Routine

What I'd like to know is whether or not you have managed to keep up your routine during the run up to the looming 'C' word. I am not even going to have to cook on Christmas day but I have accumulated forty nine parcels to wrap and assorted other meals to cook even without the turkey and you-know-what -else. Anyway, if you can call those reasons, that is why I have not been to my blog station for far too long. ( I know, I know, I leave it far too long far too often. On the other hand, I dare not risk boring you with them). What I need is a routine, a day which is write-a-post day. Dilemma: since I stopped working - paid working: housewives' work is never done - I have suffered a routine allergy. I am incapable of doing anything on a set time basis. As I think you know, I signed up for Advanced French and Begginers' German classes. Did I keep my Wednesday lunch-time appointments? No I did not. Not for more than a term, that is. The nature of my work was such that, in many cases, it would have been positively harmful for me to have altered my routine. If I said I would be there then there I would have to be. It has become a sort of 'yah boo and sucks' to that way of life for me to avoid anything, now, which ties me to a specific duty, or even pleasure, at a fixed time. The thing goes so far that I am having problems making up my face. Normally, you would expect to get up, wash your face and wherever else you feel the need, clean your teeth and on with the slap. Now I just have to vary it. Sometimes, I go down and feed my beloved, change her litter and even have my own breakfast before coming back upstairs to disguise the ravages of age. It has been known for me to feed her, make up and then eat. But today I discovered another aversion. I am averse/allergic to the routine order in which the slap, itself, actually goes on. Truly, if you are female, you will know that there is not much scope for variation; foundation, colour here and there, powder to seal it all and off to go. And there's the rub: vary it if you can. I have been doing this for sixty years or so. There must be a way in which I could do it differently. There is the option of not doing it at all, of course. Don't be daft: it would frighten the children - and the horses.

One of the difficulties is the usual one: that phenomena all have their pros and cons. Routine can be both irritating, infuriating, even, and also comforting and reassuring. A baby learns about alrightness in life when he/she can count on things being the same every time she/he experiences them. On the other hand, a certain amount of the unexpected is necessary to expose them to change and chance and coping with that. Have you ever changed your routine route to work or wherever just because you couldn't stand the sight of that hoarding with its posters another moment. And didn't it feel friendly and reassuring when you resumed your old path after a long absence away? I find myself dredging for examples which has thoroughly confused my inner world because it's rather a favourite hobby horse of mine, the yes and no of just about everything. Another inhibiter has been the dear old Wizard of Cyberspace. A while ago he swallowed the entire second paragraph and I have had no luck in reinstalling it. I am now working from the 'edit' edition on my blog site and absolutely terrified because it hasn't got the familiar 'save' option. I use this after about every second word as a matter of routine and am now in constant fear that the entire thing will be lost, permanently this time. Oh well, routine for the Wizard - who has also been known to be a Guardian Angel. Back to routine cellotape, ribbon and label. In which order?