I'm Sorry, But This'll Be Boring...

When I taught writing to my 8th graders, I told them to never start off by apologizing for what you're writing about. I'm afraid I'll have to break one of my own rules with this particular blog entry about my typical day-to-day life. The only reason I'm even writing this is for my friend, Julie Boucek, who after kindly reading about our weekend adventures, wanted to know what I did during the week. So, Julie, this blog's for you.

5:30am Pretend to wake up when Mike says goodbye as he leaves for work.

5:32 Go back to sleep.

Between 7:30-9:00 Wake up for real. Unless I've got an early morning wives' club board meeting at 7:30am at Starbucks. Then I have to get up at 6. And yes,I'm a board member of the wives' club here. It's a long story.

9:00-9:30 Convince myself that it's worth the pain to go to the gym because I don't want to hit the big 3-0 this year as a big girl. Read the Boucek blog as I procrastinate on the gym thing.

9:30-10:30 Work out at the gym and run my 2.5 miles on the treadmill. Feel really proud of myself until I notice that the much older and more out of shape lady next to me is still running as I wheeze to a stop.

11:00-1:00 There are several options for this time slot: 1) Catch up on phone calls and emails to my family and friends back home, 2) Meet Mike for lunch, 3) Attend a wives' club function, such as a Bunco game, 4) watch an episode of "What Not to Wear", 5) clean the house and do some laundry, or 6) any combination of the above.

1:00-3:00 Go to the Exchange/Commissary. I go to the grocery store almost every other day here. A lot of times it's because I'll forget an ingredient I need for tomorrow night's dinner. Also, they don't always stock what I need, so if it's an essential ingredient for my recipe, I'm out of luck. I'm forced to come up with a new dinner plan on the spot, but I don't have all my recipes memorized, so I inevitably forget something, and then have to come back the next day. It's a vicious cycle!

3:00-4:00 Reading time. I'm an avid reader and there's this pretty little park that is perfect for that sort of thing. When the weather's nice, that's where I go to get my book time.

4:00-5:00 Oprah!

5:00 Start dinner.

5:30 Mike calls to tell me he's going to be working late (again), so I hold off on dinner. I like to time it so that dinner is ready as he walks through the door. I hope that doesn't sound too 'Stepford wife-ish' of me. It's just that I actually enjoy cooking now and I want my meals to be displayed and enjoyed to it's best advantage, and that only happens when it's freshly prepared.

Between 6:30-7:30 Dinner time.

7:30-11:30-ish The rest of the night is devoted to catching up with my husband. We usually end up walking to a nearby Japanese convenience store to get some chocolate ice cream for me and then watching some tv. We have cable here, but it stinks...there's never anything good on and everything's behind schedule. Even though all my favorite shows have just started their new season, here, they're still playing last season's shows-- shows I've already seen! So we've gotten into DVD sets. Right now, I'm working through Grey's Anatomy since I never got a chance to watch it back home. It's fabulous! Mike doesn't like it so much, but he watches it with me with the unspoken understanding that he'll get to play videogames afterwards while I read beside him.

So there you are...a glimpse into my typical day. Come back again soon and I hope to have a more exciting blog up for you.