Monday.
Last night, right before I locked up, I finally rang it through — the probiotics I'd set aside behind the till on Sunday. Scanned it under my own name, paid full price, no discount, no more excuses.
I don't know why it took a whole day. Maybe I just needed the shop empty and quiet before I could do it.
This morning I opened the seal at the kitchen counter, before I'd even filled the kettle.
One a day, the label said. Morning, before food.
Mrs Lam's daughter's rule came back to me — probiotics first, then everything else. I'd repeated it to a dozen customers this year without ever trying it myself.
Now I know why she says it that way.
Not because I understood the science of it. Just because it made sense to sort myself out first, for once, before the rest of the day started asking things of me.
I filled a glass of water and took it standing at the sink, no ceremony to it.
Upstairs, two minutes with the LumiSpa before the mirror fogged up from the shower. I didn't have to talk myself into it this time. I just did it, the way you do the parts of your day you've stopped negotiating with yourself about.
By the time I came down, my daughter was already at the table, toast half eaten, her own little pump bottle sitting by her school bag instead of in the bathroom — like she'd used it and just brought it down with her, out of habit now.
"You're up early," she said.
"Started something new." I held up the bottle.
She glanced at it, unbothered. "Since when do you take stuff for you?"
"Since last night, actually."
She almost smiled and passed me the butter.
Neither of us made anything of it after that. She went back to her toast, I went back to the kettle, and the kitchen settled into its ordinary Monday sound — the radio low, a spoon against a bowl, someone's alarm buzzing upstairs that nobody had turned off.
But I noticed it, the way you notice weather changing without anyone announcing it.
Two separate routines, running quietly side by side, neither of us reminding the other anymore.
I used to think keeping this house running meant remembering everything for everyone.
Maybe it just means each of us finally remembering our own thing.
I rinsed the glass, put the bottle back on the shelf next to the calcium I keep meaning to start, and went to get dressed for the shop.