Could you describe in detail some small action that you do every day?

When I fold the laundry, I fold a hug into every piece.

I have an incredibly persistent eyebrow hair that I pluck everyday. I am quite certain that it is a different hair but it just assumes his cohorts position. They just line up to be plucked. If I don’t pluck…well than…I am UNIBROW

Every school day when I drop the boys off, I kiss them goodbye one by one. I say “I love you” then I kiss them. I say “Have a good day, be kind and do your best” (stolen from Gimmedat). Then I tell them I love them, kiss them again, and they head into the school building.

On a totally different note, I floss my teeth every day in the shower. I use those little floss picks, it is a great way for me to remember to floss.

I do something goofy for my husband, daughter and son, every single day. I hide a silly face in their room. It’s become a game of sort and there is a purpose to the face. It’s our own little family language. Each day, sometime after they all leave, I draw their face for the day. I hide the words in the drawing. I must admit, sometimes, this is hard to do. I’m not a great artist, but they are made with lots of love. Today I drew them, and tucked them into the pillowcases.

It’s always my habit to open the window blinds after I do this, it’s just the start to the day. I also dust them, daily. I figure I hate that task, so much, that I should do it right away, every morning. or I’ll never do it!

Pinch dead leaves off my houseplants, give Milo fresh water, oil my legs and feet, slather the rest of me with lotion, floss, check the outside for snow, ice, rain, sleet, hail or possibly the arrival of spring. When the weather warms up, I go outside with a cup of tea and see what has sprouted or bloomed, and pull up a weed or two. Milo helps.

Every night I pull my fluffiest, softest kitty out from under the bed, because she has learned to avoid me at night, and give her her meds. I load up the pill syringe and pop 2, sometimes 3, pills down her little throat. Then she gets about 10 drops of an herbal concoction. I always feel bad about it, because she has this tiny little meow that she reserves for complaining about her meds. It is a shitty experience for both of us.

everyday I get on Fluther….

Every day I make a point to drink some water. I used to hate water. But then I realized how good it is on many many levels. So now I make a point of drinking it. It has a lot of personal significance for me to do this. Its a small thing but it means quite a bit to me.

I suppose that isn’t very detailed. I have a glass water jug. I take the lid off. I flip my water filter on. Then I fill it up. I take a drink and close the lid. I do this a few times a day. I carry the glass jar with me everywhere I go. And at night I have to fill it up before bed. I fill it up. Then I go into the bathroom. Take out my vitamins. Put them on top of my water lid. Then I go into the bedroom. Make sure all the lights are out and the alarm is on. Then I sit and take my vitamins in the dark. In order of biggest to smallest. I drink lots of water with the pills and I always put water in first then the pill in so it’s easier to swallow. ((ahh.. there is some detail, lol))

Every day I take my prednisone and fludrocortisone. Every day I get confused as to whether or not I am accidentally taking 2 of the same pill (they look basically the same). In my pre-medicated morning stupor, this involves me with one eye pried open concentrating for a good 10 seconds on those 2 tiny white pills in my hand.

Every day, I walk by my mom’s room several times just to peek in and make sure she’s there. She always is, doing her homework too. :)

Every night right before I go to bed I make sure I actually see each of my three cats. I want to make sure none of them got trapped anywhere in the apartment.

@essiness; For my mother, who is very forgetful, we have a weekly plastic meds. container, yellow for AM and blue for PM. Each day is labeled so it is easy to verify. You can set them up weekly and then breathe easier.

I’ve got a framed picture of my Grandfather (gone) and I say good morning to it. Some days, I pick it up in my hands.

Every day when I put my makeup on, I sit on the bathroom sink and lean in towards the mirror. I can’t put makeup on properly unless I’m sitting on the sink.

Like Mr. M, I do a cat check at night. M is a sneaky fellow and has learned to open some doors leading to the outside and the coyotes, owls and foxes. Luckily he now shows up when I call him.

@elijahsuicide – last time I did that, I slid into the sink. Not a nice experience…it was wet.

@gailcalled – the pill organizers are wonderful!

I walk down to the mailbox every afternoon with Mr Shifter and check the mail… Sounds pretty normal I guess but I don’t check the mail until he gets home, it’s our “ritual” I suppose…

Everyday, I check on my MHC, and I make sure they have plenty of food and water. If I am cutting up fruit or veggies, I save the discards to give them a nice treat. If one of them has gone to the Great Rotten Log in the sky, I remove it so the others can get on with their little lives, and I give the deceased one a decent burial down the toilet. Sure, they are just bugs, but they are my pets, and they depend on me to make sure they have everything they need.

They give me pleasure and while they are not the sort of creature that can return love, (I’m not even sure if I love them, but I do think they are fascinating) I do enjoy their company. Especially when they hiss, because it makes me grin. Anything that makes me smile is a valuable thing, given the state of the world nowadays.

I do a cat check as well, well..I make my husband do it. Our one cat, Henry seems to want to be an outdoor cat not going to happen So I always worry that he’s gotten out.

Any time I open the windows, I check the screens by pushing on them. I have a little OCD, and fear my cats will fall out the window, if the screen fails.

Almost every day, my son wants me to read him his favourite book “Catch Me, Catch Me” He has torn our some pages, but I have it all memorized, so I can still read the entire thing to him.

Once, twice, sometimes more per day, my fiance and I hold each other and trade little quiet I love yous. I know, pretty commonplace. But it sets everything in the world right.

Everyday I like to make a dark brew which I call coffee(most would call it espresso) and feel the bite as it electrifies my tired frame to face the day.

Before I walk out of the house each morning, I stop right in front of the door. I am a very forgetful person so I stand there for about twenty or so seconds and go over a list in my head of things that I need to make sure are with me. Once I am satisfied that I have not left anything behind, I turn to my two std. poodles who are usually behind me with their sad puppy dog eyes and tell them not to be too bad (they are very mischievous and I know they won’t be good by any means).

@gailcalled I’ve considered a pill organizer, but I’m just not ready to admit to anyone besides myself (and you all now) that it’s that bad! LOL

I am currently in a long distance relationship, have been for nearly 2 years, and we make sure we talk to each other everyday. we haven’t missed a day yet
To help me not miss him so much when we are apart we have webcams and his face is the first thing I see every morning and the last face I see every night. Just that one little thing, seeing each other and saying I love you every morning, brightens my day more than anyone could imagine. :)

My Goodness, people! You’ve really done a bang-up job on this question! I love these mini-stories. A snapshot of your lives that you chose. I don’t know what it means, but somehow the fact that you chose to share these things makes me feel so much closer to you that it is really surprising. Thanks so much, and much lurve, too!

@daloon And what about something you do daily so we can share the lurve :) ?

Everytime I near the exit by my appt when its late at night I turn off all the car lights and spook out the highway.

With my terror of home invasions, I check all of the locks on the windows and on the doors, board up the back door and put in the two locks on the front door before I go to bed.
and every night before bed I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that all of my cats and dogs are perfectly safe and warm inside of my house, instead of chained outside, or starving in the woods, or all of the other things my mom saved them from, and then the last feeling before I fall asleep is of how unbelievably lucky I am to have them.

i feel so horribly unhuman after reading all this. cool stuff, guys. i don’t think i have any good rituals to share.. ummm.. before i leave I specifically check for my “Phone, Keys, Wallet” in that order, barely audibly sometimes louder if i want, and i tap each pocket (usually on beat with the “phone, keys, wallet” line but it only sometimes works out, ha) until i feel the 3 items. i try to do this before leaving someone else’s house too… umm.. i check 3 websites specifically.. this one, a design forum and gmail. Facebook is always an afterthought.

Inspired by essieness:

In the morning (or early afternoon, usually) I stumble downstairs to the kitchen and grab a can of Sprite Zero from the fridge. Then it’s on to my big old oak desk to wake up a bit while catching up with moderation duties on Fluther. After a half hour or so, I reach over to the back left hand corner of my desk, pick up the pretty metal oval planter, and place it front and center. It lands with a clatter and it rattles because this is where all of my pills live. I take the first 6 prescription medicines of the day, 3 different capsules in one (smooth, easy) swallow, 3 different tablets in another (not so smooth or easy). As I shake out each pill, I check the levels… do I need a refill yet? I also set the bottle aside so as not to get confused (so easy to do!). Once all the medication is taken, all bottles get returned to the container, and the container returns to it’s usual spot.

Late at night (or very early morning, usually) I do it all over again for the last 3 pills of the day, one capsule and two tablets in one swallow. About every third day, I really have to think hard about whether I’ve already taken my medication. About every two weeks, I get unreasonably pissed off by the fact that I have to take all these damn pills. Then I remember that it beats the alternative. :)

I try to read Time everyday, and finish it cover to cover by the time the next issue arrives. I also brush my teeth twice a day, and try to remember to hug and kiss my kids at least once every day.

Yes, I am a wild man.

Every morning i drink 1 liter of steaming hot english breakfast tea, regardless of the season (I do it even in summer) and I let no one else to prepare it for me.

It has to be 1 liter exactly, when I travel abroad I bring my cup and I ask for a kettle.

Every day I send an email to my husband, telling him at least one or two things that happened. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re sad, but I never want him to go to sleep feeling like I’m not thinking of him. It’s usually only a few minutes, but if i don’t do it, the day doesn’t go well.

I do a lot of little inane things, but one that comes to mind is that when I get up in the middle of the night to do a bathroom run, I look out both of the front & back door windows to make sure all’s well in the neighborhood. We have a lot of elderly neighbors & I make sure that I don’t see anyone walking & lurking around, & I make sure that I don’t see any fires. I’m kind of the neighborhood night watch person. When I see all’s well, then I go back to bed.

One night a couple years ago, I’d looked out our front door & was on my way back to bed. All of a sudden, a car careened through our front yard & crashed head on into our neighbor’s tree. That was quite a night!

@essieness: I understand the need to be independent, but if you turn down my brilliant solution to your pill anxiety, then you are forbidden to discuss confusion, oveerdoses, underdoses, and early-morning brain fog here.

I would be very upset (speaking as a mother) if you took the wrong amount of the wrong meds, particularly given that they are heavy-weight and more lethal than an aspirin. Mama has spoken. Listen to your fluther mother.

Every morning, after the alarm goes off, I put on a pair of stretchy pants, a sweater and clogs and take Hazel for her morning walk. Some days I take her to the park across the road so she can run around a bit, sometimes I take her to the promenade. I have to tug on her lead a lot because if she had her way, she would sniff every pebble in the street and wouldn’t see if any car was coming. She’s very strong, and sometimes she looks at me as if to say “You never let me do anything!”.

Then I bring her back in, feed and water her, make myself a cup of coffee, read my email and look at BBC News online.

Every weekday morning at 5:40, my husband kisses me goodbye and I turn over and go back to sleep until about 6:45. I stumble to the kitchen where he has already made coffee. Since I have difficulty remembering to take pills, too, and since I HAVE to have a cuppa to get rolling, I take that opportunity to medicate me. All the regular things ensue: toothbrushing, haircombing, making up, dressing, feeding the little dog, grabbing lunch and a bottle of water, and fixing that cuppa for the drive in. I leave the house like clockwork at 7:55 and drive ten or fifteen minutes to work.
Eight hours later, I make the drive back home, where I first kiss my husband, love my little dog, and kick back on the back porch with a glass of water or some Pepsi before planning and executing dinner.
DAMN! We live a boring life, but I have found boring is not so bad in the overall scheme of things!

@gailcalled Yes Mom :)

I make a cup of tea in the teacher’s lounge. It often goes cold before I drink much (when my day is pretty much a series of interruptions), but it is just nice to do something for myself in the middle of the day.

Mine’s a new thing. It’s been going two or three months now, but it’ll be going on until the end of my marriage, or life, whichever comes first. Unless I somehow lose thirty pounds and the problem goes away.

If I’m going to bed at the same time as my wife, it’s easier. I flip up the little door on the side of the machine, pull out the container (it holds maybe a cup or two) and fill it to the line with distilled water.

However, if my wife has gone to bed first, and I have not remembered to fill the reservoir before she turns out the light, then I have to do it in the (sort-of) dark. The machine has three buttons on it lined up in a horizontal row. They are about an inch in diameter, and, when it’s dark, they put out this strange blue glow—kinda like the fancy pretend machines in a James Bond movie. It’s just enough to see to fill up the reservoir.

Pulling out the reservoir is not much of a problem. I have to do everything quietly, because I don’t want to wake her up. The reservoir can stick where it is attached tightly to the hoses.

I hold it up so see what the water level is. There’s just enough blue light, and it reminds me of a glow of a pool on a glacier. Then I pour the water in. This is tricky, even in the light, because it’s only a three-quarter inch in diameter, and I’m pouring from one of those gallon plastic jugs, so the mouth the water is coming out of is wider that the mouth it’s going into. I don’t want to spill on the floor, because then there’s all that cleaning up mess, which can be noisy.

Very carefully, I lift the jug to the reservior, place mouth on mouth, and slowly tip the jug higher and higher. When I’m doing this, I can’t really see how fast the water is rising in the res. Soon, I’ve fooled myself into believing I’ve put enough water in, and I turn the jug upright and raise the res to the light to see how full it is. Surprise, surpise. It’s no fuller than it was. Somehow, I’ve convinced myself that water was pouring in when it wasn’t. So, I do it all over, and this time I make sure the water is going in.

Reservoir filled, I slip into bed. Usually I have to adjust the pillows because somehow they’ve gotten piled up wrong. They are all old down pillows (read flat—no loft to them at all), and if they aren’t piled right, I’ll be twisting and turning and waking my wife, and I’ll probably get a crick in my neck, anyway.

Pillows arranged, I lie down, then reach up with my left hand to grab the harness that is hanging over the headboard. It’s made of straps, some of which adjust with velcro, and others with tension couplings. It’s all attached to a small piece of plastic with a chamber, and two small folded tubes (like the the folded plastic that attaches the two parts of a bus or a walkway to a plane) prtruding from that chamber. There is a little hole exiting the chamber, opposite the tubes, and there is a flexible hose attached to the chamber on one end and the machine at the other.

I lie down, hold the harness up to see which way around it goes. Half the time I get it wrong. I slip it over my head, inserting the two tubes in my nostrils. This thing is like one of the hospital oxygen tubes, except it’s been taking a lot of steroids.

I breathe in and out once. Then a second time. With a click, the machine turns on, and I hear and feel the pressure of wind blowing up my nose. I’m usually breathing out, and then I take my first breath in. The pressure builds up inside, and I have to swallow to equalize it. This is the most unpleasant part of the process, because it makes my ears feel pressured inside.

In a few minutes, I’ve settled into a good rhythm. When I breathe out, the air pressure relaxes, and when I breathe in, the pressure ramps up. Soon, I fall asleep, feeling as if I’m in some ICU, with the breathing machine huffing and hissing, and there’s this other sound that sometimes fools me into thinking there’s conversation going on somewhere. When I become awake enough to realize what’s going on, I figure out that it’s the machine.

So that’s my new CPAP machine. It keeps me from snoring, and helps keep my marriage together. Otherwise, the snoring would wake up my wife fifty times a night. It’s also supposed to reduce my blood pressure and reduce my risk of heart attacks and such. But if that’s what it takes to keep my wife sleeping with me, that’s what I’ll do. When she’s not sleeping with me, I don’t do it.

If you think this is rediculously long, blame @RedPowerLady. I wasn’t planning to answer, but once I did, there seemed to be so many details needed to explain it. Plus, it’s always a challenge to turn something simple into a compelling story. If you’ve read to the end, then I’ve succeeded!

@daloon Great story, thanks for sharing, I read it twice.

Every evening at 7:45, my puppy Bailey (a Cardigan Corgi mix) will sit in front of me and “talk” to me in her little yodel/howl voice until I notice what time it is. By golly, it’s Bailey’s bedtime! I let her and the older dogs out to do their business while I take my evening meds and start the dishwasher. Bailey comes in and runs down the hall to sit in front of her bedroom. I walk to her crate and get her special polka dotted water bowl out, and fill it halfway in the bathroom across the hall. She sits primly on the floor supervising to make sure I fill it correctly. Then she races in and leaps into the crate, where she watches me carefully place it “just so” between the edge of the crate and her pillow. Her tail is wagging like gangbusters as she daintily tastes the water. I tickle her under her chin and tell her, “Night night, Bailey girl. Momma loves you!” She settles down with a contented sigh and doesn’t make a sound until morning.

@Divalicious That was wonderful, thanx for sharing.

Every day, I’m a sweetie,
I turn around and check the seatie.

and wipe it if need be….but that didn’t rhyme.

@rowenaz I believe that goes like this:
If you sprinkle when your tickle
Please be neat and wipe that seat.