Without a set schedule, a clock to punch, a boss/team driving structure, each of my days is truly unique. I do have some daily AMPS+ rounds but other than that I make up each day as I go. Pretty nice actually. It also helps provide some great reasons (excuses) for not being in touch with the Midwest as much as I’d like to be.
After the First 100 Days of simply living I’ve sort of fallen into a semi-routine that seems to work pretty well. Actually most days it works quite well:
A fairly typical day: up early (as mentioned previously~~part of my new gig is that I rarely set an alarm, almost never during the week so –early– is a relative term!), take care of things around the house (Ames, our animals, any in-home clients of AMPS+) then do self-employed home contract work till lunch. Lunch hours (yes, hours) for AMPS+ rounds, on occasion a commute by bike then back home. A couple more hours of around-the-house/yard work, maybe some paperwork then pull the house together, clean up, take care of animals @ home, change and drive into town to run (that’s Monday, Tuesday and Thursday late afternoons–be in town by 5:30-5:45pm), workout with various groups then home by 8:00-8:30pm. Shower, eat, sit and relax for a bit by 8:30-9:00. Toss in a couple mornings (sporadically) during the week of meeting a couple guys at 5:15a.m. to run and add in the weekly errand and shopping trips and that makes up a pretty typical Monday-Friday week. Weekends have been equally favorable and somewhat unpredictable.
Since I’ve completed nearly all of the running around type errands as well as house/yard work during the week the weekends become nearly wide open. Nice. Actually that extra time often pays off on weekends because of the time spend on the roads getting to almost everything we do on the weekends. Since we live outside the boundaries of The Old Pueblo this is such a large town (32nd most populated in the U.S. and nearly 200 square miles) it’s pretty easy to get sucked into doing things that require 20-30-40 minute drives; in fact it was a 30 minute drive yesterday just to go run 12 miles, hop back in the car and drive home. We come out ahead considerably by my role of completely errands during the week when much of the populous is at work and not tying up my roadways. Much more efficient.
Other things occupying my time:
- Learned about the AZ Flying Ants that show up after near all Monsoon rains
- Relocated a tarantula that had crawled onto the doorstep, relocated another one that was stuck in the middle of the road
- Both males–they grip remarkably tight to sticks and rake tongs making the process fairly easy
- Relocated a small Diamondback from my woodpile back out to the wild
- Dumb of me–and not easy; impossible to keep them out of the yard though
- Bought some art from a local Indian tribe
- Taken in a couple movies (theater)
- Worked over the summer/fall to bring back the sparse, yet still attractive, yard color (see previous: backyard in bloom )
- Hit the pool with the pups
- Found a favorite cheap-eats/drinks place
- Picked our own pumpkins from a 50 acre patch! (then failed miserably at trying to bake the seeds~~ improve next year!)
- Unloaded hundreds of pounds of goods at Goodwill in my ongoing pursuit of downsizing
- Taken hundreds of photos and made some big prints of a few (I think) turned out frame-worthy
- Improved skills at placing Christmas lights in various cacti
- Plucked cacti needles out of about every part of a dog’s and human’s body
- Learned about the history of the local settlers and the Apache Indians–as well as other local tribes
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| BK’s Menu~~mmmm…Cheap local eats |
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| Making AMPS+ Flyers |
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| Typical Co-worker on a typical workday(yes, I have on shorts) |
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| Diamondback out Back–Just Ask Drake About It |
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| My Foremen While I’m Working Outdoors–Note, Typical; Two Leaders for One Worker Ratio |
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| Go ‘Cats!! |
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| Neighborhood Tarantula–Male |
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| AZ Flying Ants |
Make no mistake, as I sit here finishing the last bits of this I’m (literally) surrounded by animals (yup, more of the in-home boarding much to Ames’ dismay), tender from an early a.m. terrific group-run through yet another amazing desert trail(followed by breakfast/social at the home of one of the guys), peeking out at the city lights through a much welcomed drizzle with a typical nothing-pressing on the agenda…..I’d be hard-pressed to name something that’d make Just Living much better. There’s a lot more that’d fall into this loosely defined category but these are many of the highlights. I’ll make up for it moving forward. Final Grade: A (missed A+ because of missteps with native wildlife)
AniMal
