6.10am – The alarm on my phone rings. I don’t want to move. At least it is already around 30F (-1C) instead of in the single digits. Also it is raining. Hard. Still rain > snow in my book, so I can live with that.
6.25am – I am out of bed. I am freezing so immediately put on a fleece hat. I know as long as I am out the door by 6.45am I will make it to 7am yoga. I brush my teeth, change into yoga clothes, take my thyroid medication, and put saline drops in my eyes. I save my prescription eye drops for later as I am not planning to wear contacts today.
6.46am – I bundle up and am out the door. I am grateful for warm rainboots and my bright pink umbrella.
6.52am – I arrive at my local yoga studio, check in, and lay out my mat. The same 20 to 30 people come to the morning classes. People rarely chat, but there is a nice sense of kinship. Today there are only about 12 people in class. I love early morning yoga for many reasons, and the feeling of spaciousness in the room is one of them.
7am – Yoga class begins. I follow the practice exactly as taught by the teacher until 7.45am and then switch to restorative pauses and start savasana a couple of minutes earlier than the class. I do not tend to get to restorative yoga classes as much as I used to, so always try to end my practice with a few minutes of restorative yoga poses. It is still pouring hard and I can hear the rain on the skylights during savanasa.
8.02am – Reluctantly roll up my mat and put it away into the cubby where it lives at the studio. Members get yoga mat cubbies labeled with their names. Then, I bundle up.
8.06am – I am on my way home. I am technically already late, as I have from 8am to 8.35am to get home from yoga, showered, ready and back out the door to work. Making myself walk fast always seems contradictory with the slow vinyasa flow of the yoga classes I go to.
8.12am – I am home and immediately jump into the shower. For days like this, I do not bother with a full shampoo routine. I rely on Everyone Soap for Everyone so I can just reach for one shampoo and body wash. I use unscented, but have been eyeing the lavender version.
8.20am – I am out of the shower and get dressed. I wear a suit or a jacket/skirt combination every day because of the dress code at my job. Technically the dress code requires a full suit (ie same color on top and bottom) but days where I do not have any meetings out of the office, I tend to wear a jacket/skirt combination. Today is one of those days, so I pull out an old favorite combination – black skirt with black top and black/grey pinstriped jacket.My husband is packing his lunch and slicing apples for both of us.
8.28am – I grab my lunch and put it in my purse. The night before early morning yoga, I try very hard to pack lunch. I also grab my sliced apple and some raw almonds and homemade hemp milk for breakfast. I finish the hemp milk and almonds but end up packing half of the apple as I am running out of time. I also take my morning supplements and pack my prescription eye drops.
8.36 – I am out the door. Usually my husband and I walk together until I get to my subway stop and then he walks on to his job. in the morning, I walk one subway station further than the one closest to where I live. It is a way to get some fresh air plus that particular metro station is way less crowded than the one right by where I live. Neither of us are particularly talkative in the morning until we leave the apartment, but usually being outside makes us more talkative. During our walk we chat about the Superbowl, which was last night.
9am – I arrive at work, put in eye drops while listening to my voicemail, go over my to do list, have a couple of conference calls, and before I know it it is …
1.15pm – Lunchtime. I have about 3-4 cups of baby spinach with Emily’s peanut sauce, as well as some chickpeas and raw almonds . The raw almonds were for a late morning snack, but I completely missed that window to eat. I read a document while eating.
3.50pm – I start thinking about my game plan for the evening. I find that if I think about what I want to get accomplished before I get home, that increases the likelihood of it happening.
6.45pm – Leave work and take subway home. I am starving and it is still rainy and very cold.
7.12pm – Arrive home. Decide against plan green smoothie for dinner because the dampness outside chilled me, so I decide to make soup instead. I throw crushed tomatoes, cashews, lemon juice, the last of my husband’s salsa (from the Superbowl the previous day) and some salt into the blender. It looks like I have about three servings, so I put one serving into a jar for lunch tomorrow. I then reheat the two remaining servings of tomato soup on the stove before stirring in baby spinach leaves to wilt down. I also brown tofu cubes in a separate, non-stick, pan. The browned tofu cubes serve as croutons. My husband makes us basic baby romaine salads with lemon juice, olive oil and chopped red onions.
7.40pm – This whole meal took 25 minutes to make. This makes me happy. Right before we sit down to eat, I remember the white beans that have been soaking for over 24 hours. I rinse them and put them in the rice cooker, along with water. I set the rice cooker to its slow cooker setting and sit down to eat.
7.45pm – I eat dinner with my husband (who has the same dinner as me) and we talk about our days. I know soup is not his favorite food, so I limited the amount of tomato broth I gave him and piled on the spinach and tofu. Nevertheless, he enjoys it. We eat sitting on the couch as we were intending to watch something on Tivo, but never get around to it. When we are done eating, my husband does the dishes.
8.20pm – I am quickly becoming one with the couch. I have my IPad and a blanket and do not want to move. I answer a few work emails that have come in since I left the office, but otherwise work is pretty quiet tonight. Unlike my day in January, today was a pretty typical at-the-office day.
8.50pm – I tear myself off the couch and promise myself I only have to do household organization stuff for an hour. I start putting away the ever growing pile of professional wear that has been living on a chair for over a week, and also fold laundry (we did several loads the day before). My husband has folded most of his. I also run a load of clothes in the washer (the laundry room is in the basement of our building). I pick that particular load because it not require any time in the dryer.
9.30pm – The washer cycle ends. I walk downstairs and get the load of laundry and bring it back to the apartment. I hang up most of it on a drying rack and the last of it in the bathroom. I then go back to folding dry laundry from the day before.
9.50pm – An hour is up! I put the Good Wife on through Amazon streaming and fold a bit more laundry while I still have some momentum.
10.10pm – I am so over folding laundry (it seems to multiply) that I just stop.
10.35pm – I remember the white beans – the timer had chimed right about when I was hanging clothes in the bathroom. Fortunately, once the slow cooker cycle is done, my rice cooker has another setting for keeping its contents warm without cooking them. I portion out 4 cups of the white beans into plastic containers for freezing, and put the rest into a glass container to refrigerate for the rest of the week. I had wanted to make white bean hummus with some of the warm beans but have no motivation. I leave the containers to cool on the counter and return to watching the Good Wife.
10.55pm – I have gotten completely sucked into the Good Wife (I am nearing the end of Season 1) but then I remember I want to go to yoga tomorrow morning, so need to get my lunch assembled. I add some of the newly cooked white beans to my jar of tomato soup. I also pack a two cup pyrex for reheating the soup (I like my soup really warm and I am not sure my recycled nut butter jar can withstand several minutes in the microwave) and a container of spinach to add to the soup. I also pack a container of raw almonds and some walnuts, as well as small jar of hemp milk (I find hemp milk to be a great snack). I then proceed to putter around the apartment, completely ignoring my aspiration to be in bed by 10.30pm or 11pm. I write a few notes in anticipation of writing this post. I also realize I have no relevant pictures, so decide to use a page from an art journal a couple of years ago.
11.20pm – I decide it is high time to go to sleep. Actually, I don’t, but my husband starts turning off the lights and pointing out it is late and I just said I want to go to yoga in the morning. I brush my teeth, put in eye drops and wash my face.
11.35pm – Lights out.
General Disclosures & Disclaimers
