Hour-by-hour Birthday Rundown

Last night I came up with a ton of great ideas for posts to write today—my birthday. Some were reflective, some covered some extremely personal topics, some were funny, some were random. I've saved the list and will get to all of those posts at some point, I promise. But not today, because somehow it's already 11:30 and I've got pretty much nothing to show for it.

Which is why I settled on posting a play-by-play of my day. My secret hope is that by committing what I'm going to accomplish over the next 12 hours to "paper," I will actually achieve it.

So here it goes. Everything between 6:45 and noon has already happened!

6:45 - 7:30 a.m.: We are normally a "sleep in" household, but today painters were scheduled to arrive at 7 a.m. to begin painting our second floor, where my office is. So I actually set an alarm for 6:45 to give me some time to get dressed, crank the heat up for the guys (we leave our second and third floors at 55 degrees overnight or else we'd be penniless after paying our heating bills), and do a few other last-minute things. They rang right at 7, I walked through the job with them, and then I went back downstairs.

7:30 - 8 a.m: Desmond's fever didn't go away yesterday, so I put a call into the pediatrician in the hopes of getting an appointment. I washed last night's dishes, fed Wrigley, let Wrigley out, and skimmed through a few texts and FB messages wishing me a happy birthday.

8 - 9 a.m.: Desmond woke up. I basically got nothing done in this hour except changing him out of his pajamas and starting to make him oatmeal and watermelon bites.

9 - 10 a.m.: Normally I go up to my home office around 9:15 after our nanny arrives. But today I stayed downstairs for an hour as Desmond ate, then I made my must-have cup of Earl Grey and an English muffin with jam for my elaborate birthday breakfast. Ha. I also cut and arranged a bouquet of flowers my nanny brought, as well as some I'd bought two days prior that I'd just stuck in water up until that point. I gathered everything I needed to be able to work on the third floor into my backpack and let Wrigley out again before taking him upstairs with me.

10 - 10:30 a.m.: Late last night I had swept up and vacuumed all of the shattered glass from yesterday's drama, but I checked it again before letting Wrigley walk around on the floor. Then I got all of my stuff (laptop, cords, glasses, etc) settled, and then the pediatrician called with an opening at 1:20. Then I had to call someone I was supposed to meet downtown at 2 and ask if we could just talk on the phone instead as soon as I was home from Desmond's appointment.

10:30 - 11 a.m.: I did a "Positive Thoughts" meditation. It gave me another idea for a future post, hooray!

11 - 11:30 a.m.: I went back downstairs to let our nanny and Desmond know that we'd have to leave a little before 1 to get to the appointment. Then I climbed up three flights of stairs again, which is when I thought to check if my new FitBit One was working. It was. (A post on that is to come, too!) I put on my wrist splint and settled in to write this post. But first I replied to an email from a guy who writes me simply "HB" each year on my birthday. He's a kinda famous guy. I'm going to write a post about that soon, too. I also responded to a birthday message from my grandma. Because she's my grandma!

11:30 a.m. - noon: I'm writing this post! It's currently 11:44 a.m. and now I'm stressed I won't get it finished by noon.

Noon - 1 p.m.: I'm hoping to get one relatively quick piece of client work done and maybe respond to the 9 birthday texts I've gotten since I started writing this post.

1 - 2 p.m.: We'll be at the pediatrician for at least this long.

2 - 3 p.m.: I'll be on my aforementioned call.

3 - 5 p.m.: If I need to pick up any prescriptions for Desmond, I'll need to do it during this timeframe while our nanny is still here. If not, these two hours will absolutely be taken up by client work that I normally would've done last night or during the day today.

5 - 8 p.m.: DESMOND TIME. Yay! I'll make pasta for myself, a bedtime snack for him, and maybe we'll try to FaceTime with my grandma if he's not too grouchy. We might also FaceTime with my husband, who will be at LAX getting ready to fly home.

8 - 9 p.m.: I'm going to make myself a mug of hot chocolate spiked with Frangelico and Chambord. Then I'm going to settle into my recliner and finally go through all of the texts, emails and Facebook messages I was not able to look at since the morning.

9 p.m. - midnight: The reality is that if I haven't finished my client work, I'll likely be doing that during this time. But if I'm done with professional stuff, then I will start reading The Circle by Dave Eggers, which my best friend Nerdy P sent me yesterday. It was already on my Amazon Wishlist and I have a feeling I will really dig it.

Normally I wouldn't stay up until midnight, but I don't sleep well while my husband's gone anyway, and he should be back around midnight, so it'll be a little birthday-inspired craziness for this old lady.

It's 11:55 a.m. and I still have to add a few images to this post.

So with that, I'm off to Google. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today!

- e

(p.s. I'm hitting Publish at 12:05—not too shabby!)