My get-home ritual has become rote at this point, with six months of repetition to drill it into my head. Drop all bags by the door. Peel off all uncomfortably sweaty, dusty, straw encrusted (and other stuff encrusted) clothing - some may make it into the laundry hamper and some may not. Jump into shower and take the quickest wash in all of history. Jump out, hair still soaking wet, and spend the next two to three hours reading, writing, and generally dripping water everywhere. No interruptions, no phone calls, no television, no distractions. Occasionally I'll venture out, scavenge for some food, check the mail, and drop off recycling and then it's a quick retreat back. My home is my sanctuary, is my fortress of solitude, is my tall, tall tower with no entrance, is my cave hidden away in the mountains.
By luck of the draw (or the gods' intervention), my apartment has the WORST cell phone reception known to man. Even worse than the dorm room my freshman year when T-Mobile hadn't yet glommed onto every cell phone tower in the Austin area. I get two bars of service, if I'm lucky but it's usually the dreaded "E" signal. We may chat for five minutes before the call is dropped. It's a convenient excuse to have for not talking long, particularly when I'm in my zone. This is my decompression time and trust me, you do not want to see what happens when all of that pressure builds up with nowhere to go. America may have an ice cream shortage at that point in time.
In other news, I'm never moving, not ever. What about you, what's your get-home ritual?
My get-home ritual is pretty much the same minus the shower:D But yeah....seriously....my dream is to live in Bag End and just knit as soon as I get home.
ReplyDeleteWow your ritual sounds amazing! Cleansing and then growing intellectually with writing, reading, etc. It's probably a great think your cell doesn't work too great in your room...I'm sure you get so much more work done:)
ReplyDeletexo Olivia
When I get home I immediately want to wear some comfy clothes. Then I need a cup of tea, play with the pets, read, write etc. Well actually, the first thing I do is to feed the pets. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I get home: food! And tea and tv :')
ReplyDeleteI've seen this house on this deserted island
before! Xx
It's different when you have a kid. Yesterday, 99+ degrees, post class, post shop, post doc, it was walk in the door to my son who'd been alone all day: constant stream of questions ranging from "Did you know that in Kennesaw, GA they enacted a law that you had to carry a gun?" to "When's dinner?" to "Where are the faucets?" All within my first 3 minutes of arrival. So yeah, a ritual sounds nice.
ReplyDeleteOMG, this is me. Lol. Kind of. I run into the shower as soon as I get home! I have to, otherwise I just feel gross. After I make and eat dinner, it's usually a toss-up between reading, blogging, chatting on the phone (rare) or watching Netflix. Bob gets home late, so I usually have all that time to myself and I cherish it!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm not a big phone-talker, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have good service in my home. I'm big on texting!
unwinding with a nice shower and being on top of soft sheets, blankets and pillows is a great way to decompress! oh and a cocker spaniel at my feet helps too :)
ReplyDeleteGirl, do you live in my house? We call our house the Blackhole, because once you enter, all cell signal disappears. It doesn't help that it's a split-level, with our bedrooms in the basement, at the back of the house, far away from the wifi router in the living room upstairs. So literally, nothing gets through to us once we go to bed. Which is actually a good thing, because we can read uninterrupted, and there is no impulse to grab for our phones first thing in the morning.
ReplyDeleteOh, and iI love your method of decompressing :) Mine is similar, but I shower in the mornings. xo
i miss reading your writing! you are so good at it
ReplyDeleteJessica
Jump Into Puddles
My apartment is a cell phone dead zone for me, too, and I secretly kind of love it. Calls rarely even come through, they just go straight to voicemail, which isn't exactly good for business so I'll probably be changing carriers when my contract is up. I only have a few more months to enjoy the phone silence.
ReplyDeleteDripping water? Someone needs a turbie!!! That's a good evening ritual. I'm usually a morning shower person. But this time of year it's morning and evening. Why both? My hair just doesn't look right if I don't shower in the morning. lol!
ReplyDeletePS - Hopefully your evening ritual gets started before it's already late evening.
I need to take off the tv from my get-home ritual. It's really pretty bad.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds really great actually, I have been getting home so late it's generally closer to shower and bed. Eat if I think I'll wake up starving. Trade?
ReplyDeleteSounds quite similar to my walk in the door (except by habit I tend to turn on the tv… I really need to stop doing that. Australian tv is bad. Real bad). And similarly, we also have no signal in our apartment. We have resorted to skype!
ReplyDeleteI always turn on my TV, and charge my phone! It always low when I got home that I need to chare it whenever I arrived. Lucky me I have the signal mostly great in my house, hehe.
ReplyDeletelove,
g-carinoo.blogspot.com
The first thing I do when I get home is change. But after that, I don't always have a routine!
ReplyDelete7% Solution
well, as you may have figured out by now i am always home. so i have about a million rituals i go through in a day covering work, relaxing: tv/book, blogging, parenting, dog walking, cleaning . . . rituals are what keeps us sane i think. and as for phone, oh my gosh i can't believe how much time i used to spend on the phone as a kid! you know before internet and texting. now i can hardly stand to be on it for more than a few minutes. though i do have a couple friends that don't live close to see each other often and every few weeks we have a 'phone date' - like in the good old days. xo
ReplyDeleteno get home rituals here either. I'm glad to hear that you found your little sanctuary. and I'm glad to hear you are happy to use every excuse to make a long story short when it comes to phone conversations. we truly are twins in so many aspects :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I get home from work, it's typically after literally being away from home for 48 hours and even though it's still morning, I'll get in PJ's and get into bed where I will cuddle with the cat, puppies, hubby...whatever is available. Then I'll either nap or spend the next few hours online, or reading or vegged out in front of the tv watching Netflix. Anything to decompress after working nonstop for 48+ hours.
ReplyDelete