Let’s begin where all days technically begin, 12:00 am, Central Daylight Savings Time. At the dawn of Wednesday, May 7th, I was watching a DVR’d episode of Comedy Central’s @Midnight. I am not normally awake at midnight, although I do always watch @Midnight because it comes on at 11. Still, I was up late because Wednesday, May 7th, was a day that was bound and determined to beat me into a pulp.
12:14 AM: In an effort to ignore the crushing angst and misery that would consume my night and most of my morning, I tried to be responsible by cleaning up the kitchen. I did the dinner dishes, wiped down the counter tops and set up the coffee for the following morning.
This here is my horrified face.
12:34 AM: Satisfied by my efforts to promote hygienic living conditions, I sat down and read a chapter of Charles Krauthammer’s Things that Matter. I also put the kettle on. Sure, I had already had an entire pot of coffee after 6 pm, but more caffeine was the only thing that was going to get me through the evening.
An immaculately clean counter.
12:40 AM: My lovely husband elected to refrain from keeping vigil with me. He told me he loved me and headed to bed. Ever gracious, I replied that I hoped he had nightmares.
12:43 AM: Unused to having a human being around. The bunny demanded food and attention. I gladly gave him some lettuce, because if I didn’t, he would eat my baseboards instead.
Munching away.
12:48 AM: I decided that it was no longer worth it to delay the inevitable. Heading down to my office, I fired up the computer and waited for the long night to begin.
1:01 AM: I sit through one of those conference calls that I am convinced has been handed to me as a challenge that I must overcome in my quest to be a good person. At one point, my homeskillet Andy and I theorized that at least one of the people on this call were sitting in an airport. Really, that is the only logical explanation for the noise. (To make matters worse, at 2:45 am, I got “We Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus stuck in my head. It made it very difficult to focus.)
Let’s pretend there’s coffee in that cup, okay?
3:16 AM: The call finally ends. Huzzah! Unfortunately, the call ending leaves me with no idea what to do with myself for the next 3 hours and 14 minutes. I have a training session scheduled at 6:30 am with a worker who lives in Sweden. In a fit of bravado unlike anything I’ve experienced since I graduated college, I decided to pull an all-nighter. What a horrifically brilliant idea.
3:20 AM: I made a to-do list of things to occupy my time until 6:30 am. I also asked Andy to call me before my 1 pm meeting. The plan was to work, run my training session, sleep and work some more. Theoretically, it was a great plan. I also decided that there would be no more coffee until at least 5:30. You know, for the sake of my beleaguered internal organs.
3:38 AM: I begin to realize that 3 hours is an awfully long time when you’ve been awake this long.
4:25 AM: Much to my shock and awe, I tore through everything on my “must do” list within an hour. This left me with two options: start the potentially time-consuming and definitely annoying things on my “do if time” list or take a nap. Napping certainly seemed prudent, although I worried about my ability to wake up on time.
4:36 AM: I opt for nap and set my alarm.
4:48 AM: Realized that a nap was never going to happen and it was time to eat a blueberry muffin the size of my head and make some more coffee. I also started watching a news show called Way Too Early. It made me hate myself a little bit.
5:30 AM: Since the sun was starting to come up, I got back into work mode and did all of my regular morning work. (I watched Morning Joe because I needed the company.) While I was sending off regular client updates, my trainee showed up a full 45 minutes early. How delightful. I would have taken a selfie of my delighted face, but I wasn’t feeling all that delighted. (Mostly, I was wondering who is responsible for the swank tunes that Morning Joe uses for bump music.)
Thanks, buddy.
7:15 AM: My husband’s alarm went off.
8:03 AM: After I finished my work, I brushed my teeth, said the Morning Offering (That wears off after 24 hours right?) and crawled into bed. Bret, to his credit, left for his volunteer commitment in near total silence.
9:30 AM: Woke up in a panic thinking I was late for work. Super duper.
12:15 PM: My various alarm systems rang in my ear. (I enlisted by buddy Andy to call me so that I would be up in time for our next call.) I was not a happy camper.
12:34 PM: Eventually, I convinced myself that I would be able to go back to sleep after the call. I knew that this wasn’t exactly true – going back to sleep at 3 in the afternoon would do more damage to my sleep habits than the original all-nighter did. I threw on some workout clothes and headed upstairs for more tea and some left over fajitas, you know, the breakfast of champions.
1:02 PM: Right as my call is supposed to start, the internet goes out. Excellent. At the same time, Bret called to let me know that he was on his way home. I make the executive decision that we’re having BLTs for dinner. This was not a nutritionally sound decision, but it did mean that I wouldn’t have to cook. I took a minute to feel guilty about Bret making dinner for the second night in a row. Then I got over it.
1:29 PM: 30 minutes into the call, my connection cuts out again.
1:38 PM: With our call concluded, Andy and I hopped on Skype with Danielle to discuss what I had missed during my internet shortage. I also started catching up with workers who were working during my morning nap.
2:33 PM: I declared my work day dead and over with. Even if I wanted to get any more done, it wasn’t going to happen.
2:48 PM: I realized that it had been a frighteningly long time since I had showered. Zombie-like, I checked to find out just how much water weight you can lose when you spend a night surviving solely on coffee and green tea (answer: about 6 pounds) and then got in the shower. Finally clean, I put on clothes like I was planning on going somewhere.
3:24 PM: Andy called to ask me about a work thing. Since I love Andy, I decided not to kill him.
3:41 PM: With my work day finally over, I sat on the couch to watch whatever it was that Bret was watching. It turns out that he was watching Alaskan State Troopers, which taught me more about “illegal” moose than anything I’d ever seen. I vowed to get up and start a load of laundry as soon as the episode ended. I had made up my mind that falling asleep was a bad idea.
6:56 PM: Bret woke me up to hand me a BLT.
Now isn’t that a beautiful sandwich?
7:42 PM: I got a very interesting phone call.
8:30 PM: Now that I was awake, I was really awake. We decided to go for a walk around Loyola’s campus. We even got a peak at the lake, which was really displeased with its lot in life.
This lake is angry.
9:42 PM: Home again, we contented ourselves to eat peanut butter cookies and watch Criminal Minds. It was a great night, except for the fact that I kept falling asleep.
11:19 PM: Dragged myself down the stairs and crawled into bed. It had been a long day.
