Story by MayaZier

The alarm clock blares at 4:30 a.m. Math teacher and Marian mom Mrs. Jaime Piernicky wakes up before the sun begins to rise. She grabs her phone and starts on the day’s Wordle. Once she has completed it, she sends it to her eldest son; they have a lasting tradition of sending the day’s Wordle to each other. She makes her way down to the kitchen to pack her lunch for the day. The weekend meal prepping makes her week go by much more smoothly. 

The Piernicky household has four children, Jack (19), Betsy (17), Josie (14), and Ben (13). Her husband, Michael Piernicky, works as an engineer at Olsson. Mr. Piernicky doesn’t go to bed early like his wife. But, he follows her lead in the morning and wakes up around 5:30. 

“I drive to my jazzercise class every morning which starts at 5:15. Once I come home from class, I need to go upstairs and get ready for school and make sure my girls are up. We try to leave the house by 6:40 to be at school by 7. Usually before school my classroom is really busy, people coming in and out so I try to be here to be available to my students,” Piernicky said.

On both A days and E days her planning period is the last block of the day. “I try to use my planning period as productively as possible to get as much of my work done at school as I can,” she said. This helps her when she has super busy days, such as an after school game or activity. 

“Once I get home from school or sports games, I reset the house and get ready for the next day. I like to try to read or sew to unwind from the day,” she said. “At night I try to go to bed by 9:30 at the latest because I get up so early the next day. If I don’t have games I need to fix dinner and walk my dog. But usually, somebody has something that requires me to drive them somewhere. So I spend a lot of time in my car grading papers, reading or taking a nap.” 

Weekends are a little different because she tends to do all her errands and meal prepping. “I cook a lot. It makes the week go so much better. Usually on Sundays I’ll wake up and make like 10 salads, so throughout the week my family and I can eat them for lunch. I’ll make a big dinner on Sunday and a couple casseroles so I’ll have those ready to go. I try to do stuff with my family and friends and do something where I’m not working,”she said. 

The two youngest children are in sports right now and so she goes to a lot of baseball and volleyball games. Mostly she does “mom things.” “She always has 10 things completed by the time I wake up,” Junior Betsy Piernicky said. 

Mrs. Piernicky responds that “the morning is the only time to get anything done and mostly what I do is do stuff to make the house run smoothly and not descend into chaos.”

 Freshman Josie Piernicky says, “Usually my mom always has something to do. She is either cooking, driving kids somewhere, or even sewing. She finds fun and creative ways to keep herself busy all of the time!”

Piernicky’s favorite part of her days is going to her jazzercise class. “I really love that class. I really only miss it if I’m sick or out of town. My other favorite part of my routine is taking care of my family. All I wanted to do was be a mom so I don’t mind packing  snacks, driving them and making food for their friends,” Piernicky said. 

However, her least favorite part of her day is seeing the mess in her house due to the construction that’s going on. After their bathroom exploded in December, they began fixing the plumbing. They redid all the bathrooms including some flooring and lighting. “The drywall dust is everywhere so that is definitely my least favorite part. Even staying up late is my least favorite part. At 8 p.m. I’m winding down for the night so if I have to be up, that is not a good part of my day.” The whole Piernicky family are morning people. 

When Piernicky was young, her dad was a college football coach and he would get up super early so her whole family turned into morning people. She grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana then moved to Lincoln for college. While in Indiana her dad, “would be up early and would be gone super late at night. My mom decided the meal we would eat together would be breakfast but he would leave at 6 a.m. so we would all get up to eat breakfast together. So my whole family is early to bed early to rise.”