Morning means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To me, it's always meant, the beginning 
of things, the time to move from one state of being to the next, the time to slowly open your eyes, curl up in 
blankets, center yourself for the day. It really is, essentially, the reverse of falling asleep. Just take the 
nighttime and play it on rewind, there you have the morning -- things get brighter, you gain energy instead of 
losing it, you sloqly move into that place in yourself where you feel comfortable and everything seems to come 
together.

This morning sounds beautiful. There are birds outside the window. The street is quiet. My husband struggles 
with sleep -- he stayed up entirely too late last night, and now he's exhausted, but we have painting to do 
this morning, which means that we have to get up, to start moving. My only aggravation about this is that I had 
the impression we had plenty of time, which meant I could luxuriously sip my coffee, write in my journal, let 
the morning come in slowly the way that makes me happy and comfortable and feel at peace. But, apparently, we 
have things to do, so now, despite his exhaustion, he's waking up, getting things done, and I think expecting 
me to get things done, too. So much for the slow road to consciousness. I guess that's what being a grown-up is 
all about.

I need to figure out what my routine is and stick to it. It's difficult -- I spent nearly two months in the 
throes of a job where I was busy nonstop, so that the small little moments of time and peace I found were 
precious and I held onto them for all they were worth. Now, I have my time back, and I'm completely confused as 
to what to do with it, now. Sure, I have all of these projects and creations and things I want to get done, but 
how exactly do I go about doing that? It's a really good question, and one I feel pretty ill-equipped to 
answer.

So, what do I want my days to look like? I was pretty happy with the routine I'd built after Christmas, so I'm 
thinking I'll go back to that. The major crux was that I would spend time -- a big hunk of time, like an hour 
or more each morening -- writing, and the big crux to that was that I spent part of that time working on my 
Charlotte book, which meant I wasn't just journaling and wanking around in my creative space just to get the 
juices flowing -- I was actually working on a finished product, I was working towards completion of a book I'd 
started years ago. 

So, we'll say -- mornings are for writing, and we'll leave it at that.

Now, what else? Fitness wise, I still have this half marathon I need to prepare for. I'm not looking forward to 
it at all -- I think I've hit the ceiling where I'm getting burned out on running. I think 6 miles as a goal is 
pretty much my limit on what I'm willing to do to my body before I start to get pissed off about it. We have to 
run 8 miles tomorrow and I am NOT looking forward to it at all. I think anything past six miles starts feeling 
to me like a waste of time, like there are so many other things I need to be doing -- not to mention it hurts 
and it's hard and I just want to whine about it all of the time. Still, up until April 7th, I need to pick two 
nights out of the week to run, and then prepare for the one long run on the weekend. I'm thinking Tuesdays and 
Thursdays would be good for the run, or Wednesdays and Fridays, depending on whether our run is scheduled for 
Saturday or Sunday I guess. Maybe I should just try to find a little time to run in the evenings every day, 
knowing that a lot of the times I won't be able to do it. Then I need to get back into doing the lunchtime 
fitness classes at work again, because they are fun and free and I really enjoy them. After the marathon, I 
think if I can run three times a week, walk or hike at least once a week, and do those classes at work, I 
should be in good shape.

So, writing and fitness down -- what else? Time with family -- that's such an organic piece to the puzzle. It 
happens or it doesn't, especially given Aisling and her moods and changing behavior. I pretty much just have to 
wing that piece of it, and try to find time with them every day. Exercising with Aisling definitely helps. 
We'll keep working on that.

So, what about in the evenings, after A. goes to bed? I believe before I oscillated between reading and 
spending time watching things with THomas. That seems to work well -- that allows us to have some time to spend 
together and also allows him to spend some time during the week playing video games with his friends while I 
read stuff. With the audiobook, I think I can try to do chores while I listen to the book and that helps, too. 
It's hard for me just to sit and bed and listen to the audiobook. It makes me sleepy and I don't retain much.

So, there's my skeleton of a routine: Writing, work, exercise, time with family, time with Thomas and/or 
reading. Sounds like a plan to me.