Daylights Savings Time and Wardrobe Malfunctions

When it comes to working from home, I have a couple rules. They have nothing to do with goals or time management. In fact, they’re so simple, they sound kind of silly.

Rule# 1: Get up at a decent hour every day. Preferably, the same decent hour every day. Coincidently, following this rule is dependent on me going to bed at a reasonable hour each night as well.

Rule # 2: Put some pants on.

As you might have guessed, lately I have not been following either rule with any great success. Something about our internet outage, which continues to drag on -- I’m currently using an archaic dial-up connection . . . Internet forever! -- leaves me feeling out of touch and slightly picked on. With the barrier of not having ready access to the internet making it difficult to communicate and research, I see no real need to spring out of bed each morning: might as well let the day unfold organically until we’re back at full capacity.

And then there’s the other fact: it is so very dark in the mornings. Andy leaves the house before 7 each morning and has taken to building a fire before he goes. As the fire crackles in the stove and the little house shakes off its nightly chill, it’s hard not burrow under the covers and fall into a final, especially cozy, slumber before starting the day. Perhaps when we shed daylight savings time this weekend, I’ll be able to pull myself out of bed at a decent hour (aka, anytime before 8), but during our current run of dark mornings and grey days, sleeping in seems inevitable.

Each morning, after I’ve broken rule #1, I proceed to break rule #2. While rule #1 exists because I firmly believe a good start to the day will buoy you through anything else the day throws at you, rule #2 exists because I’m also a firm believer that what you wear each day influences your reactions to the world around you. Regardless of what I accomplish while wearing a bathrobe, the fact that I was wearing a bathrobe while I did it kind of makes me feel like an under-employed ninny. I try to sit down in front of the computer every day, fully clothed in something I’d go out in public in. But lately I’ve taken to wearing my roomiest jeans and an old bleach-stained sweatshirt or ancient Polarfleece pullover. Not exactly the outfit of champions.

There are a couple reasons for my slovenly wear as of late. Since our firewood delivery last month, I spend about an hour every afternoon stacking wood, a filthy chore. I see no reason to get dressed twice in one day (let’s just be happy I managed to pull it off once, okay?) so I’ve gravitated towards my work grubs. That also might have a little something to do with the fact I can only seem to find work grubs in my wardrobe.

I’ve never been someone with an overabundance of clothes. I wear things until they’re shot. In college, my roommates used to throw my hole-y socks away because they knew I’d keep wearing the socks until they literally disintegrated. Because I’ve stayed the same size since hitting puberty (albeit, with a slight thickening in the thighs and upper arms in recent years) much of my clothing is a good decade old.

Right now all of my mildly fashionable jeans are all sporting a rip at the tippy-top of the right back pocket. (Maybe go up a size next time, eh?)

My eight-year-old belt finally frayed into uselessness a couple days back. All my socks have holes in the heels. When most people say they have nothing to wear, they’re usually being dramatic.

When I say I have nothing to wear, it’s because it’s the truth.

Who knew two little rules could be so tricky to keep? However, I’m determined to get back on track. After all, a well-rested slob is only good company for so long.

Do you have any tricks for getting going each morning? Any rules you live by?

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Bears, Berries, and Busy-ness

After a couple weeks of unseasonably warm weather in May, things took a turn for the chilly this June. A turn for the chilly and rainy. Considering the high fire danger we all worried ourselves sick about in May, we’re not about to wish away our current lot of somewhat gloomy weather. Still it can make things a little uncomfortable when you work in a stone building --I always wanted to know what it would be like to live in a castle! --and you try to walk to work everyday.

On Tuesday, I walked to work. About 1 in the afternoon, the rain started to really come down. I figured I’d wait it out: I had plenty of work to keep me busy before I had to make the 25 minute walk home. About 4 in the afternoon, I was wrapping the day’s projects. Outside, the rain still came down: cats and dogs. So I called Andy when he got home from work and had him pick me up.

Yesterday, a bit of drizzle fell down, but not so much rain to deter me walking home. So I was a little confused when Andy drove up as I was starting out towards home.

“Did want you to have to walk past the bear,” he said.

Just down the road, a bear had gotten in some garbage or bird feeder on a neighbor’s porch and the rest of the neighbors were scrambling to get their garbage tucked away before the bear could make a mess of it. This morning, when Andy drove to work, he say two full grown bears were on the same neighbor’s porch. I have yet to lay eyes on the bears, but other neighbors say there’s a cub in the area as well.

You’d think the bears would be forsaking their garbage smorgasbord for the berries that are starting to ripen in the woods. I’ve been meaning to head out with a little cup to gather some of the strawberries that peeping their red faces out from foliage along the roadside. But things like installing the gift shop at work have taken precedent.

As we get closer and closer the museum grand opening, an increasing sense of urgency has infused everything. But there’s something satisfying about getting everything in order, even if installing a gift shop means a lot of data entry and learning a new computer system. (Yesterday Andy and I had so much fun playing around with the museum’s point of sale system in practice mode that I fear he’ll eventually talk me into the small business owner’s life that I am so steadfastly against) Today, we got about halfway through pricing and entering the items, tomorrow I will get some work done by myself, and on Sunday we will make the final push to get everything in order.

It’s times like this when days off just are opportunities to get other work done when you most appreciate a cup of herbal tea (is it bad that I now paw manically through the tea selection looking for the tea labeled “meditative time”?) and a good book. I’ve about 2/3s of the way through Olive Kitterage and really enjoying it, although my mother warns me it “doesn’t all come together like you think it should.”

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Night Owls vs. Early Birds

We’ve all heard that opposite attract. I always thought that statement meant extreme opposites. And if we’re talking extremes, Andy and I aren’t very opposite. We’re the same age, grew up in the same town, were in the same second grade class, and worked the same job one summer. And we both grew up eating tofu. How much more similar could it get?

But after a while, you realize that any relationship is made up of little opposing views and practices. Andy likes to have MPR, music, and maybe a movie all playing at the same time. He’s not too picky about what he eats or where stuff gets left around the cabin. I have a fairly low clutter tolerance for both noise and physical stuff. Andy seems to thrive in the very chaos I detest.

Over time, I’ve learned that a day is ruined by letting the dishes stack up or letting the dishes stack up. Of course, some differences we have yet to reconcile, like my unbridled hatred for Prairie Home Companion or Andy’s need to open a new jar of salsa every time he has tortilla chips.

Yet, by far the hardest difference we deal with every day is the fact that Andy wakes up feeling like this:

While I roll out of bed, looking like this:

By the time evening rolls around, I’m feeling much better:

But Andy’s fading fast:

I have read so many accounts from successful writers who get up at 4 or 5 in the morning so they can get a few hours of writing in before they head off to their day job or other obligations. I have tried to be the early bird writer and I’ve had some success with it, but I need so much coffee to get my eyes to focus at 5:30 am that it doesn’t seem worth the expense in coffee beans. So I take heart that Peter Bowerman say in his book The Well-Fed Writer that a big part of why he’s a freelance writer is so he can start his day at 10 in the morning. I’m not fond of sleeping entire mornings away and I like to get up and at ‘em at a decent hour. I generally have pretty productive mornings, but it’s the end of the day when I’m the most functional.

So when I’m getting my last punch of energy, Andy’s thinking it’s high time to turn in for the night. At an earlier stage in our relationship, it seemed as though our sleep schedules should be compatible. Now it seems silly for us to get up and go to bed at the same times. If one of us is awful in the mornings and the other is cranky and ineffectual in the evening, why would we choose to spend those precious moments together?

Now sometimes when Andy goes to bed, I stay up to read or get some knitting done. I like bringing the day to a quiet close after all the necessary tasks are completed. In the morning, Andy does his internet surfing and coffee making without me complaining (much) about the dirty dishes. Sometimes even the most compatible opposites need to beat to their own drummer.

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