kaberett | social grooming

I stopped being able to brush my hair every day back in 2011/2012, during The Winter Of My Discontent. Brushing teeth twice a day got reestablished at about the point I moved in with A and got Prompting to do the evening round, and is now sufficiently part of my routine that it is fairly robust to him not being around.

We've been brushing each other's hair for a bit longer than that, because if nothing else social grooming at times when for various reasons other forms of touch felt overwhelming or impossible, but we've been erratic about it.

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that we attempt to introduce social grooming as First Thing In The Morning. Getting-out-of-bed time had been slipping later and later to last possible moment, because warm nest pile, with risk of getting sucked into reading the entire internet. It turns out that "sitting up to get hair brushed and plaited" is a nice intermediate step that doesn't commit you to leaving the warm bed nest but does Get You Moving And Also Awake. So. That's working well, at least on weekdays.

It will be interesting to see how the habit fares during event weeks...