Today is Thursday.  This morning I woke up to my alarm ringing at 5:50 and discovered that I had the majority of the comforter on my side of the bed.  Again.  After snoozing my alarm, I pulled the cover back onto Justin’s side of the bed and curled up behind him to wait for the five minutes before my alarm would ring again.  And again.  And then again.  And, just for kicks, one more time.  And then I gave him a kiss on the arm, crawled from under the blankets, and got out of bed, movement that startled him awake and caused him to look at his clock and say that he hadn’t heard my alarm ringing.

I showered, I found clothing to wear, I went downstairs to pull together the pieces of my lunch.  I made time to load and run the dishwasher to try to eliminate the smell emanating from the sink.  I went outside to start my car, warming it up to clear the frost from the windshield.  Then I went back upstairs to dry my hair before curling back up in bed behind Justin, waking him up and enjoying some time together before I left for the day.  Yesterday I skipped drying my hair because I was running late – my hair would dry on its own, but the cuddles could not be made up later.  Even if it’s only for a minute because I’m running late, I find time to curl up for hugs and cuddles and good mornings with my husband.

I drove to work, walked in from the parking lot, and clocked in to work.  I put my lunch in the fridge and microwaved my oatmeal.  I filled my water bottle and put water in the tea pot.  I ate my oatmeal and checked my email and went over projects that I finished yesterday.

I started the week with four documents to review and several projects.  I completed reviewing three of those documents – one for initial submittal, one for future review by coworkers, and another for immediate coworker review.  I may receive changes to the documents at any time, but at the moment, they are as complete as I can make them.

Today I intended to complete reviewing the remaining document to get it prepared for coworker review early next week.  But halfway through the morning, I was assigned a new document. It’s a lot more complicated than the documents I usually edit, and I’m writing it from scratch, following a template.  It’s going to take me several days, and that’s without taking time out to work on updating the calendar of tasks for my department and making changes to that schedule, and the other many projects that land on my desk every day.

Unfortunately, this means that I did not start preparing for a presentation that I have been assigned to complete next Thursday.  I have a lot of work to do there, but the schedule must be upheld!

During my lunch-hour walk, I got distracted from my exercise by a bat on the ground.  A bat of the furry, nocturnal kind, not the wooden, baseball kind.  It was curled up on the ground next to the walking trail, and I thought it was dead until I moved a pine needle off its back and saw that it was breathing.  I don’t know how the poor thing ended up on the ground, but I couldn’t just leave it there.  So I tried to get it to latch onto a stick so I could put it on the top of the nearby fence, from where it should be able to launch.  It didn’t want to hold onto the stick, so I ended up picking it up with two sticks and moving it, and then it didn’t want to hold onto the fence, either.  By then, it had hissed at me several times and we were both getting agitated, so I left it at the bottom of the fence, in the hopes that it could figure out how to climb up by itself once dusk fell.  And I covered it up with a few leaves so hopefully it wouldn’t get too hot in the sun and hopefully no passing wild animal would snack on it.

When I got inside, I looked it up on the internet, and apparently I was on the right track, trying to get it to latch onto a stick.  I should have moved it to a leafy spot on a tree instead of a wire fence, but since it didn’t want to hold onto the stick, it doesn’t really matter.

The rest of my afternoon was filled with trying to understand my new project, completing other tasks assigned to me, emailing people to invite them to a meeting, trying to see if I needed to reschedule that meeting, receiving the notice that we would not be rescheduling it, emailing more people to find out what was wrong with my source data, talking with people to figure out what I should do with the incorrect source data, and puzzling and puzzling and puzzling over what was different between one document and three others and why that was the case.  And thinking about that bat and trying to decide what to do about it.

At 5:00 I clocked off from work.  I walked out to my car, pulled out a pair of leather gloves from my toolbox and a shoe box from my trunk, and walked back out to where I’d left the bat.  It wasn’t there.  I poked all over looking for it but I couldn’t find a single sign of it.  It didn’t look like there had been a struggle, so I’m holding onto the belief that it crawled or climbed off somewhere and found its way home.  I haven’t got a clue what I would have done with it if I’d managed to get it into the shoe box.  I’m glad I didn’t have to figure that one out.

I went home and turned on my computer to listen to the music for band practice, something I should have done before then, but hadn’t managed to do.  I was still doing that when Justin got home.  We chatted for a while about what was going on with our day before I went to go finish listening and poking at my computer.  He went and did the same.

And then I went to band practice.  I really enjoy getting to sing with the band.  I missed being able to enjoy music with other people in that way.  We went through our songs, a couple of which were familiar but I enjoyed the refresher, and one of which was completely new and I have a lot of practice on my own to do before Sunday morning.

I left, got gas on my way home, and made it back to the house and to my computer, to now.  And I don’t know why this is the post that I’m doing today, but I’ve been working on it all day long, trying to keep track of my day.  I found it an interesting exercise.  Obviously, my afternoon got a little away from me, but it got really complicated there for several hours where I was doing several things at once, one of which was really stupidly complicated.

But there you go!  That was my Thursday.  Now, I’m going to go downstairs, where I think Justin is making dinner, and then I’m going to go to bed.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thursday!