Routines

shad­owkatt and mayre­mi: Con­sid­er­ing your recent read­ing mat­ter, I thought you’d want to know about Tow­el Day.

I’m more awake today. I think I prob­a­bly should have got­ten up the sec­ond time I woke, though, around 5:30 (the first time was 2ish). I haven’t accom­plished even 20% of what I want­ed to do this week­end. We’ll be leav­ing short­ly to retrieve shad­owkatt and help my par­ents with a cou­ple of things. 

I real­ized today that I’ve fall­en into a new morn­ing rou­tine with­out even think­ing about it.
1) Take my first meds
2) Check our suite for any dirty dish­es and take them into the kitchen
3) Round up any dirty dish­es or trash that the oth­er folks in the house­hold have left in their wake (there aren’t ever that many, but if I get them fre­quent­ly they don’t build up enough to irri­tate me).
4) If the dish­wash­er is full of clean dish­es, I emp­ty and reload it. Oth­er­wise, I load it and run it when it is full.
5) Start a load of laundry
6) Open all the blinds
7) Check the pet foun­tain to be sure it isn’t run­ning dry
8) Feed Shel­ley (curiousmay9 feeds her cats when she gets up in the wee hours of the morning)
9) Make my breakfast
10) Check the calendar/task list while eating
11) If we have to be some­where at a par­tic­u­lar time, I start rous­ing shad­owkatt
12) Skim email and LJ
13) Take my sec­ond dose of meds (those that can’t be tak­en on an emp­ty stomach).
14) Show­er and dress

Fly­La­dy be damned! I’m hap­py with my rou­tine, despite the notable absence of shoes. It keeps the lit­tle things from build­ing to the point that they hurt too much to take care of them, so I’m much hap­pi­er about the house all the time. I think the oth­er three two-legged inhab­i­tants are, as well. (I know curiousmay9 is, as she fre­quent­ly express­es her gratitude.) 

Just these lit­tle basics wear me out. I have to keep tak­ing rest breaks. I hate that. It’s a damned good thing we have a clean­ing ser­vice com­ing in to do the heavy clean­ing because it just isn’t pos­si­ble for me to do it anymore.

I want to add a few things, though:
1) Mak­ing our bed before I leave the room
2) Tak­ing any dirty laun­dry from our ham­per to the laun­dry room
3) Tak­ing care of the plants
4) A good stretch­ing ses­sion. I should prob­a­bly add in a full yoga ses­sion instead of just stretch­ing, but I’m afraid of get­ting so relaxed that I’ll want to go back to bed!
5) Pre­pare fruit, car­rots, and the like for snacks dur­ing the day.
6) Get over to the Y every day or every oth­er day

I’d like to get shad­owkatt and curiousmay9 into the habit of bring­ing their dirty laun­dry down every morn­ing, rather than wait­ing ’til their ham­pers are full or (in Katie’s case) some­thing needs to be washed right away. It isn’t on the top of my list of desired changes, though. It makes more sense to work on my own habits than wor­ry about theirs, anyway.

I’ve got­ten all the kitchen stuff that is here put away. I’m not yet done with decid­ing on per­ma­nent homes for some things. I find myself stymied by the fact that curiousmay9 has­n’t been able to pack up the kitchen equip­ment at the cot­tage yet. There will have to be a mas­sive reduc­tion of stuff after it’s all com­bined. Nobody needs 12 whisks, 4 gar­lic press­es, or uncount­able quan­ti­ties of mea­sur­ing cups and spoons. It’s just sil­ly. sam­bear and I had to go through the same sort of win­now­ing when we moved in together.