A Day in the Life

Last week's Cajun Chicken Alfredo triumph was a pretty big win for me in my journey into adulthood. I rode that high for days, feeling accomplished and proud of the leaps and bounds I've been making into behaving like a mature, responsible adult.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

As I was smugly going about my days, I began to realize that my life was still chock full of weird, unexplainable behaviors. Behaviors that if looked at from someone else's perspective would seem like lunacy.

So let's break it down. My day from waking up to going to bed and all of the stupidity in between.

6:50 a.m. Cell phone alarm goes off. This is a warning alarm, alerting me to the fact that I need to start being okay with the day starting. I set my phone first with the hope that I'll be so excited to see if I've accrued any Facebook likes overnight that I'll wake right up to check. My need for validation is out of control, but I might as well harness it to be used for good.

It doesn't work.

7:00 a.m. My actual alarm clock goes off, and I hit snooze on both alarms in alternating 5 minutes increments for thirty minutes.

And it's completely worth it.

7:30 a.m. I realize I'm running late.

Last year, I had the bright idea to set my alarm ten minute ahead of time to trick myself into waking up earlier. The experiment was a complete failure. I vastly underestimated Morning Chris's intelligence. Turns out he was there when the plan was conceived, and therefore was never once tricked by it. A week ago, we lost power and I just went ahead and set my clock to the correct time.

I've thought I had an extra ten minutes all week.

7:35 a.m. I may be late, but Facebook isn't going to check itself.

7:40 a.m. Neither is Instagram.

7:45 a.m. I rush out of bed and throw a smoothie in the blender for me to drink in the shower.

Streamlining this part of the morning allows me to combine two of my favorite things. Sleeping later and shower drinking.

7:55 a.m. Get out of the shower after accidentally shampooing twice but forgetting to wash my face. Remind myself that a shiny forehead probably isn't going to be the worst thing that happens to me today. Rinse out my smoothie cup and blender in the shower because my kitchen sink is clogged.

8:05 a.m. Rush out the door with just enough time to make it to work on time if there's no traffic, and I don't hit a single red light only to find my car completely frosted over...from the inside.

My car is a hot damn mess. There are a number of problems that individually probably wouldn't be the end of the world, but when added up, they form the perfect storm of car problems that make it nearly undriveable in the winter.

To start out with, my back window doesn't go up all the way, and in the severe cold we've been experiencing, this has caused the inside of all of my windows to frost up nearly every morning. This wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't coupled with my engine hemorrhaging anti freeze which causes my heat to go out, and makes defrosting the car impossible. None of this would be a problem if I hadn't also rammed my car into a bridge a few years ago making the hood super finicky about opening, especially in cold weather. So I end up spending every morning scraping the car from the inside because the heater doesn't work, and I can't get the hood open to fix the heater.

And then I have to try to not breathe for the whole drive to work for fear that my breath will cause the windows to frost over again while I drive.

8:20 a.m. I punch in late to work, put in my ear buds, and try my best not to snap on the first person who tries to talk to me before I'm ready to be social.

12:00 p.m. Lunch time. I sit at a table by myself, hoping no one comes up to talk to me...apparently I'm still not ready to be social.

I also begin to wonder if maybe my bitchy resting face isn't to blame for the negative first impression some people have of me. Maybe I'm just actually a bitch.

1:30 p.m. While covering for the receptionist, a gentleman comes in for a meeting. He reaches out his hand for his visitor's pass, and I think he's trying to shake my hand.

I shake his hand and introduce myself.

1:31 p.m. I die of embarrassment.

2:15 p.m. The president of our company pats me on the back while I wash my hands in the men's room. I have my ear buds in and am listening to The Spice Girls at a volume that makes it impossible for me to hear what he's said to me. I take a gamble, smile, and respond with an emphatic, "Hello!"

He looks bewildered.

3:20 p.m. I refrain from saying what I actually want to say to a customer.

I decide to reward my good behavior with wine and spend the rest of the day planning what kind I'll get.

4:30 p.m. I scrape the inside of my car windows and drive home. 

4:45 p.m. I notice a funny smell in my apartment, roll my eyes, and make the mature decision to do the dishes before starting wine night.

Plus, all the wine glasses were dirty.

You may remember from earlier in the day that my sink is clogged. If you did, you're one step ahead of me. It had been clogged for two weeks, and I only ever remember after it's full of disgusting dish water. It's a problem with an easy solution. I just need to call my landlord and have him come take care of it. He'll probably even be psyched about it. He always seems to have a fatherly concern for my well being, and appears super relieved every time he gets a chance to come look in on me.

His paternal behavior weirds me out, but it also kinda makes me want him to be super proud of me, so I can't bring myself to call him when my apartment is a mess. So I find myself in a vicious circle of my apartment being too messy for me to allow him to see it, but when I get it clean, I've got too many dishes in the sink for him to work on it. Then, when I finally get around to do the dishes, the apartment is messy again. 

I've developed a system for doing the dishes though that, while insane, works really well. I fill one side of the sink with clean water and start going to town on the dishes. I use the other side to rinse in, causing it to slowly fill up with mostly clean water. When that side gets full, I add a bit of dish soap to it, and put the remainder of the dishes in this new fresh(ish) dishwater. I then take a mixing bowl, scoop the dirty dishwater into it, and carefully walk it through my apartment (trying my best to avoid tripping on the shocking number of shoes that I've kicked off in the exact path I need to follow) to the toilet where I flush it down the drain. I do this until I have an empty sink to restart the cycle.

It takes hours.

5:30 p.m. Take a break to dance with no pants on (holla).

6:30 p.m. I finish doing the dishes, and briefly considering if going out for wine is worth putting pants on. 

It is.

6:45 p.m. The cashier at the liquor store asks me for a wine recommendation. 

The guy whose career is to sell wine turns to me as the expert on the subject. This is not where I wanted my life to be.

I need to find a new liquor store.

7:00 p.m. I'm back home, wine is in hand, my pants are off, and Elizabethtown is in the DVD player, when I notice my fingernail clippers had somehow ended up on the floor next to the TV. My first though isn't to get up and put them away. My first thought is, "Don't forget that those are there next time you're looking for them."

8:45 p.m. The movie is wrapping up, and I am feeling a bit melancholy. I consider cutting myself off, but I listen to Silver Springs and it doesn't make me cry.

I pour another glass.

9:00 p.m. I begin to feel bad for drinking by myself, so I call Chelsea who I can always depend on to be slightly drunk whenever I need her to be. She doesn't disappoint. We share a drink over the phone. 

9:45 p.m. I lose myself in an hour's worth of Kylie Minogue music videos. More dancing ensues. 

10:45 p.m. I crawl into bed with my laptop.

I do this every night, and I always convince myself that if I don't put my glasses, it means I'm actually going to go to sleep. What inevitably happens is I end up hunched over, squinting, with my face four inches from the screen until I realize that my neck is cramping.

11:30 p.m. I shut my laptop, turn the lights off, and open Facebook on my phone.

12:15 a.m. I find a piece of scandalous gossip about someone I went to high school with. I flip the light on, grab my laptop, and scroll through  my phone trying to find someone who would still be awake that I can share it with. I realize that all of my friends are grown up and likely in bed, so instead I take screenshots and send them them out in a mass text, secretly hoping that I wake someone else up.

12:45 a.m. I pass out with Taylor Swift music videos still playing on YouTube.

1:15 a.m. Receive a call from one of the friends I'd frantically text. Snap at them for waking me up, hang up the phone, give no f%#!s.

4:45 a.m. Wake up convinced there's an intruder in the apartment, but still get up to go to the bathroom.

6:50 a.m. Start the whole goddamn thing over again.