Today's net: 365 words. And before you ask, NO, I still haven't quite finished my "intro-y" stuff and moved on to the previous draft stuff yet. It looks like it will take an extra paragraph.

I am so close to done with this section, I can just about taste it. There is even a part of me (the insane part) that wants to sit and write it now. The sane part reminds the insane part that I have been up since before 6am, and should take my sleepy ass to bed now.

An average day in the life of a snail:

Up by 6am (and on really crazy days, before 5am). Read blogs, do food-related chores (plan meals, make shopping lists, do prep for dinner, bake, pack lunches, etc.), drink some tea, whatever.

Son wakes up around 7am, so then it's time to snuggle him, change him, feed him, romp with him.

Eventually, we go in to wake up husband. We take turns showering and dressing, and then I try to get out the door by 10am at the very latest, leaving son with his dad or the babysitter.

Library! Work! Typity type type pause think think type type no all wrong ALL WRONG delete delete delete pace pace type type type consult reference work delete delete type... Sometimes I break for lunch. Sometimes I skip it and get a little hungry in the interests of capturing a thought right now right while it's on the tip of my tongue or brain or brain's tongue. Sometimes I listen to music and boogie along while I work, or sometimes I must have absolute silence sssshhh!

Then it is time to close up shop and go home, often with an errand or two first. I get back in the mid-afternoon and have a little time to play with my son and chat with my husband.

By late afternoon, I have to hit the kitchen and get dinner started. (Or sometimes there are departmental functions I have to attend, and those nights we eat shit from a box, instead. I can only take my eat-healthy, eat-homemade, eat-budget philosophy so far.) The idea is to get dinner on the table no later than 6pm, but somedays it gets to be 6:30 and the toddler is cranky and then everybody gets cranky, oh joy.

Dinner is followed by extensive clean up. Did I mention I have a toddler? He has to be wiped down and often bathed, his high chair has to be wiped up, and the floor has to be vacuumed. Said toddler usually insists on naked time in the evening, too, so there are sometimes, ahem, puddles to wipe up, too. (Although, bonus: toddler seems to be figuring out potty training right quick, thanks to naked time.)

Finally, around 7:30, the toddler is captured, diapered, dressed in jammies and in protest, and hustled along to the bedroom. There it is time to bounce on the bed, play tickle games, read a stack of books, nurse, insist on song after song after song, and finally pass out sometime around 8:30 (or on late days, more like 9pm).

My plan is always to put the boy to sleep, then rejoin my husband to finish the chores and have some grownup time. Most nights, I pass out when my son does, instead. But two or three nights a week, I do manage to stay up until the late, late hour of 10pm. (Or 11pm, but then I sleep in until 7am the next morning and don't have any early-morning me-time and am grumpy.) (Why do I need so much sleep, you would ask, if anyone were reading this and I had comments enabled, which ain't never gonna to happen, because then I would have to give a crap about this blog, and that is too much energy for a diss-writing gal like myself? Because aforementioned toddler son still wakes up every three hours or so all night long to nurse. Fun! Not!)

Six days a week, that is my schedule. Sunday is my day off, but lately it has collected extra chores: goodie baking and mopping and such like. I am thinking about spreading more of the chores out into my mornings, so I can enjoy a really and truly day off once a week, to just hang around with my son and husband and be unproductive.

Well, anyway, I have to go throw some dough in a bowl for tomorrow's bread, then hie me to bed. It's after 9pm, and in my hectic, non-stop party world, that is time to get my beauty sleep.