What's the satisfaction in routine and why do we always fall into it? Okay, maybe you don't, but why do I always fall into it?
It's efficient, up to a point. It gets me out of the door in the mornings at an average time of 7:54 with a standard deviation of +- 2 minutes. It keeps me from having to think about the minutia--the brushing the hair and deciding whether or not to floss. Just do it--it's the routine.
And sometimes routine can become a self-help strategy. I cook dinner on Sunday evenings because I like to cook and I want to remind my kids that I can cook. (And that there's more to meals than carry-out or meat/rice/gravy.) I walk the dogs every evening because the dogs need walking and I need dog walking. It's what I am--I'm a person who walks my dogs.
It takes a vacation to remind me of how relaxing routine can be. I miss routine like crazy when I'm gone. Even the "fun" kind of vacation feels a little uneasy, a little inefficient. It gets old having to think about the little things, and when I'm on vacation with the family, no one knows their turn in the toilet. We have to stinking talk to each other in the mornings.
Still...I can't help thinking routine should evolve in a positive direction. For every boring, tedious chore I add to my daily agenda, I should slough off two time-wasting habits and replace them with a fun one. Hard Won Fun. HWF--huh whuf. I should get that printed on a bracelet.
But how would it work? This winter, when I added "feeding the birds" to the daily chore list, I should have taken off one chore and replaced another with some HWF. But what? Take off "clean up the mess Ed makes on the stove"? But then the mess would never get cleaned up. Take off "scoop the cat litter"? But then the dogs would drag choice morsels of poop all over the house. Take off "open the mail"? The mail would never get opened. Compared with most other women I read about, my daily chore list is pretty compressed already.
One positive HWF--I replaced my after dog walk routine of "sit at the computer for a half hour" with "read a book for a half hour." That has been a huge reward. But next time, the best I'm going to be able to hope for is to reschedule an unpleasant chore from "daily" to "weekly." The mail, for example. I can stack it up neatly and only deal with it once a week. Dealing with the mess on the stove and countertops can be a bi-weekly chore. But scooping the cat litter?
Not negotiable.
Started hilling up the row for the earliest spring planting--spinach. It doesn't look like much but in my head it makes all the difference. It's my attack on Trenton. It proved my ragtag, dispirited army could still fight. There will be a United States. There will be a garden.
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