A Day in the Life of Cassie...

 

Good Morning Lovelies! Today you are invited to spend a day in the life of her.

You know that gal who you might think has it all together. The mama who seems to do it all. Well guess what? She doesn't. Let's fight those lies. This new series is an effort to get rid of the "super mom"  image that we all make for ourselves in our heads. It is a time to inspire one another even more. We do not have to always have it together to be good moms, wives, and women in sisterhood!

I have invited some wonderful women to share their story with us and to be real with y'all. They will share their struggles, their victories, their frustrations, their joys, and everything in between. It may not be glamorous, but it is real and real is absolutely beautiful 

Come walk a bit in the shoes of another....

------------------------------

Hi everyone! I'm so happy to be here to share a day in my life- I hope you find it somewhat interesting, lol! Thanks so much to Danielle for having me here to post today.

First, a little about me: My name is Cassie and I'm 29 years old.  I am a Quality Control Immunochemist, I live in CT and work in Rhode Island.  I also run the blog Glue Meets Paper, where you can find more info about me, my family, and my crafting! My husband is a photographer and we have a 3 (almost 4) year old son named Charlie.  Charlie was born with the genetic disease Cystic Fibrosis, which means he requires LOTS of medications and breathing treatments each day.  Lastly, I am currently in graduate school pursuing my MBA and I love to scrapbook and craft. So, it goes without saying that I have a lot going on at any given time :)

I work on the weekends (Wednesday through Sunday) so the day I'm showing you is a random Sunday, which is really my version of a Friday.  We have a nanny watch our son during the week (Wed-Friday), so he's not exposed to too many germs.  Typically my son is with his grandparents on Sundays, as my husband works this day too, but this week they're on vacation so my husband took the day off to watch Charlie. Here's how my day went:

5:30AM: I desperately tried to wake up and get the motivation to work out. I hit snooze instead, so I have wicked guilt as I put away the weights and gym clothes I set out the night before as a vain attempt to get me up.

6:30AM: I finally drag myself out of bed to take a shower. I throw on some comfy clothes and sneakers (one of the perks of wearing a lab coat all day) and I don't bother with makeup either (one of the perks of working alone on the weekend).

7:00AM: Leave for work while everyone else in the house is still sleeping away.  Listen to my favorite podcasts along the way (I love Jillian Michaels, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Dave Ramsey, and some CF pod casts too).

8:00AM: Arrive in Rhode Island for work, having a one hour commute each way is really exhausting and tough on the gas budget, but this job offers excellent insurance which we need with Charlie's condition.

Safety glasses, hoodie, lab coat, no make up, messy bun.  
Come and get it fella's

8:00-4:30PM: I work 8 hour days, however, this will be changing to 4x 10 hour days soon, which will be great as I will be able to commute less!  As I mentioned above, I'm a QC Immunochemist although I've also worked as a scientist, researcher, and QC chemist in past jobs. Not many people know what QC Immunochemist means, so I'll do my best to explain it.  I work at a company that discovers life saving cures for rare and ultra rare diseases (although unfortunately not Cystic Fibrosis). Any drug that is going to market or is going to a clinical testing environment must be rigorously tested to ensure that it works as it should, has no contamination, and is the proper potency.  What I do all day is test the drugs (which are basically modified enzymes or antibodies, depending on the drug) to ensure they work properly by performing analytical assays. Since I work in Quality Control, all the assays I perform are strictly regulated and must be performed by following a preapproved Standard Operating Procedure (or SOP). This day in particular I had a very complicated assay to set up and perform, here's a look at what it looks like in the beginning.

Much of working in a lab is organizing tubes, carefully pipetting liquids, meticulously recording times/reagents/calculations and keeping your work free from contamination. I spent about 4.5 hours on the bench completing this assay.  Here's the final product of ALL those tubes, reagents, and dilutions- one single plate.

Pretty, right? Not all of our assays have pretty colors like this plate does, but it's nice when they do :)

After my assay was completed and the paperwork was done, I set about making some buffers we needed for the group.  It basically consists of mixing up liquids and powders and testing it for the requisite pH and conductivity.

While I was at work Charlie and his dad were busy having fun playing in the pool.  Jealous!

4:30: Commute home, and listen to my audio book (I'm currently listening to Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, very good so far)

5:30: Arrive home to my son doing his twice daily breathing treatment.  He has a physiotherapy vest that is hooked up to a compressor that shakes him around like a paint can for 20 minutes to loosen up the mucus in his lungs.  He also does nebulizers at least once daily (depending on what he's culturing in his lungs and if he's sick this can go up to 7 per day).  He also has 2 puffers he uses 2 times per day before he starts his vest.  He's a pretty good sport about doing his treatments, he knows it's a non-negotiable issue so he complies pretty readily so long as he can watch a TV show or play with his iPad.

6:15: Start dinner.  Charlie needs a high fat/high salt diet, while my husband and I technically are not supposed to have either of those things haha, so I usually make 2 dinners. I make my very picky 3 year old his favorite dinner: hot dog, Doritos, pepperoni, and PediaSure 1.5.  The only kid in the world that can eat unlimited fatty foods, so of course he rebels by not eating it lol.  I also get his enzymes and applesauce together- because of all the mucus in his digestive system, he can't digest his food without supplementing with digestive enzymes.  He must have these enzymes prior to any meal or snack otherwise he's unable to digest his food.  My husband and I eat turkey pastrami sandwiches because it was on sale at the grocery store last week and I was feeling lazy.

After we eat it's time for Charlie's meds, he has 6-7 liquid medications (depending on the day) we give him before bed time: special vitamins, appetite stimulants, reflux medication, and antibiotics.

7:00: Family pig pile where I almost die from suffocation.  Thankfully I survived to write this blog post, but only just.

7:30: Bedtime for Charlie.  My husband and I trade off bedtime duties, but since he was home with him all day I put him to bed.  Charlie begged and pleaded saying he wanted his daddy to read books to him, not his mommy (awesome). One of the annoying things about working and being gone from the house for so long all day is that my husband, who is around more, is definitely the favorite parent. Of course once we're up in his room reading, he forgets all about it and we have lots of fun!

8:00: I decide I should probably do something productive and attempt to tackle the piles of laundry scattered around our bedroom.  Then I realize that if I put all the laundry away now I'll have to figure out where to put that Halloween pail. Why is there even a Halloween pail in my bedroom in the first place? Where does it go, anyways? Isn't it July? Has this been here since October and I never noticed?  I then decide that putting away the laundry is a much more complicated undertaking than I first imagined and go scrapbook instead. Technically it's my version of a Friday night, so it would be far too lame to spend it doing laundry anyways.

Then I write a to-do list for my days off on Monday and Tuesday (call the pharmacy to refill prescriptions, get my reimbursement from work for my MBA classes, do laundry, go grocery shopping, prep lunches for the week, schedule blog posts, and pay bills). I write To-Do lists almost everyday, it's a necessity to keep track of babysitting schedules, my homework due dates, housework that needs to be done, and all the little annoying day to day things that I tend to forget about switching from working mode back to mom mode. 

9:00: Time to relax with my hubby and catch up on some Jimmy Fallon on Hulu (Jon Hamm was the guest, yummy).  Please ignore the mess (are you noticing a theme here yet?)

10:00: Get ready for bed, lay out my workout gear so I can get a workout in the next morning before Charlie wakes up (maybe tomorrow I'll actually wake up in time?) then pass out!

Well that's it! A pretty boring, typical day in the life of yours truly.  The only way I keep myself from going totally crazy when there's a lot going on is relying on my husband, nanny, and family to help out with Charlie's treatments/babysitting and also allowing my house to be a mess to ensure I don't collapse from exhaustion :)  Do I wish my house was cleaner? Sure, but if I don't have an hour or two to unwind at the end of the day I find myself waking up completely exhausted the next day.  We get around to all the cleaning eventually, but for the most part family time is a higher priority than putting away laundry at our house, and that's OK with us.  I hope you found my day interesting, thanks for reading along :)

-Cassie

 ----------------------

Thank you so much Cassie for sharing a little bit about you and your sweet family. I would have thought the same thing about the laundry! I currently have two baskets sitting in my bedroom, staring at me, but I have just been ignoring them. Haha! Don't forget to check out Cassie on her blog and share a little comment love with her!

Find more A Day in The Life of Her HERE 

If you would like to be a part of the "A Day in The Life of Her" series,
shoot me an email. I'd love to have you!

blissful_and_domestic@yahoo.com

XO Danielle 

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel!