A Day in the Life: Aspiring Writer and Stay-at-Home Mom (Part 1)

In honour of yesterday’s book review of Water Cooler Diaries: Women Across America Share Their Day at Work, I am going to share a ‘day in the life’ diary I wrote for January 6th of this year. Since it is kind of long, I’ll break it into several posts. Here’s the first bit.

Enjoy!
6:50 a.m. Husband wakes me up to say goodbye. His carpool buddy will be here soon. They are leaving at ‘7:00 a.m. Oram Time’.

7:25 a.m. Wake up again. My daughter will likely wake up soon. Usually she gets up early, but yesterday was the first day back at school after Christmas holidays and school wears her out.

7:30 a.m. Daughter’s up. I do stretches and she goes to the TV room to watch CBC cartoons. No cable/satellite here. I feed the cats who try to convince me they’re starving. I sit with on the futon and watch cartoons for a few minutes. I ask my daughter if she’s hungry. She’s says, “not really.” I figure she’ll come and ask for breakfast once Animal Mechanical is over. Which she does. I take my big bowl of yogurt and join her at the table. (I thought we had more granola, but the cupboard is bare in that regard. Make a Costco list.)

8:30 a.m. Load dishwasher. My daughter wants to play Barbie games on the Barbie website on her dad’s laptop. She’s in a quiet, play by herself mood today. I help her get logged on and to the site. She’s getting good at navigating and finding new games. I had her on the CBC site but she switched to Barbie on her own. I go back to my own laptop. Finish reading email. Check out comments from friends and newbies on Agent Query site. I posted my latest query on there yesterday for a critique. There are some new comments, so I reply and take their ideas into account. I’ve got too many details in this version of the query. They don’t like my ‘hook’. However, I like it and a published writer liked it. It seems that we are alone. Make comments on other’s first pages, etc. I hope I wasn’t too discouraging with a newbie. I can see the potential and told her that. She just needs more ‘oompf’ and she is so close. My mom emails for some advice. I give her my usual blunt, straight forward brand of advice.

8:55 a.m. It’s snowing!

9:00 a.m. Help my daughter with her CD player so she can get to French ‘Jingle Bells’ and then I jump in the shower.

9:19 a.m. Hungry. Yogurt without granola just doesn’t cut it. Must. Find. More. Food.

9:21 a.m. I have book club tonight so I put in some effort and blow dry my hair. However, the chances are that I’ll go cross-country skiing later and the toque will wreck my efforts. At least I tried. Check out the Barbie my daughter made on the website. (I think she is addicted.)

9:27 a.m. Word of the day courtesy of dictionary.com is ‘beleaguer’. I thought it meant to be worn out in an overwhelmed sort of fashion. Turns out it means “to surround with troops; besiege” 2. “to surround or beset” How can that be? Have I been wrong all this time or are there two meanings? I looked it up. I can also mean to surround with troubles. That makes sense.

9:37 a.m. Have a snack and make a cup of tea. Decide we need to write our Christmas thank yous as it is already a few weeks after Christmas. We’ve thanked a couple of people, but there is more to do.

9:50 a.m. We’re still getting organized to write thank yous. I had two more books come in the mail yesterday. One for reviewing on my blog. Yesterday I declined a writer who sent a bulk email asking to review his short stories. I feel bad, but know I couldn’t give it a fair shake as short stories aren’t my focus at the moment. We are in serious need of bookshelves. I think I need a shelf or two just for our ‘to be read piles’. Could life be any better?

9:53 a.m. My daughter is dressed and just about ready to make a few drawings to go in the thank you notes.

9:58 a.m. I realize I only have two thank you cards. Hmmm. My daughter has decided to draw her butterfly Barbie (Mariposa) and has set her up to be her model. Searched for cards and have come up short. We’ll see how far we get without cards.

10:12 a.m. I realize I forgot to tell my grandma I’d mailed her an after-Christmas package. Called and left a message. It had her thank you in it and a coffee cup that we made her with pictures of her cottage and ‘Nana’ on it. Still working on thank yous. Found a way around the lack of notes. Check my email. A thank you posted on AQ from someone for comments I made on their query and a bit of commiserating. Also an email from Publishers Lunch. Back to thank yous. Look up brother’s new address in my email. It hadn’t made to my address book yet. Write it in pen before realizing I’ll probably be erasing it in a few months and putting in a new one. He’s as bad as I was when I was in university for moving all the time.

10:20 a.m. It’s still snowing.

10:25 a.m. My daughter is still making her first drawing. She has 5 left to go. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. I forgot the care she takes with a drawing these days. They are pretty fabulous. I think she just did the math too. We are in negotiations. Solution met. One drawing a day and they don’t have to be fancy. We’ll see how this all pans out. I want drawing to remain fun.

10:31 a.m. Drawing complete! False alarm. More colour needed.

10:33 a.m. Realize I don’t have the in-laws new address in my book. Search my email. Look for Christmas letter.

10:36 a.m. The drawing is complete. Back to Barbie website. I can mail one thank you. Better than nothing!

10:38 a.m. Email the in-laws for address. See an email from Authonomy. Decide to check out their blog.

10:44 a.m. Blog wasn’t much help in terms of new info. Jumped over to AQ and replied to a comment as well as contacted another member who mentioned she’d comment on my query once it was up. Was going to tweak my query in regards to some feedback, but just realized I haven’t posted my blog entry for today. I’m in the middle of a one week stretch of posting writing exercises. I only have about 45 minutes until I have to make lunch, etc. and I have a feeling that this post will take some time.

10:50 a.m. I can’t find the discussion thread I wanted to reference in my blog in regards to the word ‘suddenly’. Frustrated. Thought I could check my deleted emails to see if anything triggers. Have 3069 deleted messages. Somehow I’m thinking this won’t help. Didn’t I just clean that out last month?

11:02 a.m. Solved some of my daughter’s playing ‘crises’. Also found the quote and thread I was looking for. Thank goodness for search functions.

11:22 a.m. The blog entry is done and posted. The actual writing took less time than finding the quote I wanted. Time for a little tidy up before making lunch. Dishwasher is done its work. Gotta love that!

11:41 a.m. My daughter’s snack is made and in her bag. Time to make lunch. Remember to put daughter’s school photos in the thank you envelopes.

11:58 a.m. My daughter is a nut! Excited to be going to school. Still snowing! Read more emails that came in. All from AQ. Log in and make some quick comments while daughter finishes her lunch and gets ready for school. Realized still logged in and there is a request for another pass over of someone else’s work. I’m pleased to see the usual gang has come out to talk about my query as well as a few new faces. The different POVs are great. It seems agreed that although my use of ‘beau’ in the query to agents is dated, it is quirky enough to work with my main character, storyline and query. I’m about ready to send that bad boy out. A few more tweaks–hopefully today.

Stay tuned, more coming tomorrow!