A Day in The Life of.....
04:10, Wake up trod down the dark stairs, taking care not to trip over the dog. Go into the kitchen, turn on the lights. Great! neither my son or wife had the presence of mind to simply press the dishwasher's START button before going to bed. See more unwashed dishes are in the sink. Utter a few unkind words, start the wash cycle and start making up a lunch for the wife and her breakfast.
04:50: Call upstairs to my wife to tell her she needs to get out of bed now. Have her breakfast on the table. She showers, dresses for work and comes down, complaining that the dishwasher is on and that the noise will wake our son. I go upstairs, shower, shave and dress.
05:10: Do a quick scan of e-mail and links I look at everyday. Eat a quick small breakfast. Hear son stir upstairs.
05:30 Son comes downstairs and gets his bowl of cereal. Wife starts railing about why he hasn't been fixed a more substantial breakfast.
05:50-06:15 Leave home to drop wife off at work. Sparse traffic of course, given the hour and many of the lights are on flashing mode until 06:00. A silent ride it is.
06:45: Arrive back home, son is gone meaning he has left the house in time to catch his morning bus. Scan the net more closely now, job boards mostly. Feed the dog Make son a small snack to east after his weight-lifting class.
08:10: Leave to pick up son from home school and to drive him to another high school for his Japanese Language class. Drop him off and head to a nearby Starbucks, since it makes little sense to go back home and then come back, to wait. While waiting, I drop one of my pens between the cushions and in the process of retrieving it, touch on a bunch of coins that have fallen out and lodged in the same place. The amount runs out to be almost what I paid for the coffee. Hooray for small victories.
10:30: Pick son up and drop him off at his base school. Ask him as I always doe, about what he did in his Japanese class, and he answers as always, 'Study Japanese'.
10:50: Son is safely dropped off and I now head west to the next county, where the local community college has its annual poinsettia sale. Am after the snow-white poinsettias I saw last year. No snow-white ones but some salmon pink ones for which I and some very determined women quickly snap up.
12:30: The Prelude (or as The Auto Gal called it: The Quaalude) is loaded up with eight large plants and I can barely see out of the rearview or passenger side mirrors. Drive very carefully back home.
13:35: Back home, unload the car, thrown my son's gym stuff into the clothes washer and start the wash cycle. Take some leftover turkey, fry some onions and gobo in sesame oil then add a curry-flavored salad dressing to the stuff and have my lunch. See I still occasionally get junk mail addressed to the people we bought this house from 10 years ago. Pitch it.
14:10: Leave house to pick up wife fro work. Make a mistake on the time (I am early). I get to listen to the 'My day was...' on the way back. She wants to practice cake decorating at home, so a detour to another store which lead to another detour and yet another. Meanwhile the temperature Quaalude's temperature gauge gets worryingly high. Buy and add more coolant, but realize that I need to do something about the radiator.
17:30 Finally arrive home. Son is on the PC doing homework and web surfing in alternating spurts. He's not terribly hungry. Tell him I have fixed and baked a turkey casserole which he can scoop out what he wants from, nuke and eat. Wife falls asleep upstairs.
20:30: After drifting in and out of sleep while on the couch, I get up and tell my son that if he is 'bored', he cantake out the clothes from the washer and hang then up to dry. To my surpirse he complies. I finally call it a day and head upstairs.
