Tracy of Fly On Over has given us the gift of a most excellent hop!

Ah …. the day job …. . I am well-employed. I cannot complain. But it really gets in the way sometimes! Like, “I need to be on my horse right now because it is pretty outside and yet I will be at work until 7 pm”-type of gets in the way. None of this “found my way downstairs and had a smoke and somebody spoke and I went into a dream” nonsense for me.

6:20am – music turns on, I hit the snooze
6:30am – 7:00am – keep hitting the snooze
7:00am – wake up, dress for work, pack up a bunch of stuff to take with me, wake up Conrad
7:30am – walk Conrad, feed Conrad
7:50am – leave for work
9:00am – park in my spot (being in charge of stuff has a few perks) and walk up to the biggest, prettiest pink Sunset granite building in all the land and stroll into work just under the wire

1/3 of my desk–picture collage of motivation & big Thermos of coffee that I drink all of every day. Also, a phone from 1066 AD.

9:00am – 6:00pm or later – work shit (the precise structure of my daily work activities changes from day to day). This includes indexing legislation, helping my indexers index legislation, scheduling my indexers, cataloging new acquisitions, telling people “I’ll take care of it” a LOT, training my replacement (I got promoted–not leaving the current job any time soon & the person I replaced was a total loon),

answer questions from legislative offices, state agencies, and the public, which range from “Where is the gift shop?” to “I need scholarly articles on hydraulic fracturing published in the last decade” to “I need to evict my roommate who is not on the lease and I am not the landlord” (bahahaha good luck!) to “Where is the Santa Anna chair?” to “Where does it say X, Y, and Z in the statutes?” (pro tip–it usually doesn’t say what you think it says), tracking acquisitions purchases, drafting informational blog posts, dodging tourists,

calling people to tell them to send me stuff they were supposed to send me a while ago, reminding a particularly annoying coworker that I don’t actually know how to do her job for her, curating a weekly list of articles of legislative interest, etc., etc., etc. … This time period also includes me fretting about my dog or my horse, looking at tack online, reading online horsey publications, slogging a ton of coffee, glaring at creepy patrons who are undoubtedly homeless, and taking a full hour at lunch to actually eat something and do a little online window shopping or pleasure reading, and texting people. And sometimes we have mariachis (oh, I’m a librarian, by the way, in a rather fast-paced legal-type environment).
6:00pm or later – change into barn clothes, join up with congested traffic
7:00pm or later – the barn! FINALLY! Groom, tack up, and ride my horse!!! And then groom him some more!!! WOOOOOOO!!!! Best part of my day, makes the above work shit worth it. Alternately, happy hour. Also worthwhile but not quite as gratifying.
9:45pm or so – eat dinner (and have beer), take a shower, snuggle with Conrad, watch the Spurs or football or Masterpiece Theater, maybe read
11:00pm or later – sleep some, can’t really get around it

Wow, I have really long commutes. Bummer. I can’t imagine not working though. Being chained to a desk (figuratively thus far) during the day means I get to enjoy horse ownership, so I’m not trading employment for anything unless it’s a winning lottery ticket.

On the weekends, I walk my dog and ride my horse and nap a lot. And laundry.