I’m staying with my parents over the summer holidays and haven’t quite returned to routines after the disrupted Christmas/New Year weeks. Those public holidays smack bang in the middle of the week mess with my sense of time. I volunteered to look after dinner for everyone on Wednesday night. I knew it was Wednesday, yet I spent most of Tuesday planning on cooking dinner that night—I even wrote “Get Groceries” on my to-do list. That is a list directly under the heading “Tues 7th Jan”. Late in the afternoon, it finally clicked that I was not cooking that night, and I scrubbed get groceries off the list. I don’t know why I’m having this trouble; my running still provides structure to my week. I’m also back working, so I was doing my Tuesday tasks while this confusion was going on. Can I blame it on peri-menopause brain fog?

Not being at home, I’ve also dropped into some bad habits, like instead of doing my bible reading first thing in the morning, I keep picking up my phone. Pretty soon, I’ve read the newspaper, checked my email and run out of time to do my bible reading. My phone lives overnight in the kitchen at home, so I’m never tempted to roll over and pick it up. Everything lives in my bedroom here, but I should probably put my phone in the far corner of our relatively small bedroom. It will not be foolproof, but maybe it will help. I’m a big believer in shaping my environment to support my habits, but it’s harder when I’m not at home. For a couple of days over New Year, a bowl of jaffas was on the kitchen bench, and I ate my fair share. Helping myself to one or two whenever I walked past. We never have sweets at home for exactly that reason.

Good habits and routine will need to wait a bit longer, though, because today, we are driving to Lorne to stay at a friend’s house for a long weekend. G and I are doing the Mountain to Surf Race, which is on Friday. I had to move some runs around to accommodate, but fortunately, I was on a deload week with a time trial, so the actual runs I’m doing can stay pretty much the same. Going back to a properly structured running schedule feels like a return to normality. Can I say I’ll never take being able to run for granted? Probably not, but for now, I’m so happy to be able to run.

On the blog front, I’ve decided to shake things up this year. Good Things Friday will move to a once-a-month deal. It will be more of a list post, and I plan to post more random life stuff when I feel like it. I also have a backlog of posts to finish: The Camino, the books I’ve read since August, some lists that I need photos for, not to mention all the ideas that are just bullet points on my ideas list. For now, I’m looking forward to a fabulous long weekend of socialising and activity before I’m back here at my parent’s next week, hopefully in the mood to wrangle a bit more routine and pick up some of the habits that have dropped off over Christmas.

Did you forget what day it was over the Christmas holidays? Do you find your good habits drop off when you are away from home?