If you signed up for the 2025 Time Tracking Challenge I hope you have stuck with it into the second day! A number of folks emailed asking for the “spreadsheet” version of yesterday’s narrative, so I’ll put that (and today’s) at the bottom of this post. As you can see, there is a lot less detail!
After posting yesterday, I worked until 6 p.m., then cooked dinner for the older three kids and myself. I made pasta with marinara sauce, which I jazzed up with Italian sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and spinach. One child ate this sauce, the others ate plain marinara. We ate at 6:30. This was a quick dinner (about 15 minutes) and then I helped the 17-year-old (it was his dishes night) and then drove the 15-year-old to his Scouts meeting, which started at 7 p.m. (approximately 5 minutes away).
I drove home just as the little boys and our nanny had gotten home. I said goodbye to her, then got the little boys dinner. As we’d already had our “sit down” dinner (as it were), I let the 5-year-old eat it while watching Caillou in the dining room (on the family computer, which is in the dining room). This meant I could work on my puzzle! I’m doing a 1000-piece puzzle of Pendleton (the blanket company) patterns. I did this from 7:15-8:15 p.m. while Caillou was playing in the background. This was not purely uninterrupted leisure time, as the 5-year-old wanted something else to eat or drink or had to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes. But it was somewhat peaceful!
I went to pick up the 15-year-old at 8:20, and got home 8:30 (the other kids were home with the 5-year-old). I brought the 5-year-old up to his room and we finished this Elsa Lego set he got for Christmas. Lego is marketing these sets as being for ages 4+. I have to say, I think my kid is pretty smart but he is not in anyway capable of doing these sets on his own. Maybe 4+ with heavy adult help. Anyway, we finished, I got him in his jammies, brushed teeth, got him into bed, and then sat there scrolling for 10 minutes while he fell asleep.
At 9:15 I went to hangout with the 9-year-old, who wanted to do art (no one is supposed to have electronics after 8:30 p.m.). We used his brand new Posca markers, and drew images from this book called something like 501 things to draw. I drew a cartoonish girl winking (see art). The 13-year-old joined us for a while. I went to say goodnight to the others, came back to say goodnight to the artists, shut the house, went to my room, entertained a few other questions from people that kept popping up and THEN shut my door and scrolled/read for a little bit. I made it into bed at 10:45 p.m.
I slept all the way through to 5:45 a.m. I lay there in bed for a bit — I thought I was awake the whole time, but since I looked at the clock next at 6:10 I must have dozed. I got up (my alarm was set for 6:40 a.m.), worked for 20 minutes, got coffee, then got the 13-year-old up (6:40). I showered, made sure she was ready, woke up the 17-year-old who needed extra time to put in his new contacts, then got in the van with her at 7:12 and drove her down to the bus stop. (For any new readers: the bus stops at the bottom of the hill and it is a big hill…so to save time in the morning we drive her down on any mornings she is taking the bus. When my husband is around in the AM he drives her to school.)
I got home around 7:22, woke the 15-year-old up at 7:25, then made and ate my breakfast. B (nanny) arrived at 7:40. We chatted through the schedule, I discovered the 5-year-old hiding in the kitchen and was very surprised. Like jumping when I saw a person under the counter. Anyway… I started working at 7:50. I assume the older boys left around 8, but this did not involve me. The 5-year-old was in and out until they left for school around 8:45, but I did “interruptible” work during this time. I kept working until 9:30, then took a 10-minute break for a snack. After that I worked more or less until noon, but there were a few small interludes where I wrapped a few presents, tried to order a pair of eyeglasses for a kid, coordinate camp sign-ups with another mom, and called a birthday party location about headcount. Then I ate lunch (leftovers from last night) and talked on the phone with my husband.
By 12:20 I was back at work, but only for about 40 minutes. I walked down to the mailbox to see how cold it was, and to hunt for our missing Wall Street Journal (I wrote a book review that’s in the paper today…and somehow it didn’t show up! B grabbed a copy at Wawa later). I decided it was too cold to run outside, so I ran on the treadmill from about 1:20-1:50. At this point I went hunting for the missing eyeglasses (whose absence was requiring ordering a new pair). I found a pair of glasses in the child’s room. Victory…though it turns out these were a pair that were lost 6 months ago, not the pair lost this week. I may be losing my mind.
Anyway, I then worked from 2-3:15. At this point, the 13-year-old came home, and I confirmed she was game for the sleepaway camp her friend’s mom suggested. She was, so I went ahead and registered. This only took 15 minutes (not any of the health forms or anything yet, just the deposit), so that was quick. Then there were more attempts to order the extra pair of eyeglasses, but we’re missing a metric and I keep getting automated emails that the picture isn’t right and…
I attempted to get back to work around 3:40, and mostly texted back and forth with an author friend who was trying to source a quote of mine (“going to bed early is how grown-ups sleep in.”) This resulted in me Googling myself and seeing how AI explains my quotes. This was all fun and games but not terribly productive. Which is fine since at 3:50 I started walking down to the bus stop to meet the 9-year-old (B was picking up the 5-year-old from an after school activity). On the way I bumped into the arborist who was walking around looking at our trees (we have a lot of old trees…that need to be trimmed or they fall on things). We chatted for long enough that the 9-year-old was walking up and sending me messages from his new Gizmo watch asking where I was. I met him halfway up the hill and we chatted about how his dad and I have a lot of typos in our text messages to him.
As you can see, the day was pretty distracted by this point. I answered a few emails, then went to my home workout area to train with my trainer (virtually). I normally do this on Mondays but I was traveling yesterday so it was rescheduled to 4:30 p.m. today. I lifted weights, did push-ups, etc for 30 minutes. Then I threw a load of my clothes in the washing machine, and started typing this around 5:15. I’ll probably cook dinner around 6 (B is off with the 9-year-old at swim and parkour, and I have the 5-year-old + older kids for the evening).
See below for what all of this looks like on my spreadsheets (well, a pasted in version of the spreadsheet).
Monday:
5AM
5:30 5:40 hear M, up, shower
6 dress, breakfast, hair
6:30 hair, get R up, B, ready, drive
7 drive
7:30 drive
8 stop Chesapeake House, drive
8:30 drive
9 drive, park, walk around
9:30 work/drink at cafe
10 work/to event
10:30 work (speech)
11 work (speech)
11:30 work (speech)
12PM work (other talk)
12:30 to car, drive
1 drive
1:30 stop, get food, drive
2 drive
2:30 drive
3 home, unpack, R, work
3:30 work
4 walk outside
4:30 work
5 work
5:30 work
6 cook dinner
6:30 eat w/kids, help J, drive S
7 home, H dinner, puzzle/H
7:30 puzzle/H Caillou
8 puzzle/H, go get S, home
8:30 Legos w/H
9 sit w/H, art w/A, then R
9:30 art (R,A), kid chats
10 to room (R), read/relax
10:30 scroll, in bed, sleep
11
Tuesday
5:30 5:45 up on own
6 doze? up, work
6:30 coffee/read, R, shower
7 R ready, J, in van, wait, back, S
7:30 breakfast, chat B (H hidden!), work
8 work
8:30 work (AQ)
9: work (AQ)
9:30 (10 min break) work
10 wrap presents, work
10:30 work (+ admin: camp, glasses)
11 work (record BB), email
11:30 work
12 lunch/chat M (phone), work
12:30 work
1 mailbox, change, run
1:30 run (2 + walk), find glasses
2 work
2:30 work
3 work, sign R up camp
3:30 R, J measure, work (quote)
4 A, work
4:30 train with (trainer)