Saturday Mornings

Do you just love Saturday mornings?

I do.

I love sitting in the near quiet, this morning with a very tired dog at my side and a sleepy husband upstairs.

I love the chance to do what I want with zero time limits.

Let’s talk about time

I grew up in a house where time (the time on a clock) was very important.

With parents who were teachers (music teachers, no less), they had to pay very close attention to the clock all of the time to make sure their students came and went at the appropriate time to get that ‘specials’ time in.

With a brother as a teacher who also coached swimming for several years, we often joke that he pays attention to time to the milisecond, and I round to 15 minute intervals.

In the social service world, most time increments are rounded to the closest 15 minutes.

We know that if it is 7 minutes or less past the hour, it counts at 4:00, but get it to last until 4:08 and you are talking 4:15.

One of my favorite parts of Saturdays in the house where my children grew up in is that we did not pay attention to the clock nearly as much on weekends as we did during the rest of the week.

We ate when we got hungry.

That can be challenging when we are trying to eat together and we have all woken up at different times.

There are several questions about what time each of us has eaten breakfast, and if you do not eat breakfast at all then you want your lunch the earliest of all of us.

During my sons’ teen years, waking them up in time for lunch was a pretty significant challenge, so we frequently either ate without them or convinced them to go pick us up something to eat from one of our favorite restaurants (shout out to Chick Fila and QDoba here)

Now that we are primarily empty nesters, time is even less important. My natural rhythms get me up with the sun, or a little before. I spent my middle school years having practice before school, so I literally wake up ready to play basketball or volleyball (be glad you don’t live with me-I’ll launch right into that conversation we left off with last night as if we are still mid-thought)

For my differently circadium rhythm’ed husband, mornings are not nearly as exciting as they are to me. He loves to sleep until he wake up, which is not necessarily when the sun is coming up, although with the noises in the house (ahem, guilty) it is usually near that time.

Ahhhh….Quiet Time

This morning, I’m having a quiet morning with our Grand-Puppy, Mosby.  He is nearly 1.5 years old, he usually lives with college students so he too likes to sleep in, and he was so grateful when I let him out real quick to go to the bathroom when I came downstairs at 6:45 (after 45 minutes of being awake).

How This Can Apply to You

Here are a couple of questions for today:

What are some simple pleasures you really enjoy? When you think of something that really makes you think ‘wow, that is just something I really enjoy’, what images or sounds comes to mind?

A sound I love is acoustic music. when I imagine Eric Clapton playing on ‘Unplugged’, I can feel myself getting more relaxed.

What is a sound that is help

I love to look at water

How are you able to get those needs met as you also parent, work, relax, talk with friends, and avoid talking with people you would rather not talk to?

What are some ways you can work to increase the amount of time you focus on your simple pleasures? How can you spend a day ignoring the clock and listening to your belly to know it is time to eat, or a day where you are driven by the clock to do things you want to do?