Welcome To My World

This being 'Who Am I Friday', I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself. The thing is, I don't have a very interesting job, I'm nowhere near ready to be published, and, well, I'm just an ordinary person really. I'm a bit of a nutter from time to time, granted, but all in all I'm fairly normal (whatever 'normal' is, that is). Anyway, I figured one of the best ways to get to know someone is to spend the day with them, so I hereby give you...



A Day In The Life Of Tara Smith (this particular day being Thursday 2nd December, just so you know).

4.30am - Alarm goes off. Hit 'snooze' and go back to sleep.
4.40am - Alarm goes off again. Avoid swearing - just - and get out of bed. Make cuppa, get ready for work, check emails and Facebook.
5.05am - Step outside the house, say 'Duck me!', then go back and change into hubby's thickest coat (despite it being about four sizes too big for me) and venture out again. Half walk, half skid to the bus stop. Bus is late. Again.
5.40am - Arrive at work. Heating isn't working as usual, so it's no warmer inside than it is outside. Debate whether to leave the hubby's coat on for a while, but decide against it seeing as I look like the blown up version of Aunt Marge from Harry Potter in it. Put in twenty minutes of unofficial work (opening shutters, getting the tills ready, lottery machine signed on, lights on, etc etc) before official shift starts at six. Spend four hours running around like a ninny trying to get everything done in between dealing with snotty customers who aren't impressed by the fact that we've sold out of advent calendars. Seriously, it's the second day of December, people!!
10.10am - Finish ten minutes after shift officially ends, spend a further five minutes struggling to do up the zip on the hubby's coat. Curse repeatedly.
10.45am - Arrive home.
11.15am - Finally sit down for a bit. I swear, I always tell myself that I'll make a cuppa and sit down right away, but I always get sidetracked. What's up with that?

11.16am - Remove kitten from older cat's head.
11.17 am - As above.
11.18am - Put food down for the cats in the hope of distracting them. Sit down again and attempt to drink tea.
11.20 am - Get pestered by daughter, who has been home from school all week due to school being wrecked by flooding. Suspect pestering will continue until January when school is expected to re-open again.
11.21am - Sigh loudly and promise daughter that yes, the Christmas tree can go up today (it's only what, the fiftieth time she has asked me this in the last half an hour?)
11.25am - Remove kitten from older cat's head. Suspect pattern may be forming.
12.00pm - Bundle up in hubby's less thicker coat and take daughter to mum-in-law's to pick up Christmas tree (having thrown mine away, I was kindly offered her spare).
1.00pm - Arrive home and decide that icy pavements, freezing weather, snow, wind, heavy Christmas tree, and severely cracked skin on fingers do not make a very good combination.
1.01pm - Remover older cat from kitten's head. Secretly congratulate older cat for getting revenge.
1.05pp - Make lunch for self and daughter and give daughter strict instructions to leave me be until 2pm or else the Christmas tree will be staying in the box.
1.06pm - Ask daughter whether she is deaf.
1.07pm- Glare at daughter and tell her she is on her last warning.
1.55pm - Decide to let daughter off for pestering five minutes before target of 2pm. Over half an hour of peace from her is a rare thing indeed, I shouldn't be too greedy.
2.00pm - Start putting the tree base together.
2.10pm - Still trying to piece the tree base together.
2.15pm - Considers bashing the three tree base pieces on the floor.
2.29pm - Yay! We have a base! Assemble the main part of the tree, including separating far too many individual branches. Wince repeatedly as branches scrape against weather-beaten fingers.
2.45pm - Looks at box of fairy lights with trepidation.
3.05pm - Whilst struggling with hundreds of fairy lights, receive phone call from son's school nurse. Son has been fighting. The joys of parenting.

3.30pm - Lights are done! Time to dig through a sack full of baubles, tinsel and lamenta. The cats - who up until now have been sleeping on the sofa, suddenly wake up and begin sniffing the air with interest.
3.31pm - Remove kitten from older cat's head.
3,32pm - Enlist daughter to help decorate the tree. For every three baubles that go on, one mysteriously ends up at other end of room. Both cats looking shifty.
3.45pm - Tree is almost finished (I'm not one to spend hours getting it perfect, after all), just the lamenta to throw on. Suspect I will have to re-do it when daughter leaves the room seeing as she can't quite grasp the concept of throwing lightly.
3.55pm - Time for cuppa!
4.00pm - Remove kitten from tree.
4.01pm - Remove older cat from tree.
4.02pm - Remove both cats from each other's heads.
4.15 - 5.00pm - Whip through the house with polish, duster and vacuum.
5.00pm - Cook the kids their tea. Feed the cats. Remember that I have to write a blog post for the next day. Panics slightly.
6.00 - 9.00pm - After tidying up, stopping the cats fighting, washing, ironing, starting a blog post, answering the phone, having a one-to-one with the son about fighting, telling daughter that the cats already do a fine job of wrecking the Christmas tree so she doesn't need to add to it, and a hundred and one other silly little things, I come to a stop and realise that it's 9pm.
9.01pm - Tell daughter that it's way past her bedtime.
9.20pm - Still trying to get daughter to bed.
9.50pm - Finally manage to say goodnight to daughter. Remove cats from... well, you probably know the rest.
10.00pm - Slightly comatose on the sofa, not really knowing what to do next, if anything at all. End up watching some TV (well, to be fair, 'watching' usually requires your eyes to be open, but I swear I wasn't dozing, honest).
11.00pm - Go to bed. It's been a long day, and there is a stock take at work tomorrow. Oh joy.
12.00am - Am exhausted, but still can't get to sleep. How is it I can fall asleep on the sofa while sitting up (though I wasn't asleep earlier, obviously *shifty*), but am wide awake when I am laying in my comfy bed?
12.45am - Still awake at this point, but this was the last time I checked the time....

So there we have it, a day in my life. Not really interesting, but there we are. Still, apart from the Christmas tree shenanigans, everything else is pretty much a daily occurrence. Such is the life of a working mother. Oh, and apologies for the post being a few hours late, but something else that you may have already found out about me is that I am a procrastinator, and leaving blog posts to be written at the last minute, while usually works out fine, doesn't always, unfortunately.

I'm off now. I have baubles to hunt, kitties to separate, cleaning to do, etc, etc...

All images self taken.