Happy Week in the Life documenting week! This is my favorite project of the year and I have been waiting for this week since last May! This year I hope to share most of my words and photos from each day here on the blog. For each day this year I am using a different story lens to guide my storytelling and I’m aiming to end up with 13 or so photos for each day.
Monday’s story lens was “Around Here”, which is one I’ve used the last two years to document things happening with a lens on our physical space in addition to what we are doing. Today I also played around with the idea of photo progressions that was inspired by Ali. The idea is to take photos throughout the day or a specific shortened time period from the same spot to show how things change with each photo. Today I did this throughout the day at meal time around our table. Here are those photos.
Here are some of Monday’s words and photos.
Around here Ruby is on a pretty routine morning schedule. She wakes up between 7am and 7:30am to go out and wants her breakfast then too. Nearly all mornings Shawn gets up with her. This morning I heard them as they were going out and felt excited to wake up and get the day started.
Around here I complete a weekly 5k. I usually try to do this on the weekend, but around here it was bitter cold and super windy this weekend, so I decided to push my 5k to today. It feels really good to sweat it out, push myself, and start the week off doing something hard. Last week I completed my second 10k on Monday morning and I felt great all week!
Around here Ruby sits at the window when one of us is gone and watches for us to come back. Shawn thinks she now recognizes the Life360 alert that goes off on our phones to tell us that the other has returned. He said she heard it and started looking for me and pacing between the window and front door before I was visible in the neighborhood. What a smarty!
Around here Mondays have become my weekly cleaning day. I clean all the bathrooms and our shower, dust the bedroom and main floor, wipe down the counter, cabinets, and appliances in the kitchen, and do all the household laundry (towels, napkins, etc.). Once a month I also wash all the rugs and will likely do that today. I also need to vacuum the entryway and stairs once a month, today will be the first for mixing that into the rotation. It’s our most heavily trafficked area and our most neglected. I haven’t always liked cleaning, I don’t actually think I like it now. But I do like that I finally have time and energy to make cleaning happen on a routine basis (and I enjoy time to listen to podcasts). For so many years it was neglected because our work schedule was demanding and draining. If I cleaned like this twice a year I considered that a win. Our robo-vac Rosie still does most of the vacuuming, we even started having her vacuum the top floor too. If only there were a robo-vac to do the stairs!
Around here we try to eat lunch together on most days. It’s become something I look forward to each day as a touchpoint throughout the day where we are both kind of doing our own things and don’t interact much until the end of the work day. We usually listen to music, usually we listen to country music, and most days Shawn plays Animal Crossing while he eats. Most of the time Ruby sits at the table with us.
Around here I am starting to lose steam after a busy morning, but I still have the laundry and some more cleaning to do. This is pretty typical for my Mondays right now and I always look forward to spending the afternoon relaxing. These routines have started to make Monday a day I look forward to instead of dread. It’s also nice because these routines help distinguish Monday from the rest of the days, which tend to blend together. This has been a strange and fascinating outcome of the stay-at-home life (both before and during the pandemic).
Around here I am trying not to disturb Shawn while he is on calls with work and I clean and vacuum the entryway. He has setup a workspace in the basement, which was always our intention, but it took a global pandemic and a need to work remotely 100% to make it a priority.
Around here it is almost 2:30 before I get a shower. That’s pretty typical for a Monday since I usually go for a run and then jump into cleaning. No sense in getting a shower if I’m still going to be sweating!
Around here I’m listening to the sounds outside that sound a lot like a normal afternoon in May. Someone is trimming their lawn. Someone else is having a deck built. There are children’s voices. There is a car door closing. The wind gusts slam up against the outside of the house from time to time. Dogs are barking. But most of the time our neighborhood is eerily quiet for an afternoon in May. We don’t see people coming and going very often. Kids aren’t playing in the streets and yards. Baseball games are not taking place on the weekends at the school field. There isn’t the hustle and bustle of cars in the neighborhood throughout the day. Sometimes we get a glimpse of what life would be like “normally” and it feels a little bit like a jolt to the system. I mush prefer the quieter, slower pace we’ve been growing accustomed to during this self-isolation period.
Around here we take an afternoon walk together as a family nearly every day. It’s something we have started since being in self-isolation and has been a highlight of our days and something we all look forward to. This is another thing we talked about wanting to do for months before this all happened. But now that we have made it a habit, I don’t think we will be abandoning it anytime soon. Ruby loves to be off-leash and has recently taken to squirrel chasing and loves running through the trees behind the school. Shawn and I both enjoy the fresh air and another touchpoint with each other in our day. So grateful that we started this together and make the time for it each day.
Around here we are currently obsessed with Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch. It’s a game where you live on a deserted island and work to develop the island and progress in the game by catching fish and bugs, planting and breeding flowers, and harvesting resources to build furniture and other items. Between the two of us we play for multiple hours throughout the day. Many of our friends and family are also playing, which makes it extra fun, and extra obsession-inducing. Typically Shawn plays in the morning while he eats breakfast and during his lunch break and I usually play for a couple hours in the afternoon while he finishes up with work and then one or both of us usually play for a little while in the evening. It’s been great fun and something we have really enjoyed as a bright spot during our stay-at-home time.
Around here we are trying to grill as much as possible, we are aiming for at least once per week now that the weather is nicer. Tonight Shawn is making a steak for himself and BBQ chicken for me (and for leftovers). I got some MD corn last week at the store for the first time this season so I’m also going to cook that up so we have it for the rest of the week. Shawn really enjoys grilling and he was happy to buy a charcoal grill when we moved into this house. We have started grilling a little earlier this season than is normal for us because we are home with plenty of time to take the extra time.
Around here we have been doing a little bit of light meal prep on the nights we cook a full meal so that we have plenty of leftovers for a few days. Tonight after dinner I am cutting all the corn off the cob so we have it loose for meals for the rest of the week. Shawn is prepping taco seasoned and BBQ chicken breasts using the FoodSaver to be frozen for future meals because I bought a lot of chicken during my most recent grocery run. Around here we eat a lot of chicken!
Around here we are settling in for the evening and have decided on watching some Animal Crossing videos on flower breeding techniques and playing together to implement some of the tips and techniques we learned in the videos.
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