The Daily Tannenbaum The stigmata of the single life.*

I like being a financial services agent. At least, I think I will once I finish this rigorous training process my company’s putting me through. Because of the increased workload, I pared down my activities to working, swimming, eating, cleaning, and seeing my friends on weekends and on Lost night.  I also spend time preparing for work, preparing for swimming, preparing for eating, and thinking about cleaning.  I’d like to illustrate my current situation in pictures.

This is my towel:

I bring this towel to swim practice and meets. I have a meet this weekend, actually, the New England Short Course Yards Championships at Harvard.  That makes this the one year anniversary of my competitive swim career.  In the past 12 months, I have smelled like chlorine almost every day of my life, and I’m much faster now than I was back then.

This towel is almost always hanging here on my shower curtain rod.  The other day while I was going potty, I started thinking about this towel, recalling buying it for $9.99 six years ago at the Penn Station K-Mart.  I was waiting for the LIRR train to Long Beach, when I realized I left my towel at home.

It was cheap, and it’s functional.  But that’s not all!  This towel has a cool design, and sometimes, when I am taking necessary extra moments in the bathroom without reading material, I start to wonder about the person who designed my cheap towel.  It didn’t just come out of nowhere.  Some person, somewhere in the world, has the job description of “K-Mart towel designer.”  I want to know who that person is, and I want to shake their hand, because this is a well-designed towel for only $9.99.

I will use this towel this weekend in conjunction with my pink Speedo brand Chamois that I bought from SwimOutlet.com.  That thing sucks all the water off any surface it touches.  But only if it’s wet.  It’s a mystery.  Chris, I promise someday I’ll give it the full post it deserves, but I need to get on to:

My coffee pot:

I thrive on a schedule.  And I won’t do this career if I can’t also fit swimming into my life.  So this is how a typical day goes for me:

5am – arise, shine, feed the cats.

5:05 set my coffee pot time and timer, because I keep it unplugged when not in use.  Put a vegan pumpkin muffin on top.*

5:10 – move Lucy’s food to the top of the fridge so that Micki won’t eat it.  Eat my own breakfast; either Cheerios, GoLean, or Kashi Island Vanilla, an awesome alternative to Frosted Mini-Wheats, which this vegetarian was recently distraught to discover are made with gelatin.  Read the internet while eating breakfast.  Hope my neat-o blog buddies understand that I’m trying to keep up, even if I have no time to comment.

5:30 Put on my swimsuit and get all my stuff together.

5:45 Lock Micki in the bedroom (where she has her own litter box, food & water.) Give Lucy her remaining food.  Warm up the car while I listen to “almanac” on the radio.

6:00 Get to the pool and swim.

6:45 Stop swimming, shower, put on make-up, dry my hair, dress up in a monkey suit.

7:20 Drive home, feeling a little guilty that there’s still 10 minutes of swim practice left.

7:30 Get home, put out my swimsuit to dry, pour my coffee that just finished brewing, and pick up my muffin now that it’s warm. Drive to work.

8:30 Phew!  Arrive at work caffeinated and pumpkiny.

*I started off March trying for an all-vegan month.  That lasted until the 15th, when I decided that life without Fage Greek Yogurt (mixed with Bear Naked Granola and a teaspoon of apple butter) just isn’t worth it.  But at the month’s start, I made a batch of vegan pumpkin muffins.  Without hyperbole, I can say that they are more awesome than Barack Obama.  (Full disclosure, I’m annoyed right now that his press conference is preempting “The Biggest Loser.”)

From my batch of 18 muffins, I kept six fresh, and froze the rest.  I find that if I leave one of the frozen ones out overnight, it’s kind of mushy and just okay in the morning.  But if I put the defrosted muffin on top of the coffee pot while it makes coffee, the muffin becomes warm like new, and makes my hour long commute feel only like it’s 56 minutes long.

You know what you don’t want to come home to after 56 or more minutes of driving?  Cat puke.  Cat puke on your comforter.

In this photo, my comforter is draped over a chair, because yesterday after I sat in a three-hour seminar on annuity products, I visited the laundromat with the industrial-sized dryer that’s big enough to handle all that puked-on comfort.  I didn’t have the patience to wait for it to dry fully.  The kicker is that the offending cat has taken up residence on the cleaned comforter.  (Eagle eye’d viewers can also see my aforementioned swim stuff drying, and my fancy shoes in the place they landed when I kicked them off.)

What caused the kitty to spew?  My theory is after I spent most of my Sunday cleaning the hell out of my apartment, including using Method floor cleaner on the hardwood (thanks to Allie for the tip!) and Micki staged a protest.  She doesn’t like it when I clean, because it means something changed.  Drastically.  I figure she threw up out of spite, because she also managed to get it all over the newly cleaned floors, the sheets, and the blanket.  It’s also possible that she licked the delicious almond-scented floors and made herself sick.  But I somehow doubt that.  Cats don’t live seventeen years if they’re that stupid.  I’m sure she’s protesting because she’s still angry about this:

Lucy.  The most ridiculously perfect cat in the history of cats.  This is her new cat bed.  Actually, this is Micki’s old cat bed.  The one that I bought for Lucy also had to be laundered.  It seems that one of the cats used it as a litter box instead of a bed.  I figure that either Micki peed it is some perverse territory marking ceremony, or Lucy peed it because she was too scared of a sneak attack from Micki to venture to the litter box.  Eternal thanks go to besties Flick and Tucker who let me use their washing machine last Wednesday night.

And despite all this consternation, I love the kitties.  All it takes is one head cock from Micki or one full-body flop from Lucy for me to instantly forget the death wishes I had for them.

However, I feel I’m lots of laundry due stuff coming out of all ends of them.  I wish this is a problem that could be solved with a solid whole life insurance policy.  Because I know a reputable agent who represents some world-class policies.

That’s my nutshell.  Now I’m off to bed so I can do it all again tomorrow with a twist: tomorrow I’m going to the home office in Albany, which means more commuting, and no swimming.  Maybe I’ll take some time to do “The Biggest Loser Weight Loss Yoga” DVD I have at home.  Becasue I’m nothing if not brand loyal.