Of time, and routines...

I have been cogitating (agitating the cogs) over what sort of schedule would best suit this semi-retired existence -- more and more truly retired all the time, I realize.

The problem has been that I can think of about eighteen different tasks or functions, each with a serious claim to be First Thing of the Morning. But how to rank them?

And the default resolution of that problem has been to stay in bed and ponder on the matter until either I fall asleep again or the external world intervenes in some fashion, usually less than altogether welcome.

(And yes, those of you with full employment, and/or families, and/or partners and/or roommates, and/or walkable dogs, etc., I can hear your unsympathetic snortings from here, believe me, and I do not blame you.)

For a week now -- a whole week! -- I have had a Trial Schedule working -- and I'm still doing it, which is both unusual and promising.  (I'm working on the general theory that as the day goes, so goes the life, and as the morning goes, so goes the day.  You see there are indeed macro-considerations in play here.)

1. GET OUT OF BED.
2. Take morning meds if any as appropriate.
3.  Take large mug of plain hot water downstairs
4.  Ensconce self in library armchair with good light and resources at hand.
5. MORNING PRAYER according to the (old) Book of Common Prayer, without Scripture readings other than the Psalms appointed in the simplest of the reading tables.
5a.  Pluck Biblia Sacra (the Vulgate, that is) off the shelf and have a go at the morning's Psalm or Psalms in Latin, just to shake up the synapses.
5b.  Note prayer concerns in handy notebook by my left shoulder.  Then trot across the landing and hop onto the
6.  ELLIPTICAL TRAINER!!!  for a few more minutes/calories/metres-equivalent than the day before.  Keep heart rate under 150, mostly, and do a sprinting thing in the last 30-40 seconds.  Hop off (high side first!) and step into the laundry/furnace room to
7. SCOOP THE CAT'S BOX (loud cheers from the cat).
8. Wash hands, contemplate what needs to be taken upstairs -- clean laundry, food from the pantry or the freezer or both...

And there I am ready for my shower and my coffee and my breakfast.  And the rest of the day!

Serendipity -- my MP armchair is between the end of one old desk and the bookshelves.  Earlier this week I became aware that just abaft of my right eyebrow, on the shelf with "Eliot, George" and "Eliot, T. S." there was also "Edwards, Jonathan."  That's right -- "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Edwards (although I've always thought that vice-versa would have made a much more interesting sermon).  

But where the book opened, when I took it down, was his "Resolutions".  And I was stunned to see how often he re-made his resolution to "speak WELL of others," "speak FAIRLY of others": over, and over, and over.  To resist the temptation to DETRACTION, that besetting besetter.

I am working on that one, too.

all day with Mary B...

I'm still working on the right mix of chores and dissipations for the days I have committed to spend with Mary Brown -- I did a lot of unappealing paper work last night, with the benefit of cleared flat surfaces to contemplate today... I have a mess of cookery to attend to -- a batch of yogurt, some fridge-cleaning-out, defrosting my freezer while stocks are low, IRONING.

And then perhaps I can spend some time sorting out my pantry shelves... and gathering up all the fountain and/or cartridge pens in the place and reaming them out and getting them running again... and writing a very tall stack of notes and letters to folks.

Somewhere in here there needs to be a sermon also! I am guest-preaching away from St. Curious on Sunday morning, among people I don't know at all -- so the approach to the text will take some pondering.

It is a busy and "fraught" time in Ramblerland...some of it unbloggable, and some of it not-bloggable-before-a-given-date. That date is now past, and so "now it can be told" that along about Easter, all being well in the meantime, the Rambler is going to enter into grandmotherhood..."with all that that entails." Marvelous birthday-present news that took me completely, but COMPLETELY, by surprise.

And in the meantime, the Rambler is now the sole occupant of Tether's End (barring Nefertiti the Wonder Cat). And THAT is all unimaginably new: from here on, NOTHING goes into that fridge that isn't in the Personal Meal Plan. It's a little hard to grasp that I probably won't ever have to buy twenty pounds of ANYTHING, ever again -- no matter how alluring the price! Also new: the sense that nothing, NOTHING in this abode has to be where it is, if I don't want it there. Startling, it is.

I'll come back later to do the Friday Five. But on the schedule now is some personal clenn-up (and "spackling"), some shopping, some bureaucracy, in the meantime contemplating a recipe for non-alcoholic-punch-for-250. My HOS, Fabrector, is getting married a week tomorrow. And I am in charge of PUNCH...this is an area of cookery where neither Julia Child nor Emma Rombauer has been any help at all, but I think I have found a recipe, and now I just have to think about container-for-transport: jam kettle, perhaps.

I also have to give some thought to roasting a turkey, preparing a Giant Pan (or two) of Delectable Stuffing, concocting a Hugeous Leafy Salad...and confecting an 8-cup Tomato Aspic (with shrimp). Others are providing the Brussels sprouts, the sweet potatoes, the pies (and more turkeys and stuffing and mashed spuds etc). Because next weekend is not only WEDDING, but Canadian THANKSGIVING (we like to get these things tidied away early, you see).

feline helpfulness...

Today, this is the only image that does justice to my state of mind...

some days this is pretty much how it feels, and today is one of them...