There've been a lot of requests for more informal and personal content, so this is Installment I of my diabolical plan to get us to talk to each other more than once per week!
This question is easy, breezy, beautiful (Covergirl). Recently, I've been giving my sister shit for eating an orange in the shower every morning. What's something you do while you're still waking up that's weird, unique, or tough to explain?
I'm going to leave my answer to this post as a comment, because pretty much everyone who knows my morning routine thinks I'm a fucking psychopath and I want to create room for reactions of horror, shame, violence, etc.
So, I shower poorly. I'm not exaggerating: I spend probably 45 minutes - 1 hour in the shower every morning. I also turn the lights off when I shower...And sometimes I sit down. In the shower. If I need to get to work at 8:00 and my commute is 15 minutes, I'll wake up at 6:00 just so I have time for this process. If you were to share a house with me, you'd probably think that someone accidentally left the shower on overnight because none of the lights are on and it's been running for like thirty minutes - Nah, just me. Sitting, thinking, drinking coffee! First, I can't help it - Literally the act of stepping into a shower relaxes me so much that I completely forget any hurry I was in and will end up zoning out for probably 15 minutes. Second, this is terrible for my skin! Third, it's turned into a daily meditative time for me, which is really the one upside to this whole practice! I feel like I'm constantly being told to practice mindfulness, but my weird ablutions pretty much guarantee that I've got at least 30 good minutes of unguided, uninterrupted thought before I get started on any given day. I should probably just move to a Scandinavian country and invest in a sauna. At least then it'd be socially acceptable! (P.S. I obviously don't pay utilities, and I'm pretty sure my last landlord hated me for my water bill)
Speaking as a fan of hydrotherapy, you should probably figure out a way to get your meditative time without using that much water. There will come a time where you have to pay for it. Your bathtub probably holds 80 gallons. With you in it, it's probably 40 gallons. Your shower flows 2.5 gallons per minute; half an hour's worth of showering is like taking two baths, or 285 liters of water. An hour's worth of showering eclipses this entire graphic: I say this as someone who takes up to three showers a day this time of year: for sure 1 after biking 16 miles to work in 100 degree heat, for sure another after biking 16 miles home in 80 degree heat, and if I have to do any bike maintenance before going to work, 1 before I leave. And I say this as a massive proponent of Russian spas who has an appointment in a sensory deprivation tank in three hours. But I also say this as a fellow traveler in a world that is running out of water. I read The Hunt for Red October when I was in 6th grade or so. It exposed me to the concept of "Navy showers" - where you get wet, turn off the water, soap up, turn on the water and get out. I did that for years. And while I can definitely appreciate sitting there with the water blasting you in the back of the neck (and while I can say with no hesitation that without cold water blasting my head every day I'd have long since died of heat stroke), it's a sensation you can find elsewhere.
That onsen article was a nice read. Honestly, if I could do that every day I'd be in heaven. You have some good points - I'm not likely to get much better about long showers, but I'm thinking it might be time to set an alarm or limit myself somehow. There are other things I can do in the morning to get that same meditative experience (like zebra2's coffee routine) I'm wondering if it's easier to not feel guilty about long showers because I'm living over the Ogallala Aquifer , and virtually all of the water-use in my state is for agriculture. You're in LA, right? I can see why you might be more cognizant of water usage! The ogie aquifer isn't going to be around forever at its current rates of depletion. I should be doing my part to make it last. Thanks for the reminder, klein :)
I wonder someone makes a shower head with a very low flow mist setting - just enough of a mist to keep the shower steamy. Quick googling doesn't turn up what I was thinking of though. And the whole room might need to be mopped if mist was running that long...
I've literally never seen a steam shower before, they seem like a godsend ...I think I might just buy one of these and embrace the ablution black-market
Shower panels are kinda weird. They started with the Kohler Bodyspa, which was an expensive and custom install because it's effectively a jacuzzi tub deconstructed and splayed out in a shower enclosure so that it sprays on you rather than recirculating the water. Most people didn't want to bother with that but they'd seen something like it in a magazine so the Chinese jumped the fuck on it. To get a real effect you need more water pressure than your shower or tub has. This is what the loud grinding pumps of excess maintenance are about. If you just want a shower head that kinda sprays in all sorts of directions depending on which knobs you twist, they're cheaper if you deal with them direct. Either way, it's worth a visit to a plumbing store so that you can see that the $500-$900 ones are kinda cheaper than you'd expect something that expensive to be, but that the $20,000 versions are insanely overpriced by any reasonable metric.
"The study found that if farmers and other users could cut the amount of groundwater pumping by 20 percent immediately — that is, the cuts that farmers in the northwest have proposed — that could extend the life of the aquifer significantly. Farming wouldn't have to peak until the 2070s, and it would fall more gently thereafter." You live in the middle of what was called the Great American Desert prior to marketers at the railroads encouraging colonization and farming in order to exterminate the Comanche by denying them rangeland. The Ogallala is basically the Aral Sea except it's underground; it's being drained just as quickly. Things are going to change radically and in your lifetime.
Not at all, man. Americans suck about thinking about water. I want you to find a routine that won't have to change when all of a sudden, decades too late, public opinion forces us all to swab off with reusable baby wipes. Again, I'm with you on the showers. Just pointing out that from an environmental standpoint you're probably less than a decade away from being considered a coal roller by the more strident corners of the world. Showers are big money. Most every marquee manufacturer has some form of high-flow shower that relies heavily on a recycle tank. There are solutions to this and if you pick onw rather than being forced into one you'll have a better experience. I will also point out that this is like the third time in a month I've had to reassure you that you're not being picked on.
Yeah, I'm planning on cutting back on showers. Gonna try and find something to replace that habit; I value the meditative time in the morning, but I gotta find a more responsible way to get into that mindset. Re: Me feeling like I'm getting picked on...I think our baseline form of communication is different, and that's why I'm left feeling that way. When I'm trying to prove a point, I write stuff like your last comment because I'm not a super aggressive person and that's about all I can muster - simple statements of fact to drive my point home. I dunno man. This is an issue with me, sorry for constantly dragging you into it. I'm probably gonna get a tattoo on my mouse-hand that says "kleinbl00 isn't being mean, you're just being sensitive".
I'm probably gonna get a tattoo on my mouse-hand that says "kleinbl00 isn't being mean, you're just being sensitive".
What do they mean by visible tattoos? From what I understand, you have to be naked so any tattoo is pretty much visible then. They only "not visible" tattoo I can think of are if you have one inside your mouth? I'm just being picky, I think it's just a clumsy way of saying no tattoos.Note: if you have visible tattoos, you should not use an onsen. This is a pretty strict etiquette, so don’t try it on or you are likely to create offence.
I've known any number of people with tattoos inside their lips (both kinds of lips), ass-cracks, behind the ear, you name it. Tattoos have a criminal history in Japan and considering the place is basically a showcase for tradition, onsen can be the site of culture-clash.
I used to take really long showers as well. I started taking showers before I go to bed and they got much shorter. I think part of the reason I cut them short was roommates. I sympathize with your pleasure but it's not something I indulge in anymore. If it makes you happy, don't feel guilty about it. We all need pleasure to make the pain of life bearable.
I don’t know that anything about my routine constitutes weird, really. I’m curious to know what everyone’s morning meditative ceremony is. Reading the newspaper, or showering for an ungodly amount of time, etc. For me it’s the coffee. I make a chemex pour over most mornings. It’s a bit more labor-demanding than other ways to get the coffee fix but that’s part of the point.
I'm curious if anyone else does nothing meditative in the morning. Getting ready for bed is a ritual for wrapping up the day, but mornings are reflexive.
I totally get the coffee ceremony. I work somewhere with good coffee in-office now so I haven't done it recently, but that was always a huge part of my mornings in college! Wake up. Grind beans. Select filter. Boil water. Pour. Spend a few minutes watching it brew, on my phone, staring at a wall, thinking about exams...Then, pour a cup and get on with my day. There's something about that quiet sequence of events that always felt sacred to me! I'm glad someone else gets it :)
Yes, that's the routine! I have an office now so I can actually do all this stuff at work when I first get in and am in that not-quite-ready to hit it mode, while checking emails and stuff. The whole habit started in grad school when a labmate brought in his chemex and another would roast his own beans and bring those. We'd sit out in the hall to make it because you can't do that in a lab, but it was a great morning ritual. Now indispensable for me is a good thermos to keep it drinkable for a while.
First comment! Hmm, I wake up at 7-ish and by then my cat is on the bed with the sun hitting the his spot at just the right angle. Every morning I find it irresistible not to give him a 20 min photoshoot and spend another 15 mins editing his photos in bed. My photo gallery is just photos of my cat!
I try to get in the car by 6:50 AM, so I can turn on the radio to the local rock station (KISW 99.9) and listen to their "Beat Migs" trivia quiz. (The show's Producer, Steve Migs, goes out of the room and is isolated. The caller on the phone answers as many trivia questions as he can in one minute, as delivered by The Reverend En Fuego. Then Migs comes back in the room, and does the same. If the caller wins, they get tickets to a concert. Simple dopey fun.) My schedule is entirely my own. I can work whenever I want from wherever I want. So, without some sort of routine first thing in the morning, it can be hard to get started. Somehow, getting out to the car in time to hear this 5-minute radio bit has become A Thing I Need To Do Every Morning. Of course, sometimes I ride the motorcycle and miss the entire thing anyway. But when I don't ride, my morning schedule is entirely focused on getting into the car by 6:50 AM.
The weirdest thing about my morning routine is I have no morning routine. Four or five months out of the year I either need to be at work at 5pm, 11am, 8am or 7am or some other random time because weirdness. And as there's a massive bike ride before that, I give myself two hours to get up, pack two changes of clothing, prep 84oz of icewater, eat two salt pills and get on the road. If my morning is an early morning I'm out the door within 15 minutes of waking up and then I burn 1200 calories. Then I get to work, take a shower, start work, start the coffee, generally grab a breakfast burrito and about a quarter of a pineapple and then settle in for a couple hours. I Facetime my family and turn on the Helicopter Channel, which is a live feed from one of our news copters that streams uninterrupted on the cable plant. Literally 90 minutes of "what's newsworthy" or "what looks cool" according to an airborne reporter and his support crew. I read the news, deal with bills and stuff, and exult in it. If my morning is not an early morning I either get up in time to have a little coffee before beginning the blitz or having a little coffee and dealing with stuff until it's time to leave at 3. Or, like this morning, I naturally woke up at 7, a mere 4 hours after getting to bed (a 16-mile bike ride at midnight will keep you up a bit), to FaceTime my family. If it's the other 7 months there's a bit more of a routine - there's a 6-year-old who will be up at 7 but even that's changing because she's starting to read in her room or do art in the living room. Either way, maybe my wife goes running, maybe it's eggs, maybe it's oatmeal, but gotta get the kid out the door which is usually my wife but not if she's been off since 2am delivering a baby. And that hasn't been routine either because for the past year I've been getting up at 5am and pouring the overnight coffee into a thermos and driving 16 miles to class which goes until 11 at which point I eat a wrap in the car to get to the other class which goes until 4 at which point I drive north to pick up the kid. The only real constant is I check this site.
Not a morning person at all. Work days I snooze until I'm almost late, then shower, brush teeth, wash face, dress, and I'm out the door in ~20 minutes. Make coffee or tea once I'm at work. Weekends I sleep a bit later, get up, sit on the couch a while, make coffee, drink it slowly, and I'm ready to start the day by lunchtime. I quit eating breakfast years ago because I never had time, now if I eat a meal within three hours of waking up I get queasy.
I haven't eaten breakfast regularly since I was 14, and I totally agree with you. Breakfast food is so inclined towards unappealing levels of sugary, greasy, or bland...and who wants to eat first thing in the morning anyway? It'll make me feel full, which will make me feel lethargic, which is going to make it even harder to do whatever I need to do that day Fuck breakfast, I'll choose a big lunch any day of the week
I used to have a routine of waking up like an hour before I needed to be up and laying in bed and watching an episode of a tv series. It was a pretty nice way to start the day, but now I have the habit of (if I have to wake up early) getting up like 15 minutes before I leave the house and snoozing for half an hour. Less nice.
I have my morning routine pretty well locked in. Wake up, get clothed, breakfast, brush teeth, bathroom, grab stuff and leave. The only thing that might be weird is that I have optimized for duration. My train departs every half hour. I know if I rush I could be on the platform in 9.5 minutes, but to not rush and leave some buffer (the traffic lights may all conspire against me, after all) I always depart 15 minutes before my train does. I know that I can technically do my morning routine in 18 minutes, but that means rushing all the way. I also know that if I take more than 30 minutes I'll be too much of a slowpoke and either have some minutes to spare doing nothing, or will take my merry time eating breakfast and have to rush everything else. So I've optimized my morning routine such that my alarm goes off at T-40 and must leave the house at T-15. As soon as I step out of bed, I rely on my autopilot to go through the motions, and I usually start feeling awake when I go outside.
Nothing strange at all if keeping a strict schedule isn't weird. The alarm goes off at 5:22, I get out of bed immediately, grab an outfit and go down stairs. I feed the cats. I go outside and smoke a cigarette while I check the weather and news. I go back inside and attend to my bathroom needs and grooming. I get dressed. If I have food prepared I grab it. If I'm reading a book or need my laptop I scoop it into my bag. I leave the house at 5:45. I get to the shop 7 min later, grind and brew coffee, put the till in the drawer and turn on the open sign. I fill the bakery case and the bagel jars. After I've been open for about 45 min to an hour I'll have a cup of coffee.
Mine is fairly normal, but if I'm in a hurry I'll bring my apple to the car with me and eat the whole thing, core and all.