Sometimes I’m slow.
Most days, after Mom has her morning coffee and cookie, she moves to the couch and manages to fall asleep for the 10-15 minutes she has before it’s time to get dressed. I’m doing stuff around the house, the time slips by me, and suddenly it’s almost time for her ride to arrive, and she’s still sitting on the couch in her gown, dozing to the morning’s news.
It’s only taken me a year to figure out how to fix this.
Every morning, when I get up, the dogs get up. I let the dogs go out, then go to the kitchen to give Mom her meds. I watch her take her meds, the dogs come back in (unless they’re barking, then they come in in the middle of me trying to watch Mom take her meds), I feed the dogs. I give Mom her coffee, I let the dogs back out. Finally, I get to pour my cup of coffee. By this time, it is almost 7 am.
This week, I’ve been trying to get up a half-hour earlier, 6 am instead of 6:30. Sunday night, I forgot to change the alarm setting on my phone for Monday morning. Monday night, I didn’t sleep well, so Tuesday morning, I turned off my alarm and waited to get up until I heard Mom’s alarm at 6:30. Yesterday morning, I got up at 6:00 am – hooray! – and Mom woke up early, too. *sigh*
Today, Thursday, is the first day the process has gone as envisioned. I got up at 6, got the dog circus out of the way by 6:15, emptied the dishwasher, got a cup of coffee, got Mom’s meds and coffee ready, and sat down at my writing table at 6:19 am. Mom got up a little early, about 6:25, but I had already had a tiny bit of writing time and a few sips of coffee. I was almost zen.
I finished my morning journaling at 7:05, just in time to wake Mom up from her post-coffee nap, get yesterday’s socks out of her shoes (she’s given up hiding them), and toss them, along with yesterday’s clothing, into her hamper and out of sight. A quick refill of my coffee cup, and here I am, at the computer by 7:15, blogging away.
I think this new schedule is going to work out quite well. Now I just have to figure out how to get to bed before 11 pm.
Not The Roommate I Expected 