SnowDancer

I get tired shoveling snow but my pooch really gets exhausted.

Here's why:




Ain't that a hoot?

Walk Softly Carrying a Big Stick

No biking this weekend

Had a great walk instead

In the park

With the pooch.

He ate sticks,

Bugs ate us &

We ate up the

Peace of the woods.

Energy Management

Acquire

Conserve

Monitor

Yeah, that's it; I'm not lazy, I'm just an effective energy manager...

SnowDancer

We have this beautiful dog. He has no opinion on the weather. He doesn't seem to care about the coming of spring, or the NOT coming of spring as we are currently witnessing. He's a good one to consult with when spring is yet again delayed and the weather makes me crabby. When the snow gets deep, he is delighted and can't wait to go out and help me shovel the snow. Even when it's so cold he has to wear his boots, he just sits patiently ready for action. He doesn't want to hear that we are done for the day. It's not that he doesn't enjoy spring when it arrives and he gets to romp in the park climbing trees and such. He's always bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for a barbeque or a session with a toy I would complain miserably about and want a new one. Not only a new one but a super-lightweight one made of carbon fiber or unobtainium that would make all the other dogs oooh and aaahhhh over. OK, it's true he sometimes only has one eye focused on the present, but what would you do if you had a shredded Frisbee on your head? At the end of day, he doesn't need anything fancy, he just hops in the back of the car and drops off for a nap on top of the luggage...

Elusive State of Normal

Normal isn’t typically hard to find. It’s just how things are. The way they have been for the largest periods of life. Yes there are the peaks and valleys where normal flits away on an unexpected gust of life. When the gust subsides, normal creeps back in like a puddle in the low spot of a parking lot. It’s never quite the same but it becomes the new normal.

Normal includes the redefinition of Normal spinning from where it came to where it now is. But it’s still Normal. Accepting the new Normal sometimes takes time. Perhaps it requires an acceptance, even grieving for what’s been lost, what’s being replaced. It’s true that some states of Normal are more difficult to accept than others. Sometimes it’s difficult to detect when the new Normal has finally settled in and the transition is complete.

For me, reconstructing Normal has been a long and varied effort. I’ve known folks who declare how their lives will go, perhaps “I’m going to be a Doctor” and then one day they are. It still takes time but their path is pretty straight between that day in third grade when they declared their intent and their current Normal. I’m not one of those and can’t pretend I am. Don’t want to either which is not to cast any shadows on their path but it just hasn’t been that way for me.

I started this post a few months back when the house was torn apart for our remodeling project. Being unemployed through it all, I was here living every dusty, noisy moment. Sometimes leaving for interview calls since I didn’t want it to sound like I was calling from a park bench in downtown. Sometimes I would head out just to head out and that was fine and all but Normal demands a home into which you can retreat.

Normal has the comforts we surround ourselves with. It’s soft where we need it to be. Quiet for our thoughts and rich with the dreams of a future yet to be realized. It also has its hard spots from which we can push off into the world we are constructing. We plan, or at least understand that at times we incur disruption and lack of connection to these things just as a broad jump athlete lifts off from the toe board in the quest to soar over the distance.

At that point they are helpless, suspended in air, hurtling towards all that for which their training has prepared them. Even though they are no longer physically connected to the earth, this is Normal and they know they will land according to the trajectory their training, in the long term, and their leap at the instant they took flight, has set for them. But they always land somewhere.

I have carefully crafted the arc of my career, set the trajectory on which I have flown for many years. And, as Normal would have it, I always landed. But what happens when the very laws of physics change between the time your foot launches your flight and the predicted landing? I started this run as a broad jumper and now find myself in the dark, a freefalling parachutist, wondering how to open my chute.

Actually, I’m wondering if I have a chute since I didn’t pack one. If I do have one, I’ll have to figure out how to open it on my way down and assuming I can figure that out, knowing when to pull the chord is likely to be important. Too late and I’ll end up a stain on the tarmac but too early and I’ll suffer the relentless cross winds and miss the target completely.

I don’t know if it’s a good thing but I’m not alone in this free fall. Somewhere along the line our society lost the concept that adding value was the foundation of Normal and that bedrock was replaced by a Normal where adding wealth was all that mattered. Never mind that it was all based on IOU’s written on tissue paper now being used by the Bear to clean up after a grizzly dump.

So now that our game of Financial Let’s Pretend is ending, will we return to a Normal based on actual value or will we just generate so much paper that it looks like a foundation on which our future can be constructed? Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion but while we wait you might want to pick up a few extra rolls, you know just to get in on the ground floor of the next Normal.

The Oddball

We have an odd dog.

He's a Border Collie and 

they are very smart dogs.

But they can also be pretty odd.

It's what some folks like about them.

(Folks like me but then 

I'm a bit odd myself.)

I snapped this shot the other day.

Another day of oddball antics.

OK, so he can sit on a step.

That's not really that odd. 

Even the blind cat can sit on a step.

 (Humming; Even a blind cat can tell when he's sitting on a step...) 

So what's so odd about a dog sitting on a step?

Take a closer look.

Does your dog sit with his butt on one step

and his back feet on the same step as his front?

I didn't think so...

Oh, and the frisbee?

Always

gets the center bit out of it.

So he can carry it like this:

That way he won't trip on it when he's 

bringing it back.

bringing it back..

bringing it back...

bringing it back....

I'm still trying to get a shot of him

Drinking tea with his pinkie up...

Circle of life

As life rolls forward many changes come along. Dealing with the change is always a challenge but losing my beautiful Quincy was really hard. I did, however, get some relief from writing his eulogy: We all get exactly one lap around the circle of life and no one knows how long our race will run or how big our circle will be. Today Quincy crossed the finish line and is trotting happily across the rainbow bridge, free from the burden his body had become. He adopted me in May of 1994 and raised me with patience and unbounded cheerfulness, always willing to try it again. Perhaps this time, I'm sure he was thinking, I would get it right. I don't know if I ever did but I do know that he never cared. He was a brilliant obedience dog and an enthusiastic agility partner. I didn't have a clue how close a bond could exist between a dog and a person until he showed me that my life-long love of dogs prior to meeting him had just barely scratched the surface. I will forever remember his cheerful enthusiasm and miss having him at my side for even longer than that. Dearest Quincy, The hole in my heart seems infinite just now but the pawprint you left on my soul is even bigger. I look forward to the joy of your memory replacing the pain of your passing and thank you for every single moment you gave me.