I was Daddy's Girl, not Mama's Girl. By the time I was old enough to break free of that paradigm in my dad's dysfuctional decline, and appreciate my Mom, and learn from her, I had missed a lot of simple tricks of daily living. I'm still developing new ways of handling what she might have taught me, that fit the life I have now.

One area of persistent need of improvement has been brekky. Between Hardi and I, nowadays the oatmeal crockpot usually gets cleaned out each night in time to set it up for the next AM. I add hot tap water to soak it when I empty it for my serving (later in the AM than Hardi's).

Another area is dishes piling up-- I'd gotten pretty good at soaking what would end up in the DW and loading and running it before it got out of hand, even in our crazy-busy lifestyle of ministries. This got even better when I started re-using my AM wake-up teamug for my oatmeal bowl. :~) Silverware was still going unwaashed, too often. I hate doing the silverware. Our DW doesn't handle it well..... we bought a bigger set. But that still doesn't mean I can or should leave it forever....

Another area has been reducing portions sizes all day, now that my metabolism has finally recovered from the medically-imposed metabolic crash of the late 80's-early 90's, after much hard work. Fat that would not burn, prior, is starting to burn. It's time to shrink the stomach, from the inside out. (We DO NOT NEED gastric bypass to do this!) I got some good strategies in place for that too.

(BTW, NONE OF THESE ARE HELP REQUESTS.)

Well, this morning I hit the trifecta in new strategies.

There's a Pyrex glass measuring cup I use every night to make the oatmeal. 1/2 cup of oats, 1 cup of water. The hot water for the oats rinses the cup well enough, I only wash it once a week. Weekdays, it sits stovetop, drying, in reach for the next night's crockpot setup.

So today instead of the teamug as a bowl, I used the Pyrex. LOVED the handle, loved the mixing space it provided to stir in the peanut butter, loved the measure marks to keep the milk-added inside my chosen limit, love how it sits in the sink soaking now, waiting to catch and soak the day's silverware. If I want oatmeal tomorrow, I'll have a day's silver to whip as I pass through the kitchen, one bowl less to wash, etc.etc.etc.

Waking up smart, yes.

~Susan