This
is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in
their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share,
if you wish, to future generations.
This
is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in
their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share,
if you wish, to future generations. - See more at:
http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf
This
is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in
their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share,
if you wish, to future generations. - See more at:
http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf
The prompt for the week is:
The feeling of home
The Brief:
- Do you have a daily routine?
- Did your parents? Grandparents?
- Why did they (or you ) have this routine?
- Where did this routine take place?
- Structure - Is this important to you? or your family?
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| My mother on her way to work |
My mother thrived on having a routine. She left 2 hours early to get to work as a shift worker at the local bag shop. She worked one week during the day and the next week in the afternoon and evenings. If she was home, we would have dinner at 4:30pm in the afternoon and then watch News and entertainment shows in the early evening.
My father, I could never see a routine. Most of the time on Sundays, when it was his allotted custody time for having me, he would do 1 of 3 things - forget and not show up (and my mother being my mother would have me up and dressed by 8am waiting for him and I wasn't to move from the couch or chair) - would call in mid afternoon saying he wasn't coming - and lastly, he showed up at different times to get me. The last, unfortunately, would happen more when I was younger, but as I was growing up, he did the first two quite often. By the time I was 8-10 years old (I can't exactly remember the age), I had enough and told them I wasn't going to be doing it any longer. If my father wanted to see me, he could call and see if I was busy.
My grandmother, before her death, always took me during the summer. I think this helped my mother out with what to do with me over the long US summer breaks.
As you can see, I never really had a daily routine. If anything my routine was around moving. Every 3 or so years we would moved from one place to another. This continued until I graduated from high school and then it was only because I don't think my mother could figure out where else to move us. Once I moved to Australia, within months, my mother moved once again within the state of NY. I think she was having moving withdrawals. Even today she moves about every 4 or so years and she's in her 70's.
I did try and create a routine as I had always heard of bedtimes, but when I tried to do this, my mother kept asking me why I was going to bed when I did. After about a year I gave up trying.
The only thing that was a given was the time I spent outside. When the street lights came on, I had to be in the house.
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| There are many more but I couldn't find a better picture than this |
If anything, out of our household, the only one that works on a daily routine is the dog, Buddy. He "needs" his breakfast of wet dog food between 6:30-9am. Then when he sees us eat our lunch, he goes in and has his "lunch" by eating his dry dog food. When he sees me in the kitchen in late afternoon or early evening, he knows I'm making dinner and wanders in looking a me and this is his hint for his wet food "dinner". We eat and then when my husband is doing the dishes, Buddy watches him and when he's done he gets his treat for the night. Even when I head towards bed later at night he
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| Our doggies in 2007 Jackie (left) and Buddy (right) |
knows its bedtime and he gets under the covers and cuddles with me. If both of us go out the door, he knows he gets his treat and barks at us and even has stood between us and the front door to make sure he gets his treat. This is every day. If we try to go away from this (as we had this routine because of another dog, Jackie, had diabetes and that was how we controlled giving him his insulin shot) to something even a bit normal like one bit of food a day, and we've tried both morning and night, he jumps all over us, wakes us up, and barks at us until we give him his tiny bits of food.
Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.
