Diary: A Morning in the Life 🌅

Hi friends! Here’s a fun little experiment I did where I wrote a diary of my morning. Enjoy!

It’s Monday, Presidents’ Day. I wake up around 7:15 am when my husband’s alarm goes off. He does this insane thing where he will just lie there and let it ring and ring until I say, “Ross, sweetie, your alarm is going off.” (Sometimes I leave out the “sweetie” depending how grumpy I am.) I think he somehow is able to sleep through the alarm. I am not.

His alarm goes off two more times until I finally decide to get up at about 7:30. “I swear I turned my alarm off for today,” he says. Uh-huh. He goes back to sleep.

I pee, scoop the litter box, and brush my teeth. Some mornings I have a sliver of a gap between my two front teeth, and this is one of those mornings. I try to push my teeth together. I have a dentist appointment on Thursday. I haven’t been to the dentist since 2019 and I feel super self-conscious about my teeth. I can’t wait to get them professionally cleaned so I can do some Crest White Strips. I’ve already bought the box.

I put on the black spandex bike shorts I’ve been wearing for the last two days and debate putting on a bra under the black t-shirt I slept in for about half a second, then decide against it. This isn’t my permanent outfit for the day, I reason, it’s just morning me. I bring my phone and water bottle into my office, turn on the lights, and put the space heater on–low, oscillate.

It is pouring outside. I can hear it. I never closed the blinds in my office last night, so I can see it, too. It’s so gray out. I look at my weather app, and it’s warning of potential mudslides. I don’t think they will affect me in Highland Park, but it’s still unsettling. I didn’t grow up in California and its natural disasters are still strange and scary to me, even after living here for eight years. It’s supposed to rain through Wednesday. Last time it rained for three days in a row, I felt insane by day three. I wonder if I will get depressed again this time. Too late to do much about it now.

I walk to the kitchen, passing by Ross’s office where our fluffy tuxedo cat, Zadie, is perched on the laptop on Ross’s desk, looking at me. “Good morning, Zadie!” I sing-song. “Good morning!” Saying good morning to the cat always puts me in a good mood. One time, I stayed with a friend who had a toddler and saw how she greeted him in the morning with so much joy and affection and excitement to see him. I feel like I greet my cat the same way.

I grab the first of three giant cups of iced coffee. We are lazy and buy bottles of Starbucks iced coffee from the grocery store, and I drink that with a little unsweetened almond milk in it every day.

I remember that I wanted to make banana bread today and take two eggs and a stick of butter out of the fridge and set them in a bowl on the kitchen island. They’re supposed to be room temperature in the recipe. I know that Ross will ask about them later.

I return to my office with my coffee, sit cross-legged on my couch, and open my laptop. I sit here every day for hours and write or just dick around on my computer. My desk is currently serving as a makeup table. Ross is always chastising me about how bad sitting on the couch is for my back, and he’s not wrong, but it’s comfortable.

Zadie comes into my office and climbs into my lap. I spend some time petting her. I drink my coffee. She purrs and drools on my arm.

I check my email; nothing exciting. There are Presidents’ Day sales going on that I can’t afford to shop. Deb Perelman sent a Smitten Kitchen newsletter; she’s in Paris with her family. Her newsletter is all about French food. I bookmark a recipe for dijon and cognac beef stew. I’ve been wanting to make a beef stew before the weather gets too warm. This recipe has an insane amount of dijon mustard in it, and that intrigues me.

I check my horoscope in about six different places. It’s Pisces season. Good for creativity. I play the Sims 4 for a while. My teenage Sim goes to prom in the middle of a blizzard, so no one is wearing a formal outfit, they’re all dressed in their winter clothes. I almost get her to a gold score on the event, but time runs out, and we’re left with silver. Not bad. She returns home and talks to her brother for a bit, a child who is in a phase where he just wants to wear a bear costume all the time. I love the Sims. I decide that my Sims family is in a good place and save and close out of the game.

I make some notes for a future newsletter. I keep those on a digital sticky note on my desktop. I have tons of stickies, one with my New Year’s resolutions, a couple with notes for scripts I’m working on, one with recipes I want to make, one from Christmas with gift ideas for Ross. It’s a mess, much like my apartment and my mind. I think about the chores I need to do this week, which are also listed on a sticky note: wash my makeup brushes, do laundry. I still have gifts from Japan I never mailed out. Later, later. It’s a holiday today, right?

I have become slightly obsessed with the e.l.f. lip oil, which is supposed to be a dupe for the Dior one, and I want to recommend it in my newsletter, but I read a piece Jessica Defino wrote in her newsletter about how the cosmetics industry is picking up the slack of our decrease in reliance on petroleum products and I feel guilty about it. I find her post and reread it. She talks about petrochemicals; I look at the ingredients on the e.l.f. lip oil and try to figure out if they’re petrochemicals. I’m no scientist, so it’s hard. I ascertain that a few of them probably are. I feel guilty. Mission accomplished.

I reread an essay I’ve been working on about being childfree and anxiety about how your friendships may change when your friends start having kids. I finished a draft yesterday, but it needs another paragraph. I think about texting various friends to see if they would read it and give me notes, but it’s not even eight-thirty yet. They might not be awake. I put up an Instagram story post on Close Friends asking if any happily childfree friends would read it and give me feedback. (I don’t want my pregnant/parent friends to read it yet because I think it might make them cry.) Last time I put up a post like that on my main feed, asking if anyone would read my script, 15 people responded. That’s too many. A lot of them never even gave me feedback. I don’t want my rough drafts out there to everybody and their mother. They’re not meant to be entertainment yet.

Ross gets up. I say good morning to him. It’s nice, but not in the same way I say good morning to the cat. 

“What’s with these eggs and butter?” he calls from the kitchen. I explain about the banana bread. He asks if he can use one of the bananas for his oatmeal, I say okay. He has oatmeal every morning. I could never do that. I get bored too easily. He eats his oatmeal in the living room and watches YouTube videos. He always watches this one channel where people play an old video game called Age of Empires. The narrator has a very upbeat, gentle voice, so it’s good for the morning, and I don’t mind hearing it in the background of whatever I’m doing.

I decide to start writing this. I wrestle with how granular I should get when recapping my morning. I planned to write a diary of my whole day, but it gets too long. No one would read that. I decide I will just write about my morning instead, the time from when I wake up until noon.

I grab a piece of cold leftover pizza from the fridge, the first thing I’ve eaten today. I think about what I’m going to make for dinner tonight. I’ve been talking about making meatball subs all week, but the timing hasn’t worked out yet. I also have chicken thighs in the fridge and plan on using them to make chicken and dumplings. Maybe that would be nice, in the rainy weather. I grab a seltzer and go back to my office.

I check Instagram; two friends have said they would read the essay. I send it to them. I dick around on Instagram for a while. Da’Vine Joy Randolph looks amazing at the BAFTA Awards. A woman I’m mutuals with on Instagram, who lived in my college dorm, is going to be on the next season of Survivor. We’re all very excited about that.

I think about taking a shower. I don’t.

Ross decides he wants to do some work, even though he’s off for the holiday. I think he’s nuts, but whatever. Zadie darts ahead of him into his office, and it’s cute.

I go into the kitchen to refill my now-empty water bottle and poke at the butter. It’s got a bit of squish to it, but not enough. I know I am going to have to blend it, so I want it to be quite soft. I take out the Greek yogurt needed for the recipe that is also supposed to be at room temperature. I didn’t want it to sit out as long as the eggs and butter. I set a timer for 10 minutes. I eat another slice of cold pizza. I pee. I go back into my office.

One of the friends I sent the essay to has already responded with great notes. She confirmed some things I suspected weren’t working and gave me a smart idea on how to tweak the opening. I’m surprised she replied so quickly, but I guess an essay is easier to give notes on than a script.

I just finish replying to that friend when another friend also responds with notes. I guess it was smart to ask people to give notes on a holiday! She has great ideas for areas I can expand or clarify. I’m really glad I got notes.

The timer goes off. Everything is at room temperature now, so I make the banana bread. Ross comes into the kitchen and has an early lunch, a microwaved meal. He asks me about dinner, I give him the two options: chicken and dumplings, or meatball subs. He asks which one is healthier, I say chicken and dumplings has more vegetables, so we decide on that.

While I’m mixing the ingredients for the banana bread, I think about The Bear. We’ve been watching a lot of it lately. We just watched the “Fishes” episode last night, which is a flashback of a dysfunctional family Christmas dinner. I think about the writing and how smart it was to show the family dynamic that made Carmy who he is. It’s like when you get to meet a friend’s parents and suddenly you understand everything about the way they are. I love that.

I think about how fast professional chefs do everything and how slowly I do everything in the kitchen. I’m like Marcus in that one episode of The Bear where everyone is running around frantically trying to get orders out (okay, that’s kind of every episode) and he’s just like, “Hey Carmen, taste this doughnut I made.” I adore Marcus.

By the time I put the banana bread in the oven, it’s after noon. I set a timer and go back to my laptop to write this up.

What I do with the rest of my day: Take a shower and change clothes. Load the dishwasher. Take out the trash. Eat banana bread. Write a little. Watch YouTube makeup videos. Read two different books in bed, finish one. Fall asleep for an hour with the lights on. Take off my turquoise nail polish. Make chicken and dumplings, listening to a couple episodes of Hollywood Crime Scene while I cook. Eat dinner with Ross while watching the finale of True Detective: Night Country. Read some more. Take all my meds and some magnesium gummies because a nurse friend of mine said they would help me sleep. Turn off the lights, turn on the white noise machine, and go to bed.

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