Salon post : January 19

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post. I get us started with a couple of questions, but feel free to bring up totally different things if you'd rather.

(This is a public post, feel free to encourage other people to drop by, just note the 'if posting anonymously, include a name people can call you in responses' rule.)

Topics of the week:
Wow, I'm glad it's Friday. Too much tired in the end of my week.

I sent out my fortnightly newsletter this Wednesday and one of the things I linked to was a site collecting brief interviews with people's morning routines, um, few of which remotely resemble mine, but which are interesting to peer at.

So I'm curious what yours are, and whether it's a thing you like, or a thing that is 'doing this because it's necessary'. And if you're so inclined, what your ideal might be. (I'll do my own in a comment.)

Recent things I've been doing:
Currently up to Trial of a Timelord in my Doctor Who rewatch, and reading a book about the Black Death, Return of the Black Death by Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan, which argues that the Black Death was a viral infection (more similar to Ebola) than rat/flea Bubonic Plague.

I'm only a couple of chapters in, so still contemplating the argument, but there's a bunch of interesting data and quotes from writers at the time. (Some of which I've read before, because I am that kind of person, but some of which are new to me.)

I am also contemplating what I want to offer and request in the Worldbuilding Exchange, a fanfic exchange focusing on (shock!) worldbuilding. I had a lot of fun writing for it last year (Pseudonyms are Expected, a Leverage thing about an email list) (commentary here), and I liked a lot of other things people wrote too.


House rules:
* Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to.

* If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)

* If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Comments

[jenett]

So, my morning routine depends on if I'm swimming. I am not at all naturally a morning person, but a combo of work hours and traffic mean I get up early - either 5:30am on days I swim (usually Monday and Friday) or 6:30 on the others.

I roll over, get up, do morning bathroom things, take my morning thyroid med, get sat on by the cat (key part of the morning, in her opinion) while doing morning practice things (one song from a playlist, Tarot card of the day), peer at online stuff, mark things for later replies if needed, and at about 10 minutes to, get dressed, put lunch things in my bag, fill my water bottle with ice things and water and lime juice, and go off.

If I leave promptly at 7, the drive is about 25 minutes (if there's absolutely no traffic, it's about 18, and it gets noticably more annoying if I leave after about 7:05). I get to work, have breakfast (I leave at least a 45 minute gap between the thyroid meds and food), and sort out whatever questions have come in at work overnight.

A theoretical me would love, y'know, a bit of meditation in there, but I can't do it without stretching the morning in weird ways that make me late whenever I try. And there's a bunch of other stuff where it'd be a nice idea but doesn't work for me (I'm noticeably more clumsy in the morning, so I try not to do anything I can drop or break or similar.)

[davidgillon]

The morning routine my body seems to tolerate most reliably barely qualifies as a morning routine, as it involves waking about 11AM. Depending on how I've slept*, it can take me two or three attempts at waking up and I can be seriously groggy for a couple of hours, or I can wake up first time - it's very variable.

I'll usually grab my Kindle Fire from next to the bed before thinking about moving (I'm not always particularly mobile first thing). That might be half an hour playing a game, or catching up on Dreamwidth, or reading whatever I'm currently reading, or a combination.

At some point in there I'll stumble out of bed and deal with the necessities. Sometimes I'll put coffee on, but mostly not at the moment.

And eventually I'll be both awake and mobile, and getting up and getting dressed becomes feasible.

I'll sometime have a more conventional schedule during the summer, but it's rare that I can stick to it for more than a fortnight or so.

* It's reasonably common for me not to get to sleep until 6AM or even 8AM, with 4AM being my rough normal. I'm so not a morning person.

[jenett]

I really liked the bit when my job hours were either 1pm to 11pm or 11am to 8pm.

It had complexities for other reasons, and it turned out to be tricky to do writing time because I'd resist getting started if I knew I'd need to go to bed or work soon) but the sleep was fantastic. I'd come home, putter for 2-3 hours, go to bed, and wake up 8 hours later.

[rosefox]

Woo, delayed sleep phase syndrome high five! It's interesting that you go to bed earlier in the summer; I often stay up until dawn. Going to bed "on time" (~2 a.m.) is much easier in the winter when I haven't had all that sunlight to wire me up.

My wake-up routine is pretty much the same regardless of timing, though. If I have a thing I have to get to, I stay in bed until about 10 minutes past the "must get up by this time or I will be late" cut-off, panic, skip showering and eating, jump into clothes, head out the door. If I don't have a thing, I doze until I am incontrovertibly awake, then meander into shower and food and clothes and so forth.

One unexpected side effect of having been on the wrong schedule for 25 years is that I can't eat until I've been awake for at least half an hour, because I get really queasy when I wake up much earlier than my body clock wants to, and even now that I'm able to keep a mostly natural-feeling schedule, my stomach is always a bit wary when I get up.

[davidgillon]

It's interesting that you go to bed earlier in the summer; I often stay up until dawn.

I've taken to sleeping in the bedroom the morning sun hits during the summer. And as I often leave the curtains open that means sun shining right on me. But inevitably I'll eventually fail to get to sleep one night, and revert to later morning waking.

My last boss had the habit of getting into work ridiculously early, whereas I'd pushed my flexible start back to 9:30, so the joke was that I wasn't getting to sleep until after she had started work (except it was true, not a joke). It worked well in that it meant I was there to cover stuff from our American colleagues after she'd gone home.

[pameladean]

I also have a getting-up routine that is just barely happening in the morning. I wake up between 11 and noon, depending on various things, and visit the bathroom. For the last week, and into next week, I then put on two different socks, put a built-up regular shoe on my good foot, and then go carefully away from other sleeping people, sit down in the sitting room, and put on the EXTREMELY NOISY walking boot. This allows me to be noisy in admonishing the boot if the various velcro bits catch on my sock, too.

I then collect a glass of water and a carton of yoghurt and a spoon, and go into my office and fire up the laptop and start downloading my email.

If I am fast right here, I eat a handful of almonds and take the histamine-2 blocker for acid reflux. Then I drink about half the glass of water. If I am not fast, Saffron comes and climbs up on my collarbone, purring thunderously and preventing me from doing anything other than delicately moving the mouse to read or delete email. When I can harden my heart, I put her on the desk cushion provided just for her and then start the meds routine.

When the first med has settled I take the rest of them with the yoghurt and finish the water. Once I've dealt with email that shouldn't wait too long, and done anything else quick that would benefit from being done at once, I go make a cup of tea and prepare something to eat; sometimes toast, sometimes leftovers, whatever.

I settle with these and start checking the weather and an auxiliary account and a couple of news blogs and DreamWidth. If an idea has come to me in the night, I poke at either the notes file for my writing project or at the project itself.

That's probably the end of the morning routine. I might take a shower and get dressed at that point or I might just segue into writing while still in my pajamas. It depends on whether I need to be somewhere, start laundry, or get weekly or semi-weekly chores out of the way.

A lot of this is dictated by the meds schedule, but I like the tea-and-the-web part. And of course I love the cat part even when it's inconvenient.

P.

[davidgillon]

sit down in the sitting room, and put on the EXTREMELY NOISY walking boot. This allows me to be noisy in admonishing the boot if the various velcro bits catch on my sock, too.

Ah, I've played this game before! SCRITCH!

[pameladean]

If only it were just one SCRITCH. The straps tend to double up and stick to themselves, so that's two; they will also, once freed, stick to the velcro strips on the inner flaps of the boot, so that's two more; and something or other will also generally stick to my sock. Then at last I get to fasten the straps, and that's two. It makes me think of alien insects building a nest or something.

P.

[davidgillon]

One trick I've found when taking any velcro'd brace off, deliberately fold each strap back onto itself. It does mean having to peel them apart before you can fasten them, but guarantees they won't become entangled with each other and you'll only ever have one velcro surface showing at once.

[rmc28]

My morning routine is driven by the requirement to get two children to school in a ten-minute window, and myself to work asap after that. The weekend mornings are not the same, but are also constrained by child activities. Also on Wednesdays my younger child attends a before-school club so we have to be there about 45 minutes earlier.

Overall, it's very much me doing things that are necessary rather than my ideal, but they're necessary because of choices I've made e.g. to have children at all, to participate in school rather than home-educate, to do particular activities at weekends. The children have another parent resident, and another related adult resident; for reasons it is easiest for me to be The Parent Who Does Mornings, but that's another choice.

One thing I did over the recent Christmas/New Year break was formally write out a weekly schedule for each child, print them out, talk through each one with the relevant child, and put the print out in a place of their choosing for reference. This is mostly to help each child on a daily basis - and to cope with Wednesdays being different - but it has had the useful effect that if I'm too ill to be Morning Parent, the replacement adult can follow the schedule rather than me trying to dump the requirements on them verbally.

To create the child schedules, I started with the school arrival window. The children must arrive no later than 08:55. If they arrive before 08:45 they have to hang around in the (increasingly crowded) playground until the doors open. The optimum arrival time is about 8:47 when the first rush into the cloakrooms has dissipated, but there is still plenty of non-rushed time to hang up coats, bags etc and get settled into their classrooms.

We live close enough to school that if we start walking at about 0840 we arrive nearly perfectly; that in turn seems to require declaring time to put on coats, shoes etc at 08:30. Both children need to eat breakfast, get dressed, clean teeth, and get their bags ready. 11yo needs to make lunch if he wants a packed lunch that day. (I would actively prefer to pay for a school lunch than make a packed one, but said child is very particular about food, so we have reached a compromise of "you want it, you make it", although I will step in and help if time is getting tight.)

11yo's schedule is looser - we've learned from experience that he needs to start eating breakfast by 0800 at the latest, and to get out of bed by 0730 at the latest, but exactly which order he does tasks apart from that is up to him, and he will often make his own breakfast. 5yo's schedule is in 15 minute increments from 0730, and I usually make his breakfast.

I usually wake up at 0700 or shortly before, and pick up my phone to check my calendar, skim my email, and indulge in a few minutes on a silly phone game. I then get up and use the bathroom. If I'm feeling energetic I'll shower and get dressed immediately, before the first child checkpoints at 0730. If not, I will lie back down and read (fic, DW, news) on my phone until 0730, and squeeze both shower and dressing around the child checkpoints during the next hour. The other things I need to do in that hour are preparing my food & packing my bag for the day / taking my morning pills / checking the children's bags / cleaning my own teeth / brushing my hair.

I almost never eat breakfast at home, but will pack a home-made smoothie and drink it once I'm at work. This is a relatively new thing - until about 2 years ago I was a BREAKFAST BEFORE ANYTHING person but dietary changes I made for other reasons seem to have changed this.

I walk to school with the children, then either walk directly to work (about 25 minutes total) or walk home to collect my bike and cycle to work (about 15 minutes total). The choice depends on a bunch of factors including whether I have meetings to attend, my general energy levels, the weather, and what I'll be doing at lunchtime and after work that day.

It's easier to leave the bike at home because it minimises the number of transitions for the children to "leave the house" and "arrive at school". Taking the bike, whether riding it or pushing it, adds at least two transitions and also I'm then steering a bike through the morning school rush twice.

Wednesdays are different: 5yo has to be at school no later than 0810, so I moved his whole schedule 45 minutes earlier, my alarm goes at 0630 and his first checkpoint is 0645, and we leave the house at 0800. I then come back home and either read or get small tasks done around checking on 11yo's progress, and go to work when he goes to school.

On Saturday mornings, 5yo has dance classes at 10:00 for which we ideally leave the house at 09:30. I wake 5yo if necessary by 8am, and we do breakfast, teeth, getting dressed, packing bags in a similar order as to weekdays, but with a bit more leeway. 11yo has no commitments and sleeps in / plays / reads as they like. I usually have a small breakfast with 5yo, and we usually go for brunch after his classes at the cafe beneath his dance school.

On Sunday mornings, if at all possible I take both children to a family swim session at the nearby pool, from 0930 to 1130. I wake both children at 8am if necessary and we do breakfast, teeth, dress, pack swimming stuff and get out on bikes as soon after 9am as possible. 5yo has a seat on my bike; 11yo rides their own; it takes less than 10 minutes to ride to the pool and lock up the bikes there.


The morning routines depend on the previous evening's routine being followed well enough that everyone has had enough sleep. We really notice it on the days when that hasn't gone so well; again having a written schedule seems to be helping everyone (both parents as well as children) keep on track.

[silveradept]

The morning routine is relatively the same on working days - alarm at 7, which is generally snoozed and gives me 15 minutes to either sleep more, read the feeds, or, if I'm actually rested, feed the cat.

The cat, at this point, begins to complain that she has not been fed.

When the alarm fires again, it's time to get upright and feed the cat wet food. After which, the human feeds themselves and listens to podcasts while reading the feeds or playing some mobile game.

After fooding is shower time, which folds into teethbrushing, then dressing. At this point, it's time to make lunch and then bodily get out the door and start driving to work.

The cat, even after being fed wet and dry food, still complains that she has not been fed. Once she realizes there's nobody here to hear her and feed her, she stops complaining until I get home.

[kyrielle]

My weekday morning routine, no kid wakes up version: Alarm at 5:30. Second alarm at 5:35, but I'm often up by then; if not, I get up then. Bathroom. Shower if it is a showering day. Dressed for the day, brush teeth, that sort of thing. If no one is in the guest bedroom*, scoop the kitty litter. Grab lunch stuff packed the night before from the fridge, backpack with other items, and purse; drive to work, usually arriving 6-6:15. Breakfast at work, along with morning medicines. Text Scott whether the kitty litter got scooped.

* If someone is in the guest bedroom, this is too noisy. It's also often one of the kids who settled there, and waking kiddo up puts us into the other morning routine.

My weekday routine, kids version (usually the youngest, who is a morning lark *and* clingy to me): same as before except juggling kid needs (breakfast, clothes, etc.) until 6 am when Scott gets up, and often for a little while thereafter. Continue to work and that part of the routine, but 15-30 minutes later.

The latter also means my IBS is probably flaring, which is Not Helpful, but that's life.

On weekends, I often sleep until 7 and it is _glorious_.

[lifesnotasong]

On good brain days (when brain squirrels are non-vicious and exhaustion gnomes are non-immense): Wake up at first alarm at 5:30, turn on happy light box of happiness, and mess around on my phone while looking in the direction of said light until 6:30.

On mediocre brain days: Hit snooze once or twice after the 5:30 alarm, but manage to start light-and-phone routine by 6am, lasting until ~6:30.

On bad days: Hit snooze repeatedly after the 5:30am alarm, manage to struggle out of bed after convincing myself not to call in sick around 6:35-6:40.

Once I'm up, the routine always looks the same-- turn on the heat lamp for the 1 hermit crab in isolation in our bedroom, then wander to the living room and turn on the overhead light for the tank with the other 4 hermit crabs. Feed the cats their morning kibble, then put together my soda-and-lunch for the day (usually two cans of cherry coke, an apple, and a microwave pasta thing, unless I managed to put together some leftovers the night before). Then it's back to the bedroom to take my meds for anxiety and aquadynia, brush my teeth, and get dressed. Give partner #1 (who I share a room with) his goodbye hug/kiss, then go to partner #2's room and give him his goodbye hug/kiss. Coat on, backpack on, keys and phone grabbed, out the door.

In order to make my bus, the car should be driving between 6:50-6:53 (I drive to a nearby park-and-ride, then catch the bus for the majority of my commute, because I work at the top of a large hill with very limited-- and expensive-- parking). I've made it by leaving a minute or two later than that, but it's dicey, and the next bus isn't for another ~20 minutes, which means skipping most of my lunch to make up the time if I get in late and want to leave at my normal time. Drive drive drive, and hop on the bus when it shows up at 7:10. Ride the bus until it gets me to work around 7:40, get off at the stop that lets me walk ~1300 steps to work (rather than <1000), and plop down at my desk (with cherry coke #1) at 7:45.

Morning routine success!

[bunny_m]

For work-mornings, my morning routine is probably very unusual:

Sleep app on tablet wakes me up anywhere between 5am and 6:30, and gets snoozed until roughly 6:30/6:40.

Turn off and save sleep tracking, check current weather and forecast, get up, return bedding to some semblance of order, wash face and other morning ablutions*, get dressed and wish the fuzzballs a good day, be out the door approximately 10-15m after I get up. Bus to train, train to city, train to work, pick up breakfast then sit down at computer and do all the log in/check mail/eat breakfast and take painkillers whilst psyching myself up for another day of tech support. This usually gets me to my desk at ~7:40-7:50 for an 8:30 start. Awake usually happens sometime on the bus or train.

Non-work mornings** are more: lie in bed until fully awake/bladder insists, turn off sleep-tracking, wash face/etc, turn on computer, assess temp/comfort outside of bedroom and let cats out if comfortable. If not comfortable, leave bedroom closed with cats inside and potentially turn on split system AC. Turn on computer, check emails and FB, log into voice chat and chat with friends. Switch to gaming or watching something an hour or so in.

Ideal would clearly be all non-work mornings, and in a better premises with better housemates.

(*) I shower at night just before bed, as I find it much easier to get to sleep this way, and the getting out the door process that much faster. Up&moving=/=fully awake.

(**) For values for 'morning' that mean 'when I wake up', as I am *SO* Not A Morning Person, and on non-work days I stay up till I feel like it and sleep until I wake. Non-work days tend to get a lot more sleep also, for the same reason, and because I find it really difficult going to bed before midnight. Left to my own devices, I'm generally a 2-3am sleep kinda guy.

[jazzyjj]

My morning routine is generally more or less the same, with the slight exception of Monday which is my day to do laundry here in the apartment complex. I recently unofficially? quit my job due in part to the hectic schedule. I've never had trouble sleeping, but I used to have to get up almost every day at the crack of dawn to get ready for the day's disability-awareness training. Most of these trainings were pretty far away, and I was picked up early each morning. But thankfully that's probably not gonna happen anymore. I might be starting a new job though, so I'll have to adjust my morning routine slightly. But no big deal there. I also work out at the local YMCA once a week with somebody. This work-out schedule has recently varied somewhat, due in part to one of the tutors here needing to quit because of personal issues which I won't get into. But one of the newer staff members here picked up those hours with me towards the end of last year. I also have chatty neighbors and at least one of them hangs out with me on a regular basis either to just sit and talk or watch TV or a movie on NetFlix.