#OneDayHH 2018

Every November, Laura Tremaine hosts a linkup called One Day, in which everyone posts the minutiae of their day that normally go undocumented. I’ve learned that these are the kinds of things you look back on and see how much in your life has changed (or not). While One Day is meant to happen on Instagram throughout the day, I prefer to post it all here as a photoessay!

Past years: 2013 // 2014 // 2015 // 2016 // 2017

 

Thursday, November 8

5:40 am: Wake up (around 20 minutes earlier than my typical weekday time). I use a real radio alarm clock, not my phone, and this one that I bought in college is still going strong.

5:45 am: Every morning, as soon as my feet hit the floor, Rufus runs to the bathroom to wait for me to run the tap. He rarely drinks from his water dish, preferring to follow me from sink to sink demanding running water. Cats.

5:50 am: I do Yoga with Adriene most mornings. I rarely have more than 15 minutes to spare, but those few minutes make me feel a lot better. It’s for physical and mental well-being, not to work up a sweat. Today I’m especially pressed, so it’s 7-minute Yoga for Stress Relief.

6:07 am: Make the coffee.

6:19 am: While I’m doing my hair, Taylor texts to say good morning and that there’s been another mass shooting. I turn on the news.

6:25 am: This is my skincare drawer for all my daily creams and toners.

6:40 am: Still loving this palette organizer for all my eye makeup. Most of my palettes are Makeup Revolution. Today I’m using Neutrals vs. Newtrals, one of my favorites.

6:50 am: Some humor. This was to Taylor, but I sent the same text to my brother, because laughing at crazy news together is one of our things.

6:55 am: A fall foliage view from my balcony. Downstairs, my wall of indoor plants! I have a few new ones for the winter, and recently repotted them all with special indoor soil. I also made other arrangements for two that needed more sun. You’ll see them later.

7:00 am: In the car. I ran my favorite race, the True Blue 5K, last week and one of the swag items was a set of stone car coasters. My coffee cup doesn’t rattle in the cup holder anymore! On the drive I hear an interview with one of the shooting victims’ dads before they knew he was a victim. I think about that poor dad all day.

7:15 am: So, I’m up early today because I have a counseling appointment. I’ve been seeing the same therapist off and on for several years. I don’t have a standing appointment – I just call her when I need her, on average every 2-3 months. My anxiety has been bad lately, and I’ve felt angry and impatient a lot, then upset with myself for being angry and impatient. Her diagnosis is cumulative stress with no down time, exacerbated by not being totally recovered from burnout. So basically I paid a professional to tell me what I already knew, but the validation always helps. She also gave me a few action items. I can’t implement all of them right now, but it’s something.

8:15 am: Headed to work and really enjoying this Neil de Grasse Tyson interview.

8:25 am: Every day I feel thankful to work in such a beautiful building!

8:30 am: At my desk and ready to go. (For confidentiality and safety reasons, there won’t be a lot of substantive pics of my workday.) I follow up on some stuff and update some reports.

9:50 am: I realize I signed my offer letter for this job one year ago today!

10:00 am: First meeting of the day. My team consists of two attorneys, two paralegals (I’m one of them), and an admin. This is our regular meeting to go over all the matters we’re working on. Our team generally has fun together, and the meeting usually starts with some silliness. One week my boss wanted to have an “In My Feelings” dance contest. This week he tries to remember some Manufacturing Excellence stuff and write it on the whiteboard, with our other attorney telling him the Japanese words, which doesn’t sound funny, but really was.

12:00 pm: Watering my cubicle plants! I get natural light in my cube (still amazing to me after 16 years of working far from windows at my last job), so plants do pretty well here. The crown of thorns plant and the aloe are the ones I recently moved from my house. The one in the gold pot is from IKEA, and I can practically see it growing. As it gets taller I plan to wind it all around the space.

12:25 pm: I don’t want to take a full hour for lunch since I came in late, so I just take a Lean Cuisine downstairs to our building’s hangout area. I eat here a lot in winter if I don’t have time to get off my work campus. This is the first quiet reading lunch I’ve gotten in a while. Ideally I need them at least twice a week. I finish my new book, which is about YA books of the 80s and 90s, aka Brenda Crack.

1:00 pm: Elevator selfie! This dress was a lucky clearance find at Kohl’s over the summer, and this is the first time I’ve worn it. I also just started wearing boots this week. I hold out as long as possible, because while I love all my boots, I know come March I’m going to be sick of them.

1:05 pm: My co-paralegal got me an iced tea while she was out. I love her and am so glad to work with her. And not only because she brings me tea.

1:15 pm: These are my usual rings on days when I go with silver jewelry. I bought this HOPE ring at a Catholic bookstore in 2002. They had Faith, Hope, and Love, and at the time I could only afford one, so I chose Hope (wow lots to analyze in that sentence). I got the knot ring on Amazon. Nail polish is OPI Blue My Mind, chosen for both Election Day and the start of Tiger basketball season. I got it from my friend/Rufus’s godmother, Stacy.

1:30 pm: Second meeting of the day. My former co-paralegal has been promoted, but we’re still helping her with a project she started over here. She wants us to review a summary she wrote. I try to focus on her overall point, but as the meeting continues, I go into editing mode and make a bunch of writing composition changes. She’s okay with it.

3:00 pm: I never get tired of this view. ♥ As the trees continue to turn, it’s a new show every day.

4:00 pm: A random quote I quote frequently (mostly to myself, mostly sarcastically) from The Devil Wears Prada: “I’m on this new diet. I don’t eat anything, and when I feel like I’m going to pass out, I eat a cube of cheese!” Well, roasted almonds are my cubes of cheese. I keep a big bag at my desk.

5:00 pm: Leave work!

5:10 pm: Another anomaly: I prefer to go to the Kroger by my house, but today I also need to get gas, and maybe the traffic won’t be as bad by the time I finish shopping, so I go to the Kroger by work. I cross off every item on my list, which is an achievement – usually something is out of stock.

5:50 pm: Gridlock. Hopes of lighter traffic dashed. This is one of my favorite songs right now – sorry not sorry.

6:00 pm: Taylor’s mom calls to invite my parents to their family Thanksgiving. This makes me happy.

6:15 pm: Rufus has different greetings for different times of day. This is the Home from Work Greeting: meeting me at the door, then flopping and rolling around on the countertop while I pet him. We both enjoy this. I put away the groceries, throw a load of laundry in the machine, change clothes, take out the trash, quickly cram a few chips in my mouth, and hurry to the gym.

7:00 pm: I go to the gym twice a week (plus one Pilates class a week), which is the most I can manage right now. At Taylor’s encouragement, I’ve started doing more free weights than weight machines, and so far I like it better. I only had one shot at this selfie stiff-arming TEN POUNDS WHAT WHAT (I’m still finding my sweet spot on free weights), because men in the weight area were already looking at me suspiciously. This session was followed by a mile on the treadmill and 45 minutes on the elliptical. My current elliptical show is The Good Place and I just started Season 2!

8:30 pm: DINNER AT LAST. I had a few options on deck depending on my hunger level, but can hang on long enough to cook an egg scramble with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese. It’s not an omelet because I couldn’t wait for an omelet, but I’m just pleased I’m not eating dinner from a plastic container. These gold-trimmed salad plates from my SIL Stefanie are my favorites – I happily took them off her hands when she and my brother moved, and she had to downsize her extensive plate collection. I follow this healthy meal with a bowl of the S’mores cereal I just bought. #balance

9:30 pm: Time for the hot shower I’ve looked forward to all day. I seriously feel like I might fall asleep in the shower.

9:45 pm: After sitting in my lap while I eat, Rufus is ready for a brief playtime. He LOVES this toy. I got it on eBay for $3.

10:00 pm: Doing a classic Queen Helene clay mask while I hang tops and dresses from the laundry – I never put these items in the dryer. The clothes in the dryer can wait to be put away another day because I’m done.

10:30 pm: Most of my days end with Colbert (sometimes Fallon), a note in my One Line a Day journal, and maybe a little reading. This magazine arrived today and I had to include it because HOW GORGEOUS. I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, and digitally to the WaPo and the Daily Memphian. My family says I’m keeping print journalism alive. :P

10:45 pm: I think this is when I fell asleep. Good night!