When I decided to leave my job I figured it would give me an overwhelming amount of free time to write and take pictures and just be generally creative. I thought at this point I would have created so much amazlingness that I would need to tell myself to slow the hell down and just relax already. Instead I find myself unable to wake before 10 and then frantically running around all day in the hopes that I can get something worthwhile accomplished. Most days lots gets done, just nothing worth mentioning.
Or IS it?
Since I’m unable to come up with anything original, I’ll just give you a basic rundown of a day in the life:
12:37 AM – Wake up on the couch with intense neck pain after dozing off while watching something uninteresting on the TiVO (probably Chuck since I don’t find any humor on that show save for Morgan but the bee begs to differ because he just loves it. choose your battles wisely, people.)
12:38-12:41 AM – Attempt to rouse a sleeping bee from the sofa, at first with sweetness and love, whispering things like “Hey, sleepy. It’s late, let’s go to bed, OK?”. When that inevitably doesn’t work and I’ve paced the room for the next few minutes after multiple futile attempts to wake his comatose ass it becomes “FINE! I’m going to bed, with or without you. You can sleep out here, ALONE, where it’s scary and there’s no one to protect you. Good luck.” Within moments a groggy bee will rise as late-night threats of impending fear and abandonment will almost always work in your favor.
4:23 AM – Wake to the sounds of “A-BANG-A-BANG-A-BANG” coming from the weird, dwarf-sized, pseudo-closet underneath our bed where the cat has decided for the umpteenth time to try to see if he can exit through a set of unnecessary double doors that lead only to a wall. Directly under our heads. Where we sleep at night.
This is then followed by the “SCRITCH-A-SCRITCH-A-SCRITCH” when the stinker realizes that his first tactic wasn’t completely fortuitous so he’s moved to the set of drawers built into our weird elevated bunk bed in the hopes that THIS will wake us up so we can git on down thar and play with his fuzzy little monkey butt.
4:24-5:05 AM – Unsuccessfully bargain with a cat, pleading for a decent nights sleep and some peace and quiet if he would only just let us have it: “Just two more hours, buddy. Then we play with flying string-feather alllllll day, OK?” which quickly turns into “WOULD YOU SHUT UP YOU HELL SPAWN JUST BE QUIET GODDAMN IT I’M LOSING MY MIND YOU JERK I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GONNA KIL…” until, finally, the cat gets bored with this charade and resumes sleeping peacefully wherever it is he wants to sleep and we are forced to separate (as it seems to be the ONLY way he’ll ever give us peace), one of us staying in the bed while the other mans the pull-out in the living room where we both end up passing out miserable and overflowing with rage.
Let me just say: It’s awesome.
VS.
note the slight shift in location and the subtle difference in eyelid presentation in both photos. i mention this because these things matter little. in either instance he is ready to take your sleep schedule and make it his bitch.
7:35-8:05 AM – I half-wake to the sounds of the bee getting ready for his day at the office. I remain barely fazed by his knocking about the house and only regain consciousness again briefly as he stops to give me a kiss goodbye before he leaves the house.
I’m not gonna lie. I’m a huge fan of that part.
9:56 AM – I awake to the sound of “Meeeeeeer, meeeeer” and a little orange face staring up at me from the floor telling me to get the hell up already because he’s hungry, so let’s get this party started. This is closely followed by the “Bzzzzzzp, bzzzzzzp” of my phone which is the bee texting me to get the hell up already because he’s bored, so let’s get this party started.
10:02 – approx 1:30 PM – I begin frantically running about the house in attempt to get things done. I start by putting the kettle on for tea and feeding the cat while I work on straightening up the house because, for whatever reason, collectively we manage to make a mess of things on a daily basis so much so that each morning I have to turn the bed back into a couch or rearrange furniture that was moved to provide sufficient space for the flying string-feather obstacle course or, you know, because I am highly OCD and I just have to. During this time I will also drink my tea, eat my breakfast and manage to make myself feel sub par for not having accomplished more in the way of actual “work” all while sitting in the same dirty pajamas that I’ve worn all week. (that last part is more statement of fact than complaint because I LOVES me the time in my dirty ‘jams)
1:31-4:12 PM – Commence freaking out because it’s almost 2:00 and that’s when the bee goes on lunch which means he’s gonna call me and ask what I’m doing. Also, because technically I think I’m supposed to eat again but that’s so much work and I really don’t have the motivation but I better do it anyway because otherwise I’ll get yelled at (see: the bee). It’s around this time that I realize that I still haven’t managed to do the dishes from the night before and it never ceases to amaze me that no matter what the meal and regardless that it’s just the two of us we still have a towering mound of crap in the sink on a daily basis to deal with.
Also? I should probably shower. It’s been a while. Oh yeah, and the teeth. Still haven’t brushed the teeth.
4:15 PM – Decide that just brushing the teeth and putting on real clothes should be good enough in the way of grooming for the day. Attempt to go online and read-up on blogs and maybe get some writing done. This never happens. Instead I find that Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead is on Cinemax for the 11th time this week so I should probably watch it again because I’M RIGHT ON TOP OF THAT ROSE.
5:30 PM – The bee arrives home and any prospect of writing goes out the window. I’m totally fine with this. At least I will be until tomorrow morning (see: 1:35-4:12 PM) when I’ll just make myself feel guilty for being unproductive again. We catch up on the day’s happenings and the bee complains about some shitty thing that happened at his shitty job and I nod and roll my eyes because I totally get it and then I tell him about how fucking crazy MY new boss is. And he’ll do the same because he knows the deal with that too.
6:45 PM – We decide that we should probably start to think about what it is we might want to eat for dinner. Considering the time we look in the fridge to realize we only have 2 week old baked beans and some white-slime coated hot dogs and since it’s too late to defrost anything “real” in the freezer we realize we need to choose from the only two options left: Wendy’s or McDonald’s. Lately Wendy’s wins out since they have those new salads. You know the one’s with the nuts and cheese and berries? Yep, tooooootally love those. Have I mentioned I should be in sales?
7:55 – 10:15 PM – Return from Wendy’s and begin scarfing down dinner while watching hours of mind-numbing television programming. Remember all the things I had wanted to do during the day but didn’t and then realize that I’m just going to have to do all those things TOMORROW and I begin to panic. I don’t handle stress well. At all. So instead of beginning to relax and enjoy my time with my husband in a low-key laid-back scenario I start to obsess and voice my worry about all my shortcomings and past failures as a human. This makes for really shitty T.V. viewing. Thank god for TiVo. Again: sales?
10:30-ish – Regardless of what is happening, I begin to lose my ability to maintain consciousness. We could be in the middle of playing Dance Dance Revolution and the indefatigable need to just “go lay down for a minute” would sweep over me and that, my friends, is usually where I completely check-out. Sometimes I can pretend like I’m still with it enough to carry on a conversation or, at the very least, add commentary to something seen on T.V. but the truth is, anything after 10:45 for me is 100% auto-pilot which brings us right back to where we started.
Basically I’m just a manic-depressive, obsessive-compulsive, slightly neurotic, unemployed, over-sleeper with less than stellar hygiene, who loves her freak-show of a cat even though he’s *this close* to getting thrown out a window if he wakes her up again with his one-man-band percussive late-night music hour, with a very unhealthy relationship with fast food who really needs to get dressed and put on some make-up. Like now. It’s either that or cover up this pimple with my finger forever.
me and the bee 