A few thoughts about my dog

In my flusteration in the last post I guess I forgot to mention another cool thing about this class: it feels SO good when a certain concept or formula actually sinks in, and I realize that hey – wow! – I actually do KNOW this stuff! I didn't know it before, and now I do. I learned it!

It's been a long time since I've challenged myself with something this difficult, that does not come naturally to me or flatter the image I have of myself as someone who is capable of learning challenging material provided it is sufficiently interesting or self-referential ..... Not that I expect ever to become a statistician, even if the statistics are specifically applied to the behavioral sciences ... It's just cool to see myself taking on something hard, and succeeding.

Also: I've been meaning to write something about my dog lately, and keep putting it off. Here's the thing. He's getting old. Not just senior dog old, but really, truly old. The kind of old that makes him sleep on the couch all day, and not be able to take a long walk every day but more like every other day, with shorter walks in between. The kind of old that grows white fur along his snoot and up around his eyes, that causes him to hesitate before jumping up into the car, or down off the bed, and to grunt and groan with pleasure when being scratched or given his dinner. The kind of old that makes me realize how precious every single day with him really is.

I thought about it again today when we were walking to the end of the road and back. Our turnaround point is at the place where the road dead ends on the creek, and since it's still running I always hike up the little embankment, through the nettles and weeds, and stand on the overlook, watching the water moving over the rocks and listening to the sound of it flowing and burbling on ... Truly, this sound is the saving grace of my days and nights during this time of my life when I feel like I don't know what I'm doing at all, or what I'm going to do, or what is going to happen, or where I'm going to be ... Listening to that water running along its happy little course does more to calm my mind than any other kind of exercise or therapy I've ever tried. So I do it every day, and every single day my dog goes with me, and waits for me as long as I want to stand there listening. He never says a word, or looks to see if I'm done yet – he's just there, intensely tuned in to Me, accepting of whatever it is I want or need to do.

I love to watch his feet on the grass by the side of the road as we walk back home. I love to watch his ears bounce up and down, and his tail moving from side to side. I love the interested look on his face when he looks me in the eye – not with any agenda that I can see, but just to see what's next. He's the most open, connected and present being I think I've ever known.

It's really profound for me, a person who uses words for everything whether they're appropriate or not, to be able to spend so much time – almost all my time lately, really – with someone who doesn't use words at all, yet manages to communicate so clearly about so many things that really matter. With Mr. A being gone these couple of weeks it's become especially clear how beautiful and calming it is to connect emotionally with someone who knows how to make me feel safe and loved in the world, to feel like I belong, all without telling me anything. Human beings being what we are, I don't know if that would be possible with another person – unless it was a baby; I suppose what I'm trying to describe is kind of the same as what parents talk about when they try to express how they feel when they're connecting with their babies.

The difference is that a dog is not a baby, or a human being, either. With another human I can see how it would feel familiar, in a way, and sort of magical to be able to connect without language ... but knowing that eventually language would come, and be part of the relationship – that would have to change things, I think. With a dog, you know absolutely that it's never going to happen. A dog will never learn to talk the way people do, and that seems like kind of a good thing. Liberating.

I've read essays by dog enthusiasts imagining what their dogs would say if they could speak. Somehow, that just doesn't interest me. What interests me is the mystery of it....

Hrm, losing my train of thought. I just really, really love this dog, so much. The older he gets, the more grateful I feel for the opportunity to know how it feels to love someone that way. Here's a great line from Mary Oliver:

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

I'll always be grateful to my beautiful dog for helping me learn how to really truly live in this world.

Freaking out on statistics

Just taking a quick break to say this statistics course is kind of making my brain hurt. I got through the first four chapters without much trouble, but now suddenly the accumulation of all these formulas is starting to bunch up against my skull in a very distracting way. It's a strange feeling to have all this information just swirling around like debris in a flash flood, scrubbing and irritating the inside of my brain without ever really sinking in, quite. Or at least, it's only sinking in just very, very slowly.

Part of the problem is that I'm trying to teach it to myself, out of a book, without an actual teacher or TA to ask for help. Mr. A knows all this stuff, and is a good teacher, but he's out of town for a few weeks so right now I'm on my own with it. My solution for today is to slow myself way down, take breaks when my mind starts to twist and push away from the material, and repeat, repeat, repeat .... It's pretty uncomfortable. One way or another, though, I just have to get through it. I have to pass with at least a C to get into grad school, and it's too expensive to take twice.

On the up side, I'm getting a lot of work done around the house. I'm finding there's almost nothing I'd Not rather do than my statistics homework – dusting, sweeping, pulling all the dry leaves off the house plants, scrubbing the bathroom floor, pulling weeds, pruning roses, transplanting raspberries ..... Not to mention taking a walk, running on the treadmill, plucking stray hairs, giving the dog a bath, sewing on missing buttons, doodling in the margins, googling Wonder Woman and Sandy Duncan's glass eye, watching the bionic woman battle Sasquatch ....

I did spend a few days with my parents last week, but had to cancel the Portland leg of the trip. It would've overlapped with Mr. A's current business trip, so that we wouldn't have seen each other for a little more than three weeks ... which normally would have been fine, except that we found out a few days before I was scheduled to leave that his mother is seriously ill (even worse than we had thought), and I didn't want to just suddenly disappear for almost a month right after he got the news. So I'll do the Portland trip another time – hopefully soon. Maybe early summer, after I finish this class.

Which I really need to get back to now, now that my brain has had a chance to disengage from the struggle and relax a bit. My goal for the day is to get through my current chapter, answer all the questions and solve the sample problems, and set it aside early enough to take the evening off. Then, tomorrow morning, review again and see how much has stuck. After that, I have a bike ride scheduled with a long lost / newly reconnected friend, which should be another nice break.

Also: You should see all the lizards that are out and about now that it's getting warm again. Just glancing out the window I've counted eight of them in the time it's taken me to pound out this post, including a cute little fence lizard doing pushups on top of a weathered wooden sign sticking up out of the lily bed. The sun must feel so good on its beautiful blue skin, after spending all winter hibernating in the cool dark underground.

Now is the time

I may have spoken too soon last time when I declared myself "back to normal" – or maybe just overestimated how good my usual "normal" feels, which I think would be easy for anyone to do after many months of struggling. In any case, I've had several really hard mornings lately, and they have inspired me to go ahead and officially declare my spring practice this year as always, even though I'm off to kind of a late start.

As with so many other aspects of my life ... I may be late, but that's not the same as being TOO late. Better late than never, no time like the present, carpe diem, et cetera.

The thing I've decided to do every day is to get out of bed as soon as I wake up in the morning (no matter how early it is, or what the weather is doing), put on my boots and jacket, grab the dog and the leash, and walk to the end of our road and back – an easy and pleasant mile. Does that sound like a wimpy practice, too easy to offer any real benefit? It kind of does to me ... and yet more than any other thing I've done to try to deal with my early morning panics in a positive way, this is the one practice that pretty much always helps.

Normally what I do when I wake up like that, or at least what I want to do, is to lie as still as I can and try to will myself back to sleep, in hopes that the next time I wake up, I'll feel better. I know it doesn't work, but in that moment the temptation to choose oblivion over anxiety is very strong. Walking gives me a third option, and it's something I can do even when all my brain chemicals are commanding me to pull the blankets over my head and try to disappear.

Oh blah, now I think I'm starting to exaggerate. Maybe just a little? It's hard to tell, sometimes – I've gotten so used to the way those chemicals make me feel.

In any case – that's what I'm going to be doing from now until Easter. A walk a day, before I do anything else. It's the timing of it that makes this practice significant, since we already do that walk anyway, most days. Getting out of bed as soon as I'm awake, no matter what, and actually DOing something right away that feels good – that is what I think is going to provide the benefit. Even when I feel great I've never been a good sleeper or an early riser, so that part will be challenging as well. I'm also curious to see if getting up very early really will help me sleep better at night; Mr. A and several other people have assured me that it will and nothing would make me happier than to prove them right!

In other news, I'm now officially bored with the topic of How I Am Doing and/or Feeling. I was looking for something I wrote a few years ago and stopped to read some old entries, and was struck by how much more interesting (to me, at least) they used to be, back when I was actually telling stories and talking about my life instead of just constantly reporting on the state of my mental, emotional and physical health. I guess trying to heal this latest crisis has been my most compelling and demanding task this winter, so it makes sense to record my observations. Now that I'm (mostly) starting to feel better – in fact, it's one way I know I really am getting better and not just wishing to – I'm starting to want to write about happier things.

One of which is the glorious sun – which just started shining after several days of clouds and rain. I'm going to get out there again now and soak it up, then head off into the rest of my day.

P.S. Before I totally abandon my habit of recording health symptoms, I would like to note that this latest round of anxiety coincides exactly with the completion and mailing off of my graduate school application, and the end of my hospice training program. Having something structured, challenging and meaningful to work on every day really did reduce my anxiety – a LOT. I already kind of knew that, so it's empowering to find it still true, and to feel it within my capabilities to create new routines that will provide the same kind of relief. The next thing I have to do is finish my statistics course by the end of May, which I'm already gathering is going to be about as much of a challenge as I've ever encountered in school ... Luckily, I don't have anything else too pressing going on right now so I'm looking forward to putting my full energy into it – as soon as the textbook arrives!