 |
| the smug face of someone who just did beach yoga |
1. I like getting up early more than I like sleeping in.
I feel like this will change in the next 5 or so years as the kids keep leaving home (in 5 years, Dorothy will be a senior in high school, and Minnie will be in 5th grade) and there is less outside demand on my time. Right now, though, I would honestly rather get up at 5:20 and have time to read, have a cup of coffee in total quiet, do yoga, fill out my 5 year journal, and take Annabel on a 15-minute walk than sleep until 6:45 when the kids wake up and the day starts jumping down my throat/punching me in the face.
Side note: That is my ideal almost-50 early morning routine
5:20: Jump out of bed, turn on my coffee, brush my teeth
5:22: Get back in bed or move to the couch under a blanket, put on my glasses, and fill out my journal from the previous day; check out yesterday's to-do list and move any outstanding tasks
5:30: COFFEE (1/2 caff with a splash of Fairlife chocolate milk and a splash of Chobani creamer (fave is cinnamon coffee cake, but vanilla works, too)) and 15-ish minutes of reading whatever hardback book I am into (I save Kindle for nighttime and when I am out and about and audio for when I am running or doing other stuff around the house--typically have 3 books going at once these days).
5:50-6: 10 minutes of yoga on Apple Fitness+
6-6:15: Start laundry, get dressed for outside
6:15-6:35: Quick dog walk
6:35: Pour another cup of coffee and just, like gird my loins because the DAY IS COMING.
Something amazing? This semester, I can have this morning 4 perfect days a week, which is MORE THAN HALF THE WEEK!! (on those 4 perfect days, I run at about 8:15 after I walk Dorothy and Cooper to the bus).
On Saturdays, I sleep as long as I want and sit in bed with as many cups of coffee as I want and read most of a novel while the chaos of the house rages around me and then get up to enjoy a run with Ben-- it's terrific. I used to do the same thing on Sundays, but we do more life management stuff on Sundays, and I hated feeling rushed. I usually do my routine above but kick everything an hour later.
Here's the sad trombone part, though: Monday and Wednesday, I teach and need to GTFO with the children, so it's a 5am alarm, no reading time, and I have to do a 20-minute strength workout, run in the dark, and wipe down 3 bathrooms before 6:45.
Still 4 ideal mornings, on late and lazy one, and 2 mad dashes. NOT BAD you guys. Only 2 days a week that I have to run in the dark and before the end of the semester, it won't even be dark-- I CAN DO THIS. (And my yoga goal is only 3 days a week, but I really do find that 10 minutes of excellent stretching and slow flow makes me feel better all day long, so I try to sneak it in more than 3 days).
2. I like how I feel when I don't binge eat sweets more than I like eating sweets.
Unforch, I cannot always remember this WHILE I AM EATING 5 COOKIES FRESH OUT OF THE OVEN. But boy do I remember it as soon as I have swallowed the last mouthful.
3. An area of growth for me this year HAS GOT TO BE airtight task management because I AM TOO OLD TO BE SO FLAKY.
One million years ago (or, 17 more accurately), I wrote about being the commencement speaker at my PhD graduation and feeling very nervous and acting like a total ditz in the official party robing room and how I was too old for that schtick and I AM STILL DOING IT YOU GUYS MY GOD because things are falling through the cracks, and the cracks are getting bigger?
To give you a very recent and low-stakes example: Our pool is hosting the All-City dive meet this summer, and I am heading up the senior recognition and trophy committee. We had a board meeting on Jan 7 that I knew about (and objected to because Ben is out of town mid-week, and I am a taxi driver for my children, but then I realized Harry was home and with some not uncomplicated juggling I could make it work especially because Dorothy hasn't started dance yet (long winter break) but then she got a trio, and she had a trio practice scheduled for Jan 7 at the exact same time as the meeting, which I did not know because I never put the meeting on my calendar) and nearly forgot to attend. I would have forgotten! But luckily for me another committee member sent a last-minute email bowing out of the meeting due to a choir concert conflict, and I was so grateful for her conflict because it jogged my memory, and I as able to figure out the whole thing (you have a goose, a fox, and a bag of grain...) and attend (with Minnie who will attend any meeting happily if she has an iPad and a basket of cheese curds) (the meeting was at the golf course bar).
The tl;dr of that mess above is two-fold: 1. I have had too much coffee today, obvi (the number of parenthetical tangents in a single sentence are my very obvious tell) and 2. My task management/task capture system is basically Swiss cheese.
There were SO MANY options for me: jot the meeting down on my daily to-do list (I do this a lot and then add to my calendar when I am dealing with my list); use my calendar app on my phone (I dislike this-- something about the google cal app interface is a real turn off for me, but I will do it in a pinch) (probably I could have just tapped the date and time in the email and it would have automatically posted itself to my calendar, though. THERE IS NO EXCUSE); text the meeting to myself; jot the date and time down in my Notes app in the general catch-all note I keep; put the meeting on my desktop Google calendar as soon as it was confirmed (the gold standard).
4. Everything is better when I make time to go to the library.
You heard it here first: I will go to the library (with Minnie!) once a week for this entire YEAR-- but this is a gail best left to the weekly level for me, so I am going to never mention the streak again). I am even going to make an IG highlight for accountability. It is so fun to take Minnie to the library now that she is too old for the communal baby toys that always always always got her sick and now that she is a reader and just marches over to the shelf and confidently selects the books she wants to read. It's a joy, actually, and one that I will not deprive myself of.
Is probably getting a virus from these markers
5. I like getting stronger.
My strength workouts are really beginning to pay off. I was able to put my hair in a pony tail and fishtail braid it, something that really used to strain my triceps. I carried in 7 half-gallons of FairLife milk at once AND reached up to push the button to shut my trunk, and it was NBD. (We go through a ton of chocolate milk a week, especially when Harry is home). My core is also SO MUCH stronger than it was just 3 months ago. It is so wild to see that I have muscles in my stomach, even after 5 pregnancies. I love knowing that just 80 minutes a week of weigh training and weight bearing exercises can make a measurable difference, and it is helpful motivation when I really don't want to take the time to open my Apple Fitness app.
