Tag Archives: routine

December 31, 2023 · 8:17 pm

Blueberry Muffins on the Last Day of 2023

This morning everyone was home for breakfast, even Mocha, the newest addition to the family (she is my second son’s dog). As we do almost every Sunday we had blueberry muffins. We also had scramble eggs and bacon, Mocha loves bacon. Even mom fed her a piece.

As we talked about the holiday break, I was struck with the knowledge of what a special moment we were in.  To have our family tradition of blueberry muffins on the last day of a year with everyone at the table. This day may never happen again.

Oh, we will have blueberry muffins next Sunday. We will all be together again, maybe with new additions as my older children build their adult lives. But this morning was unique, special on a number of different levels. 

But isn’t everyday unique? 

Even as we fall back into the routine of work and living, falling for the trap of thinking life is just a routine and each day is the same as the day before. It is not. 

There will never be a day like tomorrow. Yes, it is a Monday. But it is the first Monday of 2024. That will never happen ever again. What will you do with the unique day you have tomorrow?

There are important routines in our lives. Things we should do on a regular basis. These routines build a foundation for us, but each day we are given is new, and 2023 has taught me that it is not guaranteed. We know this… but we don’t actually live like we know it.

So, I challenge you to see each day for what it is… a new day that you have never experienced before. To live life with an appreciation for the routines, yet excitement for the new opportunities that the day brings.

Here is to a wonderful 2024!

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November 8, 2023 · 9:19 am

From Home to School

As many of you have, we have a route we take every day to school in the morning, then follow the route in reverse from school to home. It’s part of the daily routine. It takes about 15 minutes to get to school, 30 minutes round trip. That’s if there is only one trip that day.

Yesterday, I made three trips to school and back. At the moment we only have one car. So, my daughter had morning basketball practice. I dropped her off and returned home to get the rest of the crew for school. At the end of the day we went home, then to my junior high daughter’s game in a nearby town. After her game we returned home, but I had to go out to school to get my other daughter who was making sugar skulls for her Spanish Club.

We finally settled down at home after 8 o’clock last night.

It got me thinking about how many times I have traveled the streets from home to school and back again.

So, being conservative (I did not include summer or holiday breaks or even weekends when I come to my classroom to grade.) I calculated some numbers.

We have lived in our home for about 12 years. My oldest son started junior high around that time. In those 12 years… again conservative numbers.

I have traveled 33,000 miles on just that route.

Adding up the time… 84 days traveling that route! If I started driving back and forth from home to school to home without stopping today, I would drive that route continually until Jan 31, 2024.

It’s been a hard year. Even now my wife’s side of the family is dealing with another tragic moment. Time and the importance of my life have been factors that trouble my soul, but as I thought about this small moment, driving to school, I realized two things.

One: Life happens in the smallest moments. Singing songs, laughing at my bad dad jokes, venting about a bad day, getting a blueberry muffin at the coffee shop as a surprise, all these moments are the moments that weave the fabric of my life. The quality of my day is elevated in this routine. The bonds with my children and my wife are built in these small moments.

Two: There are no throw away moments in life. Our daily life has routines that fill lots of time, usually in small chunks. But it adds up. To be honest, this was something I thought about as I listened to my dad talk about mom at her graveside. How a life is not defined by the big moments. A life is the individual strands of yarn we weave together to make a tapestry of living. If we do it well, others can find warmth and comfort by wrapping it around their shoulders.

Today, we only have two trips to make. I have some new dad jokes to tell during the trip.

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October 15, 2023 · 9:15 pm

This house is not a home

I am not going to talk about all the dots life has been sharing with me about this idea. There have been many, some very deep and challenging. Instead I’m going to jump right to the point of this post, and that means we are jumping into deep waters right away.

Our lives are our homes.

A house is just one of the facets of building a home. It is a central spot where we build our homes. But it is just one of the elements to a strong home, a strong life.

Our routines are central to the quality of our homes. This doesn’t mean our lives are just a series of repeated actions, far from it. Routines that build a sense of safety and love allow us to do wonderful things. 

A major routine I have is to wake every child with Care Bear or unicorn energy. Even if they have the morning blues, I make sure they know a new day has begun, and I am happy to wake them. (My boys still talk about how much they hated my energy in the morning… but with smiles now.)

Another routine we have, as many of you readers know, is Sunday morning blueberry muffins.  We also try to have dinner together every night, even with practices, musical concerts, and games.

Even the simplest routines influence the sense of home during the day. For example, I fill everyone’s water bottle in the morning and make lunches when they don’t like the option at school. Every day.

I could go on, but these routines would happen anywhere, any house, under any circumstance, and they have. They happened when I was jobless. When we lived with the in-laws for six months. We were home.

Another aspect of home is the people we let in the front door. The people we let into our lives. Now, this is a tough element to delve into. If someone came into your home and started breaking your dishes, throwing them on the floor, and ransacking the cupboards…Would you just sit there and let them? Or if they started screaming at your children or taking a hammer to the walls? Would you just sit and smile while you watched them? I don’t think so.

Yet… yet, we allow people to emotionally do this to us. To walk into our lives and destroy us in the name of family or friendship. Our home becomes filled with fear, angst, doubt and negativity. We would defend our dishes, but not our hearts? Our home is influenced by the people we ask into our lives. 

I understand the complexity of relationships, especially when the family is used to justify accepting someone’s actions. But I will protect my home, protect my heart from being thrown on the floor to break.

The final aspect of a home is the decorations, the pictures, the figurines, and the books on the end tables. The stories and memories we create are hung on the walls of our lives. A beautiful home is created by living fully with the people we cherish. 

Yes, big moments, like family vacations. But also the small moments of breakfast at McDs or taking snack walks. The walls of our lives should be filled with stories. Our lives are our homes… and a home is where we should feel free to live.

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July 31, 2023 · 7:25 pm

That’s a Wrap!

Thirty-one blog posts! In a row! 

There were only a few days that I didn’t have a clear idea to write about, but I got rolling once my playlist started and my pen or fingers started writing. 

These monthly challenges have forced me to pay attention to my everyday routine. Sometimes my routine was thrown for a loop at the beginning of the month as I figured out when to complete that month’s challenge. But by doing that, I had to take inventory of how I spend my time. On a deeper level, was I spending time doing things that correlated to what I say is important to me?

For example, you may notice most of my posts are done in the evening. After dinner, after spending the day with family. Yes, I have my coffee next to me as I write. What you don’t know is that I took my walk earlier. Today we spent the afternoon buying school supplies. I had a doctor appointment this morning. Recorded the next episode of The Creative Moment with my son. 

I spent my day as a dad and husband. That’s important to me. 

As life often does, this idea of living life as close to one’s central beliefs has been a part of different conversations with different people over the last couple of days. My best friend’s new job allows him to travel but mostly work from home. My dad is dealing with the tough decision of what to do next in life. My daughter can’t wait for college to start, to finally start focusing her time chasing her dream of being a film director.

I don’t know if I will keep my streak alive of blogging everyday, but if you check the Archive menu, you will see I have been blogging for a long time. So, that won’t stop anytime soon. But I have some other aspects of life I have been wrestling with. How can I live out in my daily routine the things that are important to me? That’s a topic for another blog post.

What I do know, from doing these challenges, is that living is an active endeavor. You have to have an open heart, be cognitive of your actions, and step into your day – even if it is a routine part of the day. We all are given a life, we are responsible for how we live it.

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July 2, 2023 · 11:40 am

Blueberry Muffins and Twitter Spaces

For my regular readers, you know the importance of the tradition of making blueberry muffins this morning. We had bacon and scrambled eggs, as is the norm now. We had left over tortillas so I made a breakfast burrito. So, good!

I had to miss a Twitter Space started by one of the members of the writing group I am a part of on Twitter because of breakfast.

Why did I mention that? Because this post is about the power of traditions or routines, both in the real world and the digital world.

Again, if you read my blog on even a semi-regular basis, you know about our family tradition on Sunday morning. How important it is for us to spend time together. My second son who lives in town usually still makes it to Sunday breakfast. It keeps our family bond strong.

The writing group I belong to has a routine of starting spaces, especially in the mornings. In fact many times they are in a space before I have even had a cup of coffee. During the school year, I find time to stop in to listen or chat before the school day starts but not on a consistent basis. 

Honestly, their morning routine is no different than my father-in-law meeting with his buddies to drink coffee at the local McDs. It’s just in digital form.

Recently, a handful of the group has been able to meet in real life. They have traveled to see each other, went to open mics, or had ice cream together. I am a little jealous and feel a little bit like an outsider in the group. Not because of anything the group has done, but I share my feelings to reinforce the power of routines or traditions.

Almost every morning the group starts a space. In fact, if a member needs to talk they will start a space at any time and people will join to talk with that person. They have a routine in the morning that connects them. That has built such strong friendships that they are connecting in real life. Relationships are strengthened by shared experiences, shared routines, shared traditions.

It doesn’t matter if it is in real life or in a digital space. It doesn’t have to be every day. My best friend and I have a tradition of making CDs or playlists of our top 20 songs… that year, the last decade, or even of all time. Just depends on when we decide to make the list. (Yes, we will make CD mixes and mail them to each other.)

Traditions or routines are one of the elements to the quality of our lives. Whether it is a personal routine, for me taking a walk each day (lots of writing ideas come to me), or a Twitter Space every morning that allows the members to build friendships by sharing successes or hardships. These purposeful moments bring us joy, help us through tough days, and create meaning to our everyday life.

If life seems shallow or lacking in connections, I challenge you to evaluate your routines. What traditions do you wish you had? What connections do you want to make? There just might be a Twitter Space dedicated to that…

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September 24, 2020 · 9:01 am

I took out the trash today.

I took out the trash today.

I filled my daughters’ water bottles. I made one lunch. I started the dishwasher. I had my one cup of coffee. My morning routine is predictable. There are activities I do every morning, like spend a few minutes in meditation. Other activities happen as needed, like making lunches for my daughters.

Today, I took out the trash.

Let me back up to the start of the day. My alarm went off at 4:50. Groggy, I put my feet on the floor. I was already dreading the day. The health department set their COVID dial to Orange. The school routine would be amped up. Cleaning every period. More temperature checks. No visitors to the school. Let alone, the daily battle of wearing a mask. That’s all I will say about that situation.

A bad mood was brewing before I even started my coffee maker.

And it just got worse. Especially, when I had to fight the trash container to get the bag out. We have a cylinder trash can that creates a vacuum when the trash bag is too full. Fun times.

I wake my daughters at 5:55. Get them breakfast. We are usually ready to head to school at 6:30. This morning, we were actually a few minutes ahead of schedule. My mood was darkening, that’s when I took out the trash.

The clip above is from the movie Peaceful Warrior, which is based on the book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior.

I waited for the garage door to open so that I could put my bags in the truck of the minivan. After setting the bags in, I stepped out on to our driveway and took in the stars. I heard a side door open so I turned to see my second daughter waiting for the door to stop moving. I asked her to come see the stars, especially the constellation, Orion.

There we stood, father and daughter under a morning sky that was filled with wonder. I pointed out Mars and how it had a reddish shine. We found Venus, too. We circled looking at the different constellations. We heard the rest of the family getting situated into the van, but we stood there a few more seconds.

“Pretty cool, huh?” I said.

“Yeah, the stars are beautiful,” she said.

We smiled at each other, then got into the van to start the day.

My daughter helped me take out the trash today.

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September 30, 2011 · 8:39 am

Turning 40 “Life”

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This morning was a reminder of one of the aspects of life I’ve learned.  It started as one of those mornings. Trash and recycling need to be put out on the curb. Lunches needed to be made.  Diapers to daycare.  Movies to return. My oldest son overslept.  My youngest daughter didn’t want to be put down. It was time for me to start my commute and I was nowhere close to pouring my coffee into my travel mug.

I multi-task, carrying the last of the recycling, diapers under on arm, movies clutched in a few fingers to put in my wife’s car.  Both garage doors opening is an appropriate sound track to the morning, arrrrgrarrrarrr, clunk-clunk.

It is about 6:20 in the morning, dark, and my breath can be seen as the cold tickles my forearms.  It takes three trips to get the trash and recycling to the curb. The constellation Orion is above the southern horizon.  Mars is shining bright toward the east.  Beautiful. I take a few minutes to star gaze (I don’t know why, but stargazing is special for me).

In those few minutes the stars reminded me that life is beautiful.  No matter what is going on in life, “nothing dims these stars.”  I know that life can be hard. I know even in good times there can be a grimy feeling to life. Diamonds can collect filth on them.  But the shine is still there; the diamond will sparkle (like a star) with a little cleaning.

Minutes later as I was getting into my car, my sons came out to get into the minivan.  “Did you guys see the stars?” I asked.  We go out to the drive way and we stargaze together for a minute.  For a moment life hits me, in a single moment I feel the beauty of life so true that it almost crushes my heart.  There I stood with my two sons, in front of our new home, on the driveway that we play basketball.  Life can be hard. I know this. There is pain and disappointment, tragedy that can also crush a heart.

It takes work, it takes time, but no matter how filthy a diamond becomes, it still has its shine. “Nothing dims these stars.”

“Dad, there is a new Clone Wars on tonight!” Both boys head to the minivan chatting excitedly about the show tonight. I smile. Everyone has their own set of stars.  What allows you to know that life is beautiful?

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