Morning Routine

Brief chat with old friend on our morning routines.  Having one frames the rest of the day, maybe keeps people productive in retirement.  His seemed simpler than mine.  He gets up at a time when working people are already at work.  He makes coffee in a large French press, sips it from a double sized mug as he reads his subscriptions to the NY Times and Wall Street Journal.  Then we chatted about what we think of his two journals and a few other pundits whose thoughts we both seek out.

My routine is more involved.  Ideally, which does not always materialize, I make my best effort to arise at 7AM, later than in my working years but before people other than nurses and baristas are already toiling away.  My next destination is dental hygiene.  Then coffee.  Mine comes from a k-cup, usually selected from among three varieties, with the 8 oz option selected on the Keurig Mini-Express.  While brewing, retrieve the daily local paper for my wife to read when she gets up, placing it right outside our front door.  Then some dishes left over from the previous day.  I tend to do cups first.  On some days, I am scheduled to check on the indoor herbs which grow in an Aerogarden and three Chia pots, as well as a new Bonsai starter.  I keep a bottle of water next to them, sometimes having to refill the bottle before I go upstairs to My Space with the newly brewed coffee.

On Sundays I plan my week while sipping coffee.  On the other days, I planned my day the night before, so I review it.  My medicines are filled in their weekly containers every Sunday.  I take out the day's pills, one set of four, another of two large OTC tablets, and swallow them with coffee.  

Next I check my messages:  email, FB, Reddit, X.  Never an overwhelming number.  Then I start, and often finish, and entry in furrydoc.blogspot.com and begin the daily crosswords, where I usually do five.  More often than not, I return to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee, either a different variet of k-cup or bagged ground coffee of good quality in a k-cup adapter, splashed with generic creamer.  Back to My Space.

My rate limiting step seems to be the daily treadmill sessions, two days on, one day off, with a three day recovery at the end of each month.  I target 8:15AM for this, and afford it a priority appointment with myself.  Once completed, I am ready to get dressed and declare the morning routine successful.

There are some specified mornings as well.  Shabbos is a time to look at what I have done and fallen short of doing.  Sunday I plan the ensuing week.  I remove shabbos dinner from the freezer Thursday mornings.  On Sundays I fill out my appointment list on a whiteboard so that my wife can see when I need to be away from home.  So even the routine has its variants, but enough is fixed as to be a framework that keeps me accomplished when morning has passed.