February 29, 2012

3:52 am – Wake up (no alarm) and look over at my bedside table, realize that it’s 3:52 am and I don’t need to be up quite yet, so I doze for a bit.

4:14 am – Give up on dozing and grab my iPhone to read the morning Daily Office to connect with God, and to check Instagram to see what people are doing in the world.

4:30 am – Get into the shower, get dressed, makeup, etc.

5:00 am – Make coffee, cut up an apple, get a glass of water. Sit down at computer and check twitter/facebook/email real quick to make sure nothing exploded etc. Text. Gather papers for my meeting, look over my notes, look over my report. Open up Day One to start this log and then write my Morning Pages.

5:29 am – Start meeting for iPhone App project with my business partner (who is in another time zone, hence the early meeting time)! Yay! We are making progress!

7:14 am – End meeting. Gracie is up now! Get her breakfast while she watches Sponge Bob on Netflix on the TV. I eat another apple (raw breakfast, yay for me! well, except for coffee. Lol.). Make her lunch & get stuff ready for school. Get my stuff ready. Get Gracie dressed (an extravaganza that takes longer every day).

8:03 am – Leave for school. Explain to Grace the concept of Leap Day – she is very excited that there has only been two of them since she has been alive. She can’t believe we need to add days / seconds to keep calendars and the earth matched up. We are almost late but barely not, they do the rain stick just as she is entering the classroom so after a quick kiss she runs in to grab her spot on the carpet.

8:37 am – Leave her school, get gas (the car’s No Gas Alarm is going off! Wish I could wash my car there too but it’s raining), and go to Panera Bread. Lots of construction along the way and people driving crazy b/c raining, oy, which makes me feel like I’m running behind.

9:17 am – Finally sitting at my table at Panera. With coffee, you pick two (black bean soup and a veggie sandwich), laptop, notepads, headphones (to keep people from talking to me). Totally not eating raw this morning but oh well – I’m hungry and I need to eat right now, and I need to write a blog post somewhere that’s not at home, etc. At least this is vegetarian and remotely healthy. Well, except the chips. Well they are just potatoes and sunflower oil and salt so not too bad in the scheme of chips.

Start writing a blog post about yesterday’s nervous breakdown. Eavesdropping on people having telephone conversations about various startup ideas and someone else who just got their Cisco routers finally. People are entertaining.

10:23 am – Just published the blog post and posted on Twitter & Facebook. Now gathering stuff to leave Panera to go back home to work for the rest of the work day. Also want to use my own bathroom instead of a public one.

10:41 am – Home! My organic fruit/veggie box came from Farm Fresh to You – contains leeks again. That’s a lot of freaking leeks. I need to look up a new recipe or something. Do the 15 min tidy/clean daily routine – today all I got to was dishes & taking out the trash.

Guy with a chainsaw outside my window (apt complex has a tree service here cutting down trees that are allegedly diseased or something) so I was going to record a podcast … but I’ll have to wait until they go on break.

11:25 am – Create and send out an email blast – blog post plus 21% off MBTI Type II, now until Friday – and talking about my blog post that I just posted. Which means: set up the coupon code & test, change where the link is on the coaching page, write the email blast & test & send & check to make sure it worked.

11:52 am – Record the Live Your Truth Daily podcast. Along the way get distracted by Facebook and upgrading my Live Your Truth Facebook Page to the new layout and looking at Hiro Boga’s upcoming program. Then go back to finish publishing the podcast. Oops, distracted by email again and filling out a form for church. Now back to hitting publish on this thing.

12:32 pm – I’m taking a break. Had a snack and watched the first episode of Downton Abbey, via Amazon Prime streaming. Omg that was so awesome!!! Love!! I rarely watch TV shows (we don’t have cable and until recently didn’t even have a TV) but that show was really well done and I love British period pieces. It’s hard for me to let myself take a break.

[As I am posting this a week later, I still feel guilty about taking this break. Perhaps 30 minutes would have been reasonable but this was almost an hour and half!]

1:50 pm – Emails. I have a backlog due to me going off the grid when I was in Disneyland. I start going through the gmail deemed “important” emails – opportunities, clients, inquiries, stuff from my BFF, plus all the wrongly-labeled-unimportant junk.

2:19 pm – Okay that’s as much emailing as I can take right now. Going to get stuff together to go get G from school. Not sure what we will do after school, so I’m bringing stuff to do, just in case she wants to go ice skating (as in, stuff for me to do as I sit on the bench. I enjoy sitting on the bench while she skates.). Leave to get G at school.

3:25 pm – Gs friend invited her ice skating, so we are across the street at the outdoor ice rink. I’m happily sitting on a bench … going to see if I can get some Internet access so I can email and/or watch training videos. Yes there is free WiFi!! Win!! Watched an MIT lecture on Intro to Computer Science (lecture 4 of 12), to bring me up to speed re thinking like a programmer, for the iPhone App project. Email.

4:59 pm - Leave the ice skating rink as their afternoon session closes, get G drive through food on the way home (not exactly a parenting win, but oh well).

5:35 pm – Get home. Make myself an omelet with sautéed onions & goat cheddar cheese.

While eating, watch lecture 5 of the MIT course (45 min). With occasional stops to get G something to eat, to cut a piece of paper, to get a black sharpie to write on cardboard, to buy tickets to Cinderella, to rip off pieces of blue tape, to insert and then remove Gracie in/from a big box (that the vacuum came in), etc.

More emails. Get a band-aid for Gracie. Talk to Gracie about summer camps. Text. Take pictures of Gracie in a box. Tried to print a picture but printer is not working augh!!!

8:11 pm – Enter “get the kid to bed” phase – her brushing her teeth etc., and then I read her a chapter from Little House in Big Woods (we just started the Little House on the Prairie books!) and a devotion from a kid’s Lent devotional. We pray. Then she listens to a children’s guided meditation and falls asleep.

While I’m sitting on the floor besides her bed as the meditation plays from my phone, I post a picture to Facebook and read thebloggess‘ latest post (is it wrong to internet while my kid is listening to a meditation? Hum. Not very Zen of me, eh?).

8:40 pm – Leave the kid’s room, as she is theoretically asleep. I do my yoga stretching, read the evening Daily Office, and get myself ready for bed.

9:31 am – Lights out. I turn on a guided meditation and presumably fall asleep a few minutes later, because I don’t remember any of the meditation.

—

Leap Day 2012 Summary:

Work: 5:55 hrs

Chauffeur/Driving/Drop-Off/Pick-Up: 3:02 hrs

Multitasking (work/mommy stuff combined): 2:36 hrs

AM Routine & PM Routine: 2:06 hrs

Get G Ready for School/Bed: 1:18 min

Break Time: 1:18 hrs

Housekeeping: 44 min

Doze: 22 min

Total: 18:21 hrs

Well, no wonder I feel like I can’t get anything else done. I think this is the best I can do.

The answer is … I don’t.

But to really answer the question, here is how one day happened for me.

It’s not a typical day – I don’t have typical days. Some days I work a lot more, some days I don’t have my daughter with me, some days I’m more or less insane.

This is just a snapshot of my life, as it was, one summer day when I was 36 and a half, running a business and getting a master’s degree while living in the Silicon Valley with a six year old girl and a cat.

Thursday, August 4, 2011.

5:22 AM. I wake up alone in my bed.

No alarm set. It’s quiet. Suburbia.

I grab my iPhone vibrating next to my pillow and answer the early morning texts from two of my favorite people, who are awake, elsewhere. I laze in bed, checking Instagram and Twitter and my personal gmail account, reading my message from the universe for the day.

5:50 AM. I need coffee.

While the Tassimo is making its magic in my Gracie-designed coffee cup, I cook my breakfast, the same thing I eat every morning – one scrambled egg with sauteed onions and one piece of whole wheat toast with real butter. The cat watches me from her perch as I sit down at the dining room table, my blue journal before me, and I write three morning pages with my blue felt-tip pen, brain dumps about what’s upsetting me, and the outlines for two new videos.

6:45 AM. Sit down at the iMac.

Check Twitter and business email, ask people on Facebook for advice about an interior plant that’s less resistent to death. Set up an SQL database and finish a WordPress install for a test site of the new ElizabethPottsWeinstein.com web design.

I realize that I’m still writing July on everything.

6:57 AM. Stand up and go into mom mode.

Pack Gracie’s snack for nature camp, with a mini-love-note from her to me, as requested. Realize that Adia the cat peed all over the floor underneath the litter box and she tried to cover it up by pushing half of the litter onto the floor. Oy!!! Litter fail!!!

I make more coffee.

7:09 AM. Gracie announces her awake status from her room.

Get her started on her day (apple juice, Wheat Thins, PBS) and I start tidying up toys and clutter and cleaning the apartment – today we are getting a visit from the Head of the new school she’s attending in the fall. I don’t want the lady to think that I’m an incompetent housekeeper.

Make a list of everything I forgot to get at Target and the grocery store.

I have been to both stores twice in the last two days.

7:25 AM. Get me ready for the day.

While in the shower, rehearse a video I’m planning to film later in the day. I would totally make videos in the shower – if it was not for the wetness and the naked.

7:59 AM. Get G ready for the day.

She “texts” me on her new Barbie phone that she’s decided to wear a long sleeve sweater dress to outdoor nature camp. As such, I pack a short sleeve shirt and shorts in her backpack.

Drink a glass of water to combat post-two-cups-of-coffee insanity.

8:13 AM. Drive G to nature camp.

9:27 AM. Home.

Paranoid. Decide to clean the house more, so the Head of G’s school does not think I’m a bad mother. Move boxes, vacuum, sweep, try to damp mop the floor with the new mop but realize it’s ineffective. I can’t figure out the best way to clean these slightly-squishy matte-finished wood-looking floors.

I think the floors are pourous. #flooringfail

10:00 AM. Back at the iMac.

As I set up the video, realize I am shiny in the wrong places. Powder. Lipsick. Do the record, edit, export, upload, post the video blog, send to social media, reply to comments/replies/retweets thing.

Switch laundry to dryer.

11:00 AM. Oy! It’s time to leave to get G from camp!

11:57 AM. G meltdown on the way home.

She thinks I don’t do a good job packing snack because it’s not what she wants to eat that day. I respond that I am not magical and cannot predict the future about what she will want on any particular day. So if that’s important to her, she needs to pack her own snack. After a large quanity of tears and pissyness, she agrees to do so. #EPWwin

12:25 PM. G is eating spicy hummus on crackers for lunch.

She does not yet know that unlike mac & cheese and chicken nuggets and cheese sandwiches, hummus is not a typical kid food. Please dear god don’t anyone tell her.

Gracie suddenly asks, “how did the dinosaurs die?”

12:51 PM. Inadequate housekeeping paranoia increases.

More cleaning.

G watches PBS while I do the email/social media/comment thing until the Head of school arrives.

2:00 PM. “Home Visit” with the Head of G’s new school.

She’s very nice, asking G about her summer, what camps she has gone to, if she went on vacation. G uses Harry Potter as an example for a point that she was making and the Head is surprised that she’s seen such a “scary movie.” G matter of factly answers that it is not scary because she watched at home with her mommy.

2:20 PM. Order a twirling baton.

2:33 PM. Research for two papers due on Saturday.

Have to use peer-reviewed journals to support my arguments, which the syllabus says are more reliable and important than other sources. I find this entertaining because in law school I was a editor of two law reviews and am not impressed by said peer review process. But is required, so I research in journal databases about the trolley problem, the hippocratic oath, and oaths taken by army officers.

3:23 PM. Sort through a box of old clothes from the basement of G’s dad’s house (was our old house).

Find 6 sweaters that fit me! It’s like shopping without the spending of money! Win!

Text Alli re said sweater success.

3:50 PM. Don’t know what to do with myself.

Make coffee.

Play with the Canvas theme from WooThemes. Omg. This theme framework is freaking powerful and easy and I think I can actually use it to create the site I imagine! Love.

4:25 PM. G wants to go swimming & I agree as long as I don’t have to get in, so I can use the time to outline chapters for Ethics class.

5:21 PM. As G takes a bath, I eat my dinner, reading Eddings’ Crystal Gorge book.

I used to multitask while eating – eat at the computer, in front of the TV, or while studying for class. But a few years ago when I changed how I ate (and thereby lost 40 lbs), I created a new practice of no work/studying while eating. I either do nothing, write in my journal, or read a book.

5:59 PM. We watch Harry Potter together and eat Tootsie Roll Pops.

Neither of us make it to the center via just licking.

8:39 PM. G is in bed. I’m at the iMac.

Look for hex code color families & google fonts, play with the layout and design, using the Canvas framework. Am so excited! I think this will work!

9:46 PM. I need to get off the computer & go to bed.

9:49 PM. No. Seriously. Get off the fraking computer, EPW.

I go into my bedroom with a snack of Cheezy Cheese Its and some water so I don’t wake up hungry at 3 am.

Read Pride & Prejudice yet again. Text. Get a yummy late night phone call.

Sleep.

#thatwasall

–

How do you spend your days? How do you balance all of your roles and responsibilities – and still get work done? I’d love to hear from you below!

5:55 AM – I wake up to a tiny hand pulling on my arm.  "Mommy?"  Gracie (age 2.4) climbs up on my bed and cuddles with me.  She tells me about her bad dream ("cat was mean and scary").  I hope she wants to cuddle for a while longer.  No luck.  "Mommy up!  Wake up time!  Hungry!"  Ugh.  It’s still dark outside. 

6:03 After giving Gracie a cereal bar and plopping her down in front of the TV for a Dora show, I check email and delete spam.  Answer an email from my mom about my sister’s new engagement, and travel plans for September.  Read the front page headlines on cnn.com to make sure the world did not explode. 

6:15 Cook breakfast of eggs with cheese, onions, and green peppers, for myself (I’m on Atkins, so I have to cook for each meal, ugh) – while that is cooking, clean up the kitchen and tidy the living room.  Grace asks to do art, so I get down some letter stickers and construction paper, so she can make a collage while I eat.  I wish I could eat in peace, but that does not always happen.  Then get Gracie some crackers and juice as second breakfast.

6:50 After I clean up dishes, and pack her lunch for school, I hunt around the house for a clean set of sheets and blanket for nap time at school.  Since I did not launder her usual nap blanket (who wants to do laundry every week?), I ask Grace if it is okay to use a "new" blanket.  "Yes, new blanket.  I’m cold, blanket?"  She wants to use the blanket now – mental note to not forget blanket just because Grace abandons blanket in random part of house.

6:55 Grace wants me to listen to the dinosaur CD (classic kid tunes with dinosaur lyrics), so I play that as she practices turning her light on and off.  I tidy her room, then tell her lights are not for playing, and she just smiles as if saying "just wait until you leave the room, then I can do whatever I want."  She then says "exercise!"  We get on the floor and do leg lifts and sit-ups (a great way to make sure I do my sit-ups), she does a few so-called jumping jacks, then jumps on top of me so I do the last few sit-ups with 28 pounds of girl on my chest.  Ouch.
 
7:30 I try to take a shower, but get distracted because Grace cannot find her Dora doll.  We look everywhere, to no avail.  Dora, where are you?  Oh no, we have no replacement because that doll is discontinued, maybe I should get a backup on eBay?  Finally get into the shower as Grace decides to wake up daddy.  Too bad for him. 

8:30 Take Grace to preschool.  Praise god, my husband filled my car with gas last night — chivalry is still alive.  Get Starbucks coffee on the way home.  Oops, forgot to bring the mail, so don’t run by the post office on the way home like had planned.  That means I have to remember later in the day, which is even less likely. 

9:05  Get home, gather up laptop and papers to go "to work" in office (attached to garage).  Set up in office, check over email and delete spam.  Throw emails to answer in the Follow Up folder like a good GTD girl (but will I actually look at them later?).  Confirm schedule and to-do list with myself.  Start working on writing blog posts for the week for The Wealth Spa Business Blueprint blog — idea is that I will get all my blog posts (for 3 blogs) done for the week, today, so I can work on the book for the rest of the week.  Rough draft of the book is due on Wednesday, and I want my full second draft done by the end of next week. 

10:00-10:17 Phone call with host of radio show on which I am appearing in late September.  We chat about ideas for the show (had not thought about it ahead of time, so had to wing it) and about my business.  Need to remember to get her $100 "donation" and info sheet.  Move her email from Press folder to Follow Up folder. 

10:17  Work on blog posts.  Change mind and decide to shorten one post, which was going to be way to long if I covered the entire topic — now it is a three-part-er.  Did a book review, which I also post on my Squidoo book review lens and amazon.com.  For some reason, can’t get Squidoo to display amazon.com links of any kind, which sucks.  Will have to figure that out later.  But maybe I don’t care, because I only get like 17 cents per book sale anyway.

11:31  I’m really hungry.  Go into house and get current novel (Arrow’s Flight by Mercedes Lackey, which I have read like 10 times already), and go to Baja Fresh for lunch to (1) get an Atkin’s friendly bare chicken burrito with no rice meal, and (2) feel like a real business person who goes out for business lunches.  Yes, I am part of grown-up, non-hermit society! 

12:35 PM – Back in office, finish up posts for TWSBB and procrastinate on anything else by checking email and reading blog RSS feeds on Google Reader.  Decide, no, I’m not going to procrastinate!

1:00 – 1:20 Get Acquainted phone call with prospective client.  She will probably come in for an hourly consultation in a week or two.  Have to look up her name because could not understand her well, probably because we were both on mobile phones and my 1-800 number is over VOIP. 

1:23  Start working on posts for Chronicles of a Mompreneur.  Pace around the room instead of writing because am stuck.  Come up with new post that is a "top 7," which tends to be easier to write than plain paragraphs, and would be good to submit to blog carnivals etc.  Also decide on posts that cannot be written until later in the week, because they are either based on things that are not done yet (radio website not finished) or require me to wear makeup (video), which did not happen today.  Great, a valid way to procrastinate on work, and can cross that off my list. 

2:25  Worry about The Wealth Spa Radio Show website.  My web host (my dad) has the domain name registered, but I don’t have any of the login info so I can’t upload wordpress and figure out what I have to do for podcasting my radio show (starts next week).  I emailed him on Saturday and have heard no response.  If he was a company, I would call and nag, but since he is my dad … doing business with family (especially parents) can be a problem. 

2:31 Start working on posts for Travel With Toddler blog.  Close email program so checking email as procrastination tool is more difficult.  Decide to get Coke Zero drink to procrastinate instead (means I have to go inside house).  While inside house, check mail (not there yet) and see little magnet left by city councilperson, with helpful numbers and dates for local events.  I have a fleeting thought of running in the San Jose Rock & Roll Marathon in October, until I remember that I don’t want to run in a marathon. 

2:48 Working on TWT blog.  Check Squidoo lens on flying with toddler, and there is a comment from Mom2Mom that they are going to cover it in their September issue.  Cool. 

3:29 Take a break.  Re-evaluate tasks for the day.  Probably will get blogs done, not sure if will get to eZine or not.  Write in calendar that for sure will take off Thursday to spend with Gracie, and will take her to Happy Hollow.  Get cheese for snack, yum.  Check snail mail (nothing interesting). 

3:54 Finish up work on TWT blog.  Decide to create new Squidoo Lens on family travel book reviews, since already doing family travel book reviews on blog.   Having trouble uploading a photo onto the new Lens, hum, Squidoo has made editing lenses better (can add html links, etc.) but the photo upload is buggy.  Realize it is 4:40 so may need to stop soon. 

4:52  Got an email from Host Services at Voice America with the audio for my new radio show – the commercials for the show, and the leadin’s.  Wow, very creepy and cool to listen to an announcer-chick voice talk about me in official, radio-sounding way. 

4:57 Shut down computer and pack up to pick up Grace from school. 

5:15 Arrive at Grace’s school during pick-up rush-hour.  A bad idea, have to get a tiny parking space for my SUV.  (why have tiny parking spaces at a school parking lot, where everyone has huge kid transport vehicles?)  As we leave, Grace says "cheeseburger, fries?!"  I decide to say yes today, so we go through McDonald’s drive through (I get a southwest chicken salad, since I am on Atkin’s).

5:35 At home I first have to set Grace up with her dinner, then feed the cat.  Why does everyone else eat before I get to eat?  After she finishes, Grace comes over and whines — probably because she did not get enough attention from me right after we got home, in her opinion.  She wants a band-aid for an "ow" on her knee that happened like 2 weeks ago.  I comply, just so I can finish eating in peace. 

5:41 I decide to go check my email for a minute, which means that Grace comes up 30 seconds later to try to get my attention.  "Sticker book!"  I get out a new sticker book (Dora, of course), and we pick out stickers and figure out where they are supposed to go in the book. 

6:05 Grace says "outside mommy" and I realize that the backdoor is standing wide open — she has figured out how to open the backdoor.  Great.  We go outside to play.  Grace starts playing with "painting" water (using a paintbrush to paint water on various outside things), so I get to read my book for a bit.  She decides we should go for a walk, so I get my iPod and we get the stroller out.  Great, will I get my walk in today?  No, after 3 minutes she’s too cold (it’s very windy today) so we come back, and she refuses to believe that a blanket will keep her warm, so we go inside. 

6:27 Grace plays while I do some emailing and RSS feed reading.  

6:54 She runs up and says "mommy up!  mommy pick up!  sit on lap!  mommy sit on couch! watch Little Einstein’s!"  We cuddle on the sofa while Grace watches Little Einstein’s.  I give her some "bear cookies" (aka Teddy Grahams). 

7:21 "Mommy, exercise!"  We go into her room to do another set.  I try to get her to read a book with me, but that reminders her of dinosaur sticker books (and we don’t have one, so she’s upset).  I distract her by asking her if she wants to take a bath.

7:31 Grace takes a bath.  I call Mark (husband) to see when he is coming home, and he asks me to record a show that starts at 9 pm, which is not a good sign. 

7:42 Grace’s bath does not last as long as I would have liked.  She now sits on her little chair in front of the TV (wrapped in a towel) to watch the same episode of Little Einstein’s again.  Hey, at least that show has classical music and art, so it’s not bad TV, right?  I go into the kitchen and clean up from dinner and her lunch box, then tidy up the clutter left behind by the cleaning people (they clean and find tons of junk under furniture, etc., and leave a bunch of stuff for me to put away).  Grace (still naked) asks to sit on my lap, but I tell her "I only let people with clothes on sit on my lap."  She chooses being naked over sitting on mommy’s lap. 

7:52 I remember that I forgot to call a friend back, but can’t remember her kid’s sleep schedule and don’t want to call in case it messes them up.  I can call her back tomorrow – and make sure the post-it note with the message is on my planner notebook. 

7:54 I start working on my to-do list and plan for tomorrow (written on a sticky post-it note that is stuck to the front of my planner).  Tomorrow I am going to dictate the last two chapters left in my book and send them out to be transcribed, and email a survey to my panel to gather leads for case studies for the book.  I have a 1 pm call with my book coach.  Then I will go through all client files where I am waiting for something (papers, a decision, etc.) and send them a reminder (aka nag) to get it done.  If I have time, I will then work on client projects.  Hum, Grace is now running around wearing a wood bead necklace, and nothing else.  I shut the drapes.

8:01 I fold laundry that’s crazy wrinkled because it has been sitting there for 3 days.  Grace announces "I did it" because she went BM in her potty.  "Yay, Gracie!"  She finds two used toilet paper rolls in the bathroom (why didn’t the cleaners throw them out?) and put them on her forearms and runs around making monster noises.  I ask her to throw away a used dryer sheet, so she takes it to the recycling can and find that it contains interesting stuff, like an egg container and a used soda bottle.  She comes up to me and says "soda and eggs!  soda and eggs! I want soda and eggs!  Please soda and eggs for me?"  She apparently wants me to cook her soda and eggs.  Um, I don’t think so. 

8:17 Grace announces "I go to sleep in my own bed."   I’m all about that. 

8:30 Grace is tucked in.  I turn the muted TV to HBO so I don’t miss my show on at 9 pm, and sit down at the computer.  I check the stats on my websites and blogs, Squidoo lenses, RSS feeds, and my eZine.  I update some Squidoo Lenses and publish a group. 

8:59 Big Love is on! 

10:00 I love that show.  Mark finally arrives (with sushi for his dinner). 

10:17 After a quick visit with Mark, I’m off to read in bed. 

10:45 Sleep