My alarm went off at the usual time.  I hit snooze. I just want five more minutes. The rest of my house senses the change in breathing and they are all ready for the day to get started.

 No not any of the humans in my house. They both snore peacefully. Not even stirring at the excitement of everyone else happy to see me upright.  

The animals in my house. They know it’s time for food.  I stepped back from my sweat session in my basement for a walk about with Grace and our new puppy Sophie.

Sophie is a Border Collie mix and around 6 months old. I hope someday she will save me from my sister sitting on horseback yelling the same thing into the trees, “I see you, you #$%* cow. I sure could use a dog about now!” This is what I have heard for over a year! A year sitting on a horse yelling at cows who are standing behind a tree. I bet you didn’t know cows played statues? Well they do. Now we have Sophie. She is not a part of my self care routine; but she is an added bonus. I know Grace would sleep the day away and be happy with some fetch; but Sophie. Sophie will dig or rearrange plants in their pots without a little extra exercise.

She is my only motivating factor to getting up.
My self care routine is in the toilet. I am tired. No, I am exhausted. I can’t tell if it’s from stress of the world or boredom. This list of things to do or not do gets longer. The list of things to pray about gets longer as well because I learned that lesson. You can either pray or worry but you can’t do both. 

How’s your self care routine? 

Recently our school board in our local community voted to send our children (grades 3-12) back to school twice a day for in school service and 3 days a week on line. Now for a single mom and a working mom; this is less than ideal. The worry about my child and her ability to manage her time is real. I am blessed to have family around me to help fill in these gaps. The schedule will come. Is this permanent? No. This too shall pass. My attitude about it will ensure an easier transition.

I can either worry or pray; but I can’t do both.

I have a planner. I work towards these big ambitious goals. I write them all down with a pretty felt pen. Last night I looked at my goals and reworked them. I reversed engineered them down to the easiest of tasks. My goal was something big and lofty like becoming a multi millionaire in ten easy steps ( not really but you get the idea) and I brought it all the way down to: Go to bed at 9:30 pm. Period.

This is my new 30 day push goal. How simple. I have a before bed time routine which includes letting the dogs out, making sure the puppy does her business, letting the dogs in, making sure all the lights are off and the doors are locked; remind my kid she has to brush her teeth and wash her face (that is when she is not showering/or taking a bubble bath for hours), and to finally brush my teeth and wash my face and….. The mom list is long. The me list is short. Get my ass in bed to read. That’s all I want to do. I want to crawl into bed and spend some time somewhere else. I was reading so much self- help it started to overwhelm me. So, I put those to the side and I focus. I read my daily devotional, put on some good smelling lotion, and get in bed. And then I sigh. I realize a lot of this I bring on myself. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders when it doesn’t have to be or that I am not being the best mom, girlfriend, friend, sister, or daughter I could be. So this week I gave myself a little grace to relax. To not work out as hard as I had been, because frankly; I think my body was craving a break; and to get back to basics. Sleep, drink my water, and take care of my mind. Walk over a mile with two dogs who are way too excited to be up and going for 6:30 am.

After all, nothing else will run right if I am not in a healthy place.  Some nights it looks like border collie, a chihuahua and a black cat all curled around me and a sweet Labrador snoring on the floor beside us.

We can either worry or pray; but we can’t do both.