You’ll have to excuse me as, again, I find myself turning to this here blog to try to keep the crazy at bay . . . I have a particularly busy stretch coming ahead, and need to plan it out, so I figure the three and three-quarters of you still reading will keep from unsubscribing y’all would love to see the way my mind works.
Complicating the busy stretch for me are two factors. First, I’m the organist of a Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and the Greek Church and the Western Church commonly celebrate Easter on a different schedule. So while most of the Christian world celebrates Easter this coming Sunday, this Sunday actually marks Palm Sunday in my calendar. So, everybody who might have scheduled around Holy Week, or, at least, Easter . . . well, they scheduled directly INTO my busy time. Then, my wife is following one of her passions, helping to make a local community theatre production great . . . and she approaches Tech Week as I work around Holy Week.
- Saturday:
- 5:30am: wake-up, walk Benji, start coffee brewing
- 6:00am: shower, get into costume
- 6:30am: drink coffee, eat breakfast
- 7:00am: out of the door
- 7:30am: check in at race
- 8:00am: run the Movie Madness Half Marathon dressed as Rocky Balboa
- noon: pick up the kids from Duffy‘s rehearsal
- If I’m thoroughly exhausted:
- Take kids to Starbucks, get myself coffee
- Head home to watch movies on TV, put feet up
- If I’m able to function:
- Take kids to garden store, get cold weather seedlings (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts), pest-repellent plant seeds (marigold, mint)
- Throw above shit into garden
- 4:00pm: start dinner and hardboil eggs
- 4:30pm: have kids dye eggs1
- 6:00pm: dinner, movies, whatever the fuck happens at night. Drink
a bottle or twoa measured amount of wine because, fuck, I just ran a half marathon. Sleep.
- Sunday:
- 6:45am: wake-up, walk Benji, start coffee brewing
- 7:15am: shower, dress self and kids for church
- 7:45am: drink coffee, force breakfast down kids’s gullets
- 8:30am: head to church, rehearse with choir, get through Palm Sunday service.
- noon: donate blood (blood drive at church)
- 1:00pm: head to my mom’s for Easter Dinner
- 2:00pm: chores / child wrangling / piano playing / dinner eating / hugs / kisses / goodbyes
- 7:00pm: home for movies and whatever the fuck happens at night.
- Monday:
- 5:30am: wake-up, walk Benji, start coffee brewing
- 6:00am: head back to bed (Duffy and the kids have the day off . . . so I’m taking the day off, unfortunately for her, she has dental surgery)
- 7:00am: shower, drink coffee, dress and play with kids
- 9:00am: pack up van, drive Duffy to dental surgery
- 10:00am: drop off Duffy, take kids to Starbucks. Or maybe McDonalds. Somewhere.
- 11:30am: pick up Duffy, head home, make kids lunch, play with kids (possibly, head to garden store if I couldn’t make it on Saturday & every one is up for it)
- 4:00pm: pack overnight bag for kids, make dinner, eat dinner
- 6:00pm: drop kids off with my mother-in-law for the night
- 7:00pm: symphony rehearsal
- 10:30pm: sleep. Blessed sleep
- Tuesday:
- 5:30am: wake-up, walk Benji
- 6:00am: start coffee brewing, light strength-training workout, dress for work
- 7:00am: work
- noon: gym for shower/massage chair
- 1:00pm: work
- 5:00pm: choir rehearsal
- 6:00pm: Holy Tuesday service
- 10:30pm: sleep.
- Wednesday:
- 5:30am: wake-up, walk Benji
- 6:00am: start coffee brewing, dress for work
- 8:00am: symphony board presentation
- 9:00am: work from home
- 12:30pm: preschool presentation
- 1:30pm: work from home, pick up CJ
- 5:00pm: karate belt test with CJ
- 6:30pm: pick up Leila
- 7:00pm: home for dinner, baths, bedtime, sleep
- Thursday:
- 5:30am: wake-up, walk Benji
- 6:00am: start coffee brewing, dress kids, dress for work
- 7:00am: work
- noon: gym for shower/massage chair
- 1:00pm: work, pick up CJ
- 5:00pm: karate belt test with CJ
- 6:30pm: pick up Leila
- 7:00pm: home for dinner, baths, bedtime, sleep
- Friday:
- 5:30am: wake-up, walk Benji
- 6:00am: start coffee brewing, dress kids, dress for work
- 7:00am: work
- noon: gym for shower/massage chair
- 1:00pm: work
- 5:00pm: choir rehearsal, Good Friday service
- 10:30pm: sleep
- Saturday:
- 5:00am: wake-up, walk Benji, start coffee brewing
- 5:30am: shower
- 6:00am: drink coffee, eat breakfast
- 6:30am: out of the door
- 7:30am: check in at race
- 8:00am: run the Garden Spot Village Marathon
- 2:00pm: shower, rest, eat something
- 9:00pm: dress
- 10:00pm: choir rehearsal, Easter Vigil service
- 3:00am: sleep. Blessed sleep.
- Sunday:
- whenever Benji sticks his face into mine: wake-up, try not to strangle him, walk him
- half an hour later: back to bed (with head under covers)
- noon: dress
- 2:00pm: family Easter celebrations. Finally break my “no refined flours/sugars” restrictions
Of course, I have a week of “more-normal” (which is still pretty structured & busy) before I start tech rehearsals for my next show (Schoolhouse Rock) as Duffy spends weekends with her production run of The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr. My kids will remember who I am, eventually. I’m sure.
With the aforementioned schedule, I have the added fun of planning to run a marathon in there, which requires meal planning. I’m . . . truly disciplined in what eat (because, if I deviate from a plan, everything falls to shit in a heartbeat and I wonder why I’m shoving fistfuls of sugar into my piehole with one hand as the other hand slices a wheel of cheese into bite-sized bites). Every weekend, I take a little time to
- Place a large quantity of high-quality meat in the crock pot with a bunch of spices overnight, then in the morning, I shred the meat before placing it into
John-sizedsingle-serving containers - Mix a small amount of yogurt with milk and leave at 110°F overnight, bottling the yogurt into single-serving containers
- Shred/chop/slice large quantities of green cabbage, napa cabbage, bok choy, carrots, onions, and/or red cabbage, placing the result in large jars with spices and salt, and leave the result to ferment at room temperature for the next month
- Take a batch of the fully-fermented prior and package into
John-sizedsingle-serving containers - Pour a half-gallon of whole milk over kefir grains and store to ferment at room temperature for a week
- Take a batch of fully-fermented kefir, strain out the grains, and portion into single-serve containers
For breakfasts, I have coffee & kefir & yogurt. For lunches, I have the pulled meat and sauerkraut/kimchi. For the most part, this treats me quite well (you might recognize the diet as a fairly standard weight-lifter’s diet . . . it’s about 50% protein/25% fat/25% carbohydrate) . . . but, well, I need to bump up my glycogen stores for the marathon . . . which means more carbs. As I haven’t been gaining weight (and, well, normally I would care a LOT more about body fat percentage than my actual weight — but 26.2 miles is a LONG way to carry even an extra 2-3 pounds, so, well, my weight does matter) I’ll simply be adding a sweet potato & a beet, which I’ll munch on, throughout the day – perhaps the stray avocado as well.
After the marathon? I’ll rest. Or something.
Chris and I wondered if you were running the half. We run in the developments around Northeastern High School, so we timed our run to avoid the races.
We’ve run the 5K at Movie Madness before, but US Road Running often puts their 5Ks through the muddy soccer fields instead of closing roads. I’ll probably do the half in the future if I can get my legs healthy and trained back up to long races.
I hope you had fun!
The older my kids get and the later they stay up, I really am wondering what the fuck it is that happens at night. So far it’s a lot of nature documentaries.