3 posts tagged “baggage”
What I'm carrying home today instead of the computer:
Notes:
- Source: Schmancy on 2nd Avenue. I went in today looking for a monkey but they were all out of monkeys.
- I am not a pin person or a jewelry person of any kind really (except for tiny earrings and sometimes a fun watch). Little cloud will live inside my backpack, sheltered from the rain.
The shoulder injury has prompted a change of routine effective immediately: the laptop stays parked at its docking station at the office, at least on weeknights.
The smart person would have decided to do this the day the Dell boxes were delivered. The smarter person would have requested a lighter-weight notebook or a desktop to begin with. Instead, the foolish person decides she can tough it out and add intensity to her daily hike and uses this as an excuse to spend $140 on a flash messenger backpack that is proportioned for someone taller, makes her stoop a bit to get the full advantage of the waist support, eventually realizes this is not good for her spine, reverts back to the shoulder-hugging urban commuter pack in which at least she can stand upright, and pushes on by golly until something is clearly damaged.
The smart person would also recognize an injury for what it is, go to a doctor, get physical therapy, etc. soon after it occurs. The foolish person relies on self-diagnosis of mere underutilized muscle soreness, stretches it vigorously for a week before realizing that is making it worse, and persists in dancing “through” it anyway, takes on new yoga classes, continues to strap on heavy backpack, etc. for weeks and weeks. Then, one day, she can’t raise her right arm.
In case you are in any doubt as to who the foolish person is, let me tell you that once I stuck my finger in the beater-bar of a vacuum cleaner (in the “on” mode) that I thought I wasn’t working. It was. In addition to the pain of the shredding of the fingernail, there was the added humiliation of the witnessing of the seven-year-old I was babysitting at the time. She knew better than to do that. (She probably learned quite a few useful life lessons by observing two years of babysitter foibles.)
Anyways … I will leave the computer at work tonight and I will see a doctor at a sports medicine clinic next Thursday and I hereby cease the self-flagellation right this minute.
Now I just have to get used to having no more monkey (i.e., Internet) on weeknights. This will no doubt do wonderful things for my reading, art-making, housekeeping, and living. I might even start riding my bike to work again. Hurrah! I feel better and lighter and freer and more productive already. And a bit wiser.
So I sent a message to the rescue organization hosting Beau, asking if there was any way he could be happy in a tiny condo with no yard, two cats, and four-block to a park, and heard back that, as a senior dog, he has a hard time walking long distances and needs to be lifted in and out of a vehicle. He's very large, and the vehicle would be an ancient Toyota Landcruiser (a significant hop up). My sister-in-law also pointed out that dogs often become incontinent in old age. No, this would not be a good fit. What was I thinking?
Maybe the energy that I've been channeling into dog-dreaming is best diverted to the new baby garden. I really don't want the garden to fade into another abandoned hobby, something I have a long history of cultivating. Before the move west, the good part of a closet was dedicated to paraphernalia of abandoned obsessions which once were as new and fresh and exciting as the gardenette feels now: fencing gear, "character" shoes and castanets, a unopened roll of Rives BFK paper (I optimistically moved that). The acoustic guitar never made it back east from the previous cross-country move, and the Roland electronic drum kit was purchased by a work colleague. Thankfully, I never got around to building the low-flying trapeze. I have, however, continued to schlep most of the unread books on past obsessions. Certainly someday I will want to get back into reading about Northern European mythology, Victorian London, Japanese pop culture, seasonal monastery cooking, Venice, and ... herb gardening! Voila!
The dog, if there is a dog, would of course be a commitment for the long haul (incontinence and all). But, I wouldn't want to take that on with a strong possibility of the dog (or the cats, or me) being unhappy with the situation from day one, and I doubt the rescue organization would allow go for the placement, either. I'm sorry, Beau.
