day in the life

So now that it's a new year and back to the grind and all that, I bet you find yourself regularly pondering Self, I wonder what Erika's REAL life is like? You know, the day-to-day boring parts...not just the fun parts where she's ripping out her own body parts or clearing a room with her foot odor or whining about her barren womb...what's it like being a DINK family in suburban Georgia in January? And because I'm a giver, I decided that I'd answer that question for you. With lots of pictures (and even a VIDEO!!) to accompany. Mainly because I always enjoy seeing other people doing posts like this-- but it seems like I mostly see SAHMs doing it. So basically they've resembled my life in zero ways- but I think it's so interesting to compare notes on 'regular life.' So here we go: A Day in the Life of Erika (and Matt)- Friday, January 4, 2013.

6:13am- Alarm goes off. Spend next 15ish minutes snoozing/reading blogs and email on the phone in the bed.

6:29am- Drag self to the bathroom. Stare in horror at what the cat dragged in.

Yeah, I just posted a picture of myself first thing in the morning, in my PJs, on the internet. Apparently I have no shame. 

6:30-7:10am- Hair, Makeup, Wardrobe. This morning I only had to change shirts once, belts twice, and cardigans twice...in other words, things went fairly smoothly.

7:12am- Make bed, snap self-portrait in poorly lit bedroom. While I've been grooming, Matt also woke up, showered, and groomed-- taking approximately 20 minutes to my 45. In the meantime, he's been (get jealous!!) making coffee, preparing our breakfast and lunches, walking Lola, and feeding Lola and the cat.

7:14am- Join Matt in the kitchen. Pour and fix the coffees. Eat breakfast (for me: Rice Chex w/  unsweetened vanilla almond milk, half the banana, coffee w/ Stevia and almond milk).

7:30am- Load up the Matrix and head to Athens. Matt drives and finishes his coffee, I man the radio (NPR), take pictures, and lament the fact that my nails look like crap.

7:58am- Arrive in downtown Athens. Park at my work. Goodbye kisses and Matt walks across the street to his bank. He has to be at work at 8. I don't have to be at work til 9, so I'm an hour early. This is fine with me because it gives me time to wake up, read and comment on blogs, listen to my Broadway Hits station on Pandora (can you decipher what's playing? Why is this picture so blurry?), and get all of my internet time-wasting out of the way.

8:45-8:55am- Fool around on Adobe Illustrator and create the amazing "Day in the Life" graphic above.  Spend a few minutes pondering about how using Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign for work makes me feel ultra-mega-super-duper cool and smart. Especially since I figured out how to create and save that graphic, export it to a JPEG, and upload it to the blog without ANY HELP from Google (or people)!!

9:00-10:30am- Alternate between actually working and trying to figure out/ask people how to do the things I'm supposed to be doing.

10:30am- Refuel with a handful of almonds.

11:07am- Switch from office chair to balance ball. No time like the present for some core stabilizing, right? Also embark upon task of putting everything in the ancient Rolodex I inherited into a modern Rolodex, aka Excel document. Naturally, this task thrilled my organized little heart. Spend some more time pondering why all of my pictures are blurry today.

12:15pm- Matt comes over to join me for lunch. We dine for about 20 minutes (tomato & red pepper soup; walnuts/pecans/sunflower seeds/pepitas/almonds mix; fresh blackberries; carrots & hummus, lime flavored sparkling water) and then make a brisk walk a few blocks across downtown to run an errand. After coming back to my work, we play a friendly game of Foosball (which I win. Just like yesterday. Booyah.).

While we were eating, there were plenty of opportunities for me to play my favorite current 'game' (if you can call it that) with Matt: the one where I pretend everything I give him is a precious gift that will redeem his life, therefore he better not screw things up (a la the Bishop to Valjean in Les Mis). I do this by butchering the very end of the Bishop's song and altering it to fit whatever random thing I'm giving Matt ("you must use this precious ____(paperclip, reindeer sock, used tissue, whatever)...I have bought your soul for Goooooooooood"), and also butchering the very low note the Bishop ends the song on. Matt laughs every time I do this, which is why I keep doing it-- he NEVER laughs at any of my hilarious jokes, so this is clearly a winner. He even wanted to video me doing it, which I couldn't say no to. So here you go. The Bishop Erika.

20 second video. I promise it plays right-side-up.

1:15-4:00pm- Work on updating and modifying web pages for work. Approximately 20 minutes after one of my supervisors tells me that she authorizes, clears me, and"completely trusts me to do this" however I best see fit, without further help, I completely jack up THE ENTIRE WEBPAGE, starting on the front home page. And when I say "screw up", I mean it looked like a ninja 3 year old hacked in and randomly bashed the keyboard while in HTML coding mode. And it was LIVE-- as in, anyone looking at the webpage at that moment saw every single awful mistake I was making. It was HORRIBLE and there were tears and nearly a panic attack. Luckily I was able to fix about 85% of the damage before I had to tell my supervisor so that she could help me fix the rest. Even when I told her how bad it was, she laughed and said it could have happened to anyone and that she had never seen a face as red as mine. And then she reaffirmed that she still trusted me with Top Webpage Clearance and to keep doin whatever I was doin. Yeah, right. Only after a few years of therapy.

4-5:00pm- Successfully initiate, start, and finish a completely different, non-web page-related task and do a bang-up job. Faith in my ability to be a competent human being is slightly restored.

5:02pm- Meet Matt at the car. WORK WEEK IS DONE! Homeward bound, we make a few stops on the way: Academy and Trader Joe's.

Seriously, why do all my pictures look like crap today? Technology hates me.

6:20pm- Arrive home, throw together (and eat) one of our favorite quick dinners: TJ's Vegetable Masala burgers (topped with avocado), garlicky kale, and quinoa (leftover from last night).

7:15- I sit down to write this blog while Matt watches DVRd episodes of How It's Made (NERD SHOW). Although our night isn't technically over, I can guarantee you the rest of it will be non-blog-worthy (as though the first part of the day was soooo exciting). Here's the agenda: taking down the Christmas decor and watching the Aggies win their bowl game. Just a typically wild and crazy Friday night.
So there you have it. If you made it this far-- congrats. Now I want to commission all of you to do a similar post (if you already have in the past, you should leave a link to it in the comments-- wouldn't that be fun?)...and you'll get bonus points if you're brave like me and post a pre-makeup and hair picture!

Hope your Friday was as thrilling as mine...happy weekend, all!