Coping: Perfecting the “Morning Ritual”

This being a four-day workweek for some, the morning ritual struck me as a useful UrbanSurvival topic.

The reason for the short workweek is Good Friday which, if you don’t mind my saying so, is an oxymoron.  ALL Friday’s are good although when the day was pegged way back when, I doubt the inter-denominational marketing angle of it was in play.  Sure is now, though.

Regardless of the pending holiday – even weekends and days off – I try to hold to a “morning ritual” that over the span of 30 to 45-minutes prepares me pretty well for anything the day might throw at me later.

It blocks out into a couple of parts:

Baseline: Getting up, the throne visit, dressing and letting the cat in would be the first “block” of activities.  I think of this as “baseline” because no matter how you feel, if you’re getting up you’re going to visit the throne room and probably put some clothes on.  Or shower…depends on if I showered the previous evening…

Uptakes:  There are several categories here and each of them is worth planning in some detail:

Start Coffee!!!

Feed the cat/pets if you have them.

Next do your morning “stack” if you do pills or, if you’re like my buddy the Major, this is when he does the smoothies.  Too much work for me, and besides, She Who Must Be Obeyed is still asleep.  The coffee will be brewing while you’re doing.

My current morning stack consists of:

• A baby aspirin for blood viscosity.
• A triamterene for blood pressure.  Doc thinks it’s too high, If I cut out coffee and booze, sure, it would go down.
• A vinpocetine for small arteries and blood vessels. A kind of micro dilator.  WBMED write-up is here.
• Huperzine-A – again, brain amplifier stuff.  Another write-up here.
• Next comes a generic version of Singulair for the asthma.  Keeps things breathing well.
• A solid multi-vit:  For me, Adam (which you can get from Amazon) works well enough.
• An additional CO-Q10.
• Allopurinol for the gout – which I haven’t had since starting it and losing 30+ pounds.  (hmmm…relation?)
• Magnesium:  All of the electrolyte-criticals get a boost.
• Potassium + iodine: Which includes this, too. By the way, plain table salt will take care of most people’s iodine requirements, it seems.  But you start going with sea salt or other that doesn’t have as much iodine…well, just monitor that with your doc…
• Turmeric:  Pain and inflammation reduction.
• L-Carnitine: Seems to relieve PVC’s – a slight irregular heartbeat noticed after too much caffeine, for one.
• L-Arginine/Citrulline:  Increases blood oxygenation.
• NAD+:  This  and its companion NMN are thought to be the “real deal” on rebuilding telomere length of DNA or holding it where it is.  Good reference article over here at LifeExtension.com about it.  Right now I’m taking 100 mg but I will be increasing that because there are some reports on the web that going up to 300 or 400 mg may be needed to show results.  As always, talk to your licensed (and insured, lol) health scare practitioner.
• Two ibuprofen.  Anti-inflammatory if I am going to be doing hard physical work.

After morning stack comes the morning “Five-minute meal.”

I’ve got a bunch of these – and since the coffee in the drip machine takes about six minutes, 13 on the stovetop, after the stack I still have five to 10 minutes to cook something.

This morning it was the three-minute deal:

Two flour tortillas, with 1.5 tablespoons of canned chili (with beans) and 2 tablespoons of shredded cheddar on each.  Fold in half, keeping them an inch apart on  a big plate.  Nuke for 80 seconds with a steaming cover on.

When done, remove from microwave, slop 2 tablespoons of cold cottage cheese on top of each.  The cottage cheese should be cold right out of the fridge which allows you to instantly eat.  In a pinch, use cold sour cream.

Serve with 1.5 (12.oz.) cups of half-caf (half decaf, half high octane) coffee and start blocking out the day plan while eating.

Next up – for me – is a trip to the big monitor in the music studio – where I check futures, see how Europe is rolling, how Asia did, and look at the background news which is pushing markets around.  No trade in the after hours session foreseen…but that may change…

10-minutes of that, maybe a check of eBay if I’m sniping for a ham radio part, and by then the coffee has done its magic and it’s off to the throne room for magical event #2.

From there, a mouthful of coffee, a handful of smoked almonds and a half-dozen semi-sweet chocolate chips, and I’m out the door with the cat.  Some morning’s I will grab a couple of high potency omega-3 fish oil caps instead of almonds.  The a can of smoked almost has about the 24-hour half-life around here….

By the time I walk the (whole 100 feet) from the kitchen to my office, everything is right with the world. No matter what comes my way, there is a high protein meal in the (still too big) belly that will get me from 5:30 AM all the way to dinner around 5 PM.  It’s  low in sugars and high in protein and vitamins and building blocks, so there’s seldom any sense of hunger to it.

A couple (or four) 20 ounce glasses of water while working keeps everything cooking on the inside even with a fair bit of sweat when doing outdoor projects.

Elaine recently found some pickle juice – designed for rehydration – that’s at least reminiscent of the pickle juice we save –  like liquid gold from the Claussen’s Dills from the meat section of the deli.

The bottled pickle juice is OK for replacing salt.  The REAL pickle juice is hoarded for special occasions when we make Bloody Caesars (or Mary’s – depending on gin or vodka), but that has tapered off a lot in recent years.

Here lately, we’re  down to one or two (single shot) drinks at martini time.  Might be worth selling your distillery stocks. Aging and more than a drink or two doesn’t seem to mesh.

Whole point of this discussion?

If you plan to get up a half hour to 45-minutes earlier than departure, there’s a lot that can be done to physically prepare yourself for a highly productive day and that’s why, for me at least, the Morning Ritual around here is one of the keys to living a fairly stress-free life.

Why I didn’t do this much earlier in Life?  Well, never occurred to me, honestly.

But the time we take preparing ourselves for the day pays off just like doing good car maintenance.  May seem invisible most of the time.  Until you need it…and there’s no ready substitute around,

One more shot of half-caf?

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net