I thought I’d try this, being that this is a Saturday where I work the morning. We’ll see what happens.

0645 – Alarm blares odd chirping (don’t you love nature sounds on your clock?). I promptly smack the snooze button

0654 – Alarm blares chirping again. I concede to hauling myself out of bed. I cover T up with another blanket, grab underwear and scrub pants and head downstairs for a shower.

0715 – SE pokes into the bathroom and says “I thought daddy was here”. I tell him Daddy is upstairs sleeping, and he traipses up the stairs with Bear and his rags in tow.

0720 – Check MySpace quick (I found some people from high school).

0735 – Grab my purse & keys and head out to the car. It’s sunny and just a little cool out. Perfect summer weather, in my opinion. The car starts (praise God!) and I swing by a place to pick up some breakfast.

0755 – Arrive at work and sit in the car listening to “Wonderwall” and part of “Seven Nation Army”. I love those two songs. The latter has to be listened to another day, since I need to get inside. ["I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" - such an ambiguous line, yet so loaded at the same time. Moving. Reminds a lot of senior year, which is a good but mostly bad thing. Oh well, it's still a good song.]

0758 – Swipe in.

0900 – Insrument is set up, controls are run and reagents are loaded. It is not often I get to do setup and controls. Second shift here does not run afternoon controls since we are done at 9pm.

1030 – An inordinate amount of beeps and whistles emit from the instrument. That means it’s out of something or something is wrong. Turns out to be some fibrin in a sample that was mucking up the metering. Things are running smooth.

1045 – Peruse blogs that I didn’t get to this week and find this “meme” over here. Decide to participate and start this post.

1130 – Specimen count: 120

1132 – Baby bili is done and is not critical. Yay for baby!

1200 – Put remaining specimens on the instrument; 40 in all. That brings the specimen count to 160.

1245 – Only 15 minutes of work left. I’m trying to get everything done so I can consult the pending log before I leave. And I would like to leave on time today because this afternoon is the first day of swimming lessons for the boys.

1300 – Leave work and again contemplate getting prescription sunglasses. It’s warm and very sunny out.

1325 – Arrive home.

1400 – Rudely tell husband it’s time to go. We are supposed to be at the pool 10 minutes before the lesson starts. And I need to buy a swim cap.

1430 – T takes SE into the pool for his swimming lesson. He’s shy at first, but starts having fun after a little bit. Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep SM out of the pool, since his lesson is at 3:00.

1500 – Now it’s SM’s turn for swimming. He does pretty good. Though he is consistently trying to get out of my hold. He doesn’t realize that the pool is deep and there’s no where for him to go. He’s used to the beach where he can walk right into the water. We have fun kicking a toy around the pool, throwing and swimming after the toy, and singing the Popcorn Song. He is loathe to get out when free-swim is over.

1545 – Water plants. Some of them are looking quite wilty and my hanging basket in the front looks beyond resuscitation.

1600 – Go inside and collect supplies for my project: painting the front door. It takes a little while, but soon I am armed with drop-cloth, brushes, rags, paint and sandpaper. The sanding isn’t too tough, but extremely dusty. T brings me a dust mask and some old chem goggles.

1700 – The door looks great. Time for clean-up.

1730 – Go down to the basement to tackle the giant pile of crap that is set to be sold at our rummage sale. Things need to be sorted and priced. This is going to be a tough job.

1800 -SM wakes up from his nap and joins the malay in the basement. He and SE have fun undoing some of my work. Though they enjoy the old toys I unpack. Play food and some dishes from when I was a kid.

1900 – T brings me a martini. Boy is that refreshing. Somewhere in here everyone gets some food. We don’t sit down for a meal because the sorting and pricing is going so good.

2030 – Start getting the boys ready for bed. SE is a little sick (coughing) and that makes him difficult. SM is pretty cooperative, as usual. After they are in bed, they stay there. That’s a relief to T and I, no one likes to keep putting kids back in bed.

2100 – Head back down the mess in the dungeon. Things continue to go well, the drinks flowing. T finally says we have to stop at 11:00.

2330 – Finally pull myself away from the mess. It was satisfying to do, but there is still a lot of junk left. Plus, there are 4 totes full of crap upstairs that need to come down. That will be tough, it’s a lot of baby clothes.

2335 – Go outside and admire the front door in the dark. The color really helps. It is a solid oak door with a rounded top. A long time ago, it was stained and polyurethaned, but has since gotting dried out and cracked by the sun and weather coming through the screen door. The people that lived here before us hadn’t bothered to fix it.

2345 – Share a cigar in the back yard with T. Not too bad. Apricot. I got some smoke right in my eye twice. Darn wind!

0000 – Get ready for bed and retire upstairs. It’s been a long day and we are very, very tired. And there’s a lot to do tomorrow.