Portrait of a Typical Day
Sep. 29th, 2011 02:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueCiro and I wake up around noon, put on satin robes, and have breakfast. Breakfast is sizable, about a third of my daily food intake. It is usually a combination of: kefir (a yogurt drink), fruit (fresh or dried, depending on availability), oatmeal with cashews, toast with nutella, ricotta and honey, and two-egg vegetable omlette with fish sauce. Breakfast, reading the paper, and getting dressed and groomed takes about two hours. Usually there is a conversation with Mom or Scarlett about something in the paper or something funny that happened the previous day. Sometimes Mom and Dad are eating lunch while we are eating breakfast, but usually they eat lunch in the basement while watching Have Gun, Will Travel. Scarlett leaves for work. Ham (the cat) wants in and out several times.
Around 2:00, Ciro and I go for a walk. Either we go to town to run an errand (pharmacy, bank, library, post office - we have a lot of business at the post office), which takes an hour round trip, and Ciro helps me up the hill and we complain about the hill and I threaten to take a nap halfway up the hill, or we just walk around the neighborhood for half an hour and count chipmunks. When we get home, I drink a glass of water, take a multivitamin, and check on my balcony vegetable garden. Usually, I pick a handful of cherry tomatoes and pinch off some dead or dying leaves. I may or may not take a nap, depending on whether there is time and how well I slept.
I start work at 3:30 and caption until 2 a.m., or sometimes 3. If it's a slow day, I also read blogs - mostly about media, design, economics, politics, science, history, and feminism. I answer e-mail and resubmit rejected manuscripts to other markets. I have some kind of snack around 4:30 or 5 pm, and tell Mom and Ciro at what time I will have a gap in programming that is long enough for me to take my dinner break - usually between 6pm and 8pm. I may or may not discover that Ciro has folded the bed into the wall. If he has not, I will threaten to take a nap, regardless of whether I have had a nap already. If he has, I pretend to be confused about where the bed has gone.
I have dinner with Mom, Dad, Ciro, and sometimes Scarlett if it's one of her days off. Mom usually cooks dinner (although it is occasionally Ciro). When it is Mom, as it usually is, it tends to be the classic meat and 2 sides rubric, plus bread (which may or may not be homemade). One of the sides is usually a tossed salad. At dinner, we mostly talk about current events (domestic, international, and fiscal), on which we all mainly agree, about Christian religious history, about baseball, and about anecdotes from each of our childhoods. This does not get old.
Depending on how late and substantial dinner is, I may or may not have another snack around 10 or 11 pm. Snacks are largely but not exclusively vegetable based; sometimes cheese or nuts. At some point, I load or unload the dishwasher. Sometimes more than once. I also tidy the kitchen counter and take the recycling from the kitchen to the boiler room.
When I get off work, Ciro and I read or watch something short or both, and eat a small amount of ice cream from the local dairy. I go through an extensive teeth-cleaning process and a much less complicated washing of my face. I am asleep by around 4 pm, although some days it is more like 5 and some days it is more like 3. The shows Ciro and I watch often annoy us, but this gives us something to discuss and also to read blogs about. We IM links to these while I am working.
The books we read could be anything - nonfiction (typically European history or substantiated science from a reputable source), personal essays, poems, contemporary or classic genre fiction, contemporary or classic literary fiction, comic books. Almost never plays or screenplays, although occasionally film or theater theory. Since my childhood book collection is also here, I sometimes read to Ciro or have him read to me seminal picture books he missed out on as a kid, such as Caps for Sale and Richard Scarry.
Sometimes there are small massages or silly little songs.
On weekends, when I don't work, either that is more time for errands or we go to a museum or watch a movie or play a video game. Both of us write as time is available. Both of us practice Italian where we can. Lately I have worked three to four hours of overtime even on off days, partly because I have the luxury of being able to do so.
It is all fairly insular and fairly invisible, but pleasant as a temporary state of affairs. Things are almost sure to get complicated again soon. This feels like a sabbatical rather than limbo.
Around 2:00, Ciro and I go for a walk. Either we go to town to run an errand (pharmacy, bank, library, post office - we have a lot of business at the post office), which takes an hour round trip, and Ciro helps me up the hill and we complain about the hill and I threaten to take a nap halfway up the hill, or we just walk around the neighborhood for half an hour and count chipmunks. When we get home, I drink a glass of water, take a multivitamin, and check on my balcony vegetable garden. Usually, I pick a handful of cherry tomatoes and pinch off some dead or dying leaves. I may or may not take a nap, depending on whether there is time and how well I slept.
I start work at 3:30 and caption until 2 a.m., or sometimes 3. If it's a slow day, I also read blogs - mostly about media, design, economics, politics, science, history, and feminism. I answer e-mail and resubmit rejected manuscripts to other markets. I have some kind of snack around 4:30 or 5 pm, and tell Mom and Ciro at what time I will have a gap in programming that is long enough for me to take my dinner break - usually between 6pm and 8pm. I may or may not discover that Ciro has folded the bed into the wall. If he has not, I will threaten to take a nap, regardless of whether I have had a nap already. If he has, I pretend to be confused about where the bed has gone.
I have dinner with Mom, Dad, Ciro, and sometimes Scarlett if it's one of her days off. Mom usually cooks dinner (although it is occasionally Ciro). When it is Mom, as it usually is, it tends to be the classic meat and 2 sides rubric, plus bread (which may or may not be homemade). One of the sides is usually a tossed salad. At dinner, we mostly talk about current events (domestic, international, and fiscal), on which we all mainly agree, about Christian religious history, about baseball, and about anecdotes from each of our childhoods. This does not get old.
Depending on how late and substantial dinner is, I may or may not have another snack around 10 or 11 pm. Snacks are largely but not exclusively vegetable based; sometimes cheese or nuts. At some point, I load or unload the dishwasher. Sometimes more than once. I also tidy the kitchen counter and take the recycling from the kitchen to the boiler room.
When I get off work, Ciro and I read or watch something short or both, and eat a small amount of ice cream from the local dairy. I go through an extensive teeth-cleaning process and a much less complicated washing of my face. I am asleep by around 4 pm, although some days it is more like 5 and some days it is more like 3. The shows Ciro and I watch often annoy us, but this gives us something to discuss and also to read blogs about. We IM links to these while I am working.
The books we read could be anything - nonfiction (typically European history or substantiated science from a reputable source), personal essays, poems, contemporary or classic genre fiction, contemporary or classic literary fiction, comic books. Almost never plays or screenplays, although occasionally film or theater theory. Since my childhood book collection is also here, I sometimes read to Ciro or have him read to me seminal picture books he missed out on as a kid, such as Caps for Sale and Richard Scarry.
Sometimes there are small massages or silly little songs.
On weekends, when I don't work, either that is more time for errands or we go to a museum or watch a movie or play a video game. Both of us write as time is available. Both of us practice Italian where we can. Lately I have worked three to four hours of overtime even on off days, partly because I have the luxury of being able to do so.
It is all fairly insular and fairly invisible, but pleasant as a temporary state of affairs. Things are almost sure to get complicated again soon. This feels like a sabbatical rather than limbo.
