The house is empty and quiet and for the next 60-80 minutes, I can kind of do whatever I want. It’s a jarring and weird feeling, and this is going to be the case, probably indefinitely, during the durations of the school year(s, to come).
Today is the first day of school where I live, and it’s the first day of school where both of my kids are on the same morning schedule, and now go to work with mythical wife who teaches at said school. Prior to this day, both kids went to a preschool that was on a different schedule than mythical wife, or last year, where one was still in Pre-K, while the other began her elementary school journey and I basically had two morning routines, prepping and sending off one kid at time, on different schedules.
But now, they are both going to the same school, on the same morning schedule, and I just have to do one morning routine, and then they’re out the door and it’s like slamming into a wall where it goes from fast-paced, eat, dress, brush, pack, shoes, go, go, go, to suddenly nothing. Calm. Quiet. Still.
And I’m still trying to process what I’m going to do, and how I’m going to try and capitalize on this gift of time that I’m going to get every single school morning, presumably for a very long time.
The thing is, I knew this was coming, and I have been giving it thought to what I was going to do, but it’s one of those things where no matter of thinking, planning or theorizing was going to really compare to how things were going to go once the time finally came, and I’m sitting here on day 1 of forever, doing one of the things I imagined I’d do, which is to try to carve out some time to write, about the myriad of things and topics that I think about writing about, starting with, writing about this brave new world of actually having a little bit of peace and quiet in the mornings now.
It’s a little different from the summer mornings, where I kept my school year alarms all intact, waking up at 5:45 daily regardless of the fact that the kids didn’t have any school to go to. I did it because I didn’t want to fall out of routine and have to deal with the bodily regression of trying to adjust to the school year, but mostly because I liked having the peace and quiet in the early morning while everyone else was still asleep, and could more leisurely have a cup of coffee, knock out a daily Duolingo session, and do some writing before one or both of the kids would eventually awake and tear hell coming downstairs.
And frankly, such a routine is what I was thinking of doing now, except that the kids come first, and then I have that gap between when they go to school and I go to work, where I can do it. I pondered doing some exercise in that time, or even potentially going to the office early where I could hit the gym before I started my work day, but for the time being I’m opting against such. Working out during lunch has been a great way to break up the monotony of work days and frankly I don’t feel that 60-80 minutes is sufficient time for me to get in an adequate workout plus time to shower and refresh.
I also don’t want to even put myself into a position where I could be remotely close to doing any modicum of work outside of work hours and that seems to be the point of writing this all out, so I can write out how I often contemplate the differences between work ethics of the generations of the workforce, but if there’s one thing that the kids of today are better at, is understanding that in so many instances, giving more than what’s necessary rarely pays off, and me rolling into the office 15 minutes earlier isn’t going to make much of a difference in my day-to-day, except that I’m taking 15 minutes away from myself where I could be doing something I want to do instead.
All that being said, coffee, Duolingo and brogging seems to be the obvious and inevitable daily agenda, as I embark on the brave new world of having some morning calm of the kids going to school, together, at least for the next four years.
