Sleeping Partner

Sounds pretty racy. It is.
Back in college Charlsie used to swear by the healing of a heating pad. Charlsie and I got to live together in both the Theta house and at Windsor #15. Atleast once a month I could come home to Chuck on the smelly couch, movie running or continuous episodes of her fave sitcom on the tv, Zaxby's tea in hand, Cadburry milk chocolate eggs on the table and heating pad powered up. She seemed to believe an convinced me that any ache or pain or cramp of any sort should be nursed by the heating pad. Anyway, about a year ago I am not sure that anything even hurt but to prevent it I decided I needed a heating pad. To be honest, a dear friend actually bought the heating pad for me which makes me think maybe I really was in pain and couldnt get up. So back when my body started falling apart at an accelerated pace this summer I plugged the pad in to the jack behind my bed and wove the chord through my bed frame and now the heating pad sleeps with me.

Let's break off for a second. I am a creature of habit to the max. Recently I have been trying to break old habits, not necessarily bad ones - just old, pointless ones. I actually havent really tried but I have written them down with anticipation of exchanging them for new, meaningful habits. Someone read a book recently and said that the book said that if you do something for 21 days in a row it will become habit. Comforting that I dont know the book, the author, nor the source but I heard it and I believe it. So step one Sunday night was to write a list of habits to be adopted. Many of which I do but not habitually so please do not judge. These are in no certain order and I am sure I will leave out a few.
*Write one letter a day to out of town friend
*Drink water right when I get up ( I dunno...something cleansing about this)
*Call one of my family members once a day. My mama always gets this call and I think she is getting tired of me so I need to spread the love.
*Compliment 3 people
*Floss (I'm at about 60% right now for the week)
*Wake up earlier to spend more time reading and listening to God (This is a part of my day that I dont consider habit but a pleasure but I would rather make it a habit in the morning rather than at random times in the day)
*Pushups before bed. (Pushups are the best thing you can do for your upper body and I just dont want to think that one day good things could sag.)
*Physical therapy excercises for my knee everynight (Yeah, no wonder my knees are still hurting)
*Get to office b 7:30 (obviously I didnt start this one today either)
Okay, so I know there are more but this is a good start.

Back to the point at hand. At night, I habitually wash my face, brush teeth with Sonicare, go to my room, shut the door, dwindle to an article of clothing, turn on my bedtime partner (heating pad), turn my clock around backwards so I cant see the time or the brightness, get in bed, read for about 15 minutes (enough time to let the pad heat up), turn out the lights and snuggle.

You should probably stop reading if this weirds you out. There is something comforting about the heating pad on when I go to bed. It should probably be scary since I could potentially catch my sheets on fire but it's worth it. Somehow, without waking myself I always wake up and the heating pad has either been turned off or I have unknowingly turned down the intensity.
So, there is nothing really wrong with this habit. It could maybe stay on the list of habits to do but again, it is pretty purposeless. I won't lie - aside from my knees, there are no major aches and pains going on. But I gurantee if there were to be - they would be stopped in the night by the power of my heating pad. It's all mental. Just like mom's cure for the common cold - a coke and a Reeces Peanut Butter Cup. You believe what you want to believe.