Her (My Wife) alarm goes off at 5:45am. Well that might not be true, she has multiple alarms and I can’t keep them straight. A frequent , non-argument we have is me asking “why don’t you just set the alarm for the time you want to get up, then get up at that time?” She does not care for this rational argument and simply says “It’s the way I want to wake up.” But I can give you a guess on who has more issues with morning routine and a hint, it’s not me.
She gets up and showers and does bathroom and daily maintenance stuff. My alarm goes off at 5:59am and im usually already awake just waiting my turn to hop in the bathroom. Neither of us are super long shower takers so I never have to wait long. Well...unless she missed her alarm or decided to nap for an extra five minutes.
While I am showering and doing my maintenance, she is finishing up getting dressed, making herself coffee from the Keurig machine and then heading upstairs to the land of children. Those children need to be woken and wrangled downstairs. Our routine is pretty good so they know what is expected of them. For a two and a six year old, they normally do a pretty good job. They come down dressed and without shoes on, i am not sure why they never seem to have shoes on, but in general I have to remind them to put on or get their shoes shortly after I have had my tea.
After showering and getting dressed I tell the dogs to go outside so they can do their business, i am not sure of the specifics but their business must take a lot of time because during most mornings I do not see them again till I return home in the afternoon. Perhaps they converse with the dog next door through the giant hole in the fence, or maybe they just admire the sky, some things will never be known.
After entering the kitchen I start my tea in the microwave, feed and water the dogs, then I proceed to clean the kitchen. Generally by this time my Wife has come into the kitchen also and either she or I start waffles for the kids. The two year old gets one waffle and the six year old gets two. We make a bottle of Milk, in the Minnie Mouse cup, if it's not Minnie we have to hear a long dissertation about how it has to be Minni. If we are feeling saucy or the cup is not clean, we just work through it and wear the two year old down till they accept the milk in a non-Minnie cup. Sometime after I have started cleaning the kitchen, I get my tea out and add a bit of honey, todays honey was brought to us by the Bee Ladies of the Irvine Great Parks Farmers Market, only 12 dollars for a small container!
About this time, ~6:30am the wife says she has to leave and kisses everyone goodbye. After she leaves I generally have to check the following items: Do the children have shoes, Did she make the six year old a lunch, and did she close the doors to the kids rooms. After that's all checked, I might read an article on my phone or play a match-3 game, taking a few minutes for myself while my children eat. Then it’s time to check on them and make sure that they are actually eating. Most of the time at least one of them is not eating and they have to be disciplined, usually accomplished by my saying “Eat your food, if I have to tell you again the TV goes off.” Today they are both being pretty good and I did not have to escalate my way up the discipline tree. Perhaps it is because they are watching “My Little Pony” and they both agree that is a fabulous show and there should be more shows like it. I happened to comment to my six year old “You two really like this show hmmm?” . The six year old looks up briefly and says “Yeah” followed by the two year old yelling “And Me!”, “And you.” I repeat.
At 7:00am the kids get a 10 minute warning that we have to leave soon. Generally this is just a prep announcement so when we actually leave I don’t get too much sass. This is also my time to do baggage and door check. All the doors to the bedroom and office need to be closed so the dogs, well the puppy dog, don’t get things they aren’t supposed to like Shoes, underwear, toys, Ariel Dolls, and comfort animals that my kids insist on hiding all over the house and only the dogs and I seem to be able to find. After door check it’s bag check time. My bag is normally sitting on the dining room table, which we rarely use for dining. My six year olds bag is usually next to it with his lunch box already loaded up.
At 7:10am the call goes out “Alright kid, turn off the show, turn off the playstation, plug in the controller and turn off the TV its time to go.” Both kids then go into their routine, the two year old grabbing her baba, a Wuvy Rabbit that is just a small fluffy cloth that has a rabbit head in the middle of it then lets me know that she wants to go to. “Don’t worry” I say “You get to go to.” Both kids then run for the front door, which I have to tell them for the 900th time that we go through the garage to get to the car in the morning. Both turn to the garage door and go through it. They don’t bother to turn on the lights because they know that I will hit the button, but my two year old tells me that it's dark, just so I know. I hit the garage button and it goes up, both kids are pretending to lift it. Time to get in the car, the older one goes around to their side and gets in with no problem. I have to chase after the little one who then yells at me because they want to do it, this argument from them comes out as “And Me!” which of course means “No father, I understand that our time is short , but I insist that I be allowed to get into this seat by myself and get buckled in without your help.” I allow her a few moments to try to get into the seat, but the little one would rather sit with the older one and I have to reach in and seat them properly. The little one then lets me know that they are not OK with me buckling them in.
We drive to daycare which takes between 5 and 10 minutes depending on how long the light at Muirlands wants to take. Since I am now stuck in the car with the children they both feel that they have to let me know exactly what they are thinking. This morning the older one says “I really like my friend. He's not my best friend but I like him.” The younger one is yelling the words “Trash Truck” every time we see another car, she thinks that all trucks are “Trash Trucks” her current accuracy rating for Trash Trucks VS Trucks is about 1/100 but she keeps trying anyway. We did see an actual trash truck once, not today, but once and that was pretty exciting.
7:15am I park in the Driveway of the at home daycare that we use. They open at 7:15am and it is my responsibility as someone who wants to get rid of his children as fast as possible to be there at opening. Both the children are good about getting out and I only have to tell them twice that they need to get out of the car. I knock and after a few minutes the lady comes to the door and we go through drop off routine. Older child puts his bag near the front door, both children take their shoes off and put them in the basic, little one puts their bunny in the designated cubby, the last thing they do is give their dad a hug and kiss. The hug and kiss are also routine. I tell the daycare person that the kids ate all their food and that I will see her tomorrow.
The drive to work is fairly boring. There are three street lights in order and at the first one I have to stop at I get in the left turn lane. Arriving at work I park the care and go through three security doors. My work is very important and secretive. I stop in the kitchen to make myself a raw broccoli and cauliflower salad with a vinaigrette dressing and a hot cup of water with a straw. Over to my desk I go. When I get there it is time to dump that cup of water into my mad hatter coffee cup that also contains a tea bag. While the tea stews in the mad hatter cup, I eat my salad and go through emails. It is 7:30am and it is time to start the day.
My day to day work has me watching over agents who take care of our customers. Most of them are outsourced so email and skype are major communication tools. If they have questions when I am gone, the mornings is when I send my responses. Any issues I cannot answer get a new email sent over to the parties responsible for the creation of the product. I also view our ticket queues and look over the internet for issues or possible issues that may have popped up since the day before.
At 9am we have a call with one of our outsourcer groups. This is a basic call that simply goes over the major things happening this week and what is coming up next week, as per usual there are no questions and the call ends early.
9:30am and I take my first walk of the day. My goal in any given day is currently 12,000 steps. Which is approximately 100 minutes of walking. Some of this is done during work, going to the restrooms, getting lunch, going to meetings, walking over to talk to someone but most of the steps I get are from walking around the buildings or running on my breaks and lunches. We have an all hands at 10am so I get in about 3000 steps before its time to head back and prepare for the town hall meeting.
The 10am town hall goes over how the business is doing and some of the things that are coming up. Some of it is exciting! This townhall lasts an hour and i'm in a conference room that is dark and the speakers don't handle low waves well and it's hard to hear most of the presenters.
The townhall ends at 11am and my team and I meet up to discuss it and what we think of the announcements. The overall tone is good though we have some concerns but nothing too bad. Only 30 minutes till I take my lunch. In the time after the town hall additional emails have come in and must be dealt with . My coworkers and I discuss the proper way to say something nice to someone while blowing them off at the same time, the particulars are not worth mentioning but we laugh a lot about it.
Before I know it, it is 11:30 and time to run. I change into my running cloths, pop in my headphones and turn on my book, im currently listening to IT by Stephen King. I then make a good attempt at running. The path I take has some extreme hills and its three and a half miles in length. It takes me about 50 minutes and I gain ~8000 steps enough to get me really close to my goal and completely wipe me out. On my way back into the building I stop into the kitchen for lunch. I nuke the freezer meal which today is Spaghetti and it’s going to take 6 minutes to cook, man thats a long time. No worries though, I can go and change then head back into the kitchen with my cup. I make another broccoli and cauliflower salad and fill up my big cup with ice water. I take it all back to my desk to eat and rest for the next 15 minutes or so.
Throughout the day I talk to my wife via skype. She's having a fairly good day and we are chit chatting about a vacation we want to take next year. Nothing gets solved but we continue to hash out ideas. My brother texts me about the fires that are burning around my area. I had tagged him in a Facebook post about the park we were just at burning up. It has a zoo and I was worried about the animals. From what I understand they are fine.
At 1pm I head off to a meeting regarding one of our products. We talk about whats happening with it and if there are any major concerns. There are only a few but they are being looked into. The meeting lasts about 15 minutes and I walk away pretty happy with how it went.
Its pretty much busy work till about 3pm when I have another call with a different outsourcer group. It's a rehash of the earlier meeting so there is not much to cover. Everyone gets offline at 3:10 and it's time to get back outside and take another walk. This walk is all “Gravy” steps because I hit my 12,000 before I started walking. I think about what I will be doing for the rest of the day, which will only be about an hour.
Someone from another department comes over to chit chat for while. We mostly talk about work and how things were going. No big deal.
4:30pm rolls around and it’s time to head home. I get in the car and head back to the house. I turn on Waze to see how my wife is progressing, she gets to work earlier than I do so she gets the kids and we generally get home about the same time. On this day she gets home with the kids just before me and is already changed out of her work clothes and pulling out chicken for dinner. “I thought the schedule for today was leftover Tacos?” I say as I grab a Coca Cola from the fridge. “I know, but I wanted to do something lighter since we ate heavy yesterday.” She said. I think to myself that I had that same reasoning when we talked about it the day before but there was no reason to bring it up. “Awesome. Love chicken.”
It’s 5pm now. The kids are running around and yelling at inanimate objects while crying for reasons I don't understand and not listening to their mother. I head out to the yard to pick up dog poop and clean up the area, this is what I had on my calendar so it had to be done.
5:30 I have filled up the green garbage can and come back into the house, san my shoes because they got soaking wet due to our terrible nozzle on the hose. But its OK because it’s time to eat. I eat my chicken and rice with a salad and some water. Nothing is better than chicken and rice covered in BBQ sauce.
It's time to write my page of the day, so I sit down and write a story about the Lords of Light. Inspired by watching some speedrunners do a speedrun of the original Final Fantasy. It comes out pretty good and I upload it to my blog and send it out on twitter.
6:15 My wife puts the kids in the shower. They get wet, get out, and get dressed. James and my wife then sit down in the kitchen to do his homework. When I got home I gave him the choice to either do the homework then or after dinner, he chose after dinner but was still giving my wife grief about it. We both gave him some loving yells about just getting it done.
It's almost 7pm and time for bed. I have been putting the kids more and more lately and that’s ok, they tend to listen to me pretty well especially when they can’t see their mother. First we brush our teeth. The little one tries to copy the older one and sits down their own shirt. No big deal. Then we read a book in the six year olds bed. They each get to pick a book, though because they are together they don't pay much attention to me reading the books. It's fine, it is nice to just be around them.
The little one and I put the bigger one to bed, kiss them goodnight and turn off the lights. The little one runs to grab another book and insist that we read it. That’s fine. Its some book about trucks that has parts that feel different. The little one makes sure to diligently touch all the touchy parts. I then hear a loud noise and open the door to the older ones room. Hes missing. He pops up like a startled jack-in-the-box (no one wants a Charlie in the box). I tell him to get into bed while he chants the children's chant “Im sorry, im sorry im sorry”. Heading back into the little ones room I put them in bed kiss them goodnight and tell them I love them. ~45 seconds after I told the older one to go to bed, I have to go back in to remind them that it is indeed sleepy bed time and they need to go to bed. They repeat their chant of I’m sorry’s, which has no affect as I am dad and dad is immune to earthly chants.
That whole thing took about 20 minutes. I come downstairs and we put on How I Met Your Mother. I play phone match-3 games while my wife does her side business stuff or chit chats with friends via text. She gets up and says “We should have chips and salsa” Which sounds good to me, so she gets chips and salsa out of the kitchen, its all local stuff from a restaurant that we really like.
Now its 9:30 and I have fallen asleep on the couch. She puts the dogs outside to continue their outside business then wakes me up to head to bed. We go through the night time routine and I fall asleep to do it all again tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment