washing-up::blog

Friday, January 16, 2009
A Day In The Life

Recent travels and travails have left my Google Reader account straining at the gills with unglanced-at posts. Catching up on my lunch break, I see that Moosh has nominated today as a day-in-the-life day. I haven't done one of those in ages, so let's have a crack. I may end up not bothering to publish this if the rest of the day is deeply dull.

6.30am - The alarm goes off. Yesterday I received notification that my passport and visa would arrive today by courier some time between 8am and 6pm, so I set my alarm super early so I could get into work for 8. Fumbling to silence it before it woke the baby, I almost allowed myself to sink back into sleep, but managed to force myself out of bed for 6.45.

I fed and watered the cat, brushed my teeth, had a shower, got dressed and took the bin out, all without waking Rebecca and Aidan, woke R up briefly to say bye, and got out the door in time to see the 7.26 pull into the station. Tantalisingly close, I knew there was no chance of getting it, but thought there might be a 7.38, so sauntered over to look at the timetable and discover that there was, in fact, not such train. Rather than wait until 8 o'clock, I chose to take the bus. There was one already at the stop, and I had change, so I hopped on and asked for a "one-thirty" from the driver who looked at me like I was from Mars.

I hadn't had time to make lunch, and was paranoid about leaving the office in case the courier came while I was away, so after getting off the bus I popped into Marks and Sparks to buy a sandwich. I've been feeling a bit "meat-off" these past few days, so bought a cheapo egg mayonnaise sarnie before going into work. I was the first person in and got to turn on all the lights. I quite enjoy that, and the quiet of the place when I'm the only one in. Not enough to make me get up early unless I have to, though. I got myself some cereal from my stash in the kitchen, and went to my machine. I'd left a lengthy defrag and shrink process running on a VMWare image when I left the night before, and it had failed due to lack of disk space, so I deleted an old, unneeded image and kicked it off again while reading email and news, and started unreportably dull worky stuff once it had finished.

At about 9.30 a colleague brought over a large, black, plastic envelope and said that there was a guy at reception who needed to see my ID. Once authenticated, I tore it open, and as expected it contained my passport, containing a new visa sticker, and a large, heavy brown envelope, with instructions printed on it in large black letters indicating that it should not be opened or tampered with under any circumstances, and must be presented to the immigration officer when I enter the US. This attracted a bit of attention from various workmates who didn't know of my moving plans, so the cat is very definitely out of the bag now, even though it wasn't really a secret any more.

At about 11.00 the Friday cakes arrived, though as usual there were a fair number of savoury items from Greggs, and I consumed a sausage roll, thus making a mockery of my earlier advances towards vegetarianism. In my defense I suspect its actual meat content to have been pretty low. Now lunchtime is here, I am regretting having bothered to buy a sandwich, such, along with my usual monster bowl of Alpen, I'm really not hungry. I shall save it for later.

***

Around 3.20pm R phoned. She had been in town meeting some of the other mums from our NCT class earlier in the year, and was now heading over to Mono. Since I'd gotten into work early, I said I would come and meet her just after 4. At Mono I found her with Aidan sitting on her lap, looking quite happy. We split a veggie curry and strange carbonated elderflower drink. In the toilet I noticed a bit of graffiti that made me smile. Someone had written "This place would be better if... it wasn't so shite," but a second person had scored out the last part and replaced it with "it had a bouncy castle and the girl behind the bar with no smiles would kiss me." I'll miss that sweet, silly, and, yes, twee side of Glasgow, I think. It's not all neds and jakies. Just mostly.

I read for a bit while R took Aidan into Monorail to show our friend Russell who works in there, and then we bundled up and went back out into the damp evening. We had waited a bit too long, however, and rush-hour was in full swing, so on the way to the station we went into Tinderbox for coffee and Portuguese custard tarts. A, by now, was sound asleep, as is normal for him if he's outside and moving. When we were done we finished walking to Central Station, but it was still packed and the next train was not for another half hour. I was a bit nervous about A waking up and being pissed off, since he hadn't been fed in a while, and the taxi queue wasn't too bad, so we took one of those instead of struggling to get his stroller on a busy commuter train.

Back home, R folded up the stroller while I took Aidan upstairs. When I got in I sat down on the sofa to take his jacket off, but as I did so I felt a bolt of pain in my right knee, sufficient to make me yelp and use some choice language. I've been having trouble with that knee for a while now. It's ok while standing or walking, but if I sit with it bent for too long it stiffens up and gets sore, at which point it emits a loud "click" when straightened. Putting weight on it when bending down or getting up also hurts a fair bit. My doctor diagnosed inflammation behind the kneecap, though was at a loss to explain why I should be experiencing such a thing, and prescribed anti-inflammatories. They ease the symptoms a bit, but can't quite knock them out. In any case, it's never hurt as much as it did at that point, and for a while I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to walk on it. I handed Aidan off to Rebecca when she came in, and sat for a little while. The pain faded after about five minutes and I was able to get up without difficulty, but it definitely doesn't feel quite right, and putting weight on it hurts more than it ever did. If it still feels this way by Monday I am definitely going back to my doctor, even though I am convinced he fills himself full of Valium at the start of the working day, such is his distant, laissez-faire attitude to his patients.

I messed around on the internets for a while, and played with Aidan on the floor (getting down gingerly, but I was ok once I was there). At about eight-ish I took him into the bedroom and put his pyjamas on him. Then R came in, and gave him a feed in the dark in an effort to get him off to sleep. Sated, he dozed off in her lap. We didn't want to move him into his cot straight away, hoping that he would ultimately fall into a deep sleep that would see him through the night, or at least a few hours. His sleep patterns have been chaotic ever since we got back from the US. This is partly jet-lag, and partly because we allowed him to sleep in the bed with us while we were away. We knew we were fostering a bad habit, but when you're so tired you want to die and you know it will help him sleep through, it seems worth it. I crept out and fetched my laptop, and we had a look at flights for our move. We found a good deal on KLM, but are loathe to actually book anything until the missives are concluded on the flat and we can definitely put a date on it.

After a short time we put Aidan down in his cot and tip-toed away. In the living room I played with my DS for about half an hour, before I heard Aidan wake up and start crying over the baby monitor. Normally it takes several attempts to get him into a proper sleep. He will doze off for a while, then wake and start crying, or at least making a fuss. I can usually send him back off by picking him up and rocking him for a few minutes, as in this case.

Once back down, I went into the spare room/office and started writing the second part of this post, but I was interrupted by half-a-dozen restless-baby moments, and reading about the forthcoming remake of The Prisoner. I'm a massive fan of the original show, and was saddened to hear of Patrick McGoohan's death the other day. From first appearances, I fear that this remake will be... how can I put this?... a load of arse. I do like Ian McKellan (Though it appears that he will be Number 2 for the duration of the show, unlike the 1960's series where a different actor took the role each week.) but casting James Caviezel - Hollywood's most generic looking actor - as Number 6, a character who is supposed to represent personal individuality , is surely a mistake. I'll try to watch it with an open mind when it comes on, however.

Now, to bed. Hopefully that'll be Aidan down for a while. Or not. Every day is different.

Look at that - no posts for months, then three 1000-worders in a row. I suppose I've been keeping mum on certain things and it's caused a bit of a backlog that's now overflowing. Sorry about that. I expect the torrent will slow soon enough.

Labels: diary