2025, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Is YA really ET?

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YA works in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Occasionally she also goes into the office on a Monday or a Friday.  When she has a big project, she likes the quiet of the office as well as the big screen on her desk. 

There is a fairly complicated (from my perspective) process for her to get ready for work.  During her junior high and high school years she started wearing make-up and taught herself how to apply it.  As part of her beauty routine, she has a massive number of products, from masks to foundations to mascara to eyelash curlers to lip glosses.  Massive.  She can sit at her make-up table for upwards of 30 minutes some mornings.  It’s exhausting just to watch.

She learned none of this from me.  Not one smidge.  I think I’ve told the story of when I quit wearing make-up; it was well before she was born.  Even when I DID put on make-up it wasn’t anything as robust as YA’s routine.

Every now and then, when she is in a rush (usually when we’re going some place on the weekend or if she’s gotten up really late), she can cut the time down but very very rarely goes without.  On work mornings, I don’t usually pay that much attention.  I have my morning stuff to do (feed animals, make bed, eat breakfast, gym, errands, etc.)

Last week on Friday, she came rushing down and out the door before I even had a chance to look up.  After 15 minutes, our ring doorbell dinged my phone, which was in my pocket and as I was opening the app, I heard the front door open and YA’s footsteps running up the stairs.  She didn’t come down for almost 10 minutes, way too long for a forgotten key card or computer mouse.  When she was headed for the front door I asked what she had forgotten and she replied “I forgot to put on make-up.”

I’m still thinking about this.  First off, how do you forget something that is so much a part of your every single day routine.  And mostly, why get 10 minutes from the house (about half way to the office) and turn back to put on make-up when it’s Friday and there’s next to no one in the office?  Her answer when I asked her later was “just in case”.  When I asked “just in case what?” all I got was a shoulder shrug.

So, yet one more instance of my certainty that I live with an alien from another world!

Do you have anything that is an every-single-day-no-matter-what routines?

47 thoughts on “Is YA really ET?”

  2. The dog expects us to tug with him every morning while we sit in the livingroom and drink coffee. The cat sits by the front door at the same time and expects me to flash a laser pointer for her to chase. It gets hard to drink my coffee.

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  3. I often step outside first thing in the morning. I look around, notice birds, trees, and the sky, and whether or not the plants need anything. Then I go in and follow my new tea routine. It used to be my coffee routine, but since I had to quit drinking coffee for health reasons, it’s a tea routine. And then just a lot of sitting and reading before I’m ready to actually start behaving like a human. There is no make-up involved.

    I saw a “news” story somewhere that was about very young girls and their passion for cosmetics. Apparently it’s a thing. I think they call it something like, “Sephora Kids.” These are 10-year olds. That makes me sad. The message they internalize is that they are not pretty enough, or good enough, unless they wear a ton of artificiality. It seems like the women’s movements of the last few decades have failed entirely when it comes to young girls, and the “ideal woman” is not attainable unless a lot of cosmetics are involved. I always thought we would progress beyond things like that, but there’s my rose-colored glasses at work again.

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    1. I have thought for some time now that the marketing industry has learned to exploit social media. Girls that age would be especially vulnerable to such strategies. Sephora Kids is like the smoking strategies of the 1960s and 1970s, creating a new market for their product. Brilliant and kind of evil.

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      1. I’m not sure we can blame the marketing folks too much. Seems to me that girls wanting to wear make up at an early age is a decades old issue. It’s the allure of something that they know they’re “not supposed to do”. A first step of independence from their parents. A first step into what they think is the adult world.

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        1. I think the marketing strategies for hooking kids on nicotine are a process that the tobacco industry was fully responsible for. It was deadly and they knew it. That was proven.

          Make up is less lethal so I can let up little, but still, the industry exploits negative peer pressure. Some girls will always be curious and attracted to things like make up. (I was as a teen) Usually it is not a bad thing. But the microcosms created by social media are dangerous to kids’ mental health, including those marketing strategies regarding cosmetics and appearance.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Aside from the usual self-care routines (such as brushing teeth, taking a shower) there is the Wordle routine. We on the trail have given this a lot of attention. But I do that Wordle every day. Then there is the dog routines. Phoebe had a required vaccination 2 weeks ago that again produced RA. Therefore, some routines are interrupted until she fully recovers. However, now that I and the vet know what is going on, treating this has become its own routine. She is not due for another vaccination for two years, thankfully.

    Now that I am recovered from surgery, I must return to exercise and participation routines at the gym, Master Gardener, art classes, etc.

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    1. I have also been bitten by the Wordle bug. And the Quordle bug and the Octordle bug. It’s part of my morning routine to do all three.

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      1. When you do the Octordle, do you just do the Classic, or do you also do the Chill, Extreme, Sequence, and Rescue? If so, which one do you have the most trouble with?

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        1. I just do Classic… that’s enough of a rush for me first thing in the morning!

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    2. I used to do a few other games in the morning. The connections and a word find and a guess this movie from one photo. The movie one went away fast as I don’t know enough movies. At least not more recent ones. And the connections in the word find just weren’t very satisfying.

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    3. Sorry to hear about Phoebe getting RA from her vaccines. I hope she recovers quickly and that with repeated doses she won’t be so sensitive in the future. Enjoy your return to your routines!

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  5. It’s really a beautiful morning. I’m doing some reading and wearing down my iPad’s battery on the deck this morning. I’ve been trying to make friends with the hummingbirds. They just tolerate me. I don’t think they want to be friends.

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  6. I guess just the usual body maintenance routine: breakfast, coffee, wash up, brush teeth, etc. Now it’s also greet the cat. She hears the alarm and hops onto the bed to “wake us up” with either purring and grooming right there (sometimes literally in our faces), or attacking our feet under the covers like a maniac.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  7. This morning I am completely out of my routine. I just gave the exterior underside of our bay window a first coat of paint to seal it. The thin, brittle coating that was on it peeled off, something typical of vinyl windows, exposing bare wood. I had to crawl through peonies and cat mint to get to it. I am relieved that the paint splatters on the decorative siding come off with sandpaper.

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  9. An ALMOST-every-single-day-no-matter-what routine would be my little yoga routine.

    And as tim says, tea – that one IS truly every day. And while I think of it, wine while I’m cooking dinner. I’m trying to get myself to wait till I can sit down so I appreciate it more…

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  10. Apart from the daily self-maintenance, there are other things I do every day. Except for watching Jeopardy and meditating, there’s no particular time frame for doing them. I do most of the puzzles right after midnight when the new ones are released, except for the Spelling Bee which isn’t released until 2 AM, at which time I’m usually fast asleep. I usually tackle the Spelling Bee before I get out of bed in the morning. That’s when I check in on the Trail as well.

    My after dinner nap is a daily thing, too, but since I’m not the cook, when I take it depends on when dinner is served. My personal chef doesn’t have a lot experience with planning and cooking, so anything from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM is a possibility. But, if I don’t take my after dinner nap until 8 PM, bedtime gets pushed back a little; I’m rarely in bed before midnight.

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  11. My morning routine has changed in recent weeks, as we adopted a 6-month-old kitten. After a long night of watching us sleep (or sleeping with us), by morning she’s ready to go, go, go. If the weather’s nice, she wants to be out on the deck to watch birds. Then climb up my leg to let me know it’s time to eat. Then race around the house bouncing off the walls to let me know it’s time to play with her favorite toy. She’s very fast and very agile and VERY hard to keep up with.

    When things calm down, I drink my morning tea (chai).

    Evenings after work are similar to mornings: outside, food, play. I usually have a glass of wine while I cook dinner.

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  12. It used to be milking cows.
    Now it’s feeding dogs, and collecting eggs. The chickens can make it a couple days before I have to refill their food or water.

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  13. Well! The for sale sign went up today, and 20 minutes after that, someone phoned our realtor asking for a showing. We are currently hanging out in our church garden while our house is being shown. My evening routine is really disrupted!

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  14. I like to refill the dog water bowl on the boulevard every day, at least when the weather is warm enough that the bowl won’t freeze.

    But that isn’t really a no-matter-what. Just a pretty-close-to-every-day.

    I always set up the coffeemaker before I go to bed at night, so the fresh pot will be waiting in the morning. The day would not get off to a good start if the coffee wasn’t there.

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      1. Yes, the water bowl is pretty popular. There are a lot of dog walkers in my immediate neighborhood. Also rabiits, possums, squirrels, and who knows what other critters.

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