Every morning, Nana Mouskouri arrives the moment I open the blinds.

“Guten Morgen Sonnenschein” firing up in my brain like an alarm clock nobody asked for, and stays for however long she pleases. She has been doing this for over a year. At this point, she is family.

This is how my mornings begin. And from there, things get interesting.

The Pipeline

My morning ritual is non-negotiable. It runs in a specific order, and deviations are not tolerated, by me, by my autism, or by my medication schedule:

Open blinds (Nana arrives). Brush teeth. Yoga. Meditate. Breakfast and coffee. Medication. Shower. Work.

Simple. Logical. Airtight.

Completely ambushed on a daily basis.

The Plants

The living room plants downstairs are always a risk factor.

My husband forgets to water them. I notice when I open the blinds. One critical look and a quick feel of the soil is all it takes, and suddenly I am heading for the watering can and the spray bottle to mist the leaves. While I’m at it, I notice the window sill is dirty. I weigh the option of cleaning it.

I decide not to. I am disciplined. I am focused. I head upstairs, quietly, so as not to wake the dogs or my husband still sleeping in the bedroom.

Where I discover that the kitchen window plants have been moved to the counter overnight to keep the window open for fresh air.

These plants also need watering and misting. They also need to be arranged in a specific way. But first I need to wipe the window sill. And possibly clean the window, which I can do really quickly. While I’m doing this, I remember that the toothbrush is waiting for me.

No problem. I can multitask.

The Tooth Brushing Ritual

The electric toothbrush basically runs itself. This is a well known fact. What this means, practically speaking, is that my right hand can hold the toothbrush while my left hand cleans the sink.

Or my left hand holds the toothbrush while my right hand cleans the sink.

The question of brushing technique accuracy is briefly considered and then set aside in the interest of efficiency. Three minutes is three minutes. Why waste them standing there doing only one thing?

The Yoga Gauntlet Situation

I can now proceed to yoga. I change into my yoga clothes, and yes, it has happened that I forgot this step entirely and did a full session in my pajamas, which I only noticed afterward. I have made my peace with this.

The laptop must be opened carefully. The browser must be navigated directly to the yoga teacher’s site, enlarged to full screen, earbuds in, workout tracker started. Yoga mat rolled out!

Under no circumstances should any other part of the browser be opened before any of this is done.

I cannot stress this enough.

One wrong click, one stray tab, one notification, one email subject line caught in peripheral vision, and yoga may not happen until considerably later. The pipeline has been derailed by less, like suddenly remembering that I should look up knee pads for yoga.

But if all goes according to plan, yoga happens. The body wakes up. A new song may or may not play in my brain.

Breakfast, Coffee, and the Refrigerator Situation

After yoga comes the meditation-vs-breakfast decision. Medication needs food. Food wins.

I wander into the kitchen and begin making breakfast and coffee. For efficiency, I always eat the exact same thing: Skyr quark, blueberries, a banana, six raw almonds and some frozen mixed berries. Every day. No variation. No deliberation. The decision was made once, over two years ago, and has not been revisited since.

The coffee is decaf, vanilla flavored beans, vanilla soy milk, sugar-free vanilla syrup and collagen powder. Why coffee with no caffeine? Because it’s the ritual. Caffeine and amphetamines don’t mix well if you’d like to sleep at night, but giving up the coffee would mean giving up the ritual, and that is simply not on the table. It‘s also a real problem when I travel for business!

I open the refrigerator. There is a spot of sauce.

I must clean this. One cannot have a dirty refrigerator. It is simply not possible to leave it there and make breakfast as if everything is fine.

And while I’m cleaning the inside, I might as well wipe down the outside doors. The glass cleaner I’m already holding will do nicely on the dishwasher door too. And the stainless steel trashcans. They’re right there. It would be strange not to.

Breakfast is eventually made. Fake coffee is poured. Medication is taken. The kitchen is significantly cleaner than it was twenty minutes ago. I can now meditate in peace.

The Shower Situation

After meditation comes the shower. I sing in here, whatever song is currently on rotation in my brain, or something I’ve invented on the spot. The lyrics are not always coherent. The performance is always committed.

I wash my hair and create what I can only describe as a spectacular shampoo Mohawk. I rinse, apply the conditioner and while it sits, I scrub the shower walls. This is efficient.This is why the shower only gets scrubbed on days when I wash my hair!

I feel rather magnificent.

The skin care routine follows, in the exact same order it has followed for years, because this is not negotiable, and one most not neglect one’s skin. This is accompanied by a series of faces in the mirror that no one else will ever see. However, sometimes I find myself so funny that I will take a selfie and send it to my unsuspecting sister, niece or friend. Then it’s off to the office, focus music on, and hyperfocus activated.

I will not surface for nine or ten hours.

The Part That Will Surprise You

All of the above, the plants, the sink multitasking, the refrigerator, the shower walls, the Mohawk, costs me approximately ten to fifteen extra minutes.

That’s it.

This is because speed is one of my superpowers. The same brain that cannot walk past a dirty surface without addressing it also cannot do anything slowly. Everything happens at full throttle. The detours are real, but they are fast detours, executed with the efficiency of someone who has been doing this their entire life and has never once considered that there might be another way.

The pipeline gets ambushed every morning. And every morning, I find my way back. Usually singing.

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay I’m going off the rails on a crazy train I’m going off the rails on a crazy train 🚂