I read Jen Shoop’s day in the life of a suburban mum/writer detailing her beautiful life in the DC suburbs, and thought it would be fun to do a kind of response looking at a day in the life of a suburban mum on the other side of the world, in winter. I feel like this is a good time to put a caveat on this post in much the same way Katie Sturino does on her #SupersizeTheLook Instagram posts – this isn’t about who wore it better (did it better)! It’s about sharing a fun glimpse into the daily minutiae of a life. Remember, we all got crowns. 😉
I wake up at 5:15am when the alarm goes off, as I do every weekday morning. I’m not naturally a morning person, but this is a gruelling necessity to squeeze in all the things I want to do on a daily basis. Thankfully, Hayden is a morning person and his first stop of the day is the kitchen to make coffee, which he brings to me in bed before getting into his cycling kit and heading downstairs to his ‘bike cave’ where his trainer lives.
My morning plan is a run, and being the middle of winter it’s still pitch-black outside, so I get to enjoy 30 minutes in bed, sipping my coffee and reading my blogs as I slowly wake up. I still love an old-fashioned blog and follow quite a few favourites – Grace Atwood, Cup of Jo, Emily Henderson and Magpie by Jen Shoop are the ones I always try to make time for. Once the coffee’s gone I reluctantly tear myself away from my cosy nest to get my running gear on, wash my face, have some water and make the bed before heading out the door. It’s still dark, but the sky is clear and the crescent moon is bright, and there’s a hint of impending sunrise. One of the great things about where we live is that there are always people exercising – I pass a whole lot of other runners, as well as walkers and groups of cyclists. I run my favourite morning route, which takes me up a steep hill, down another steep hill, then up another hill before landing me at the beach that takes me back to my house. I round the corner at the top of the first steep hill just as the sun makes its appearance over the horizon, and run down the hill watching it come up over the sea. The air is cold and still quite damp after a couple of days of rain, but I can already tell it’s going to be a beautiful day.
When I get home, Amelie is up, Hayden has finished his training and got ready for the day, and breakfast is on the table – today it’s Greek yoghurt, pineapple and homemade granola. I eat and we chat about what we have going on that day, and also a bit about the vagaries of scoring for the artistic gymnastics in the Olympics, which is a mystery to us. We are usually not television people – Hayden and I will watch a programme at night when Amelie is in bed, but otherwise it’s never on – but we make an exception for the Olympics. Something about the Olympics seems to make everything interesting. When the Tokyo Olympics were on, we were skiing at Ruapehu and we’d switch it on in the late afternoon as we got ready for dinner; we all got really into the kayak slalom that year.
Hayden leaves for the office. I get ready quickly, with a minute for a momentary wobble about my sock choice (an unexpected side effect of turning 40; suddenly I’m very uncertain about my socks, but I don’t have enough time to think about it in depth and anyway, we’ve only got another few weeks of sock season). I have to remind Amelie a few thousand times of the things she needs to still do (pack gym leotard, change school tights for a pair that don’t have a hole in them, brush her teeth) and then harness the dog up for the walk to school. All too often this walk is a hustle, but today I don’t have any early meetings so I’m more relaxed than usual, and we have a nice conversation about the toys Amelie is hankering after as we go. When we arrive at school she is mobbed by her friends and I just about manage to get one last cuddle and kiss in before she’s spirited away. I walk home at a rather faster clip than the walk to school, but there is no such thing as a speedy exit in this community – I see several people on the way who stop for a brief chat. This is one of the best things about where we live; everyone is lovely and as well as closer friends, we have a wide group of people we know in passing who stop to pat Theo and exchange a few friendly words.
Today is a work from home day for me, and although I was thinking about taking my laptop with me and stopping at a café on the way home to do some work from there, the laundry calls. Just since Sunday, our dirty activewear pile has grown to daunting proportions in the basket, and if I don’t get it washed today I won’t have anything to wear to tennis tonight. I get home, check my phone again to make sure there’s no work emergencies, then put on a load of laundry. I haven’t put on makeup yet and I briefly consider not putting any on (I am trialling a new moisturiser and it’s making my skin look great) but I have a couple of meetings today which will require me to be ‘camera on’ and I’d rather make sure I feel good about myself when I inevitably catch sight of my own face in the corner of my screen. I quickly throw some tinted sunscreen, mascara and brow gel on, while calling the school to let them know a friend’s mum is taking her to gym today (I received the text offering to take Amelie on my walk home and am stoked about the sudden slack in my afternoon). All that done, I finally pour myself another glass of water, make another coffee, and clip in for work.
I work solidly until nearly 4pm, breaking only for 15 minutes for lunch, when I eat leftovers from last night’s dinner (sesame katsu chicken, brown rice, broccoli, bok choy, pickled radish, ginger soy dressing). This is not the norm but I have a couple of things I have to get done and I lose track of time. I listen to music quietly while I work when I need to focus and today it works maybe a little too well. By the time I do move again, I feel like I’ve curled into the shape of my chair. I take Theo for a walk down on the beach and notice the weather is packing in – it starts raining on us during the walk back home.
Back at home, I return to my laptop to wrap up a few things. Hayden gets home just past 5pm, and Amelie is dropped off not long after. That’s my cue to pack work away, light a scented candle, and transition to the evening. Hayden offers to make dinner and I gladly take him up on it, using the time to sort out the laundry from earlier in the day and play every adult’s favourite game of ‘walk around the house picking up all the things that are in the wrong place’. While I’m doing this I get a text – tennis is off, it’s too wet. I’m disappointed but I also get into my loungewear with much enthusiasm.
We have a family dinner of vegetarian chilli over potatoes. It’s delicious. Amelie is not a fan but she tries it, at our insistence. She’s quite polite about it, comparatively (a suspicious eye, a tentative taste, a curling of the lip – “not for me,” she states, as if her facials weren’t clue enough). At this age, she dislikes more meals than she likes, but we persevere with family dinners and serving things we know she’ll turn her nose up at anyway, hoping one day the wide exposure to lots of different food will pay off. And we make a lot of everything butter sandwiches.
Dinner – PJs – dishes – animal feeding – teeth – stories – and finally Hayden and I get to spend some time together. We have a glass of red wine and watch Shameless, which we’ve just started (a cool 13 years after the first season was released – good things take time). We don’t usually have wine on a Wednesday, but there were a couple of glasses left in a bottle we opened over the weekend, and we decide to polish it off before it becomes vinegar. It is – surprisingly – still good.
After Shameless, neither of us is quite ready to head up for bed, so we watch some of the late night show monologues on YouTube. We are still deeply invested in what happens in the States, even though we haven’t lived there for the longest time, but these days it’s definitely easier on the emotions and general sense of wellbeing to watch the news through a layer of humour than just taking it straight. We do a quick catchup via Stephen Colbert then head up to bed, putting the candle out and checking the doors are all locked on the way. Once upstairs we get ready for bed then settle in for a spot of reading, my perma-cold feet nestled between Hayden’s legs. I manage about 15 minutes before I realise I’m no longer taking anything in. I put my book down, turn my lamp off and almost instantly fall asleep.
~ some recommendations from this DITL ~
Listen: My usual playlist when I need to focus is just the Classical Focus playlist on Spotify. Does what it says on the tin, really well!
Read: On the day in question I had just started The Maid, by Nita Prose (surely a pseudonym?). I am enjoying it so far – it’s not the book’s fault I fell asleep so fast.
Watch: Sure, it’s been 13 years since it was first released, but so far Shameless is great! Fascinating watching a veery young Jeremy Allen White (like everyone else we love The Bear). We’re watching the American one; we haven’t tried the English one – would anyone recommend?
Sniff: My favourite candles are Glasshouse. They smell amazing, they’re not so cheap as to be alarming, but they’re not so expensive I’d be scared to actually burn them. In the city we have the I’ll Take Manhattan scent – orchids and blood orange.
The Judd Crew 