Howdy friends!! Thanks for stopping by for this month’s Where Bloggers Live 04.2023: A Day in My Life. This month finds the gals and me each chronicling a weekend day in our life. I chose to share my Saturday, 03.25.2023 with you. Our spring was a long time in coming, lasted about 2 days and now we seemed to have jumped into an early summer. Wish the weather had been warmer on this particular March Saturday but the air still had a chill and there was a breeze bouncing about. So, this may look a little more like a winter weekend day rather than spring.
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Where Bloggers Live
Ever wonder where the ideas for this series come from? Well, let me tell you!! Each month our fearless leader Bettye comes up with a prompt for the gang to respond to. This has been one of my favorite series in which to participate and I hope to continue to join these fun-loving ladies for more thoughtful posts.
If you missed last month’s post, you might check it out. We shared our favorite website. Mine is PINTEREST…are we friends on Pinterest yet? I just love it!! And pin with great abandon at least 4-5 times a week. Looking at those pretty images doesn’t make me anxious or feel less than. It is soothing to me, somehow. And inspirational. Before I head down that rabbit hole again, let me get back on track with today’s post…
Where Bloggers Live 04.2023
While we are usually pretty busy on the weekends, not all of my Saturdays look like the one I am sharing today. But most Saturdays between February and October find PC on the ball field with me on the bleachers much of the time. Many Saturday afternoons find me scrapbooking with my sister for a couple of hours. And we usually eat one meal out on Saturdays. Let’s see if all of that held true for 03.25.2023.
A Day in My Life, Weekend Edition
I don’t know about you but PC struggles most mornings Monday-Friday to ‘rise and shine’ when the alarm goes off. But come Saturday (baseball) and Sunday (church??, breakfast out, walking the outlet mall), he practically leaps from bed. Most weekend mornings, without an alarm. I am the other way. While I don’t exactly pop out of bed any day of the week, I move at a more leisurely pace (sloth) on weekend mornings.
7:45 Alarm
- This day in March was no exception. I wanted to lounge for a bit after the 7:45 am alarm rang to wake us. Had asked Alexa to remind me that it was today I had planned to document for the A Day in the Life post. Opened the door and went downstairs to retrieve my phone. The kitties took that to be an invitation to family time in our bed. Purrsimmony and Purrsnickitty snuggled while we gently embraced the day.
8:22 am
- Family time was curtailed because we had to get moving. PC showered and dressed for his ballgame. I showered and dressed for the ballgame and watching the girls’ first gymnastics lesson. Wore a plaid linen-y Amazon blouse, light wash Old Navy blue jeans and my ‘letter’ jacket from H&M.
8:27 am
- Took all of 5 minutes to put on some makeup – always pretty minimal, usually mascara, blush, lip color on weekends except for church when I might brush my hair and wear a little eye shadow!! Fancy!! Made the bed. PC says we should leave the bed unmade on Saturdays. But that goes against my grain. Besides, Purrsnickitty loves to play with me as I spread up the sheets and covers.
Breakfast
- PC got himself a bowl of cereal while I made our fruit smoothies. He did a quick Supernatural workout and stretch before heading to the ball park. I ate some cereal and Facetimed with Brennyn, Cadence and Declan. Fed the kitties, including the semi-stray Fluffy-cat, who is really a neighbor’s cat that spends more time at our house than its own.
9:22 am
- Into the car and off to the PC’s ballgame. The weather was cool, the wind bouncy but the sun was out. Drove the 16 miles to Ascarate Park, part of the route alongside the border wall. The red X you can see in one of the photos below is actually in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In another of the photos you can see a Border Patrol vehicle on the U.S. side of the border. This is an area where immigrants are crossing almost constantly from Juarez to El Paso.
9:51 am
- I parked my car near the field where Paul’s ballgame was going to be played then took my usual walk around Ascarate Lake. The wind coming off the water on the west side, the ballpark side of the lake was nippy. So many Saturdays, I have walked around this lake while talking to my mom. It was a good time to catch her between naps and meals. And I enjoyed telling her about the geese and ducks around the lake, about Paul’s ballgame, and all the goings-on in the family.
- I watched about 30 minutes of PC’s game. He was in the outfield, then the team went up to bat. So, I moved to the bleachers. But when he went back to the field, I stood at the perimeter fence and watched a few more minutes. Then it was time to head across town to the girls’ first gymnastics lesson.
10:58 am
- Climbed into the car for the drive across town to El Paso Gymnastics. Listened to the radio and a favorite Dan Fogelberg song came on, temporarily transporting me back to college days. Brought back to reality by the flashing sign warning motorists to be aware of unexpected pedestrians crossing the highway. A number of immigrants fleeing apprehension have been run over on El Paso’s highways or killed in car chases on our roads.
- Just as I was approaching the gymnastics studio, Lauren called to say the studio was closed for a competition and classes were canceled. They decided to take the girls to Jumping World instead and invited me to come along. I arrived first so sat in the parking lot pinning colorful expressions to my Superstitions, Idioms and Old Wives Tales Pinterest board until the kids arrived.
11:34 am
- Chased about after the girls as they jumped, climbed, and flipped around Jumping World, then took a break long enough to eat a slice of pepperoni pizza before going back to it. I declined Lauren’s offer of pizza but enjoyed sitting with them and talking. When the girls returned to playing, I slipped out to head back across the mountain for a stop at Walmart before going home.
1:29 pm
- For a day in late March, our mountains were still very brown. And no poppies at all this year. When I got to the bottom of our side of the mountain, there was an all-lane blocking accident. Thank goodness, no one involved appeared badly injured but the wrecker, the firetruck and those plastic emergency cones kept me from proceeding through the intersection for about 20 minutes. Picked up a few things at Walmart and admired all the pretty spring clothes on display. Love these denim jackets. And this darling gingham sundress.
2:28 pm
- Home again, home again, jiggety jig. PC had eaten lunch with the team after his game and brought me his leftover enchiladas Suizas from Carnitas Queretaro. Uhhh, YUM!! Changed clothes into my University of Tennessee sweatshirt (thank you, PC) and ate a late lunch.
- Visited with PC a few minutes about his game while I ate then went up to my loft to scrapbook with my sister Valerie. We had signed up for the Pretty in Pink Bouquet Challenge with Tracy Weinzapfel. We started work on our projects Facetiming with each other and watching Tracy’s video instructions. Painted our canvas background and the vase for our bouquets.
4:42 pm
- We had to let our canvases dry overnight before continuing the work on our project so called it quits at 4:42 pm and went downstairs to watch NCAA tournament game the Florida Atlantic Owls vs Kansas State Wildcats. Purrsimmony joined me on my side of the couch, Purrsnickitty joined PC on his side. Watching March Madness was a lot of fun for us this year. A great distraction. While I watched the game, I read the blogs of all the gals I follow. You can see my Feedly feed on my laptop screen. Have been sorely negligent in my blog reading lately. Lots of days I just can’t focus on anything but getting PC well.
- Managed to meet my StepBet goal for the week, too.
7:02 pm
- In between basketball games, I did my Supernatural virtual reality workout. These are so much fun. Great music, good exercise, and the scenery or setting for each workout is really pretty. Sometimes I am boxing in the Grand Canyon. Or doing a ‘flow’ workout on a beach in Tahiti. Have even worked out on Mars and the moon. I asked PC to take a few pictures of me so you could see.
7:58 pm
- We had such a heavy, late lunch that we decided to just eat popcorn for dinner. Brennyn bought us this wonderful microwave popcorn popper. It requires no oil and makes the fluffiest popcorn. I spray the popcorn with zero-calorie margarine spritz and sprinkle it with flavored popcorn salt. Delicious!! Zero points, too!!
- Once the ballgames finished, we went upstairs to read before bed.
9:48 pm
- We take vitamin C gummies and melatonin before bed…we call it our ‘bedtime snack.’ Brushed my teeth, washed my face, and if I had enough presence of mind, I might have applied moisturizer to my face and lotion to my legs and arms. Added an entry to my gratitude journal. This one is super affordable. Read The Woman with the Cure by Lynn Cullen about the female scientist who helped develop the cure for polio.
- PC and I usually read for about 15 minutes (except this month – April – when I am trying to stay awake to read for 30 minutes every evening for the St. Jude reading challenge) before we turn out the light to sleep. Since we learned about PC’s cancer diagnosis, we both had a number of nights of fitful or little sleep.
This is a map of my travels for this day. Especially in my Sentence a Day posts, I talk quite a bit about ‘going over the mountain’ – to church, to sub at Lundy, to visit Lauren and the girls, to go to Hobby Lobby, Target and the outlet mall. This map will give you some idea about how that looks. And going to the ballpark to watch PC play ball. The red dot is HOME. The blue line from home going right to left across the green shape that symbolizes the mountain is the route I take to go practically everywhere. Paul’s ballpark is straight south from our house on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Downtown El Paso would be about where the EL in El Paso are on the map.
And that concludes a day in my life, weekend edition for 03.25.2023. Riveting stuff, I know!!
Your Turn
Oh, girls, the struggles I had getting this post saved…and hopefully, in just a minute, published. Started working on it days ago but was unable to ‘save’ anything I had written. Spent hours with the technical support folks at my web hosting site, was disconnected once from my chat with them and had to start all over again. Eventually, they said there was nothing they could do to help me at which point I began pulling my hair out…Now, newly bald, I finally deactivated a number of plugins include my cute little weather effect widget that would create snowflakes or raindrops or candy canes that cascaded down my blog homepage. And voilà, I was able to save. Now to see if I can PUBLISH!!
Hope you will join me in stopping by to discover how my Where Bloggers Live girlfriends spent a recent weekend day in their lives. Shall we all pop in on their blogs together?
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Sally at Within a World of My Own
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
About to click on PUBLISH. I am not going to attempt to proofread this as I am getting error messages as I type. Please know that I do know better than to do that but do so out of desperation to get this published.
Hugs and kisses,
Bettye L Rainwater
“Had asked Alexa to remind me that it was today I had planned to document for the A Day in the Life post.” Ooh! That’s a great idea, Leslie! I got my Alexa thingie as an alarm clock and am definitely under-utilizing her other talents.
Wow, Dan Fogelberg, I haven’t heard THAT name in a long time! He was also a favorite of mine at the time…I guess my early high school years.
Ha ha, Juarez, I had a crazy night there in my youth! But that’s a story for…well, maybe never 🙂
“Home again, home again, jiggety jig” – ha ha, I say that same thing!!!
Now I want cheese enchiladas.
WOW you had a full day! I’m exhausted just reading about it!!!
jodie filogomo
I missed that you were joining us! Yippee!! I’m sorry I took you off the list. I promise to add your name back on when we get home this weekend!!
What an amazing day when you get to spend so much time with your lovies!!
Xoxo
Jodie
Cindy Anderson
You were quite busy and drove a lot of miles that day! Everything for me is a mile from my house: work, grocery store, church, Home Depot, restaurants… one mile. The mall is 8 miles but I don’t go there very often. 🙂 I love that you Facetime with your family so often. My sister isn’t tech savvy and doesn’t know how to Facetime. She lives two states away and I miss her. Maybe it’s time I teach her!
Rosemary Davis
Leslie,
I enjoyed this glimpse into your daily life and I feel that I know you a bit more.
Thanks for sharing my friend❣️
Rosemary
Deb
How lovely to share your day with you. That virtual reality workout looks fun, it must look very different when you are ‘inside’ the goggles! Love the photos of the area in which you live, it’s SO different to where I am!
Gail
Loves reading this. It’s fascinating to read what others do on a day! The virtual workouts look really good, wish i hadn’t got rid of the headset!
Iris
Oh my goodness – I got tired just reading about your day. I did enjoy traveling through it. Kinda had to catch my breath at one point. I didn’t realize you were quite that close to the border. And btw – I LOVE your bed. It is truly gorgeous. You just don’t see many like that these days. I enjoyed going back and looking again. My kitties have to help me make the bed too.
Iris
Laura Bambrick
Your granddaughters are so cute! Jumping world looks like so much fun for them! It was fun to take a peek into your life!
Leslie Roberts Clingan
Thank you, my friend. My granddaughters keep me young but make me feel old!! They are constant motion.