Day in the Life

Here are previous day in the life posts…and here’s what my day looked like last Wednesday, March 25! It was a slow day and I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but hey, that’s life.

6:30 My alarm goes off. Snooze.

6:39 It goes off again. More snooze.

6:48 It goes off again. You guessed it — more snooze.

6:57 The alarm goes off yet again and I finally get up. I don’t usually hit snooze more than once, but I guess it was just one of those mornings! I immediately head into the bathroom to brush my teeth and get in the shower.

7:05 As I’m getting out of the shower, I hear Jose talking to Emma — who has come into our room on her own. She’s really loving having figured out door knobs at last. Jose and I, on the other hand, and not loving it as much.

7:15 I dial in to a telecon. Fortunately it’s one that I only have to listen to, because it’d be tough to participate while simultaneously getting ready for the day.

7:25 As I’m eating a bowl of cereal, Emma comes into the kitchen dressed in red from head to toe. Jose says she picked her outfit by herself, and it’s all seasonally appropriate, so we go with it.

7:30 I take the recyclables outside. Mornings are exciting stuff, aren’t they?

7:35 Emma gets to watch a bit of Curious George while Jose fixes her hair and gets her shoes on. I’m over in the kitchen making my coffee.

7:55 After a bit more puttering around and a few minutes of watching TV with Emma, we leave the house. In my hands are my work bag, my purse…and an orange astronaut suit for Emma to wear for her “literacy appreciation day” presentation. (They were supposed to dress up like a character from a favorite book — she was Maxine the kid astronaut from “Floating Home.” The presentation part for her class was just )

8:20 We arrive at the daycare and head to the cafeteria. Her class started eating in the cafeteria (instead of in the classroom) maybe a month ago — such big kids now! Several of the other kids were already in costume, so we went ahead and put on the astronaut suit. It was way too big, but still adorable.

8:28 I arrive at my desk and start the day with the usual — going through email and reviewing my calendar while drinking my coffee. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be too busy today. Maybe I’ll actually get caught up on a few things I’ve been putting off!

8:45 Since it’s going to be a slower day, I think about going back over to the daycare to hear Emma’s room present their book and character, but I decide against it. If I show up, she’ll want to sit with me so the chances of her participating are much higher if I’m NOT there.

(See? Another parent took this pic — looks like she did great!)

8:57 I decide to record my day for this post, and jot down short notes about all the stuff you just read. Then I get down to business.

11:05 I wrap up a conversation with some coworkers about how to handle various issues for a pre-flight review scheduled for next week. We’re getting ready for the upcoming SpaceX cargo flight (launching from Florida on April 10) and Progress cargo flight (launching from Kazakhstan at the end of April). Since the launches are relatively close together, the reviews are combined.

11:25 My stomach is growling and I need lunch, so I put in an online order for the salad place across the street.

11:45 Time to go pick it up!

12:00 Annnd I’m back at my desk.

12:45 I need to start heading across site for a meeting in a different building. It’s a nice spring day in south Texas so I decide to walk instead of drive, and listen to a podcast on my way.

1:05 As the meeting is starting, I spy something brown on my shoulder out of the corner of my eye. Turning my head to investigate farther, I discover that the brown thing is a HUGE BUG. Instinctively I swat at my shoulder while kicking my wheeled chair back from the table, which of course draws the attention of everyone in the room and brings the early minutes of the meeting to a screeching halt. Awesome.

(Don’t you wish I had a picture of THAT…)

I step on the bug and sheepishly assure everyone that I am fine. The meeting recommences.

3:50 As the meeting wraps up, the HUGE BUG — which I stepped on TWICE almost 3 hours ago — reappears on the shoulder of another woman several feet away from me, and from where I thought the apparently-not-dead bug was lying. Someone else smushes the bug again and throws it in the trash can.

3:55 THE BUG IS NOW CRAWLING AROUND IN THE TRASH CAN. I wish I was making this up but nope. NASA: home of un-smushable bugs.

4:00 I start walking back across site to my own hopefully bug-less building. Good riddance undead bug.

4:20 When I get back, I start chatting with coworkers about a couple issues they’ve been working on lately.

5:15 Time to bug (hahaha) out of here! I hop in the car and head to the daycare, where Emma greets me enthusiastically and says (as she often does) that she wants to listen to Frozen in the car.

5:30 We leave daycare. I negotiate (or rather decree) that we will listen to a few minutes of my podcast first, with the promise of Frozen to come after that. Emma is agreeable enough, so I keep up my end of the bargain as well.

5:55 As we roll into the driveway, “Let It Go” is playing. Ahh, we’re home! Emma goes to the potty and then gets a lollipop, since she’s done well with potty training today. We walk across the street to check the mail, and then she starts playing with toys while I start dinner and unload the dishwasher.

6:10 Jose gets home. We spend the next half hour talking about work, bugs on my shoulder, and whether intelligence is genetically inherited while Emma does puzzles and plays with her dollhouse.

7:05 Dinner is ready, so we sit down at the table to eat. (I didn’t write down what we had that night and now I don’t remember! It was something frozen, since we hadn’t been to the grocery store since getting back from our weekend in Corpus Christi.)

7:45 Dinner is done and after wiping down the table, Emma and I head to the bathroom for potty and bath time (for her, obviously). Lately, she likes to lie down on her back in the tub so that the water covers her ears, and then she asks me to sing “For the First Time in Forever.” (Yes, from Frozen.) I have no idea where this randomness came from, but it makes her happy so I oblige.

8:25 After letting her watch a couple Disney songs on YouTube, Jose and Emma go to brush her teeth and read books. Emma’s bedtime has crept from what used to be 8:00 to what is now usually 8:30. It’s not ideal, and I feel like maybe we should work harder to hit 8:00…but when we don’t get home until almost 6, it’s just really hard. So I’m trying to remind myself that 8:00 is a somewhat arbitrary time, and if 8:30 is working for us, then that’s ok.

8:50 With Emma asleep and the kitchen cleaned up, Jose and I settle in to watch some TV. Tonight’s choice is the episode of Survivor recorded from a couple hours earlier. It turns out to be a two-hour episode, so we don’t end up doing anything else.