What are your daily habits?

So many are dog-related. Ok some are dog-related.

There are snack breaks splattered throughout the day, and they know when they are due. Often, there is a campaign that starts about thirty minutes before the allotted time. 

10:30 am is a little chewy stick thing, and I can look up from whatever I am doing to find two sets of pleading eyes reminding me that they are starving and might not last another thirty minutes and maybe we could have them now. If you loved us, really loved us.

I have explained many times that if I were to do that, tomorrow the snack pleading would start yet another thirty minutes early, and by the end of a week, all snacks would be consumed right after breakfast, and then where would we be? In a very happy place seems to be the agreed response.

So we retain control and hold out until the precise agreed time. Same with dinner time, same with that little smackerel we have just before bed. Little crunchy biscuits to make sure there are no rumbly tummies during the night. We have paws, Dad, we can’t make a sandwich if we get hungry in the night. 

My own habits are quite normal. Smearing myself with yoghurt every morning, whether I need to or not. Eating cold porridge for breakfast. Dancing naked around a maypole erected in the middle of the lawn. 

Not true. Just an attempt to make anything I do admit to seem quite normal and pedestrian by comparison. 

Thing is, as you get older, you temper and control your bad habits. A realisation that you can’t go on like this or that you have become out of step with society. When I was the last man standing outside on a winter’s day sucking on a cigarette, it was time to stop, and I swapped them out for a vape. I don’t vape anywhere near as much as I smoked, but it is in my pocket. I use it daily. I use it regularly throughout the day. 

I drink coffee, no, more than that. I spent a few years in Holland and they really don’t mess about with coffee. It is where I learnt to drink it black and strong with no sugar. A few years ago I put a self-imposed limit on myself and now don’t drink it after midday. I allow myself a cup of tea around 3pm. Because I am British and it is my birthright.

Teeth brushing and showering are daily habits. They are basic hygiene, surely? There are little things, always applying lip balm, fiddling with rings, rubbing the tummy of a dog, reading the newspaper, the usual things.

I write every day. I try to. Strictly speaking, I throw away things I write every day. Delete rather than throw away. Well, it goes in the trash. Sometimes I keep phrases or paragraphs if I think they are worth something. Stealing from myself. 

I kiss and cuddle my wife and dogs, not always in that order. I am not sure any of them would like to be referred to as a daily habit. I think it fair to say that both are habit-forming.

Most of my daily habits are either essential, or pleasurable, or just happen. They may not be noble, but they’re mine and – they fit.