The Morning

Sometimes, everything works out the way you want. As a dad, I can no longer remember what it was like to get up in the morning and not be worried about anything other than feeding the cats in the condo and the cats outside the condo.

Don't get me wrong- I still wake up with a cat on the bed, another one staring at me from the floor, and a third one wanders into the bathroom. The day starts with a group feeding. But after that, the dynamic is different than it used to be. Pressure to get in a morning workout used to be reserved for those days when we were going to a play or had a meeting at night. Which is not to say there weren't plenty of days I wanted to get up and do that early workout. It's when you feel like you have to that it takes on a different dynamic.

I like to spin more than most people, so at 5:50 AM I found myself doing Virtual Reality 1.0 with the sound low and the baby monitor cranked up. It's 51 minutes long but my goal was just to get 30 minutes in, and I picked the workout because it's easy to get lost in the scenery and forget the clock and that gnawing certainty your son is going to wake up before having even slept 8 hours. When I hit 30 minutes, the goal was 40. When I hit forty, the goal was to finish, and random chance was totally in my favour. As I started to take my bike shoes off, Ian started to cough and cry, having woken up. Talk about perfect timing.

Of course, having a good morning is about more than whether you got your workout in. Getting lunches packed, dishes washed, getting my son dressed and out the door, that's all part of the day, along with him having some fun time after he gets up and before he goes to school. Today that included Wonder Pets, castles, and drawing butterflies on the driveway...