It’s about time to pick up my daughter from nursery, but I’m not going to. In my defence, she’s on an outing, so she’s not there to pick up, but try telling my gut that. I have that dreadful sinking feeling that I’m neglecting something really important. My every fibre knows it’s time to pick her up. I do it every day.
I’ve been getting to grips with habits over the last, well, twenty years. By which I mean I’m trying to be more aware of them, and to control them. Some are very bad, like overeating; some are very good, like showering and dental flossing. Haven’t quite nailed the process of easily eliminating the bad and establishing the good, but I’ve made a habit of the attempt, and so get better every day. Very slowly, but I’ve also learned not to obsess over where I am so long as I’m moving in the right direction.
I established most of my stay-at-home parenting routine by setting multiple daily alerts on my phone. I’d be wondering how in the hell to stop the baby crying when my phone would ding and tell me: “Feed baby.”
My kids are old enough to tell me that themselves now, but I still have nursery and school pick-ups buzzing in my pocket, even though my gut, after all this time, gets there first.