A peek inside our day, the third hour

(The first fifteen minutes can be seen here. The first hour can be seen here. The second hour is here.)

Jon gets a head start on his day since he won’t go to spin class with me. His excuses are 1) he’s not really into that kind of torture, and 2) I’d inevitably make it into a competition. GUILTY AS CHARGED. I can imagine being in class, seeing him peddling faster and stronger than my body will allow, and suddenly I’ve run over and knocked him off of his bike.

That wouldn’t be domestic violence, guys. Because it’d be in public.

Once I’ve wiped myself down from my workout I head straight to the office where Jon is knee deep in work, probably something involving accounting or payroll or taxes or one of a million business activities listed under his job description, not to mention email, managing the relationship with our ad partner, server maintenance, and those phone calls back and forth with the developer who helped build the website. You know, the usual: sitting in his pajamas, scratching his balls.

Tyrant will have arrived an hour earlier, and when I enter the office he will pass me as I’m headed to my desk and ask if I want my coffee hot or cold. Can you even believe that? He fixes my coffee every morning. Is he peeing into my mug? Probably, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

The thing is, this is not something we ever required him to do. He just started fixing us coffee every morning. I can see the furious twitter responses now: did you see that dooce’s assistant fixes her coffee? I bet he wipes her butt after she shits, too.

I actually did ask him to do that once, but it turns out gay men are pretty particular about their butts.

For the first ten minutes after I sit down at my desk I get settled in, and that includes checking email, voicemail, twitter, and Facebook, basically anywhere anyone could have left me a message. INSANITY. Seriously, how does anyone get any work done when you could spend an entire day tracking down messages asking you to get something done? Whatever happened to just throwing rocks through people’s windows?

I only allow myself that first ten minutes, though, because otherwise it’s just one giant rabbit hole of cat photos, pimple videos, and celebrity babies. (Pssst! Can’t remember the name of that one kid born to that one celebrity four years ago? Cherish that brain space. I didn’t, and his name is River. Born to Keri Russell.)

I usually spend the next hour taking and/or editing photos. Normally I take a lot of my daily shots on the weekend, but I almost always leave the Chuck photos for the days that I post them. Because this is his job, and he lingers around my desk anxiously waiting for his instructions. Dude is tenacious, too, and can stand in one spot for over an hour just staring at me. I wish I could teach him to do this to Leta. Next to her bed. In the middle of the night.

Chuck shots are rarely ever planned out, and I usually just let inspiration hit me. Sometimes I’m feeling religious, sometimes cute, and sometimes he just sets them up himself.

Whenever I hear people complain that all I did was post a photo, I want to hand them the camera and go HAVE AT IT. Because even though this is one of my favorite parts of the job, it takes a lot more time and effort than most people realize. Sometimes a shot happens with just one take. Sometimes it takes a hundred takes. And then there are those mornings where we have to think of something different after trying four hundred different takes. Like that one morning I really overestimated Chuck’s ability to balance something as heavy as the coffee machine on his head.

Turns out withholding love doesn’t really help. Although it does with kids!

Then I have to transfer the images from the card to the hard drive, choose the exact one I’m going to use, and then edit. And then edit some more. And then edit even more. Do I edit too much? Some think so, and that’s fine. As much as these images are for your enjoyment, I like documenting these moments mostly so that I can look back at my year and go, “WOW! I don’t remember January being so heavily cropped!”

Then I publish the photos, a process that involves uploading them to my server and the content management system behind this website. However, the biggest part of this process is what goes on in my head: what will be the title? The caption? How many people are going to misinterpret what I say? And how can I make that number bigger?

Since it happens every time I publish anything, I just started having fun with it. Like this:

Someone replied to me, “Would you have been as rude to that checker if they’d been a celebrity?”

Oh, yes, Internet stranger. Yes, I would have. Except I would have invited that celebrity to come home with me and join in my yummy tampon feast.