Routines

[chanaleh]

These days, what with the being deliciously unemployed freelancing and job-hunting, I often don't get out of bed until 10:30am... sometimes later. (But this is partly because we go to bed between midnight and 1am... and then I wake up every morning sometime between 6 and 7, and usually can get back to sleep, but sometimes not for over an hour. The last several days, due to what appears to be my seasonal allergies kicking in, I wake up at 3am AND 6am AND 9am... which is Not Fun!)

Whoever gets up first makes the coffee and feeds the cats.

Normally I'll sit around with my coffee for most of the rest of the morning, usually with my iPad at the kitchen table, reading all the interesting articles people post on Facebook (this is my version of a newsreader), and doing the NYT crossword puzzle. (Did any of you see that stupid "Change of Heart" puzzle from yesterday? It was so ridiculous that I had to look up some kind of explanation afterwards, and was gratified to learn that I was not the only one totally infuriated. Anyway.)

Between 11:30 and 12:30, one of us might decide to cook breakfast, or else we each just forage in the refrigerator whenever we get hungry enough.

I like to shower soon after breakfast/lunch in order to get dressed and move on with the "productive" portion of my day, but it doesn't always happen that way -- often we both end up sitting back down at our respective computers and getting to work on something, and then suddenly it's 3:30 or 4:30pm.

Most days, etrace has computer housecalls to make (service calls, or sometimes pickup and delivery so he can run longer scans and interventions at home). A couple of times a week, he has music students.

When I'm not working on actual freelance projects (which I've happily had a few of, all website stuff so far), I have been spending the majority of my time (a) working on my own website/portfolio, (b) writing entries on my pro blog (eschultz72, which I'd love it if more of you would follow!), (c) hunting up and applying for jobs, and (d) generally screwing around on the Internet. Proportions are, of course, not always in that order. :-}

Sometime around 7pm, when it's starting to get too dark to see the keyboard in my little computer nook, I think "oh hey, maybe should do something about dinner" and (if etrace hasn't already) get up and start dealing with that. So it's anywhere between 8 and 9:30 when we actually sit down to eat.

After dinner is usually leisure time, unless one or both of us is in the middle of a project and goes back to the computer. We might watch some TV (or occasionally a movie, if dinner is early enough); for most of the summer it was a constant stream of Game of Thrones, but we finally finished that up a few weeks ago! Or I'll read for a while on the living room sofa, within arm's reach of etrace on his computer. Eventually (around midnight if not sooner) I'll head up to the bedroom and read for a little longer while etrace takes Tank outside one last time, and we gradually make our way to bed. Tank sleeps with us, but the cats are not allowed in the bedroom.

We end up doing a big grocery run about once a week, a pet food run to Target about every other week, and a Costco run every couple of weeks (dictated mostly by when we run low on coffee).

Last Monday was a big day: I did laundry AND three kinds of baking. :-) (Bread-machine bread, homemade pizza for dinner, and then chocolate-chip cookies after that.)

For a while, there were weekly Tuesday-or-Wednesday rehearsals for etrace's band, Cuttin' Up, at which I was kind of sitting in as potential/guest vocalist. Then there was a hiatus of several weeks, but it looks like we might be trying to gear up again and like I am invited to be more officially on the roster, so... cool. Need to add "listen to practice songs" to the lineup of regular computer-time activities.

On Thursdays at noon, we go out with etrace's mom to the local Greek diner for the weekly Kiwanis lunch meeting, a.k.a. the retired teachers' club. :-)

Two Friday mornings a month (the 2nd and 4th), etrace delivers a Meals on Wheels route, and I generally ride along and hold the clipboard. We pick up between 10:45 and 11am, and it takes 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on the exact route. (Today we had 24 meals, which is a lot, although sometimes there are two or even three clients per household so it's not that many individual stops.)

We haven't been going to synagogue, like, at all; I keep thinking I would like to go on a Saturday morning, but in the moment, it never seems important enough to actually get up and go. They only have Friday night services once a month (always with a dinner afterwards), and we did go to the one they held last week.

However, on most of our Friday evenings I like to make a roast chicken in the crockpot, that most Shabbosy-feeling of dinners. And around sundown -- or sometime before dinner, whichever -- we go into the kitchen and etrace puts his arms around me while I light candles and make Kiddush.

Which is to say, it's just about candlelighting time now. :-) Shabbat shalom!