Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-first day of the month is "Safety."
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Last week, Elisabeth posted about how her morning routine wasn't very routine and I mentioned that the first hour and a half I was awake was probably the most predictable part of my entire day. Here's how it shakes out.
The alarm goes off at either 6 or 6:30am. This depends mostly on if it's a weekend or weekday. When the alarm goes off, I get out of bed to turn it off because my alarm is on my phone and we live in a 100-year-old house, so the only two outlets in our bedroom are far from our bed. This is key. I get up when the alarm goes off. (This will change in a couple of weeks, I suspect. The SAD lamp usually makes an appearance in September and then I'll set the alarm for half an hour earlier so I can bask in the glow of the SAD lamp.)
Anyway, Dr. BB and I tag team morning chores. Here's how we do it.
|
Time |
Dr. BB |
Me |
|
First five minutes |
Takes medicine,
checks the house for cat puke |
Brush the
cat |
|
|
If it’s
applicable, we will both go around opening and closing windows as necessary. |
|
|
Next half
hour |
Feeds Zelda/cleans her bowl, empties the dishwasher, makes tea, gets Zelda’s medicines ready (he also does some boring stuff like regularly walking through the basement and attic at this time, but heaven help me, I have no idea what it really is) |
Walk Hannah |
|
Back from
walk |
We both clean
Zelda’s chin. This is a two-person job. |
|
|
After chin
cleaning |
Gets dressed |
Brush Zelda’s teeth, feed Hannah, brush Hannah’s teeth, make breakfast for myself |
|
Last half
hour |
Makes breakfast for himself, eats breakfast, makes teafills |
Eat breakfast, shower and get dressed, drink teafill while doing Duolingo |
You brush your cat every single day? Kudos to you. My longhair Marlowe would simply not stand for it. I've never known a cat who hates being brushed like she does.
ReplyDeleteMy morning routine is not nearly as strenuous unless my mother is here for the week (as she is once a month). Let's not even get into that.
Well, I brush the cat for about fifteen to thirty seconds every day. She hates it, but she literally gets mats within 24 hours if we don't at least make an attempt. She's terrible at grooming herself. Those random swipes in the morning add up, though, and she has a very soft coat.
DeleteHow strange. I just described my morning routine to someone. It's odd how that happens, as I just had cause to mention our Joe Pye plant on two consecutive comments.
ReplyDeleteI just talked about Joe Pye yesterday. There was a talk by some master gardeners and Joe Pye is one of their favorite natives!
DeleteOur mornings are fairly predictable. I work out, the hubs does whatever he needs to do to get the kids out the door. Hopefully we both get a little sitting around time before work.
ReplyDeleteAs the dog has gotten older, her morning routine has changed. She used to get up with me and go downstairs to start her first morning nap. That's changed over the past year or so to her getting up at the same time as the hubs. Lately there have been a couple of mornings where she's slept in even after he's gotten up!
Wow! Your dog is living the life. I don't really trust Hannah's bladder for much longer than 10 hours, so I like to get her out and moving first thing in the morning. She's never had an accident inside, so I guess maybe she could sleep a little longer. Maybe when she gets older she'll be like your dog!
DeleteThat last line had me laughing!
ReplyDeleteYour pets have the best dental care--probably better than some humans. :0
Depending on if Coach is home in the morning or not, my morning goes one or two different ways. If he's home, he usually takes care of the dogs first thing and I can linger. If he's gone early (or even in his home office before the sun comes up) then my morning is pretty regular with taking care of the dogs needs the first 35-45 minutes.
I'm gonna need to start brushing their teeth though, because now I'm embarrassed that I don't.
FYI: I emailed you this morning...at least, I think I emailed you. Maybe it was a random stranger?
I would have laughed so hard if that email went to a random stranger. NGS? Engie? Dom? What the hell is your name anyway?! LOLOLOL for days.
DeleteI think brushing their teeth was a goal last year or the year before and I tried to do it at night, but I'm so tired at the end of the night that I just couldn't add it to the evening routine. It fits better in the morning! I don't know if I NEED to do it, but Zelda is 12 and hasn't ever had a teeth cleaning, so I think it's doing something.
We would be risking life and limb if we tried to brush Oscar's teeth. She won't even let us brush her. We've tried different brushes and she won't tolerate ANY of them. So when she still lived with us, all we had to do was feed her and fill her water dish. Your pets are very cooperative!
ReplyDeleteOur mornings vary based on whether it's a week day or weekend, and whether I'm going into the office. Today is an office day so I got up at 5:50, showered/brushed teeth, then I toast my GF bread while putting on my make up. Next I get Paul up and get him breakfast while I finish making my breakfast and pack his lunch. I eat and play spellingbee and wordle and read emails until Phil comes down with Taco. Taco is VERY volatile in the morning. He will go from being happy to a full on meltdown with no warning! I work on getting him to make a decision about what he wants to breakfast/calm him down from his meltdown and dress him while Phil usher Paul through getting dressed and teeth brushed. Ideally we are all out the door at 6:55. Mornings are NOT my favorite. Paul and I are morning people, though, so the time with him is generally pretty enjoyable or not awful. Taco is NOT a morning person and neither is Phil but that just means he isn't super talkative and it's not a time to bring up important things that need to be discussed!
Dr. BB is very sullen in the morning. I don't think we say a word to each other during any of this, except for maybe a "the cat puked last night" or "can you get me a can of cat food"? LOL. We definitely don't have big discussions in the morning.
DeleteSecret from me to you: Brushing Zelda is really taking the Furminator to her haunches and mane because she gets mats there very easily. It's usually between 15-45 seconds every morning, so not a big thing. I would not brush a short-hair cat, but here we are with Ms Long-Hair. While Hannah the Dog lets me actually use a toothbrush, we just put enzymatic toothpaste on a piece of gauze and let Zelda lick it and sometimes chew on the gauze. She has fought actual toothbrushes and those brush things you put on your fingers, so this is the compromise. Her teeth aren't great, but they aren't awful. The enzymes do SOMETHING, even if it's not as great as actually doing a thorough brushing.
You know my mornings are quite varied. Not in major ways, just the order of things, whether I shower, when I eat breakfast etc. For the most part I aim to sleep in as long as possible, and then tend to end up rushing to get all the things done that need doing to get out the door. I'm starting to panic a bit because when school starts up I NEED to jump out of bed before 7 am and hit the ground running of everything will collapse. As much as I find summer to be exhausting with all the extra parenting work, I do appreciate the much more relaxed mornings!
ReplyDeleteThanks for publishing your routine. We were ALL curious!!!
I honestly cannot fathom the varied nature of your mornings. If our routine is off by even half an hour, I can tell because I get hungry for lunch early/late or Hannah wants her afternoon walk early/late. It really messes with my entire day. That's said, if it works for you, then that's great!
DeleteMy workday mornings are pretty standardized because I need to have the structure without thinking about it--I am not a morning person. The alarm goes off at 6:30 and I get up (interestingly, I always used to hit the snooze button a couple of times, but after I moved down here, I don't anymore; aging? who knows). Go to the bathroom, and feed Maggie (who is very vocal that she should be the first thing, not the second, and meows the whole time I'm getting food in her bowl, as though I am prone to forgetting what I was doing). Make my iced coffee, and sit on the couch with it, my pills, and the tablet (and often Maggie on my lap). Read the Boston Globe, parts of the Washington Post and the local paper, some blogs and emails, glance at Facebook/Instagram/Twitter as time allows. Get up, put in my contacts, feed the cat a little more, shower and dress, and ready to sit down and work around 8.
ReplyDeleteOn weekends, I wake up when I do (assuming no early-morning plans, which I try to avoid) and hope the time is at least after 7. I always used to be able to sleep in, but aging has eroded that ability.
Zelda is meowing THE WHOLE TIME we are awake and she has not been fed yet. She also meows directly at Dr. BB and winds her tail around his legs when he's preparing her food dish. It's a good thing that cats are cute because they are demanding beasties!
DeleteMy mornings are extremely predictable, especially the first two hours. I like a lot of structure in my day so I tend to follow routine.
ReplyDeleteI think we are a lot alike about this sort of thing, Nicole. If one thing is off in my mornings, it can really throw off the whole day.
DeleteI knew you brushed Zelda and Hannah's teeth, but I'm newly impressed that it's a part of your everyday morning routine. I'm also laughing at Dr. BB's first task, which is checking the house for cat puke. That should be our first chore, but we just end up finding it at some point as a special surprise.
ReplyDeleteI left this comment on Elisabeth's post- if I didn't have a morning routine I'm pretty sure I would just wander around in a daze. I need to just get moving without having to think too much.
I'm also impressed that you apparently set your alarm for 6:30 on weekends? Well- I guess Zelda and Hannah won't let you sleep much later. If possible, I try to sleep a little later on Sundays but the cats don't always approve.
I find I can't sleep much past 7 these days. It's mostly my bladder that's the weak link. That being said, I can't stay up much past 10, either, so I'm neither a morning person nor a night owl.
DeleteThe cat pukes, on average, every 3-4 nights. Since we don't want Hannah to encounter it, we have to make sure we get it before we let her out of the mudroom where she sleeps. Z definitely pukes more than the average cat. If it were just a once in a while thing, it definitely wouldn't be in the morning routine.
I am so in awe of Zelda and Hannah getting their teeth brushed every day! I saw the note about not using a brush, but even so that's some serious dental hygiene. My early mornings are very structured too--I need that first 20-30 mins to make my tea and candle gaze and wake up.
ReplyDeleteHannah and Zelda don't appreciate how good they've got it, do they?
DeleteI used to be a hitting the snooze kind of gal, but I feel like when I hit 40, it just became impossible to sleep in and my mornings became very structured. It's probably a good thing, right?
Haha, the last line made me chuckle. I love that you have such a set routine in the mornings... I guess, if you have pets, you have to be organized.
ReplyDeleteI can't even imagine if we had livestock or something. How do farmers do it?
DeleteSo interesting to see how other people start into the day. I am surprised how much work goes into taking care of animals.
ReplyDeleteWell, having a pet is a part-time job. LOL.
DeleteI really need to figure out how to get Lila to the point where she gets brushed WAY more regularly than she is. She hates being picked up and will run away if I come near her with a brush, so it's just something I don't do. Her fur doesn't get matted, but there is a lot of it and I think she would do well with a good brushing once a week. Eloise, my short-haired cat, LOVES getting brushed. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteMy morning routine is fairly straightforward, although things tend to fall apart on the weekends. I'm either waking up and doing a morning workout/walk, making breakfast/feeding the cats, taking a shower, doing my skincare routine, taking meds, and tidying up the kitchen from breakfast. If I'm not doing a workout (which is most mornings these days, sigh), I usually sit on the couch for 30 minutes reading and then do all of the above (sometimes minus the shower because I usually can't be bothered if I didn't work out/don't have meetings, lol).
I do not have a good solution for brushing cats who don't like to be brushed. It seems to me like we really screwed up with Zelda when she was a kitten and we could have (should have) brushed her more then so she'd enjoy it more as an adult. When you rescue a cat who doesn't like to be brushed, it's a problem. Have you tried those brushing gloves with Lila? (Zelda knows we're not petting her in good faith and runs away.)
DeleteYou are clearly My Type of Person, Engie. I picture this like a well-choreographed ballet, with the dancers knowing where everyone else is in their shared physical space. You, Dr. BB, Zelda, and Hannah all kind of circling around - but never banging into! - others in the space. :)
ReplyDeleteMy days are so structured, and I've loved the structure I have had since COVID. But right now I'm really struggling with, how are my days going to look now that I (sob) have to go in to the building at least for a short period of time every weekday? (Sigghhhh....)
Yes, it IS like a ballet in the morning. You're right!
DeleteI don't envy you having to figure out new routines. The beginning of a new semester is always a time of stress for us. We just have to remember that some day it will all be normalized again.