CREATURES OF HABIT

CREATURES OF HABIT

This is one of those days that make you want to sleep. We are receiving our third drenching in a week. When I woke up, the rain was coming down hard and fast, and the skies were heavy with charcoal gray clouds. There was a chill in the morning air that made me want to stay under the covers and read a good book (which is exactly what I did until 8:00 a.m., at which time shame got me out of the sack). My husband, Art, on the other hand, suffers from no such shame. When I tried to roust him at 8:15, he asked for more time. I looked at the clock, “It’s 8:15”, I cried. “What is happening to us?” He shrugged and said, “I don’t care!”

You see, Art and I are in the happy category that is euphemistically referred to as “semi-retired”. This means that we don’t have jobs. Our time is only as structured as we want to make it. Usually, we are ruled by habit. Our usual schedule dictates that we rise between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m. We have breakfast at approximately 7:00 a.m. Although the fare is simple – cold cereal, toast, this is always a long, drawn-out meal, with lots of time to talk about the day’s news, share a pot of tea, and announce our aches and pains for the day. I do my blogging at about 8:00 or 8:30. Then I clean the kitchen and make the bed.

We usually have our daily walk around 10:00 or 10:30, so that we arrive back home in time for our tea break (11:30 or so). Art usually busies himself in the studio working on projects from about 12:00 noon to 5:00, with the occasional break to do odd jobs around the house. I usually run household errands in the afternoon. Sometimes Art and I are working on a music project together, which means that I let the house go to hell and work with him in the studio during my housewife time. And by 5:00 or so, it is time to begin preparing our evening meal. (We eat so early in the evening that I’m not sure whether our third meal of the day really qualifies for “supper” – I guess it’s more of a “dinner”, as in “Senior Early Bird Dinner”).

Sadly, we have acquired that all-American habit of watching the news while we eat our dinner, which means that you have to digest death, destruction, and corruption along with your salad and your baked potato. We relax in front of the TV for a couple of hours, and we try to be in bed by 10:00. Before sleep (and I really don’t know why) we usually have another round of death, destruction and corruption (news), which means that our sleep is light and dreams are peppered with strange visions.

I confess all of this to you for two reasons: First, in case you’re anything like we are, you can stop feeling like you’re the only one. I suspect that most people in this world have habits that they can’t rationally explain. Second, so that you can see that none of this is written in stone.

Between the holidays of the past several weeks and our unusual weather, which has necessitated moving our walks to “whenever it’s not raining”, our neat little behavioral pattern has been completely upset. This morning we didn’t begin our breakfast until 8:30, so I am a little late with my blog. The rain is just beginning to let up, so I don’t know when we will actually get our walk in. And since we ate such a late breakfast, our teatime may be postponed until 1:00 p.m., which means that dinner may indeed become supper, and bedtime will probably be past 11:00 p.m. This means that we may actually miss the six o’clock news, which would not break my heart, and who knows? Maybe we’ll skip the news altogether for one day. And since we’re already off our schedule, we might even work in the studio tonight and maybe even – Write a song instead of watching a rerun of a sitcom we’ve seen half a dozen times.

We may be creatures of habit, but remember – Where there is life, there is hope!

© 2005, Robin Munson