Wednesday, May 12, 2010

what feeling "good" means

I am probably getting less sleep than pre-PCP; my typical routine is to come home between 10 and 11 pm and spend a focused, calm and soothing hour in the kitchen: I empty the dishwasher, load it with whatever isn't clean yet, hand wash whatever is left (certain hand-pottered items, my bento box that I will soon use again, etc.), chop vegetables, load the steamer, hard-boil and peel eggs.
Then I randomly figure out what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the next day, and start loading up containers and baggies and bento boxes. Measure carbs and fruit snacks, try to get an even balance of vegetables, mix up the colors, make sure I have enough eggs, wonder what to do with all the damn yolks (I usually take a day's worth of yolks, i.e. 6, and mix in one full hard-boiled egg with mayo to give my wife a big jar of artery-hardening really rich and yellow egg-salad!), collate and stack and bag (I have had enough spillage accidents to be incredibly anal about getting everything drip and leak proof, and double-bagged just in case) and insert in refrigerator for-grab-and-go efficiency the next day.
Then I catch up on a few emails, order groceries from the co-op for next delivery, finish off whatever domestic tasks may be pending that can be completed in relative silence and darkness so as not to wake the family (hang and/or fold and/or wash a pending load of laundry, bag the trash to take out the next morning, etc.) and off to bed. If by some miracle it is before midnight, I will sit for a bit.
And then I get up at 5am, sit for 20 minutes, jump for 20 minutes watching the horrible NHK morning "news", 8MA+ (don't let feet touch ground!), daily workout.
By now it's 6:30ish, so the wife and baby son are probably up. Wife makes kids' bentos and I juggle between making my breakfast and taking a shower and entertaining my son to keep him from driving wife crazy as she does her thing. At some point daughter wakes up; either early enough to sit with me and eat breakfast together, or late enough to eat with mom and possibly brother. (Alternate version: she wakes up early, but then lies on the couch for half an hour; she is an absolute miserable bear when she first wakes up, so best to not provoke her and let her figure out the timing of breakfast.)
Recently son has been more manageable; capable of sitting in his high chair for nearly an entire meal, pawing handfuls of food into the general vicinity of his mouth. Recently he has been very into chicken fingers, and rice topped with shirasu (little white fishes), and kids yogurt in a packet (imagine a long package of individual servings of ketchup).
From them on it's clothes, brushing of teeth, packing of bentos and other work/school necessities into bags, finding of socks and arguments about which jacket to wear and possibly (though rare) brushing of hair before rushing out the door to school / work.
I take an old (15 years and counting!) EMI backpack stuffed to the seams and heavy: lunch and dinner plus three snacks, workout clothes plus jump rope. Tried to make do with a more "professional" looking shoulder bag, then switched to my awesomely cavernous Freitag messenger bag, but the weight was too much for one shoulder so I have switched to the extremely geeky-looking suit-and-backpack...can't be helped, because for every strange look and grumpy stare I get when I smack someone on the train with my massive pack, I get at least as many stares and comments when I am changing in the gym or dojo, usually followed by a "What happened to YOU?! Didn't you used to be kinda...fat?"
PCP happened to me, baby.
P.C.P!

1 comment:

  1. WOW - I thought I had a full day. I like knowing what I am going to do the next day as well. There is a comfort in having a plan. I just need to not get too tied to what is going to happen in my plan because there is not a great deal of plan following going on in the world some days.

    Go Team Go

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