The Routine Life

We’re working on housebreaking our puppy at the moment. It’s awfully reminiscent of potty training a toddler: the adults learn to adhere to a new routine to promote success in the toddler, whether she’s human or canine. The process has, of course, disrupted my usual routines and made me really aware of how ritualized my workdays usually are, filled with little habits that make the difference between a productive, happy day and a grumpy, useless one.

No matter how varied our lives may be from day to day, I suspect most of us have certain rituals we adhere to, the absence of which upsets the balance of our days. What seems paradoxical about them is that rituals take up time, but somehow I get a lot more accomplished when I follow them than when I’m not able to for one reason or another.

My own list of little routines and rituals is long and boring to anyone other than me, but here are a couple of examples of what I’m talking about:

The very first thing I do when I come downstairs after dragging myself out of bed (where I hit snooze two times on the alarm) and brushing my teeth is check my email. It’s an integral part of my morning, and it happens before I let the dog out, before I make breakfast or lunch for my daughter or anything else. Down the stairs and to the computer. I don’t have time to respond then, but I can think about them while I’m going through the rest of the off-to-school routine and be set to reply when I sit down to get to work. And if there’s social email there from friends, that sets a better tone for the day, just as personal snail mail has such a different feeling from bills and junk mail.

There are a handful of websites I have to check before/as I get started on work.

I always shave my left leg first.

Why? The letting-the-dog-out-every-hour routine has some benefit (please, let it have some benefit!), but what of the rest? Why are we such creatures of habit? Nothing would be different if I shaved my right leg first, and checking my email at 7:50 in the morning affects nothing more than my mood. And yet the world seems off-kilter when these things are disrupted.

I know I’m not the only one, because I’ve heard too many people talk about their days being messed up by being out of their routines. What are some of yours?

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Puppy update

Several people have asked me how the puppy’s doing, so here’s an update:

In the four weeks we’ve had her, she’s just about doubled in size, from 5 ½ pounds to 9, and that was last week at the vet, so she’s probably closer to double now. Life is really difficult for Sadie, as she is now called. Here’s what a typical afternoon looks like (taken with my phone, so excuse the quality):

She’s proving to be both a cuddly companion and a crazy, manic puppy, as suits her age. She’s figuring out some basic commands, but still doesn’t get the notion that using the great outdoors for a bathroom is the thing for dogs to do. She’ll happily run around outside for ages, long after we know she badly has to go, but she’ll hold it until she comes in and her feet hit the newspaper on the kitchen tiles. And yes, we’ve tried newspapers, even stinky, used ones, outside on the patio and on the lawn, but apparently that doesn’t feel the same as the paper does on the tiles, so she’s having none of that idea. We’ll get there eventually. Or so we keep telling ourselves.

She has also carried on the great puppy tradition in our family of biting my husband’s ears. Every single puppy in our extended family has made a habit of trying to do that. They don’t bite anyone else’s ears, just his. He can think of ways he’d rather be singled out, but tradition must be upheld.

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Trouble

It’s been a busy week around here, as you may have noticed from the complete lack of attention I’ve given to this blog (and Facebook and Twitter, for that matter).

Part of the reason came to us Monday night, when we surprised our daughter with the one thing she’s wanted more than anything for years: a puppy. It all happened pretty fast. We only found out about her on Sunday, and by Monday, my husband and I were on the road to Abbotsford through rush hour traffic to meet her and, it turned out, bring her home.

Are we nuts? Possibly. But the look on Isabelle’s face when she saw her for the first time made it all worthwhile.

5 1/2 pounds of sleepy cockapoo

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