Routines

Mabel launches herself into the wrapping paper every December. It is funny, until you think about the ribbon. How I wrap now, from one closed room to a clean floor before the door opens.

Fourteen months in I noticed I had been eating dinner at seven and sleeping before eleven all week. The schedule two animals imposed on me fixed something I had failed to fix for myself for fifteen years.

Animals have never heard of a five day week, so Saturday now starts at the same hour as Tuesday. What I lost when the weekend stopped being a category, and the three hour window I got back instead.

An eleven hour drive there, a ninety minute reception, and a highway home in the dark because the sitter had one night. An honest accounting of what living with a dog and a cat has cost me in freedom.

Our dog runs on events and our cat runs on sunlight, and they overlap maybe three hours a day. What it is actually like to keep a house on two incompatible schedules, and why it turned out calmer than expected.

There is a dinner plate sized dull patch on our hardwood where the dog stands while I put my shoes on. Two years of leaving and coming home, and the small ways a house bends around a repeated moment.

A cat who never yowls, a dog with no subtlety, and a weekday alarm I stopped setting eight months in. How two animals quietly took over the first hour of my day, and what I traded to keep it.