Routine: It's What I Do.

I can blog tonight.

Not for any good reason. I never had one before, though.

I have a beer. A beer that fooled me, I’ll admit. It’s an ESB, as proclaimed on the label. I was excited, because I love a good ESB and I hadn’t seen or had this before. The bitch of it (besides the fact that it’s called “Bitch Creek”) is the “B” stands for brown in this case. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good brown ale, and it’s a good brown ale. But ESB is extra special bitter—that’s what it’s supposed to mean. That’s the style of beer. But they call this the Bitch Creek Extra Special Brown Ale, which is just dirty if you ask me. I was fooled. Fooled into something that still tastes okay but isn’t what I’d had in mind for dinner that night.

But not tonight.

No, tonight I had wine with dinner. This ESBrown: it’s just for blogging.

My days are my days, routine-like as you know by now. I actually got up a bit early this morning…around 6:15. I slept well, mostly. Liam ended up in our bed. He has a few teeth coming through right now, and maybe that’s why or maybe it isn’t. But I woke up at 6:15 and went out to the garden to do some watering. I’m not watering as much now because 1) things are dying, 2) I don’t care so much, and 3) it’s getting cooler outside.

We’ve gotten quite a bit of good corn out of the garden, honestly. And some of it we didn’t get to fast enough. There’s still some to be eaten, but it needs to be eaten this week or it’s going to start drying into seed. That’s what corn does. That’s what corn wants to do.

We eat a plant’s hard work.

If it won’t kill us.

(Not like Seymour in Little House of Horrors [Bop! Bop!]. More like a poisonous plant. Although I’d steer clear of Seymour, too. Although I bet some would eat him. But what would a vegan do? Man, that’s a tough one only a vegan can answer, I’d bet. I mean, can only one plant have consciousness…or would it imply all plants have consciousness and hence…well, that’s not my area of knowledge. And a giant personified carnivorous plant doesn’t exist, to my knowledge, which really makes it non-issue. Moving on.)

I may have drunk a Berry Veggie this morning, but I can’t guarantee it. There has been Naked Juice down hatches in this house in the past few days. This is no surprise.

At the office at had my oatmeal and mocha. These things were pleasing.

I worked.

I sat on my ball. My exercise ball has become my permanent office seat lately, which is okay. And it’s still possible to have bad posture on an exercise ball, no matter what the magazines and web articles might tell you. You can slouch. Lean on a desk. Wedge the ball against the back of your legs.

But you can also bounce on it. And balance. And bend backward. And do pushups, but I didn’t do that today. I did some at the gym yesterday. But today I just sat and bounced and leaned and slouched and wedged. Slouched and wedged.

I ate some almonds and I ate a banana and I ate an apple, one of these little organic gala apples that’s super sweet and tart and so darn good. SO darn good. I drank water.

I worked.

I had work conversations.

I left work an hour late and went to pick up Liam, who was still awake, and he passed out on the way home, transferred easily to his crib, and

I worked.

I got hungry so I made a grilled cheese on double fiber bread: real butter, yellow cheddar and mozzarella, yellow mustard. I ate some pretzels with that. I drank water. 

Work frustrates me lately. I’ve mentioned it a lot. Work isn’t usually all too frustrating to me. I shan’t get into details here, though.

Liam woke up just around 4:30, a good 3 hours under his eyelids, and we snuggled a bit because he was in that mood and it’s AWESOME when your kid wants to hold you or hug you or just lay on you. Seriously: awesome.

Of course he ultimately needed milk and I had work to do so he got to playing, some of that involving sitting in my lap typing on his (broken) keyboard while I type on my real one which is honestly just so, so sad and says I shouldn’t work on the computer so much around my boy, I think, but then what’s a guy to do? Other bits of his playing consisted of other things. How’s that for specific? (I honestly know, though.)

Angie got home around 5:30 and I worked ‘til 6, then I went for a bike ride. It felt really good, and I would have worn my Forerunner if the battery wasn’t low. I should start it charging now, but I’ll gamble on remembering in the morning. That’s a big gamble. 

Anyway, the bike ride was nice. Around 15 miles, I went through neighborhoods to William Pond Park, hopped on the American River Parkway, rode along the American River up to Sunrise Park, then rode up into Bannister Park and ended up with a mile or so probably on Fair Oaks and then it was back to residential. None of that means anything to you, most likely. I felt pretty strong. My knee felt good. It took me about 40 minutes.

I got home and started dinner, which was a good one from mostly garden stuff. I made whole wheat spaghetti in a meat sauce, which probably isn’t that exciting, and the meat was ground beef. But the tomato sauce was some sauce I cooked down from garden tomatoes a few weeks ago and I put in some onion, basil, oregano, and gypsy pepper from the garden, along with a bunch of garlic, some salt, some ground pepper, agave nectar…and paprika. I had a bruschetta bread I bought that was already cheesed and/or garlicky or something, but we sliced that down the middle and buttered, garlicked, and put some mozzarella cheese on that stuff and after toasting, it was pretty badass. That with the spaghetti and the meat sauce made my stomach happy.

I drank a couple glasses of some cabernet sauvignon—nothing fancy—one while cooking and the other with dinner. We played with Liam a bit and Angie got him bathed and we brushed his teeth and read to him and then I came here.

I typed this.

And Angie rocked him to sleep. I always depart after reading and turn off the light. Angie rocks him to sleep. (Except when she was out of town, which went REALLY well, by the way.)

I got this beer to accompany my writing.

I’m pretty sleepy.

I’m gonna go to bed now.

So good night, those of you that bothered reading this again. I can already sense I won’t be so consistent in this blogging. I still like the idea. It’s just hard to keep up. It takes time. And sometimes I’d rather read or hang out with my wife or maybe just sleep. Balance is important.