03 December 2010

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.

12 comments:

Natasha said...

And you still managed to put this blog post together. Sheer genius!

Tara, dump your chick lit, and start writing humour- you are a natural.

Hart Johnson said...

*giggles* Oh this was FABULOUS! Oh, Angel... silly kitten... Has your tree survived a full 24 hours...

And I think the chick lit IS funny. Though being sometimes funny, sometimes dark in my writing, I think doing all of it is a good idea...

Amber T. Smith said...

Natasha - Yeah, this whole week has been manic, so cobbling together a blog post was tricky. Though I'm glad the week WAS manic, as it gave me something to blog about.

As for the humor, it's realy odd. Most of my blog posts end up being funny, whether intended or not, but if I WANT to write humor, I find it hard.

Tami - The tree is already looking bare near the bottom, but as you know, naked is good. *nods* And the chick-lit is mostly hunor I guess, but that's probably because I worte the main character with a lot of my own foibles, and we all know how 'quirky' I am. *snort*

Unknown said...

Hooray for cuppas! (And cats.) Four-thirty in the morning sounds like torture to me. You deserve extra chocolate for managing that on a regular basis.

Golden Eagle said...

That's super-early in the morning!

Tina said...

Nice to meet you, Tara! I was giggling as I was reading this. You managed to find the humor and light-heartedness in an "ordinary" day. Well done.

Unknown said...

*candles Christmas tree*

Tara, you are amazingly funny and manage to keep little Ellie and the cats from completely destroying the tree. So far. . . :D

Great post.

*leaves a steaming, hot cup of tea*

CA Heaven said...

Cool pic of the cat on skateboard.

Is your Christmas tree up already? Hre the tradition is to put it up late on 23rd December. I always get yelled at because the lights doesn't work, and I ave forgotten to buy new bulbs to replace the defect ones. Same procedure every year >:)

Anonymous said...

I laughed out loud - you ARE hilarious, Tara, esp as you don't seem to know it!!! it's a turn-of-phrase or, ahem, a turn-of-screw to cats who look so-o-o innocent and butter/cream (your tea milk) wouldn't melt in their respective mouths...

thanks for this delight to spice up the drear SNOW of Scotland - glad you have something warm to wear, even if borrowed x lol Marian

Ca88andra said...

Thanks for the laugh! I especially loved the cat getting its revenge on the kitten...

Amber T. Smith said...

A big hello and THANK YOU for all the lovely comments! A quick-cover-everything-in-one-response...

Four thirty IS super early, I still don't quite know how I got syckered back into it, but there we are. Still, it's a nice place to work, so that's something at any rate. The kitty on the skateboard picture was one of my best 'catch it' moments. I only with I had video cam because she was actually moving the skateboard backwards and forwards, it was hilarious. *snort*

And yes, older puss definitely needs to get some revenge in now and again, the poor thing is pestered 24/7. I always cheer her on. :)

Thanks again for the comments, and sorry for the tardiness. Early shifts, seasonal busy-ness and general procrastination doesn't bode well for responding to stuff promptly unfortunately.

Amber T. Smith said...

Yikes! I wish there was a way to edit comments, there's far too many typos up there. Still, it's almost 1.30am and I HAVE been awake for 21 hours. I'll forgive myself I think. *nods*