Incidental Housewife of Atlanta/Secrets of a Stay-At-Home Writer
My days have been like this:
I wake up at 7:05 am, sleeping an extra five minutes after my wife’s alarm goes off. I’m always tired; I feel like I could lie in bed for another hour or two. But I don’t. She heads to the bathroom, sometimes checking the cats’ litter box on the way. I head to the kitchen. The cats are already crying in front of their empty food bowl because we have, so inhumanely, starved them all night. I peel open a can of food and empty it into a metal bowl for them.
Then I open the fridge, peering inside at my stores. I don’t actually have to do this, I’m a little bit of a freak when it comes to food, and I usually think about what meals I can make with what I have days in advance. But I do it anyway, and as I pull out the ham, the cheese, the lettuce, bread, and mustard, I call out to my wife, “Ham sandwich today?” She replies, “Yes!” from the bathroom, not like she has many choices. We are limited to (very good) sandwiches right now. I am a very good sandwich maker. I pack her lunch bag with an ice pack, the wrapped sandwich, and whatever snack I think she’d like— a bag of chips, a bunch of grapes, blueberries. We’ve had Moose Munch or some leftover brownies the last two days from Domino’s. I zip up the lunch bag, put it by the door with her purse, and then head back to the kitchen to make breakfast.
The kitchen is my sanctuary right now, but it always has been. Like the OR, I take comfort in knowing where everything is, what I need to do next, and orchestrate the series of movements in my head. This is why people complain when you’re in their kitchen. They already have the dance all planned out. Our coffee maker and water kettle have not been unpacked yet, still lost in the moving box graveyard that is our mudroom. So I make drip coffee for my wife with a little pour-over sieve that has saved our mornings for the past month. For her, eggs in sourdough toast. We call these toad-in-the-holes, though I am aware that in the UK, that means an entirely different dish. For me, usually cereal. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with All Bran Buds (I am my own guinea pig). As we sit down, she says, ‘That looks like rabbit food,’ and it does. Not in the ‘lettuce and carrots sense’ but in the ‘processed gray pellets sense.’ I usually have orange juice or tea.
She leaves for work, and I wave from the window. The baby cat wants to sit out on the porch, so I sit with him for an hour and do my morning pages, usually for my blog. When he is ready to go inside, I sit at the kitchen table because yay, now we have furniture. I work on The Book. I am so grateful to have the luxury of spending a few hours down the rabbit hole of my mind. Thankfully, I write fast and prolifically– whether it’s any good or not, I don’t know. But the words are there, on the page. I read a statistic last week that says 80% of Americans want to write a book, but only a small percentage of us have the discipline actually to do it. Fortunately, discipline has never been a problem for me. Probably why I became a surgeon, I set a goal for myself and meet it, whether it’s doing a certain number of test questions, reading a number of pages, or, in this case, writing a number of words and meeting my quota for the day.
Once I’m done with that, I take an hour's break for lunch. Lunch for me is usually leftovers or a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and avocado. Usually, this coincides with some free lecture or workshop I’ve found online. They’re all trying to sell you something, but for now, I’m just trying to learn a new thing every day. I did one on coding last week, one on medical writing, and one on website development. They’re pretty basic, but it stretches that side of the brain that I haven’t used in twelve years. I used to code and build websites in the early days of Blogspot. I was an early adopter.
After lunch, I do my chores to cross them off the list I made in the morning. In the past week, I’ve set up our internet, swept and Swiffered the floors, emptied eight boxes a day, cleaned up cat puke, arranged the spice rack in the kitchen, put our bills on autopay, found a lawn service to mow our lawn, emailed our landlord, and submitted a manuscript to Cureus. In between, I make sure I shower, take my vitamins and drink my water.
By about 4 or 5 pm, my wife comes home. We only have one car right now, so if there are errands to run or groceries we need to get, we do it then. After that, I make dinner while she does more unpacking or does some gardening. On Sunday nights, we roll the giant trash and recycling bins to the curb– something we haven’t done in about 9 years. We’ve been eating well now that I have most of my cookware and utensils again. We’ve had (thin) pork chops and applesauce, fresh spaghettini with broccolini and tomatoes, grilled cheese with tomato soup, baked potatoes with broccoli, and roasted chicken. She says we’ve been eating well, and I have to agree. We’re trying to get less take out.
We found our Amazon Firestick so we can now watch our streaming services on TV. We eat fruit for dessert–peaches, cherries, grapes, apples, and strawberries. The cats cuddle up on the couch with us. By about 10 pm, we do our Wordle and go to bed.
In other news, today is the launch of my new website, carmenfong.com. This is finally my collection of everything. The posts on that site will be more frequent than the monthly Substack newsletter that you get, although you MAY get an email notification if I’ve posted something on there. While this email tends to be more personal, some of the posts on the website will be more medically related. There will be recipes I’ve been working on, some artwork I’ve made, and, last but not least, on the Links page, a collection of all the videos, podcasts, etc that I’ve been involved with.
Lastly, I was chosen to be a Doximity Op-Med fellow for the 2022-2023 year. So, you’ll see more of my writing on there (in the fall).
During the week, you can always find me on Instagram.
Until next time! Always go black tie.