Inside you the time moves and she don't fade

Yesterday I had to be in my office in Center City by 9, which I've had to do somewhere in the vicinity of 3,000 times since I started working down there in 2008. 

I was up and out by 6:35 since I was driving in from the shore. About 40 minutes from the office I realized I didn't have my access card that gets me on the building elevator and into our office. I got assistance on both, and reassurance from a partner letting me in that I was not the first one to do this by far this week. 

I went out and got lunch, which I've really missed doing in the city. I needed more than lunch so I decided on DiBruno, where I would pick an odd or end up at pretty much weekly for 12 years. I overshot it by a full block before realizing I went too far. 

Back in the office with a borrowed key card, I stowed my DiBruno stuff in the fridge, finished a project, and headed out. Forgetting my DiBruno stuff and unable to retrieve it because of the aforementioned forgotten key card. Everyone had left after the meeting so no one was in the office to let me back in, and my borrowed key card needed to stay in there so out meant out.

I was back at the shore by 4:25. Exhausted. Wrung out spent from doing not even a quarter of a routine I did weekday daily for 12 years before corona hit. Not even a train involved here. Which strikes me as absurd. 

It reminded me of a line from Jane Eyre which I think of often - "I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon." Jane is speaking of an instantaneous tiring of the spirit, emotions and mind in regard to routine; but yesterday tired meant actually physically tired in my reference. I am a person who likes and thrives in routines, which is why the plunge into Coronaland was so hard for me mentally last year despite having no actual hardships compared to what other people were dealing with. I just never paused to consider how much energy expenditure my daily routine required and how much dips back into it would cost after an extended period of de-programming. 

All that to say it's not easy to return to even a well established routine when you have spent over 18 months trying a bunch of new ones on for size. We don't have a return to office and will likely continue operating as we have, going in when needed for a meeting, etc. We were not five days in the office, and we won't return close to it. I'm thankful for that, because going in now requires preparation and thought than it never has and that feels shitty like an elementary thing I should be better at. 

To anyone struggling to adapt once again to a back in full time, a new hybrid schedule, another office opening delay, kids back in school, new job or home, new boundaries set to protect your energy, or something just entirely different for you, give yourself some grace and extend kindness to yourself and others. Life is a big rolling adjustment period. 

Four easy ways to make your mornings healthier

Starting the day right is a great way to actively work towards a healthy lifestyle. Pre-pandemic, this was not something I paid much attention to. It was super easy for me to ignore a morning routine because I was so worried about getting to the train on time. My morning routine used to consist of sleeping until the last possible second, running around upstairs like a tornado, hurtling down the steps, grabbing things, shrieking when I could not find things, bulldozing humans (MFD) and dogs (all) in my path, and running out the door like my behind was on fire. Now that I work from home, these are some ways I go about making my mornings - which translates into my days - healthier. 

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is incredibly important to your lifestyle, and I'm going to bet 90% of people reading this do not get the amount of sleep their bodies are asking for. Getting the right amount goes beyond being awake enough to perform the tasks that you do each day. Getting enough sleep can improve your health by a huge degree, enabling your body to have the right amount of rest to digest food, while also improving your mental health by putting less stress on your brain. In most cases, around eight hours of sleep each night should be the minimum that you’re aiming for. Yes, this means maybe letting the house go a little dirty or putting your phone down earlier. 

Start With Exercise and Fresh Air

The idea of starting each morning with exercise is torture to people like me who are not I Love Exercise people. This idea comes with many benefits, though, and this goes beyond simply making yourself look good. Early exercise can kickstart your metabolism, enabling your body to digest food properly and avoid storing things like sugars as fat. Exercise also helps me feel energized. The first few pandemic months I didn't know why I was so sluggish - I never realized how much of my commute involved walking in the morning. When I added walking back to my morning life, things got much better. 

Eat The Right Breakfast

The food you eat in the morning will have an impact on your body throughout the day. Eating fried food each morning is bad for your body, putting pressure on your heart and other organs while also providing very few of the nutrients you actually need. Eating fruit, low-calorie cereals, and other healthy foods will make you feel much healthier throughout the day. Eating healthy breakfasts doesn’t have to be boring, and there are loads of options available on the market that make this easy. I am a huge fan of the breakfast burrito, power breakfast muffins, or hard boiled eggs with a side of raw peppers and some fruit. 

Create Healthy Drinks

Alongside the food you eat, it also makes sense to give yourself access to healthy drinks in the morning. Coffee is fine but mainlining a pot probably isn't. I like to do two cups of iced and then make sure I take in 40 oz of water by 11 and another 40 oz by 2 to make sure I am hitting 100-120 oz by bedtime. I am not a huge smoothie person, but I don't mind juices. I like mango that I buy in the store. Options like sweet beet juice can be very good for you, and you can find recipes for those types of juices all over the web. Your drink can offer a good opportunity to make your mornings healthier.

Making sure that each of your mornings is as healthy as possible doesn’t take much work. Morning routines are infinitely tweakable. How do you start your day off right? 

Hey guys! I got my poop in a pile

via

Can you resist the siren song of using poop in a title or an image of poop as a weapon? I can't.  What a world. What a world.

It's a good thing vacation is worth it, because the prep going into it and dealing with the cyclone coming out of it is a bitch. Yesterday I worked from home to concentrate on a lot of writing I had to do and knocked that out like a boss, even though it took me until 11 pm. With two more hours in my day because of the lack of commute and the ability to do a quick task on my way to or from the bathroom, I was able to get my house back in order, which was no small feat given the destruction on each level in every room. It's like we returned from vacation and vomited all over our own house with our own things.

Some things are still out of place as always - I don't have the fire within me to finish the basement purge and reorganization right now, so things are still going down there to sit and collect dust - but I do feel like things have been set pretty much to rights.

What needs to go back to the shore is packed up and in the basement ready to be loaded into cars, including my new beach chair, and the cluttered dining room table from hell was mostly cleared.

New sheets are on the bed, and that's the only place I am okay with pattern mixing. Five loads of laundry were done and some was put away. This is not dream life, this is real life. In dream life all the laundry is put away immediately, no one is a fucking asshole, everyone has more than enough of what they need, you can eat what you want and never gain too much weight, no one puts the toilet paper on so it pulls from underneath, we're all equal, you can always find the shoes you want in your size, there's no litter, and dogs never pee or poop inside.

A vat of iced coffee is turning itself into magic in the fridge, a fresh pitcher of mint green iced tea was made, power breakfast muffins were made and frozen, and mexican stuffed shells were made and half frozen. The ones with cheese are dinner tomorrow.

My reusable bags have made their way back to my trunk after a big Target re-stocking trip and I returned shoes to Famous Footwear that I kept forgetting to return. Hey Target, why the F would you sell a light up Hangry sign? It is a state of being that is frankly dangerous for the people in its line of fire. No one is safe. Bring food. 

Geege got his pre-dental bloodwork done at the vet and my furry coworkers got a shit ton of attention.

I used the sassy oven mitts I picked up on vacation and put some of my treasures in my living room shell jar. I like looking at my various shell spots and knowing they're from so many different places.

And I displayed a little art card I picked up on vacation. My God does not care what you look like outside but my God does care what you look like inside and my God don't like ugly. 

We're heading to the shore tonight, and I feel a lot better about my life getting my poop in a pile at home and work. I hope you're heading into the weekend feeling good about where you are today. If you're not, there's always tomorrow.

Toodleoo and TGIF, mofos. And happy birthday to my friend Mr. Chris.

The Predictable Me by MFD

This extremely attractive photo was taken during a hurricane in Wildwood in September 2008. It always makes me laugh. 

This weekend, Dirty Dancing was on twice. Naturally, I watched it both times even though I a) own it and can see it without commercials whenever I want, and b) have seen it eleventy billion times. If it's on, I'm watching it, and you can take that to the bank. When it comes to certain things, we're all creatures of habit. To myself, I am a very predictable person because hello I live this shit, I know what I do all the time.

On our way to dinner Sunday night, I said to MFD, "Can you think of some ways I'm predictable?"

He burst out laughing and said, "You are so predictable in every way." We've been together for 11 years this September. I certainly hope I'm predictable to him in some ways, otherwise he'd be caught asleep at the wheel, you know what I'm saying? Of course, he's predictable to me in a lot of ways too. Cohabitation breeds familiarity.

I was curious what he'd come up with at a moment's notice since he doesn't like to be put on the spot about anything. Here is his minute and a half list of ways in which I'm predictable:

• You are going to write a blog every day or every other day.
• You want me to do chores right away, and you yell at me because I never do them right away.
• You will prepare food for the week on Sunday. 
• You will wake up at the last possible minute you can and still get to work on time.
• You love water with lemon and a lot of ice. You use three glasses in one day and never finish any of them.
• You leave those glasses in bizarre spots where glasses don't go, like on the entertainment center or on the front table by the door.
• You go to Target and get the same things there all the time. You go to Redner's for certain things as opposed to Giant, which you never go to.
• At bars you ask for ice in a glass for your beer.
• When you're going somewhere, you will pack four days in advance at least.
• You will have a very long and lengthy reading list for every vacation and you will finish all the books. 
• You will look for shells on the beach.
• You will always ask me to put lotion on your back and say, "Make sure you get under the straps" like I don't know to do that. 
• Your birthday will be celebrated in grand fashion for a month. 

All of those things are true. The glasses thing cracked me up. I never noticed that I did that, but now that I think about it...

Here's something else predictable: Tuesday sucks. 

The End.

In what ways are you predictable?