Barnmaven

When to let go - and when to hang on

When Roscoe was fairly young still, about four years old, he began limping slightly on his back legs.  Because of the way he lays down, on his belly with his legs out to either side, I assumed he had dysplastic hips.  I don't know why I simply decided this was the case, but I distinctly remember being told by someone who had a dog with hip dysplasia that this was a common way of laying down for dogs with that condition.  I figured Roscoe would eventually need surgery, just not yet, and that was good because it would give me time to save money.

A couple of years ago it became apparent that he was in a worsening state of pain.  I thought maybe I could afford a surgery by then, so off to the vet we went.  The vet noted the beginnings of atrophy on the leg he uses the least and took X-Rays.

The news was not so great:  Spondylosis.

Spondylosis is a chronic and degenerative condition in which bone spurs begin to form in the spine.  Over time these spurs grow in size and begin to bridge betwen the vertebrae.  At first the dog begins to lose flexibility, but as the condition worsens it becomes quite painful and can have a serious impact on quality of life.  There is no surgical cure that has been shown to successfully relieve the condition.

Standard treatment, and where we started with Roscoe, is a pain reliever.  We were given Rimadyl for him.  Mostly we gave it on the days he seemed in pain.  He would typically be stiff and painful a couple of days out of the week, nothing too bad and nothing the pills didn't seem to help him with.  I was told, however, that eventually the medication would no longer be enough to control his pain, and at that point we would have to consider putting him on injectable steroids.  This would relieve his pain, but also seriously shorten his life because of the other side effects, so it would only be a last resort.

The last week or two, despite his regular medication, Roscoe began showing signs of getting worse.  It started with him soiling his crate, a typically rare event.  We thought maybe he'd gotten a bug or eaten something that disagreed with him.  I didn't piece it together until I got home Tuesday night and he was lying on the floor of my bedroom, crying, and he had made a very large mess right in front of my closet.  He couldn't walk at all, and the pain had made him incontinent.

We went to the vet.  I was terrified that I was going to be told there was nothing they could do for him, and girded my loings for the worst.  I was so relieved when the vet assured me that we could definitely get him feeling better.  She increased his dose for the pain reliever, added an opiate, and told me that if the additional pain relief didn't help with the incontinence issues she could prescribe a hormone therapy.

As soon as we got home I gave him both of his meds and within a half an hour he was playing with T-Bone like nothing had ever been wrong the day before. 

I don't think I'll ever be ready to say goodbye to Roscoe.  When Hercules passed, there was no decision to be made -- his heart was seriously enlarged, he couldn't breathe, and the many medications they gave him to try and help weren't doing anything.  He was so afraid and so sick, letting him go was the kindest thing I could do.  But with Roscoe's condition, his health comes and goes.  When he's in pain he is obviously miserable, but he can seem almost miraculously better in a matter of hours if he gets meds or a massage or just rests long enough.  If you'd asked me about his long term prognosis on Tuesday night I would have replied that he was near the end of his capacity to cope. That night I spent much of the evening curled up with him on the floor, crying and whispering stories in his ear.   Wednesday morning, after he'd spent the night on my bed snoring gently into my ear, he was walking on all four legs.  He was limping, of course, but nowhere near the crippled puppy he'd been the night before.

We've been through so much together, Roscoe and this family.  I fell in love with him through a picture in an email. He moved from North Carolina to New Jersey and then he moved all the way from New Jersey to Washington State with us, and of the three dogs that made that move, he is the only one still alive.  He survived being shot.  He has gently welcomed every new member into our household.  He's seen me through divorce, through dating, through remarriage and through the lonely times when SG is on the road.  He and I have a lot of history between us.  With a good vet, the right medications and a lot of love, I hope we have a lot more.

Spilt milk

The laptop I bought on closeout for the kids resides on my breakfast bar. 

When its not being used to play Minecraft or  watching Justin Bieber and (shudder) Ke$ha music videos,  it becomes a resting place for one cute gray polydactyl kitten. Did you meet Hemingway yet?  No?  Here.  Readers, meet Hemingway. 

Hemingway showed up in our garage about two months ago during a several week cold snap when the outside temperatures were hitting single digits.  I opened the garage door to grab something out of the box freezer early one morning and a small furry gray shape went darting away from me and under the car.  It was small enough to be either a very small cat or a very large rat, and it was dark enough for me not to be able to discern which. (Yes.  I screamed.  No.  I am not ashamed.) 

I woke up SG who came out to help locate and identify our newest houseguest.  It took a little while but eventually we heard a very very tiny "meow" from behind the luggage.  Hard as we tried we could not catch him and couldn't get him to come to us, so we started leaving the garage door slightly open and putting out food and water for him.  We worried about his survival because he was so small, but every day the food we put out was being eaten, so we knew he was alive.  I finally got someone to loan me a live trap and we put the food dish inside it.

Three nights later we managed to catch Coco, who was extremely unhappy with us over it.  I reloaded the trap and forgot about it for a couple of days until SG went to get something out of the garage one morning and came back in the house with the trap full of a frantically meowing kitten. 

Now I've dealt with feral cats before and they are notoriously opposed to being handled, so I fully expected to open that trap and have a spitting, hissing, clawing, ANGRY kitten come barrelling out of it.  Instead, a little gray and white furball ran right into my arms, purring and rubbing against me as if he'd been waiting for me his whole life.  I suspect he was very cold and very lonely and happy to have someone warm to cuddle with.  He crawled up my shirt and it was then we saw his six-toed front paws and both SG and I knew he would stay with us.  The name choice was obvious -- Ernest Hemingway is one of history's more famous Polydactyl cat fanciers, having been given one by a ship's captain.  Polydactylism is a dominant trait, so that first cat became the founder of a large polydactyl cat colony.  Hemingway's estate in Key West is currently home to around fifty descendents of that first cat.  Polydactyls are thus commonly referred to as "Hemingway Cats."

(Hemi is the second polydactyl kitty to enter my life, and rather coincidentally, the first extra-toed kitty I had was also a gray and white boy I named "Crash Davis" after Kevin Costner's character in Bull Durham.)

Hemingway's origins are somewhat of a mystery to us.  We are not aware of any feral cat litters in the neighborhood and none of the neighbors reported a missing kitten.  He couldn't have been more than seven or eight weeks old based on his size, and his friendly nature isn't indicative of a feral litter.  Regardless, he's part of the family now.

Yesterday I had to stay home from work to get an emergency crown on one of my back molars.  Turns out 20-year old fillings have a habit of undermining the structure of your teeth, as I unhappily discovered at dinner on Saturday. 

Hemingway was snoozing on the lid of the laptop on the counter as he is wont to do nearly every day when the kids aren't using it.  If they leave the lid open he will walk and nap on the keyboard, which has mixed results -- either the laptop freezes up, which sends the kids into a frenzy when they try to use it later, or it sends out undecipherable emails to equally undecipherable addresses and opens odd websites. 

I managed to snag an appointment to get my tooth fixed, but when I went to leave the house I could not find my keys.  I spent a good ten minutes tearing the house apart looking for them.  As I was frantically searching the kitchen counters. I lifted up a sheaf of papers on the breakfast bar, startling Hemingway out of a sound sleep. He levitated straight up, then landed with scrabbling feet on the counter, knocking over a glass of milk that Race Car Man had left unfinished.  Now I not only couldn't find my keys, but a pool of milk was widening under the mouse, the laptop, my envelope with all of our tax paperwork and my Blackberry.  Heavens to Betsy! 

I clutched my Blackberry to my heaving chest, scooped up the laptop, gave it a cursory wipe, then threw a wad of paper towels down on the rest of the puddle and continued on my search for car keys.  I finally did find them on the workbench in the garage right next to the driver's side door of the car; I must have left them there when I got home from dropping the kids off at their bus stop.  I have no idea why I would have done that, except that I have been completely discombobulated ever since my tooth fell apart.  I was already late for the dentist.  After four hours in the chair getting my new crown installed, I completely forgot about the milk mess.

Last night when Race Car Man went to play on the laptop he gave me a round tonguelashing over the sticky mouse and milk-speckled lid which I had failed to finish cleaning.  Sensory issues and sticky things are an endlessly bad matchup and typically grounds for screaming exceeding the sound barrier, so I count myself lucky he was only Complaining Loudly. 

I wanted to tell him, "There's no use complaining over spilled milk," but I don't think he would have appreciated it.  At least the laptop still worked.

Hello new header

I just adore this photo I took of Bugs and Penny the other day.  I had just put hay out for them and Penny decided she would eat with Bugs.  Bugs didn't really want to share, but he's become far more tolerant of her since the other horses moved out.  I stylized it a bit through the photo editor, and every time I looked at it I liked it even more.   I'd been thinking about revamping my header anyway, and with this image it seemed the right time to make a change.    Besides, I'm growing my hair out.  New look for me, new look for the blog. 

Finding a catchall phrase to include in the header was kind of tough.  Its difficult for me to categorize this blog.  The subjects that present themselves to my forebrain as writing topics are so disparate as to make pinpointing my "niche" nearly impossible.  I will never be a brand.  Its a good thing I don't blog for a living, we'd be living in a cardboard box under the overpass.   There are times recently that I've seriously considered quitting this venue and finding different outlets for my words, but like a lot of things I like to do, if I push them back into the realm of ideas rather than actions, I'm afraid they'll disappear.  This place forces me to find reasons to write, to find subjects to write about, to explore my life and my relationship with my life and the people in it.  In doing so I find patterns and solutions.  Besides, spring isn't the right time to lay this to rest.

Life seems more hopeful at certain times of the year, and this is one of them.  As the daylight extends its dominant hours and the winds begin to blow more warm than cold I find my mood and outlook improve greatly.  Everything is possible, and things that once seemed mired in quicksand seem to present solutions.  I have more energy.   In spring I fall back in love with everything.  Including blogging, apparently.

Its really just narcissistic navel-gazing, this thing.  Oh, its also the chance to complain or gloat in public, the opportunity to vent to a wider audience about your currently malfunctioning appliances in hopes someone will toss you a sponsorship, a platform to maybe get a post that trends and gets picked up by an outlet with a broader platform and increase your internet fame.  Its also exhausting sometimes to decide what you can and can't write about or to pick up the relationship pieces after you've said something publicly that can't now be taken back.  You can pick every word carefully but just like in real life --eventually you'll say something you regret.  With any luck, more often than not, you write things you can be proud of, things you hope people will read and think about, things that do more good than harm.

Its not like a fancy header will do anything to improve the quality of the writing, but hopefully it enhances the viewing experience.

Happy almost spring!

 

Not doing what I can't

I think I'm starting to get better at this grownup thing.  Perhaps, just maybe.

Race Car Man started a few weeks ago with a new therapist, this time one at a place whose clientele are people with autism (as opposed to a therapist who deals with autism among other things, which for us did not work so well).  I think its helping.  He's had more good days at school, he's starting to get homework again.  My ex had a schedule change at work that allows him to go to our son's classroom two days a week for a couple of hours which is fantastico.  If I could only find a way to make life outside of Minecraft even remotely palatable for this child all would be straight up and down.  You can't have it all. 

Amazon Girl also started with a therapist last week, as the doors of pubescent hormonal hell have apparently opened wide and beckoned her therein.  She's struggling emotionally and needs some support from an adult she can talk to about life, about her parents, about her brother -  which means a third party is required.  Fortunately the last therapist she saw, the one I really really liked, is still practicing and takes our insurance. 

Then on Wednesday nights I still have obedience school with TBone.  And Sundays there's church and then Amazon Girl has her riding lesson, and most Saturdays from here until the sun goes away in the late fall again, I have something to scheduled to do with my horses.  SG has guitar lessons every Tuesday and just got started with some group political thingamajig.  And so on.

Sometimes in between all of that we sit down for a few minutes and breathe and maybe fold a load of laundry.

Last week Race Car Man's therapist asked if we wanted to start him in her next social skills class.  "Sure, when does it start?" 

Next Tuesday. (Two days ago)

Its a class he needs, BUT - it starts at 3:45, just 5 minutes after he gets out of school, AND its a half hour ride away from his school.  And I work full time.  And my husband works full time.  And if I had some time to sit down and sketch out a plan it we can do it but Next Tuesday just does not work for me right now and I for ONCE in my goddamned adult life opened my mouth and said the magic words:

"I'm sorry but that doesn't work for our schedule right now."

I didn't even feel guilty about saying it.  I felt relieved.  I am doing all that I can do for my family and myself right now and I am not going to try and cram one more thing down our collective throats, not at this moment. 

There have been a lot of times in the last several years where I've felt almost all of my waking time was consumed with trying to frantically get everything done that I am supposed to do and failing miserably at it.  Its a horrible pattern - try to do more than you're capable of, fail, drop two or three of the balls you're juggling and then spend a month trying to dig out of the hole you've just created for yourself.  

Perfectionism just isn't going to happen for me right now.

There will be a point where our schedule will open enough to make the social skills class do-able for us.  It will happen.  Just not two days ago.  

Slow down. The tempo isn't as fast as you think it is.

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Saturday morning we loaded up and headed down the road a ways and across the river to a bomb-proofing clinic at one of the local arenas.bomb

Contrary to how it sounds, this is not an event where we endeavor to get our horses to calmly stand still during explosions by subjecting them to hand grenades and cannons, although from the reactions of some of the participants it might as well have been.

You can quote me on this:  There is no such thing as a bombproof horse.  Unless he's blind, deaf and cemented in place, most horses have at least one thing they will spook at or at the very least react to.  There are horses that accept most everything you throw at 'em, who you could trust to carry a toddler around on them safely - but  they are all capable of getting frightened by something new, even the most level-headed of them.  If they weren't born like calm, cool cats, the best way to get them there is - you guessed it - to throw everything at 'em.  Rinse, wash, repeat.

When we got to where the clinic was being held the fun had already started.  Right behind the fence line where the trailers lined up there was a pen with a great big black and white sow in it.  More than one horse decided to break loose and head south when they got a gander at her.  Unlike cows, who tend to be more curious than frightened of new things, horses tend to react with a great deal of self-preservation.  Until they've determined (or been convinced) that something isn't going to kill and eat them, they'll just assume otherwise and vacate the premises with haste.  Also?  (And this is anecdotal so feel free to Snopes me on it) Pigs supposedly smell very similar to bears.

Fortunately Bugsy Boy wasn'tt all too concerned about the pig.  The llama and the sheep, on the other hand, had him snorting and jumping around until the llama was kind enough to touch noses with him through the field wire.  After that, Bugs was all, hey, I don't know how to get in there with you but would you mind sharing some of that hay?

The entire facility was covered with various obstacles - bridges, gates, tarps, water obstacles.  There were obstacles set up inside the covered arena, and obstacles set out on the grounds as well.  Did you know that a water obstacle inside the barn is not the same as a water obstacle outside in the daylight?  No?  Just ask Bugs, who successfully (after a lot of coaxing and the help of a buddy horse) walked through the water inside the barn but not once set foot in the outside water.  Those plastic ducks looked pretty threatening to me too, come to think of it.  Sometimes you measure success by your proximity to the desired result. 

He did great on the tilty bridge and the "car wash" (a frame made of PVC pipes with streamers and pool noodles hanging off it).  Once he figured out he could put his head down and the streamers wouldn't touch his ears he didn't mind it a bit.  He did not like going through the obstacle where a whole bunch of plastic bottles and jugs were strewn on the ground inside of a square made of wooden poles.  The first time his foot crunched on one I thought I was going to have to pull my hat out of the rafters.  By the sixth or seventh time through it, though, he was a lot calmer.

We also successfully negotiated the Black Tarp of Death, which a couple of years ago was what I referred to as his "kryptonite."   When he put his head down, sniffed it and walked right over it I had to turn around and do it a few more times just to convince myself I hadn't dreamed it or maybe was on the wrong horse.  I was sure the tilting bridge would unnerve him but he handled it like a pro.

By afternoon we had put in a good three or four hours and both of us were ready to go home, Bugs to have a nice roll and me to have a nice hot shower.  It was a really good day, seeing old friends and making new ones. 

A lot about improving your riding and helping your horse learn is about the miles you put into them.  Except for rare cases, the spookiest of horses can be gotten used to a variety of things.  I like to expose my horse to everything I can, it just makes him safer for me on the trail - and that makes the trail a lot more fun for both of us.

 

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Photo Credit:  Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters 

SG and I were chatting a little about the big scandal happening over in Europe, where it appears food manufacturing plants in Ireland and the UK have been adding horsemeat to products which are supposed to contain beef or pork.  Horse DNA has been showing up in testing on supposed beef and pork products both on the shelf and in restaurants across Europe.  Burger King, Tesco, Aldi, Nestle’, Birds Eye and Sodexo, among other, have all been impacted by the fraud. 

Some officials have raised health concerns about whether the horsemeat could contain phenylbutazone (Bute), a commonly used equine pain reliever that isn’t approved for human consumptions.  Others suggest there is a risk to consumers from Equine Infectious Anemia, which in and of itself isn’t dangerous to humans, but according to officials might be indicative of other health issues with the animal and point to poor sanitation and handling at the factory, which could indicate the presence of other, worse contaminants.  Personally, I think these impacts would be negligible at best, since it would impossible for Bute to be present in concentrated in a horse in large enough amounts to actually cause harm to a person.  Now the sanitation issue could be plausible threat, since a factory that is slipping horsemeat into their beef and pork products could conceivably be cutting costs by skimping on their plant sanitation or faking test results as well.  Still, no outbreaks have been reported (yet) of infectious diseases being transmitted by the affected products.

Aside from the visceral reaction of “OMIGOD WE DON’T EAT HORSES, THAT’S GROSS,” I think the bigger issue is how the prepackaged food industry either directly or indirectly manages to blur the lines of information about where our food comes from and what it is composed of.  We’re not made to eat all these chemical additives and highly processed foods.  We aren’t mean to have a bigt helping of gluten or corn filler in our staple products.  We aren’t meant to eat bread that can be squished down to a nugget the size of an eraser and has been processed to the point that you need extra helpings of fiber just to get it to pass through your intestines. 

When most of our food is produced by subsidiaries of giant corporations much becomes invisible to the consumer, unless the consumer is willing to spend a lot of time researching who owns who and who produces what.  Boycotting anything on principle these days pretty much means you just can’t shop anymore. Anyhwere.  A couple of months ago when some companies which I’d always assumed were just great little producers of organic foods showed up on a list of companies opposing a measure in California to identify GMO products on food labels.  Turns out those companies were subsidiaries of larger corporations which had a vested interest in hiding the origins of many of their food products. 

The horsemeat scandal is just the current frosting on the cupcake of how the giant business of producing all of our food in factories is for the most part pretty bad for our health and probably our planet, but so long as its good for the company bottom line, who gives a shit?

I personally would be horrified if I found out something I ate contained undisclosed horsemeat; but I’m realistic enough to know anything at all that I eat that was packaged in a big giant factory somewhere possibly – probably? – contains things that are even more objectionable than THAT.   And I probably think it tastes AWESOME too, because big companies are very good at taking advantage of the sense of taste that when we were still wandering around the forest in loincloths led us to eat the foods that were good for us and avoid those that would kill us. 

In our house we are always talking about food and about eating healthier.  SG’s doctor wants him to eat paleo; my personal food style is to try and eat more green things, more whole things and fewer processed things, but that sweet tooth of mine keeps tripping up on the Ho Ho’s.  I’m not a Whole Foods hipster, by any means.  I think it’s a shame that the foods that are pesticide and antibiotic free are also way more expensive and that most people can’t afford to buy them.  But for fuck’s sake, if we’re going to manufacture a situation where a large portion of the population can’t access fresh food, could we at least make the stuff they can afford less toxic for them?

If nothing else, the situation in Europe is just that much more incentive to buy things locally as much as possible and to always always read labels.   And if you go to London, DON’T GET A WHOPPER AT BURGER KING.  Gross.

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Failure: I do not think it means what you think it means

I struggle with the way I keep finding myself in the place of being afraid of my own imperfections.

I give everyone else a mile - but not myself.  Somehow I don't think I've earned it.  Or even worse -- its not that I expect more out of myself than out of others, its that I have a fear of being seen failing.  And because failure is such a frightening concept, I do two very destructive things:  I apply the word "failure" to many more situations than to which it actually applies; and I will do practially anything to avoid failing or being seen by others as what I believe is failing.

In 2007, not too long after I moved into this house, I bought horses again after more than a decade of what I think of as the 'years when I wasn't really myself.'  The horse I bought to be my 'perfect horse' illustrates beautifully another one of my more troublesome character defects:  I decide in my head what the perfect situation will be and then proceed to make it happen without making sure the steps I am taking actually match the outcome I desire.

I bought a mother/daughter pair based on little more than the shape of the younger mare's head and the discovery that she shared bloodlines with my old horse.  8 years old, never ridden, not touched at all in at least two or three years.  Sounds like a great prospect for a woman in her 40's who hasn't ridden in ten years, right?

I started doing some work with her only to quickly find out I was really out of my league.  I sent her off for professional training with a wonderful trainer, I took her to clinics, but ultimately she was the horse I could not trust. She would explode for the silliest of reasons, or even for no reason at all.  I grew fearful and nervous of her, and became concerned with the fact that I could get seriously hurt because of her.   The day I realized I could not stand to ride her I cried for what seemed like hours.   After she had a full year off of being used for anything I paid another trainer to put sixty days on her and I found someone who was interested in buying her.  I spent $700 for sixty days of training and let her go to her new home for $300.  (Never ever ask me for financial advice.)

But was it a failure?  Or was it a difficult situation that resolved successfully because in the end both the horse and I got what we needed?  She got trained by someone who helped her lose her tendency to flip her lid and a new owner who thinks she's the best horse in the world.  As for me, I got Bugs, who has done more for my skill and confidence than I would have ever guessed.

Still, I confess I thought of it as a failure for a very long time.  I felt guilty for having let that horse down, for not being the right person for her. 

This week I find myself in somewhat of the same situation. 

I have for quite some time been consumed with thoughts of my dog Lady, who passed away a couple of years ago.  She was a one of a kind dog, gentle and kind with everyone.  I wish I could imbue every family dog with her temperament, because she was perfect with children, perfect with smaller animals, perfect with people.  And I've gotten in my head the idea that I want another dog just like her.  Last fall we adopted a mastiff mix who ended up being aggressive.  After that disaster we waited a little while and then adopted a different mastiff through a rescue.   She was - is - a lovely dog, loves everyone she meets, loves going places, loves lounging, loves cuddling.  But after two months with us she went from being "interested" in our cats to wanting to eat them.  The same day she went after Tucker - he was only mildly hurt, thankfully - she then proceeded to try to eat our little dog Gizzy. 

It isn't hard to know what the right answer is -- its much easier to rehome one dog than it is five cats and a football with legs Chihuahua -- but it has been extremely difficult to come to terms with that answer.  The best answer to me would be the one where we spend a lot of time diligently working with her on her training and she becomes safe for the little animals in the house.  But for that to be very feasible, I would have to become a different person with a different life. 

 Training a problem dog takes a great deal of dedication and effort; I have the desire, but I'm terribly short on time.  If I did decide to give the time, then one of the people or the rest of the critters would have to be deprived of their fair share of time, for who knows how long.  As I write this out I am nodding my head at the inescapable logic; but it is a challenge to get my emotional self to stop telling me what a failure I am for not being the perfect home for this dog.

I can visualize what it would be like to be the person who doesn't take a poor fit as rejection or failure; but I am not that person, not yet.  I think - I hope - that someday I will be.  In the meantime I will continue to repeat to myself what a friend of mine told me what I wailed to her about how badly I had failed as an adoptive home for this dog:  "It is not a failure to do the right thing for your family and for the dog."  Knowing and feeling are so terribly often disparate concepts in this head of mine.

I think perhaps I might be less prone to these scenarios if I stopped trying to take on so much.  Of course, that's another person I hope to be some day -- the person who stops trying to drink the world from the end of a fire hose. 

How to turn the me that is overwhelmed and thinks she's failing into the me who is peaceful and OK with the way the world works, that is the ultimate question. 

 

 

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Remember weeks ago when I said SG had a job offer here in our area? The start date finally materialized.  He had to wait until the holidays were over for the HR people, who are located in another state, to get their stuff together and get him scheduled for his background check, a DMV report and a physical.  The DMV apparently is slower than the social security office because after a whole month they decided to just get him started with the DMV report as a contingency.  (They also made him get a spinal x-ray - but no drug screen.  Weirdest hiring protocol I've EVER heard of.)

So he passes all his screens, gets his offer, quibbles over it for a few days, then accepts.  He finally started on Monday of this week.

While the weeks at a time of wrangling life at home on my own was a serious challenge, the upside was is that SG was also home for weeks at a time.  Home to get the kids dressed and fed and on the bus, the animals fed, dinner made, groceries shopped for and household chores done.  If a child ended up needing to be picked up at school due to illness or behavior, he was there to take care of it.  I got used to coming home to dinner on the stove and kids with finished homework every day. 

I was spoiled.  I had a househusband.

About Thursday of last week panic set in.  We had considered that this would mean drastic changes to our routines at home, but until it was staring us in the face we hadn't really thought it out in detail.  Kids going to before- and after-school care would be kids who needed to get out of bed and ready to go an hour and a half earlier than they were used to.  Dinners, especially when we wanted to create time at the end of our day to exercise, would need to be planned and cooked in advance.  Bedtime would need to be pushed up, undoubtedly spawning cries of outrage.  We'd need to plan around guitar lessons, obedience classes, homework and workouts. 

We laid out plans for meals, we bought groceries.  We identified who was responsible for what each morning and each evening.  We were the parenting equivalent of Rocky training for a fight against the seemingly unbeatable Ivan Drogo.

(What was that line of Dolph Lundgren's from Rocky IV?  "If he dies...he dies."  Yikes.)

Sunday night, groceries are bought and stowed.  Dinner has been eaten and put away and the kids have showered and are enjoying computer time before getting ready for bed.  I pull all the meat out of the fridge we will need for the meal plan I've written up for the next few days.

"Honey, there's only one package of chicken in the freezer.  Didn't you buy any?"

"No, I thought we didn't need chicken.  Do we?"

"I don't think four legs are gonna cut it."

Swap Tuesday for Wednesday on the menu plan and forge ahead.  Its only a minor setback, we're still on our feet and swinging.

So far we've dealt with:

• SG forgetting to set out all of his daily supplements and leaving the house about twenty minutes later than he planned and THEN forgetting his phone on top of it, causing him to have to go back to the house after dropping the kids at daycare
• Me forgetting to fill out Race Car Man's medication log resulting in a phone call in the middle of a meeting after I'd forgotten to silence my phone
• SG spending an hour on another day looking for his desk key, which just happened to be in his desk at work.  In the keyhole of his desk at work.
• Guitar lessons being missed
• I forgot to buy the M&M's for Race Car Man's class party
• Wednesday dinner being changed at the last minute from homemade Ginger Glazed Chicken to McDonald's.
• At least three separate instances of me dramatically announcing "I SWEAR I'm going to CUT MY HAIR OFF!"

On top of all of it, the Chihuahua has had diarrhea for three days which has added an extra half hour to each morning of changing crate bedding, cleaning the carpets with my steam cleaner, extra loads of laundry and lots of air freshener.  Because we were out of clean bedding last night we had to let the dogs sleep loose in our room.  Did I mention Zoey's favorite place to sleep is the bed?  Between her insistence on putting her big head so close to my face I couldn't breathe and SG's habit of hogging the covers I finally ended up retreating in a huff to the couch where Iwas then assailed by the cats trying to take advantage of available human real estate to curl up on.

Its only Thursday and I'm starting to feel afraid we're headed for a TKO.  Not to mention its Valentine's Day.  I'm here to tell you its a sheepish thing to give your husband his Valentine's Day card when you've spent the night in a huff on the couch.  To be honest, I didn't actually give the card to him, I just tossed it over onto his side of the bed after I finished getting dressed this morning.  I'm not usually this chickenshit, but I'm just wiped out.

Hey, we're still in one piece.  No one's lost a finger or gotten left behind at the grocery store, at least at the last head count.  

I'm sure we'll have this down in a week or two.  I just hope to God the Chihauahua's butt dries up.

 

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Finding my speed

My daughter is growing up so quickly.  I am starting to see her reacting to peer pressure, to worry about being noticed for the wrong reasons.  I often find myself thinking back over time and wondering if I've been careful enough with my words to help her avoid the body awkwardness that has plagued so many women.  When I compliment her I try to remember to not just say how beautiful she is (and oh, she IS) but also how loving and smart and funny and creative she is.  The time left I have to truly influence her is nearly over - very soon she'll be at that age where her classmates have far more power than her mother over her self-image and the directions she chooses to take her life.  Like most of you I have plenty of sweaty-palm moments when I realize just how powerful peer pressure can be and pray like mad that I've been the mother I want to be so that my daughter has an inner compass with a strong enough magnetic north to overcome the negativity and shallowness she is sure to encounter.

I want to be a guide for her just as my own mother was for me,  leading the way for me to appreciate the value of having outside interests and staying active. 

Riding and caring for my horses, my home and my yard do a lot to keep my body moving, but with a job that mostly involves driving a keyboard, I know those things are not enough.  Over the last decade or so I've focused more on being healthy than on losing weight, although after the kids were born I had quite a lot of extra weight to lose.   I prefer exercise that feels good, particularly yoga, but I've been aware for some time that I frequently don't pay enough attention to my cardiovascular health.  SG frequently cites a study he read which concluded that one of the biggest contributors to longevity is the one's aerobic capacity.

Now I'm no stranger to cardio.  I was a rower once, and in the sprint races your typical rower goes anaerobic within the first minute or two of a 2,000 meter race.  Rowing uses every one of the large muscle groups, so the lungs must work extra hard to meet the body's demand for oxygen.  Of course that was a long time ago and nothing I've done since has been quite as phsyically demanding, childbirth notwithstanding.

 Back in 2011 I had started a C25K running program and was in the middle of my fifth or sixth week when I managed to give myself a severe bilateral sprain.  That put me off my feet for a while - fortunately NOT during the time of year it would keep me off my horse.   Six weeks on my lazy ass helped me go soft in a way I was not entirely comfortable with, but my vow to jump back on the exercise wagon had about as much veracity as my frequent threat to sell my children to the highest bidder.  Then last summer I ended up losing a lot of weight due to severe gastric issues. Instead of encouraging me to start exercising again, all it did was give me a good excuse to be lazier than ever.  When you are like me and you keep several sizes of clothes and the smallest ones fit without even having to try hard, complaency is easy to come by.  Unfortunately, lazy eventually catches up with you.  And it has.  I haven't weighed myself since I was pregnant with my daughter, but my clothes started telling me I had one more size to go before I was right back where I was at the beginning of the summer.

I made a few attempts to restart my C25K program.  Its bitterly cold here, though, and I have little time as it is -- I don't enjoy spending an extra half hour putting layers of clothes on just to stay warm enough to suck in freezing lungfuls of air as my out-of-shape body tries to make itself jog.  Screw that.  But now what?

As often seems to happen in my life, fate - a/k/a my parents - intervened.  About a month ago my parents told us they wanted to give SG and I a wedding gift.  Yes, that's right.  We got married three days after I sprained that ankle in 2011 and they are just now getting around to the wedding gift.  But who am I to argue?  Better late than never.

They bought us a treadmill.  Not a crappy, cheap treadmill - a really nice treadmill.  Probably the nicest treadmill I've ever been on.  Its got a Wi-Fi connection and an 11 inch touch screen and will also hook up to your iPod and mix you a martini.  In fact, I think might actually be smarter than me.

The days of coming home, dropping my briefcase on the floor and pouring a glass of wine have gone by the wayside.  The New Me comes home, puts dinner in the oven, throws on my running shoes and climbs on the treadmill.  Its taken a few weeks but I'm starting to see some results.  I'm able to run two miles now, and twice I've actually run three.  Okay, maybe I didn't exactly RUN.  I am not exactly anyone's idea of a runner.  But I'm doing a nice imitation of jogging.  I'm moving and I'm breathing and its getting easier.  I actually had a hard time zipping up my english riding boots this weekend because my calves seem to be growing a muscle.

Will it last?  I'm determined to make it so.   I think back to all the things I've started in my life that eventually faded away.  In context, however, I've always exercised.  Just not always consistently.   What I'm more keenly aware of now is that the older I get the less attainable fitness becomes.  Its not the weight I care about so much as longevity and quality of life.  With my arthritis and structural issues, being fit is the best way to keep myself active and pain free for as long as possible.  Its the best way to give myself a shot at being around for my kids for a long time to come. 

If ultimately it also helps to show my daughter that there's no such thing as "too old to get fit," so much the better. 

Just doin' my job.

 

You've wasted another perfectly good ten minutes reading my blog.  THANKS!

 

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