your morning routines

Recently I asked a few friends to write me with descriptions of their morning routines. I'll start with mine.

1. Start waking at 6:30 with daylight, bird twitterings, and dog movements. Put on eye mask, fall back into light sleep. At 7, Mom lets Boo into the backyard, where he sits on the grass with a deflated soccer ball and growls loud enough at squirrels to occasionally wake me. Alarm at 8:45-9, snooze until 9-9:15. Drink a cup of water immediately after sitting up, to kick start metabolism. Check phone, email, and depending on day wonder what is wrong with S that she never flirts with me by email anymore or think fondly of my adorable girlfriend. Get up from bed, lay down on floor, 150 crunches and 20 leg lifts, noting persistence of spare tire. Brush teeth, wash face, glasses, moisturizer, sunblock. Get dressed in jeans and t-shirt if biking, work clothes if driving. Take lunch from refrigerator, put it in bag. Shoes, helmet, reflective pants cincher, headphones playing Top 40, NPR, podcast, or Peter Gabriel. Leave house 9:10-9:35, arrive at work 9:20-9:45. Drink caffeine addiction-kicking concoction of 1/3 decaf, 1/3 regular, 1/3 hot water, plus a sugar packet and three half and half thimbles, read email, Times and Huffington Post, eat oatmeal scooped out from gallon-sized Ziploc at desk. Dawdle. Drink water. Wait for bowel movement. Start working.
   

2. i typically wake up around 9, then go straight to the gym, then back home to start writing from my bedroom/office, until i need a break. unless i'm hung over, in which case i lay in bed until i'm overwhelmed by guilt, then get up, pretend to work, watch some tv, and see what happens. or if my girlfriend spent the night, then i sleep until she has to go to work, then start writing or go to the gym.
   

3. approximate morning routine
   


• 8am or so - wake up to the alarm on my phone. look around to see where kitty is. she's usually lying on my chest or at the foot of my bed. pet her for a few minutes before getting up.
  
• brush my teeth and shower. this takes about 10 minutes.
  
• put on the clothes i set out the night before (which is usually the same pair of jeans that i wear every day + a tee shirt), comb my hair, apply toner to my face, clean out my 10 ear piercings with a cleaning solution so they don't get infected, apply spf 15 face moisturizer. this takes another 10 minutes.
  
• boil some hot water to make tea for the drive into work. put 2 scoops of food into kitty's bowl and top off her water cup if needed. this takes about 5 minutes.
  
• drive to work, which takes about 10 minutes.
  
• 8:50 - meet nils for breakfast at no name.
  
• 9:30 - sit at desk and turn on laptop. look at emails.
  
• 9:35 - go to the microkitchen and get coffee and my ice pack from the freezer. go back to desk and ice knees. start doing work.
  
• 10:30ish - go back to microkitchen and put ice pack back. get a snacky. usually a banana or a cup of brown cow yogurt. usually vanilla, but sometimes peach or blueberry.
  
• 10:35 - 12. work and/or meetings.
  
• sometime between 11 - 11:30 - figure out my lunch plans via IM. usually i eat with nils and we chat about which cafe to go to and where/when to meet.
  
• 11:55am - start walking to cafe.
4. i would actually find this fascinating, except i am scared to hear how healthy other people are, because my routine is so shameful! i set my alarm for 7:30, snooze every 20 minutes for the next hour and a half (while checking my email on my phone), wake up at hmmm 8:55, try to brush away the cookie mush embedded in my back teeth with limited success (because i hate brushing my teeth at night but love eating cookies in bed at 2am), maybe take a shower, throw on clothes, put concealer on any acne i can locate, and leave by 9:10 so i can get to work by 9:45ish.
   
   
5. on a usual morning
   
   i sleep at 2am after reading, writing, listening, playing
   at 10am i am awake. half clothed.
   kettle on the stove, 2 tablespoons of grounds in my filter, 1 teaspoon of leaves in my pot
   
   i sit
   in my robe
   on my couch
   with my cup in hand
   computer balanced on my lap
   morning breezes through the window
   clatter of dishes clatter of doors from my neighbors
   
   i read words on the screen, check accounts and newsfeeds
   this is one of my most favorite parts of the day. luxury for 1 hour.
   
   hygiene routine: wash face, brush teeth, moisturize, sunblock
   decide what to do: errands, climbing, biking, searching, research
   food: yogurt, granola, fruit, leftovers
   
   12pm leave. 12pm stay.
   
   
6. i'll write more later but it basically consists of snoozing at least ten times, drinking a cup of coffee and checking my personal email and facebook before going to work, and the normal stuff of showering (not always in the morning) washing my face, brushing my teeth, taking a shit, wearing an outfit, brushing my hair (if i remember) and inevitably leaving the house much later than i'd like! oh and i try to have a few minutes to stare at the ceiling to center myself and i cannot interact with any other human beings for the first hour after i wakeup.
   

7. • Stare at multi-colored Target alarm clock set anywhere from 7 -13 minutes fast.
     
   • Hit snooze. Hit snooze.
     
   • Attempt to catnap until I'm sure I'll be at least 5 minutes late to whatever appointment looms. Listen to the middle-aged gay couple next door chat in booming voices in the next apartment over. Reassure myself that I'm not a bigot because I hate them.
     
   • Scroll through my iPhone email immediately, enjoying the pinging sounds indicating that I matter.
     
   • Step on the scale, step off the scale, step back on the scale, shrug in resignation. Sometimes smile in surprise that I'm getting away with little exercise and rich food--or just deluding myself that it's all just water weight (no matter).
     
   • Do a few yoga poses in slapdash manner, resenting runners (especially the ones with bouncy ponytails) outside the window.
     
   • Before leaving the house, take a swig of orange juice straight from the bottle--although I will later hypocritically criticize my live-in boyfriend for doing the same thing.
     
   • Good morning: obtain coffee before appearing in front of adolescents to teach first class. glorious morning = i remember to bring eco-friendly coffee cup to work to brandish in front of all the guilty fools pumping caffeine into paper cups. Enlightenment!
   
   
8. I wake up in the morning when my Blackberry's "antelope" tone rings, and then reset the alarm for 30 minutes later. Then I start feeling guilty for staying in bed and get up and stagger to the shower, during which the reprogrammed Blackberry goes off again. Then I towel off, brush my teeth, shave, apply facial moisturizer, and put on boxers and an undershirt. Then I apply hair product, use a blow dryer, and then put on the rest of my clothes. Then I go downstairs, boil water, make tea and oatmeal, sit down to eat, and then brush my teeth again before heading out.
   

9. i set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. every day, under some sort of delusion that i will wake up early and work out, or go to work early and be real productive. maybe every 1 in ten to 14 days, i actually wake up at that time. More often than not, I get out of bed at 8 something and race to the shower. Shower up (wash, exfoliate, pumice, etc.), brush my teeth, put face lotion on. Then I put water on the stove to boil. Then I get dressed, which usually doesn't take too long on a work day. Pour boiling water into a bowl with oatmeal. Put on eyeliner, perhaps mascara, perhaps some eyebrow powder. Then I eat my oatmeal, and check my email/facebook/nytimes. After all that is done, I head out of the house, take a quick glance to see if I see the bright orange jacket meaning the pervy crossing guard is by work (he almost always is), and then walk around to the other side of the block, past the intersection for work, then around in a loop, to get to work and avoid disgusting sexual harassment. This takes about ten minutes max. Then work. This is pretty standard, with some minor deviations.
   

10. i wake up, usually from some sort of mundane but wakeful dream, about driving somewhere in my car or about sitting at a restaurant with a friend that i see all the time talking about the weather. i snooze for about 20-50 minutes, depending on how ambitious i was the night before. i wake up and wash my face and put on face lotion. i wander around my apartment for 5-20 minutes, depending on how late i am. I do fake-busy things, like organizing my work bag or looking in the fridge or looking in my closet aimlessly or checking my e-mail and finding there was no new e-mail in the last seven hours or stretching. then i get dressed quickly, then brush my teeth, then put on a little makeup, and then pack my lunch. sometimes i make my bed. i get a pair of shoes and carry them to the car because i like driving in flip flops. takes about 15-30 minutes.
    

11. i wake up at 6.30 to my alarm or slightly before due to the sound of my dog scratching and moving around in her crate. i let gog out of the crate, she stretches and then we walk out of the bedroom. i close the door behind me so angela won't wake up and then take gog for a walk. she's deathly afraid of traffic and refuses to walk in our busy neighborhood so i drive her a half mile to the park. we walk a mile-long loop around the end of the park and then drive home. i take a shower and get dressed, eat a bowl of cereal while reading the local paper and check to make sure angela is getting up around 8. then i put on deodorant, brush my teeth and shave using an electric shaver. the last three things i do in random order every day. then i kiss angela, usually as she's climbing into the shower with a dumb, just-awakened expression on her face, say "see you buddy" to gog, close the door behind me and walk the 2 blocks to my office.
    

12. it varies, but here's mine for today: 630 my alarm goes off, and then begins a 9 minute snooze/debate over whether i'm really going to drag my ass out of bed or just sleep in for another hour... since i'm feeling anxious about the half marathon and my inability to run any distance without getting extremely tired, i get up. after brushing my teeth, things get moving - morning shit (like clockwork, every morning), then out the door to run (very slowly) along the fremont creek trail. get back at 740, do some yoga moves in my living room (inversions!) while listening to best of the 90s - basically every bay area radio station and then take a shower and get dressed. sometimes i take a post run shit, but not always. switch the radio to npr, warm up some black chicken, date and gogi berry soup i made a couple of days ago eat that with walnut bread and butter (goes surprisingly well together!). while everything is heating/toasting, i put on moisturizer, make myself a pb&j sandwich for a snack, pack my lunch (leftover korean food from lunch with my mom last week, hopefully everything is still good), put on sunscreen, apply mascara. 830 - gather up my stuff and head out the door for my 5 minute drive to work (i'm driving cause i'm going to dinner in los altos tonight, don't hate me environmental people). and thats all there was.
    

13. i don't really have a routine except that i'm always in a rush. i wake up about 1 hour before i need to be in the office, shower quickly, run to my car cursing and drive frantically to work... usually to arrive just in time or 5-10 min late for whatever meeting i'm supposed to be in. on the weekends my routine consists of preferably sleeping until noon.
    

14. 7:30, snooze, stumble, put water on to boil for coffee, make bed, pee, make coffee, consider breakfast options and preferences (yogurt? cereal? oatmeal? toast? ice cream? fruit? etc.), start drinking water, sit and sip 2.5 cups of coffee with or without food, brush teeth, move bowels, shower, put on underwear, blow dry hair, put on other clothes, pack bag, consider outerwear options (jacket? scarf?), make sure of Metrocard and keys, leave.