A Day of My Life In Pictures | June 2023

[This post is sponsored by Notino]

Every so often, I like to document a day of my life in photos, so that one day I can look back on it and remember exactly what my life was like at that particular point in time, in really quite excruciating detail.

It’s been a while since I did one of those posts, but this week was the last week of term before the summer holidays, and this term has been the first time in… well, five years, basically… that I’ve felt we’ve been able to get into a routine that actually works for us, so I figured I’d have a go at documenting it, before the holidays come along and turn everything to chaos again.

So, this was my Monday, June 26th, 2023…

7AM

I’m woken by my alarm – which is unusual for me, because I normally wake up a good hour or so before it, so I can lie awake feeling anxious about stuff for a while before I have to get up. Feeling anxious is going to have to wait for later, though (Don’t worry, I won’t forget…); for now, I have a quick shower, then head downstairs to make breakfast for me and Max, who’s already awake, but who’s generally happy to chill in his room these days until I come down: a real turning-point in our parenting journey, for sure.

(Cereal bar and coffee for me, fruit and milk for him. This is just part 1 of Max’s breakfast – he had toast and eggs, too, once Terry came down.)

After breakfast, I put a load of laundry in the machine, help Max get dressed, and make his bed:

As it’s the last week of term, he doesn’t have to wear his uniform. Or smile for photos, apparently.

8:00am

Terry appears to take over breakfast duties and pack Max’s snackbox, while I head back upstairs to make the bed and get myself ready:

I’m almost out of La Vie Est Belle – I’ve ordered a new bottle in the Notino fragrance sale, which was so good I ended up spending a bit too long looking at it. Then I ended up adding a bottle of Versace Eros for Terry, too, because I can never resist the lure of a sale. Fragrance aside, I don’t have a lot of time for makeup on school mornings (Or, you know, any mornings, really…), so I keep it simple with my Missha BB Cream (# 21 is perfect for my pale skin), Too Faced Damn Girl mascara, NARS Multiple blush in Orgasm, and Clinique Chubby Stick in Two Tonne Tomato.

Work-from-home uniform: leggings, sweatshirt, workout bra, done. Cleaning that mirror: very much NOT done, apparently…

8:45am

It’s time for the school run, which we do on foot, during a rare window of sunshine, because it’s Scottish summer, which means the weather’s going to be changing radically approximately every 15 minutes:

Luckily for us, Max’s school is close to our house, so the school run doesn’t take too long, and I quite enjoy the walk, which is when Max is at his most talkative and entertaining. This morning, for instance, we had a lengthy discussion about The Titanic, then he regaled me with an updated version of the rhyme “One, two, buckle my shoe,” in which the third line had been replaced with “Five, Six, Nike kicks.” Only Max kept singing “Five, Six, Ninety dicks,” and would not believe me that it wasn’t right, so THAT was a much more awkward walk to school than I’d anticipated…

Back at home, meanwhile, I reheat that cup of coffee I didn’t have time to finish this morning, then head straight to my desk:

I’m currently working on Book 4 of my Heather Bay Romance Series. My writing software (Reedsy) gives me a set number of words I need to write every day if I’m going to meet my deadline (The book is already available to pre-order on Amazon, so this is a real deadline, not just one of the made-up ones I like to impose on myself…), and today it tells me I need to write exactly 634 words to finish on time; a reassuringly low number, which nevertheless seems to take me approximately forever, because I’ve reached a particularly tricky bit, and keep losing the will to live because of it.

12:00

We break for lunch (A chicken salad sandwich so thoroughly mediocre I didn’t even bother to take a photo of it), then Terry and I take a quick ,15-minute stroll, just to stretch our legs. We normally head out to the fields behind our street for this, but it’s been raining so much lately it’ll basically be a mud-bath, so we just stick to the street itself, which isn’t particularly exciting, but which at least gets us out of the house for a bit.

When we get back, I unload the washing machine and do the ironing…

(Yes, I iron stuff. Don’t come at me…)

… and then it’s back to the desk for more writing, until…

2pm

… when I take a quick break to do a 10 minute strength workout using my Peloton app (More on that later…):

I normally try to leave this until later in the day, so I’m not having to constantly interrupt my prechus work time, but there’s an event at Max’s school later that I have to go to, so I decide to just do it now and get it out of the way. (This is why I wear workout clothes most days – so I can jump in and do 10 minutes here or there without having to get changed first!)

2:30pm

Earlier this term, Max’s class won a competition for a project they did on France, and this afternoon they’re hosting a “French Cafe” for the parents. Terry has a dentist’s appointment at the exact time it’s on, but luckily it’s happening during another one of those windows of sunshine, so I walk back to school for the second time today, for cake and croissants with Max and his friends:

No photos at the school, for obvious reasons, but the event was notable in that I was finally able to confirm that when Max describes things as “ampuh” – which he claimed was French for ‘in the middle’ – he is, in fact trying to say “un peux” which means “a little bit”. So, excellent French-ing there.

School finishes at 3:20pm, but Max goes to an after-school club on Mondays, so once I’ve said goodbye, I head back home, and go straight to my desk again:

What an exciting day I’m having, no? How many photos of a desk can one woman take?

5pm:

By the time I’m ready to collect Max from his after-school club, it’s pouring with rain again, but fortunately Terry’s back with the car, so we don’t have to get soaked:

(Naturally it had stopped again by the time I took this…)

Max had loads to eat at his French cafe, and isn’t hungry for dinner yet, so Terry takes him down to his little friend’s house to play for a bit. While he’s there, Max somehow manages to set off the emergency SOS alert on his new tracker watch no less than 3 times, thus sending URGENT! UR CHILD IS IN DANGER! messages to everyone in his contact list. We manage to establish he’s OK right away, but my mum is never getting over the shock of that, I swear to God.

(Random photo of the kitchen, because I just couldn’t face trying to get yet another angle of my desk, which is where I was while Max was out.)

6:50pm

I walk down to collect Max from his friend’s house, where he’s staging a sit-in protest about being “forced” to come home for dinner, which Max is still insisting he won’t eat. He complains all the way home, pointing out that I’ve ruined his life by coming to collect him, but grudgingly settles down to do some reading with me while Terry gets on with the dinner:

7:20pm

Terry finishes coaxing Max to eat some dinner, while I go and run his bath:

(We normally leave a bigger gap between dinner and bath, but because he refused to eat for so long, everything ended up being a lot more rushed than usual…)

7:30pm

Terry supervises bath-time, while I run around gathering up laundry, and having a quick tidy up before getting Max ready for bed, and reading him his story. We’re currently working our way through The Adventures of the Wishing Chair, which I’m enjoying almost as much as he is – mostly because so far no one has been burned alive it it, which makes a refreshing change.

8pm:

Max is finally tucked up in bed, so I head upstairs to do a 20 minute Peloton workout:

This isn’t a Peloton bike, needless to say: we couldn’t afford one of those, so we got this one from Amazon instead, and I’ve been using it along with the Peloton app, which I use for both cycling and strength workouts. I find it really difficult to motive myself to do longer workouts right now, so I like the fact that I can use this to squeeze in 20 minutes here and there, and still feel like I’ve done something.

Working out at this time of night wouldn’t be my first choice; I’d much prefer to do it first thing in the morning and get it out of the way, but because the bike’s in our room, it would be impossible to do it when I get up without waking Terry, and once I’m showered and dressed for the day, the last thing I want to do is get super-sweaty and have to shower and change for a second time. So I’ve been waiting until Max is in bed, then I can do my workout in peace, then shower and get straight into my PJs.

I normally go back down to the office for a bit after this, but tonight I spend so much time faffing around picking a workout (And, okay, scrolling aimlessly through my phone after my shower), that by the time I’m done, the sky looks like this:

9:30pm

There does’t seem to be much point in going back to work for half an hour or so, and I’m feeling pretty tired by now, so I decide to go to bed early and read my book for a bit – which feels like a crazy level of indulgence to me, really. Like, I will feel guilty about it for DAYS now:

(In fairness, it is a really good book, though – which is why I end up staying up far too late reading it. Oh well, tomorrow is another day…)

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