Day in the Life – Web Designer & Mama.

I quite like peeks in the days of others. Here is mine from Monday:

6:38 am- Gabe wakes up. We didn’t close our curtains last night, so it’s super bright in our room and feels later than 6:38 am. I love sunshine in the morning. I just wish it wasn’t so early. Get Gabe out of bed, bring him to our bed, and flop back down. Gabe is delighted to see us and gives us lots of kisses and hugs. Mike tries to stay asleep, but I drag myself out of bed. Put my contacts in, take off Gabe’s diaper, and go to the kitchen. I reheat some steel-cut oats and put dark chocolate almond butter in them.

7:08 am – It’s Mike’s day to work the first shift (one of  us works from 7 am – noon and the other from noon-5 pm each day while the other is in charge of Gabe). He gets to work and I decide to start the 40 days of  decluttering I want to do. Day one is kitchen drawers. I go through drawers in kitchen and toss 16 things. Half of them are salt and ketchup packets (which, yes, I squeeze into our bottle – waste not!), so don’t be too impressed. 8:14 am – I can’t find my phone. I look all over our apartment. It’s next to toilet. I’m so fancy. I want to go out and garden but Gabe doesn’t want to, so we stay inside. He plays with his trains and blocks and Magnatiles. I am taking notes on my notes app and wonder if I can change the font. Google it. I can! It takes two seconds. Phew. Helvetica is much better. When Googling, remember how I want to get a Google author badge. Write it on to do list. To do list asks me to rate it, so I do that. Make note of a blog post idea in Evernote and check my Starbucks app to see if I have a free reward yet. I do! Woohoo! Make some awesome coffee. Drink it without sugar and it still tastes delicious. Email and blogs and trains and reading a book. Mike cleans off the porch – it looks so much better! I go in our room to get something and the shape of Mike under the covers on our bed. But he is on the porch. Since I’m very rational, I immediately am convinced there is a man in our bed. I go get Mike. We both think a serial killer is in our bed. Mike hits the killer. It is just the comforter.

9:45 am – Leave to walk to the grocery store. It’s about 1.5 miles away, which is a nice little walk. I like to walk when I have a destination. On the way, listen to the Etsy Conversations podcast (it was in the “new & noteworthy” section in iTunes) and make notes as I walk – both voice memos and via Siri – about branding and professional design. Get beeped at twice by guys driving trucks. Why do men beep at women? It’s weird. Also, I’m pushing a stroller, which means I’m a MOM which makes it weirder. Think about trees and city and street design. I’m reading Suburban Nation, so that sort of thing is on my mind. I only see two other people on the sidewalks, one is a runner, one is walking to work.

We get two gallons of milk, two boxes of cereal, a carton of eggs, and a jar of peanut butter at the store. The cashier talks to Gabe about the Snoopy and Woodstock on his shirt. On the way home, I try out another podcast I’ve never listened to – Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey. He mentions all the past guests and they have all been men. I am put off by this. But the guest is Jon Acuff, so I listen. As I’m crossing an intersection, a bee swarms around my head and into my armpit. I do a lot of swearing in my head, but try to stay cool so the bee doesn’t freak out and sting me. It flies away. Phew. Man, it’s hot pushing a stroller full of groceries uphill in the sun. I take my heart rate. 156. I’m sweating a lot. Think about how this means I won’t be able to go running in the middle of the day without dying. I usually run during Gabe’s nap on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that might need to change. Not sure how I’ll manage waking up early enough to run before 6:30, though. Bleh.

11:25 am- We get home. Unload groceries and eat some lunch on the porch. Mike and Gabe have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I have leftovers from last night – zucchini and sugar snap peas over spaghetti. I add peanut butter because I’m weird and it’s delicious. Then I eat an Oreo with peanut butter because it’s my new favorite indulgence and SO GOOD. 12:00 pm- It’s my work time, so I get to work. Reheat some coffee, get a class of water, and waste time for 20 minutes checking Twitter and other links before I look at my to do list I made the night before. Write and edit photos for a blog post. Get distracted by a blog post. Don’t comment because that would be even more time! Back to work. I publish the post, then move to the next item on my list – installing a website for a client. I add their URLs for social media profiles to icons and download their site backup, then realize I’ll need more than their FTP login info to install WordPress on their site, which means I won’t be installing their site today after all. Do some emailing and such. Somehow end up on the website for Disneyland Paris, thinking maybe someday we’ll take Gabe there instead of Florida. Paris sounds nice, doesn’t it? Watch the video about the Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast ride. Reminisce about doing that in Disney World as a 16-year-old with my little brother. Refocus. Email two clients whose sites were recently launched with some support about migrating subscriber lists and how to link with HTML code. Style content for a client’s site.

3:37 pm – I cannot put off peeing any longer. While I’m up, I grab a lime popsicle from the freezer. I super love these lime popsicles, even though I thought I hated all sour things. Read about getting clients. Remember that I need to email the local restaurant owner back about his site. Email him and then open this blog post and start typing about my day. Go to the business ecourse I’m taking and respond to a question. Start to read the second lesson.

5:19 pm – Notice a design bug on my site and get to work fixing it with CSS and Firebug. Fix it and while I’m there,  respond to some reader comments.  One of the comments mentions cooking and I remember that I should make dinner.  Email my friends about hanging out this Friday. Look in the fridge and see I need to use the lettuce. Hoisin lettuce wraps it is! I cook dinner while Gabe plays trains. We eat dinner on the back porch – we never eat inside these days. Too hot. Mike makes some awesome frozen banana soft serve with peanut butter and chocolate. We play and hang out and check our email (me, mostly) until we finally can’t put off sending Gabe to bed.

8:47 pm: Three books later, Gabe is in bed and we talk about what TV show we should watch. We used to watch TV together more often, but haven’t watched anything in awhile. We end up watching The Big Bang Theory because we still haven’t seen this past season. We watch for a few episodes (first episode on the couch before bringing the laptop to bed) and then chat for a while. Mike decides to sleep and buries his head under his pillow after kissing me goodnight. I should go to sleep, but instead dink around on my phone for too long (are we seeing a pattern?)

10:56 pm: Set my alarm for early, hoping I’ll get up in time to run. (I did!) Turn off the light and fall asleep immediately.

And that is my life right now (the last time I did this was nearly two years ago)! Family, work, play. And a healthy dose of distraction.