Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl

Dogs

Loyalty – How My Dog Inspires Me to Be a Better Person

January 16, 2020March 18, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl2 Comments

My dog’s nickname is Buddy. I always say, you never have to ask where Buddy is because he is right there. He is under foot right now. As I type this sentence.

My husband first met Decaf at a dog rescue event in our local park. He and I were former cat people who had lived pet free for over a decade. We had been discussing, in a theoretical far-in-the-future way, that we might should get a cat for our son in a few years. Decaf was a very scared and anxious little fellow that nobody except my husband paid any attention to. I can’t understand this as I find him to be the most ridiculously handsome dog I have ever seen. It’s like if 22 year Brad Pitt had been at a singles event and no ladies could be bothered to look his way. Oh well! His pungent anxiety was our good fortune because it bought us time for the previously non-existent dog shaped holes in our hearts to grow to Decaf proportions.

Decaf is a super weird name for a dog and probably why I call him Buddy so much. We thought we would change it after the adoption but nothing felt right. He just was Decaf. It’s not entirely inappropriate. He can really relax, most especially if in direct proximity to people flesh. But being chill is not the first words a visitor would use to describe him. Like Hopper on Stranger Things, he is steadily growing into an irate curmudgeon. I am positive he would be a police officer if human. Very law and order. If a dog needs barking at from the balcony he’s gonna do it. Doesn’t matter that he was blissfully loved up in a couchy super snuggle before that husky had the nerve to walk past our apartment. No! Decaf is on duty, morning, noon and night! He has never and will never take a sick day y’all.

While his manic guard dog patrolling can get tedious, it also impresses me. He really cares about us. He is down for his pack. He is never ever going to skip out when the going gets tough. Before him I hadn’t experienced this level of unconditional love. My parents of course but dog love is different. You don’t have to navigate the past and the future with a dog. If it’s good now its good period. No guilt, no anxiety. No “what you did” or “who you should become“. Just be with me.

Do I demonstrate my commitment so clearly to the people I love? He’s made me reflect deeply on what it means to be there for someone. It’s not about how you are when you are with them, it’s being with them, period. Decaf inspires me to be more present, more forgiving, more protective, more affectionate and more honest. I fall short because I am a human, not a dog. But I am grateful to be studying with a master.

Exercise

Not What I Expected Part 4. Who Here Thinks This is a Yoga Class?

December 10, 2019by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl1 Comment

I am medium fit. Compared to people who don’t exercise at all I am in great shape. Compared to people who take it seriously, I am weak as Lipton tea (we prefer PG Tips). The bulk of my exercise comes from walking dogs. We average a mile and half a day and hike once on the weekends. This doesn’t make me buff or visually interesting but it does allow for beer drinking without too much mid section expansion. A good trade in my mind. I also do precisely one yoga class a week and have for several decades. This keeps neck and back tension at bay and sort of feels like having the correct amount of oil in car, just enough for base line maintenance. Twenty years in and I still can’t put my head on my knees with straight legs. Oh well. Cross that off the bucket list.

Before we get to what happened you need to know I take the easiest class. It’s only an hour and follows the same series of postures every time allowing me to track where we are in the routine and conserve energy so I know I can do it all. I keep a post-it note on my computer with the times of the classes I like. They change the schedule and teachers every week so I use the post-it note method regularly. Working freelance, I never know what day is going to be best.

My stupid post it note said there was a 1:30 class. I rode my bike to the studio, about a mile away. There are two class rooms, the name and time of the class is written on the door so you know which one to enter. I noticed the door said 1:30 but rather than Modo (my class) it said The Workout. I turned back to the young guy filling his water bottle behind me and asked him what kind of class that was. He said, “Their hardest”.

Okay.

He said something about interval training.

Okay.

My brain is calculating like crazy. Is this some cross fit level business? How sore and depleted will I be in an hour? Will I be able to ride my bike home?

The room was warm as always, it’s a hot yoga studio after all. There are words written on the mirror. I’ve never seen that. They say things like Death Lunges, Craptastic Curls and Adios Biceps. I don’t know what it said. I can’t remember but here’s what happened.

The teacher comes in and says “Who here thinks this is a yoga class?” I don’t raise my hand. We proceed to do 3 ten minute sets of exercise where you rotate from one awful thing to the next with out stopping for ten minutes. In between there is a tiny amount of slumping on the ground and a lot of one off exercises. The only reason any of this can work at all is because the speakers are loudly pumping out an analogous interval merry go round of Ozzy Osborne, Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden. Dear God Thank You for Hard Rock. Thank you for the unparalleled vocal righteous anger that is the voice of Zack de le Rocha. Without him I could not have done 5000 pushups.

I honestly don’t have much memory of the ordeal. It didn’t take long for me to pass into an altered state. The final exercise was abs. At first it felt so great just to be butt down not using my arms which had taken out a full ivy league tuition level of lactic acid debt. I feared we wouldn’t be using them again for decades. I proudly had knees bent and feet off the ground as we twisted left to right and right to left for 5 solid days. By the end my feet were embedded in the mat like rebar in cement reducing needed core strength by as much as possible, I had utterly disassociated from the concept of feet and I was swaying more than twisting. I am not sure I have ever really truly collapsed before this class but at the end of that final exercise I involuntarily relinquished all muscle control and flattened like spilled ice cream on hot pavement.

Several eons passed and we figured out global warming and tribalism.

Wait, no, that didn’t happen. It was probably only a few minutes and the world was mostly the same except that when I attempted to become vertical again, I was over taken with a light headedness which quickly morphed into a need to puke. I didn’t. That’s nice. I sat semi-catatonic in the changing room for a while. Slowly my sense of self came back and with it a giddy wad of happiness. What is a giddy wad you ask. Go do an interval training sesh and find out!

I rode my bike home in 1st gear, peddling so slow it’s amazing the bike didn’t topple over. It wasn’t even the muscle fatigue I had to worry about. I was riding while extremely high. Some Venice Italy level flooding of endorphins was turning me into a day tripper. And I liked it. I was having thoughts of doing it again. I can’t tell you how strange that is. It’s the opposite reaction I usually have to discomfort.

It took 4 whole days to get back to normal. I am not fit enough to do another class yet I am contemplating it. Not what I expected.

**How I felt when I thought about doing it again.**

Creative Process, Writing

Which One?

November 12, 2019November 14, 2019by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl1 Comment

My last post started with a sentence describing my morning routine. When I started the first sentence, I thought I was going to be covering the thematic territory of this little essay but to my surprise, things went in a totally different and disgusting direction. If you have to ask yourself if you read it, then you didn’t. You wouldn’t forget. In fact, if you read it, you probably made a point to never visit us again. Link at the end.

That is what makes writing, like all creative acts, so much fun. You really don’t know what is going to happen.

What I had been intending to say in the previous post was this: Every morning I get up before anyone else, turn on the coffee, head to the couch and start informing myself about how screwed up everything is. First I give the Washington Post a shot at it, a few editorials later I mosey over to the Dailymail and check to see if a Kardashian is wearing a new outfit cuz, that’s weirdly like an antidote to the first activity. But unfortunately they cancel each other out and I am none the better for any of it yet nevertheless out a full hour of my life. Why do I do this? I ask myself this question every day. I swear to myself we are going to do better tomorrow. This is the absolute last time we read 200 Breitbart readers comments on an article about Greta Thunberg, or hunt for spoiler synopsis on the latest horror movie I am curious about but too afraid to watch. Some days I read recaps of shows I watched the night before. A tad redundant?

What I tell myself I should be doing is this, writing. When I know what I am supposed to write it’s a pleasure. But once a post is done and “more” is not a specific task but a general goal, I revert back to reading on the couch. Yesterday I managed to get myself over to the writing area, opened up WordPress and wondered if maybe something interesting was lurking in the 14 draft essays we have saved. Here is the list of titles.

A few of these I am going to write for myself. I still want to, I still have something to say. But one of these I am going to write for you. Which one do you want to read? The title with the most votes gets written.

Just based on titles alone, I would pick Free Will, Heavy Metal and Having Ideas. I totally want to read that. I opened the draft to see where I was headed. Nothing. Not a single word. So if that gets picked, it might not even help me get off the couch. I mean, what is going to come of it? I’ll put on some Mastodon and figure it out.

I also liked the title Not What I Expected Part 2. Unlike heavy metal, it’s mostly written! And funny. Why the hell didn’t I publish it 4 1/2 years ago? So stupid. The only issue is it needs an ending. Do I bring it back round to present day? Also, it was an actual part 2 to a previous post which might need to be reshaped for context. Wait a minute, I’m starting to feel like I have a task! I like that! Gotta get writing!

Update! My awesome brother made me a voting form. Click here to VOTE:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrUFShNxZ2nbBzPlB5ly2jMgbiO1R6qH6wsTKqW5xeaKBv_g/viewform?usp=sf_link

Gross Post Link Below. Trigger Warning for those with Infestation Fears.

Not What I Expected Part 3