Welcome back to my annual and only blog post in which I record everything I do for 1 day. Gus & Gibson are my twin 10 year olds; DF is my husband. Enjoy!
Friday, January 9, 2026
Location: Pasadena, CA
6:12 AM Wake up. Read Heather Cox Richardson's daily letter. Feel increasingly dismayed about the state of my country. (If you aren't following her on social media or subscribed to her newsletter, you should be. She's a professor who analyzes current events through historical lenses.)
6:25 AM Wake up children by turning off their sound machine and fans and unzipping their bed tents. They don't complain too much about going to school today because it's the Jogathon! We look around to see if we have any yellow clothes to wear because 5th graders are supposed to wear yellow. We don't, oh well. Nearly all of our possessions are still in storage after the fire.
6:40 AM Kids are up and dressed. I turn on the heat b/c it's cold in California today! We are now living in our ADU (back house) and I'm still not 100% confident in using the heat mode on our fancy mini-split HVAC system. I take a shower and get dressed while the kids watch TV.
7:00 AM Make breakfast. Pack lunches + a snack for math club, which they go to after school on Friday afternoons. Grab a coffee cup to take with me to school because this morning is a PTA coffee and we always seem to run out of cups. Plus it makes me feel like I'm saving the earth a tiny bit :) Start Wordle but only get 2 guesses in.
7:30 AM Screens off, time to brush hair and get out the door. DF accompanies us this morning b/c Gus & Gibson's class is leading the Friday morning school assembly. Normally he has to work in person 5 days a week in downtown LA, which is a big shift from my previous Days in the Life and a bummer!! We were all very used to him working from home and having a 4 day work week. At any rate, he took today off because of the Jogathon.
7:40 AM Outside school, I spot a neighbor/former PTA mom I want to ask to help with an upcoming event so we chat for a bit.
7:50 AM The boys' class does a great job with their bilingual assembly. I chat with parents at Blacktop Coffee and meet a mom who grew up in the same town as me in Oregon! And we both love living in California now!
Normally I would be starting work at 8:00 AM, but I also took the day off. Last summer, I was promoted and now work 75% time (30 hours/week), almost all from home. I had one "floating" holiday left to take so I used it today.
8:30 AM Run home to grab some cutting boards and knives to help with chopping oranges for the Jogathon. We have 550 students at the school, and each one gets a baggie of orange slices after they run. I'm a bit worried about bringing knives on campus so I triple wrap them for safety. We have a great turnout for volunteers and the oranges are all chopped by 9:30. I chat with lots of people to work out the details of the day. Plans seem to be coming together. While we work, parents share their joys and struggles of life, and I'm once again grateful for this community where we have planted ourselves. I'm the PTA Vice President this year.
9:45 AM I return home for a snack and more coffee. DF has downloaded the new season of Fortnite and is checking it out.
10:00 AM Off to Trader Joe's. I have been trying to get to TJs and do some shopping since we got back from our trip to Oregon for the holidays, but I keep being thwarted so I use my day off to get it done! While I am at the checkout area, the checker next to me accidentally drops a bottle of wine. It shatters dramatically and sprays wine in a huge radius. The little old ladies who are buying it seem shocked yet tickled by this event, and I suspect it is the most exciting thing that will happen to them today.
11:00 AM Drop off the groceries at home then walk up the hill to school. I love that we are back in our regular neighborhood and within walking distance for this last year of elementary. Someday, our front house will finally get repaired after the fire of November 2024. Who knows when, but hopefully this year...
The Jogathon is a flurry of activity with filling cups with water and aguas frescas, distributing oranges, cheering for the joggers, controlling traffic flow of children, keeping the 5th graders from making it a "chug-a-thon" when they want to drink all of the aguas frescas, snapping photos with the lion mascot, and dancing to the DJ's tunes. Gus reports that he ran 13 laps, and Gibson hit 11. They run around a baseball field. We again had lots of volunteers and I'm buzzing with the good vibes by the end of it all.
2:30 PM DF gets confused about the schedule so comes back to pick up the boys, but winds up giving me a ride home instead. My feet are tired so I appreciate it!
At home I hydrate and eat a belated lunch. Send the weekly newsletter for our church adult Sunday School class. Post on social media about my action-packed day. Check my work email and see that it's pretty quiet.
3:30 PM Back to school to pick up the boys from Math Club. At home, they run in circles around me to play "Jogathon." They chill out and watch YouTube while eating popsicles and I play on my phone. Solve Wordle on my 3rd guess! Also figure out Connections but I'll admit to asking Google a couple questions to figure it out... Start a load of laundry. The boys are totally fine with still wearing school uniforms which means we have 10 white polo shirts and I wash them once a week. They are not sure what clothes they'll wear to middle school next year as there is no uniform. Gus said he might just keep wearing the same thing anyway.
4:45 PM We decide to get Connell's for dinner, a local favorite. I go pick it up. They are busy!
5:15 PM Return home with dinner. The boys get chicken and fries to share. DF and I go for burgers. After dinner I keep the laundry moving. Our washing machine plays a little snippet of "Fur Elise" when it turns off, and it always makes me wonder what Beethoven would think of that. Like, when he composed this song, could he even imagine a world in which a machine would clean one's clothes inside one's house at the push of a button, and his composition would be part of that process??
6:00 PM After a bit of a discussion, we decide to play Mario Party Jamboree on the new Nintendo Switch 2. This game often causes fights, which is why it must be discussed first. Ultimately Gus decides to play Fortnite by himself on the Switch 1 in handheld mode while Gibson, DF and I play Mario Party on the big screen. Gibson ends up winning so all is well with the world.
7:11 PM Screens off. This is supposed to happen at 7PM but the Mario Party game went a bit long. Now it's snack time. We have tea and cookies. Gibson wants to play a new card game we got for Christmas called Trash Pandas. However, when the cards don't go his way, Gibson can't handle the game anymore so we don't finish.
7:45 PM Bedtime routine starts.
9:15 PM Bedtime routine is finally over.
Over those 90 minutes we have extreme bedtime stalling, playing a game in which Gibson's koala flies an airplane, and Gus calculating increasingly large exponents. The boys are *finally* brushing their own teeth now. I am still required to stay in the bathroom with them for emotional support, and to tell a story. Tonight I tell a story about how I was in a split 2nd/3rd class in elementary school. There's a 1st/2nd combo class at their school this year, which they find intriguing. By the time they finally quiet down for sleep, Gibson is in his bed and Gus has made a nest on the floor. I don't object - it's the weekend and for some reason he really likes to sleep on the floor.
9:15 PM Time for me to write the PTA agenda for our general meeting next week, along with a couple announcements for the school eblast newsletter, and send them out to the team.
10:50 PM Finish typing up this chronicle of the day, and it's well past my bedtime. Until next year!
No comments:
Post a Comment