Morning Routines

Each of us, I suppose, has a morning routine. I know I do. Some of us get up and exercise right away. This is NOT their story.

I get up an stumble to the bathroom to allow my overly full bladder to empty. On a good night, I do not get up six times during the night to go. Being 55 and having borne more than one child, sometimes it is a bit dicey to make it the 20 feet or so to the bathroom before wetting myself. I haven't yet, but the possibility is there. I know it's there, I recognize it's there, and I don't quite live in fear of it happening, but rather accept that one day it will. Still, I think I have a few more years left before it does.

Having emptied the old bladder I head right to the coffee pot to get a cup of coffee and start filling up said bladder yet again.

I love coffee. Plain, hot, strong, BLACK coffee. I tend toward the simple, but elegant likes and dislikes. I like plain coffee, Breyers natural vanilla bean ice cream, simple but complex merlot, and water. I don't drink pop, koolaid, or mineral thingies.

Then, I stoll the entire four feet from the coffee pot to the dog crate, and open the back door (2 feet away) and once the back door is open, I open the kennel door and all four dogs run blithely out into the fenced backyard, barking like maddogs, just incase we have been invaded by aliens during the night. They posture their way about the back yard, running the perimter of the fence, checking everything out whilst peeing on every available surface, post, toy left unattended during the night, trampoline legs ranging from 2” off the ground to a whopping 6 “ inches off the ground depending on how high the different dogs can lift their leg.

I let the nursing cat out the side porch door, so she can perform her morning abloutions.

Then my coffee cup and I, with a short stop at the medicine cupboard where I grab the odd assortment of pills I must take every morning to keep my thyroid in check, my blood pressure in check, my nerves in check, my headache in check, my arthritis in check, and boost my immune system and my daily regimen of pills, and my waiting coffee head to the dining room table.

My dining room table was purchased at a wicked price, prior to taking custody of my granchildren. It has very sturdy, yet elegantly beautiful steel works frame, once covered in white brocade which was beautiful to look at. Now, not so much.

It has a 60 inch 3 inch thick glass top which once once lovingly polished daily. Never was it covered up, so you could look down through to the artistically twisted steel verdigris bowl three feet across which held the glass table top up.

I let the dogs and the cat in. I sit and drink my coffe at the table which is now covered with a succession of tableclothes and plastic covers. I have not seen my beautiful verdigris bowl for quite some time. Sigh. But I know it is still there.

I have my moring coffee, totally alone. I don't read the paper, mostly because I like paper papers. We live in such as small town that the paper is simply, not worth reading or getting.

There was a certain joy in walking out to the front porch, getting the paper, and putting in on the table, just so, arranging my accoutrements around the paper, and sitting back, idly turning the pages, one by one until something caught my eye, piqued my interest, and then, sipping my blindingly hot black coffee, I would read such.

Now, I sit and read the newspaper on my Nook, which is almost, but not entirely, quite unlike reading a real paper.

I don't necessarily wake the children up. Some days I do, right away, somedays, I just want the peach and quiet.

I do most of my thinking in the morning, my planning of the day. My remembering things I must do. I make lists and then transfer them into my phone/pda so they are with me the rest of the day.

All of this works wonderfully, until....

I remember something rather important, and then forget about it within 30 seconds or so. Then I spend a frustrated hour trying to recapture what the important event was I needed to remember but alas, cannot. Sometimes I succeed, more often, I do not.

My morning is the only concession I can make to my 'retirement' now.

I did think of something, so earth shattering, so profound this morning. I got up to get my inhalers and a paper and pen, and when I got back to the table, it (the profound thought or whatever it was) was totally and completely gone. I haven't yet gotten it back.

I have started my list for WalMart. I now HATE Walmart. I just wish desperately that they would leave my Walmart alone. Every single time I finally get to know where things are there, they go and change it around.

We get to be creatures of habit as we age. I'm not sure why. I think it makes me at least, more comfortable. Especially for those of us with addict children. A routine is something we can CONTROL. Something which says to us, Alright then, everything is okay this morning. It gives us a start to a day which can hold an number of chaotic, earth shattering, life threatening, sanity breaking situations. At the end of the day, we have no earthly idea where we will be mentally, what condition we will be in, whether or not our bodies will be sitting in some unnamed emergency room, or in some unnamed attorneys office, or at a jail.

But our mornings? We can control our mornings. Before the rudeness of the day implodes on our unwilling psyche.

Enjoy your morning.

Addendum: Some few seconds after writing this, my morning turned into a total disaster which had nothing to do with my addict, but which had alot to do with the rest of the family. Additionally, my computer totally crashed and I spent the rest of the day saving, reformatting and then ended up losing 17 years of bookmarks. (my own distractedness and stupdity...)

the phone started ringing off the hook. Baby, the 21 year old had a banking crises. Several other of the adult children had a variety of challenges and questions. It sort of went downhill from there.

Although there were good parts to the day, and I held TIGHTLY onto those, most of the day was me being overwhelmed with people and requests, and that, all at the same approximate time.

Dinner ended up being Ramen noodles and Bologna sandwiches instead of steak. Because I remembered at 6 pm that the kids had to be at choir practice in 45 minutes.

But, in the long run, it was Thursday, and like Arthur Dent, I have never quite gotten the hang of Thursdays. They do it to me almost every week. Does anyone else have a particular day that really despises them? I think I will run over to google and see if perhaps I was born on a Thursday....hold on.

I KNEW IT !!!!!!!!!! I just went to brain bashers and checked. Yep. I was born on a Thursday. That explains much.