Sincerely, Cindy

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Routines are important. They help establish a daily pathway that outlines and guides the day sunrise to sunset and almost all points in between. If you have pets, you know they need a daily routine also. For instance, in our house, the morning routine is very important to Livvy and Zeus. Livvy is our rescue cat and Zeus is our rescue dog. Each morning Livvy wakes me up promptly at 5 a.m. by jumping on the bed and then over to my nightstand where she starts knocking stuff off to land on Zeus’s head. He of course gets in trouble for chewing up whatever she throws at him and she walks off scott-free. No guilty conscience for her. Then it’s time to let Zeus outside for his morning jaunt around the yard. While he’s doing that, I am getting his water and food bowls cleaned and filled. Livvy supervises this very carefully but makes no attempt to touch his food or water until I let Zeus back in for his breakfast. At this point she prances over to his water and food bowls and samples everything while Zeus waits patiently for his morning vittles. I just think it is so sweet of her to sample his morning breakfast to make sure I am not trying to poison her best buddy. I am sure he is deeply grateful for this too, but I digress … As we progress through life’s seasons, it is difficult to change a routine instilled at an early age. From late elementary school all the way through until the day I left for college, my days started at 3:30 a.m. for morning paper routes. To this day, I still wake up at 3:30 a.m. but now I can roll back over until my alarm clock, a.k.a. Livvy, tells me it’s time to get up. That extra hour and a half seems to agree with me just fine. On the weekends I might even be lazy and “sleep in” until 6 or 7. Anything past that, I feel like I’ve wasted half the day. My parents instilled in us kids a strong work ethic and I am grateful for it now. Can’t say I was super excited back in the day having to get up at 3:30 a.m. every morning and then spend my weekends going door to door collecting money for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Another routine growing up included daily vacuuming of the carpet throughout the house and getting down on hands and knees to wash the kitchen floor. And the most sacred routine of all was making the bed. I truly believed that if I did not make my bed before leaving for school, my day was going to be doomed. Looking back now, daily routines were more than just routines; they were life lessons in learning responsibility and a true work ethic. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I love you. Sincerely, Cindy