A Day In The Life

I really loved Char's #photoanhour blog post last week - it's always fun to see what people get up to, isn't it? Blogging and all forms of social media give you brief glimpses into things but I do enjoy a whole day of "this is what I did".  Mainly I'm very impressed by a) how early other people get up and b) how busy they are!

Inspired by Char, I decided to have a crack at it. I know most people choose a weekend day for this but well, recording my weekends at the moment would result in a stream of photos where I'm painting and scrubbing skirting boards and mopping. NOT FUN. Work day it had to be:



8.15am



Rudely awoken by the cat. I am so far from being a morning person it's untrue. Thank god I live close to work.


9.15am



Brekkie at work (I can't eat first thing in the morning or I just want to vom). Very strong coffee and an utterly delicious Udi's choc chip bagel. I can't get enough of their stuff. Honestly, I'm like a crazy evangelical person preaching the merits of gluten-free food that tastes NORMAL AND DELICIOUS.


10.15am



Photo editing stuff for the website. Endless, endless photo editing.


11.15am



Escaped work to nip to the new house and let in the engineers from the electricity company. They were late. I chipped more bitumen off the quarry tiles in the hall and practiced my rage face. It came in very useful when they arrived and immediately said "Oh no love, we can't help. Who told you we needed to do it? Impossible." Err, that would be another engineer from your company. FIX IT.

They did. I now having working plug sockets. Hurrah!


12.15pm



Back at work. Thank goodness I racked up about a bajillion lieu hours earlier in the year. They're coming in super useful.


1.15pm



Lunch! We're all mildly obsessed by tomatoes and this is my current fave way to eat them. Take some nice bread, slice a beef tomato, drizzle with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and rock salt, then scoff.


2.15pm



Spreadsheety fun.


3.15pm



A pig with a broken ear made a visit to the office. Cue many porcine jokes.


4.15pm



Still at it with the website. Captions are the bane of my life. Almost as bad as blog titles: I can never think!


5.15pm



A very hasty dash from work to the train station and then, by the skin of my teeth, I was on the train into town, finishing off an upcoming Blogging Good Read book.


6.15pm



Dinner at Luche Libre, a fab Mexican restaurant in town. Wine, spicy fries and tacos of the Al Pastor (pork belly marinated in cola) and Scouse varieties. Don't worry, that's not all I ate. I just wanted a tidy photo. Ha!


7.15 & 8.15pm



At my second home, FACT, to watch a live screening of Stephen Fry's talk/book promo/general awesomeness.


9.15pm



Wandering back to the car. Liverpool is brilliant.


10.15pm



Back at home I had a burst of energy and decided to pack away some summer clothes prior to the move. Won't be needing them for a while! The current spare bedroom is complete chaos: books and ironing and boxes everywhere.


11.15pm



My usual late night staples: Radio 5 Live, a book and my diary. I am far too prone to being distracted at this time of night. I'm sure it shouldn't take me as long to write my diary as it actually does. Need more focus.


12.15pm



Sorted out clothes for the next day and fell straight asleep. That's quite an early bedtime by my usual standards but I'm exhausted at the moment.

So there you have it: a day in the life of me.  

Life At The Moment

Let me hit you with an early 90s video game analogy. Life at the moment feels very much like this:



Chaotic and in serious danger of piling up and crashing around my ears.

I'm trying not to be self-pitying, I'm just exhausted and can't remember the last time I had more than about twenty minutes to sit down and simply do nothing. It's a constant cycle of work, decorating, home, sleep, work, decorating, home, sleep...  Work is bonkers. It's always bonkers but we are chronically short-staffed and things keep piling up and piling up so that no matter how hard I try, I never get to the end of a to-do list.

The only things saving me from going completely off the wall are the fact that the house is slowly, slowly getting there (more on this next week) and that three days a week I have to ignore the raging chaos and go and look after Monty.







Non-horsey people probably don't get it. Life with horses definitely ain't glamorous. It's often cold,  wet and distinctly smelly and even in the summer when the weather is kind, it's pretty much always tiring.  So why is it helping me maintain my sanity? Mostly because when I'm at the farm, I have to concentrate on Mr M and Rocky. There's no brain space for fretting about stuff left undone at work or the fact that I should probably be wallpapering the house instead or that I'm (as usual) running late for something else.  It's pony time.

He stresses me out when he's being an idiot but mostly he's adorable. How you can not fall in love with a horse that:



Is ridiculously cute and tries to help push the barrow when you're poo picking the fields. Wrong end though, Mont.



Kisses with his eyes closed.



Loves drinking from the hosepipe, despite being afraid of killer puddles on the ground.



And who is the handsomest pony in all the land.

Then on a lovely autumnal evening like last night we can go for a blast around the stubble fields and have a jolly good time.  I defy anyone to feel anything other than sheer, unadulterated enjoyment when they're galloping on a lovely horse with the wind in their face and the sun on their back.