Rain Rain Go Away - Routines

Woke up this morning to tornadic activity across central Florida. Rain cascading at times, wind howling occassionally, satellite pix pix pixilating all day long. As an adult in central Florida, I find that I start my day each day by flicking on the TV as I awake each morning to catch the morning weather forecast.

It's amazing to me now as I ponder the routines I have in my life. My mornings begin about the same every day. Very little change to the routine, which was never supposed to be a routine, but became one nonetheless. It goes like this:

The alarm is shut off usually too late to keep from waking anyone else in the house. Having slightly overslept by a few minutes each and every morning, it simply means that my very loud radio station blasts throughout the house each morning long before anyone else needs to wake up.

As I get up, I start pulling open doors and drawers, pulling out pants, underwear, socks, and shirt as I try not to turn on any lights. Sometimes I am able to use the flashlight I try to keep in my drawer. But most times one of the children have taken it to find their TV remote nestled under their beds the night before.

Upon leaving my bedroom, I grab my belt from the top of the stairs. Quick bathroom stop on the way downstairs allows me to run the kitchen sink later without the need to run to the downstairs bathroom - ha!

Going downstairs begins the main part of my morning routine. I go into the living room and flick on the TV. I hate how my DVR updates at night because it sets to a blank screen each morning. When I select the news channel I watch, it's "history" begins at that moment. My old satellite system would store the memory of any current channel until either a new recording began or the channel is changed. This meant each night I would simply tune the channel I watch in the morning for the news. The next morning I flicked on the TV, rewound it til I saw the weather forecast, hit play, catch the weather, then turn it off. This step generally took less than a minute each morning. But the new system, since it does not keep a stored history on the current channel at startup, must be tuned to the channel, then simply wait for the weather to broadcast again. So my routine has now been alterted to simply turn the TV on, tune in the channel, then walk away. I'll get the news in a few minutes.

Into the kitchen I go, flicking on lights. I dump any leftover coffee from the night before and rinse out the carafe. I drop the old filter into the trash, then reach behind to get a new filter. drop it in while the carafe is filling with fresh water. I pour out a new measurement of grounds and dump them in to the filter as I shut off the water and slip the lid on the carafe. I pour in the water, shut, and hit "start" as I slip the carafe back onto the burner.

Then it's off to the shower where I shower, shave (most mornings), trim the goatee (or sometimes shave it off entirely), deodorize, dress, and back to the living room.

I rewind the DVR to catch the weather and play it when I find it. After I've confirmed my wardrobe choice (only takes one time of wearing shorts when you should have worn pants), I go to the kitchen and pour my coffee.

Depending on time, sometimes I get to make breakfast. Sometimes it's simply grabbing anything I can and running out the door. I grab the wallet, the keys, the phone (occassionally I forget this step) and then out the door I go.


Well, it's time to go get my kids (another routine I've built). So I'll wrap up for now.

Welcome to my blog. Hope your routine day now includes checking out my new blog. I'm going to try to make it my daily routine to write in it.

:)