I hate to take a shower. Really. I procrastinate taking a shower in the morning. It’s such a hassle! I don’t want to get in the shower because getting dry afterwards is boring. You have to get completely wet and then you have to dry yourself off and then you have to dry your hair… ugh, so boring. The shower itself is boring, notwithstanding how great it feels to have hot water running over you, because the routine of scrubbing and/or shaving all your bits and appendages is monotonous. Why can’t my legs just stay shaved? I have ADHD. I will avoid a boring task even to the point of sacrificing something I want to do in order to keep avoiding it. Even on the weekends, I procrastinate shower time so I end up laying around in my pajamas way later than I should or even want to.
So, I procrastinate getting in the shower. Instead, I will play on my phone “for a few minutes” that turns into an hour, and then I’m scrambling but still spend too much time under the water and 9 times out of 10 run out the door with my hair still wet.
It dawned on me this morning, when I didn’t need to take a shower (because I took one in the middle of the night, which I will explain at the bottom), that I had nothing to procrastinate about this morning. I got up. Put my contacts in. Brushed my teeth. Got dressed (I had plenty of clean clothes to choose from because I caught up on my laundry on Sunday!) Futzed with my hair (even touched it up with a curling iron!) I was out the door by 7:30.
Maybe, to make my mornings go smoother, I need to eliminate the one thing that holds me up the most – taking a shower! I don’t mean by going stinky. I mean by taking a shower the night before, of course. It might even help me sleep better. I could roll out of the shower, wrap my hair in a towel, and crawl under the covers still wet. Sleeping has always been a problem for me, even before the onset of menopausal night sweats. This night time shower strategy might work out
During the school year, I have to juggle with my husband to get the shower, which just puts another obstacle up where I already have plenty. My husband likes to get into the shower first and gets a little cranky with me if I happen to get in there first. In all honesty, he also tends to procrastinate getting under the water in the morning but he still doesn’t want me to get in there ahead of him. I would have to be completely done in there before he got up and that will never happen. I hate to get up extra early to get in the shower. Even if I get up early with good intentions, I won’t get into the shower promptly anyway, because I will procrastinate getting into the shower until the last possible minute, if not a minute or two after that. Sometimes I have used another bathroom to avoid the morning shower struggle, but that doesn’t alleviate my overall procrastination.
I have always resisted taking a shower the night before. I argued that I needed the shower to wake me up. I argued that I needed to wash my hair in the morning or else I could do nothing with it. My biggest argument was about my contact lenses. I wore hard plastic (gas permeable) contact lenses for decades. They always felt scratchy in my eyes when I put them in before taking a shower, even if I did wash my face and wipe the sleep out of my eyes first. Finally, I got soft lenses and they are so much more comfortable! I don’t really notice a difference in comfort on my eye before or after a shower. It sounds like such a minor little thing, but physical comfort is actually kind of huge deal.
So, I’ll try taking night time showers for a while and see if that helps. It worked wonders this morning, so I’m optimistic!
But, I did promise to explain why I took a shower in the middle of the night. I didn’t eat enough yesterday. I missed lunch. I wasn’t all that hungry (I thought) so I didn’t eat until I got home. I had a normal sized dinner. I was still hungry before bed, so I ate a banana. Then I ate a Snickers bar. I actually felt kind of virtuous because skipping lunch meant I had a significant calorie deficit for the day, even with my Snickers. Yay me, I thought. And I went to bed.
Around 2:30 in the morning I woke up with a headache and starving. Oh yeah, I remembered, my body doesn’t like me to skip meals and will usually find a way to punish me for it. Oh, also night sweats were hitting me hard. Probably the Snickers bar right before bed was not the best idea I could have had… The sugar crash was so hard it woke me up! I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up and went to the kitchen for a snack. I had a glass of milk and some cheese and pretzels (my version of cheese and crackers) and went back to bed. I still couldn’t sleep. My headache was worse. Night sweats had me throwing my covers off and then pulling them back on. I got up and took a shower, hoping the hot water would soothe my tight muscles and pounding head. And, I wanted that special post-shower comfiness you get from going back to bed still wet with your hair in a towel to help me go back to sleep. It worked. I did feel better this morning and made a discovery about showers in the process. Also, today? I’m eating lunch.
Can you relate to my story? Tell me about it in the comments!