Walking with Gus

Don’t tell my husband, but I prefer walking alone with my dog to walking with anyone else, including him. I’ve been thinking a lot about my needs lately (because I’ve been reading Cheryl Richardson’s The Art of Extreme Self-Care), and I have discovered that walking with Gus ranks up there with good food, sex, and sleep.

It has been tough to walk with Gus regularly since the kids arrived on the scene almost 5 years ago. He is too strong to walk while also pushing a stroller, so I had to either find another adult (Harold or a neighbor) to go with us or I had to enlist Harold to watch the kids while I escaped with Gus. Add on our crazy schedules and the fact that there are minimal streetlights in my neighborhood and, especially in the winter, it was very difficult to work in more than a weekend walk.

Somehow, in the last few months, I’ve found ways to squeeze in more walks with Gus (though not always alone). I want my kids to like walking their dogs (I want them to understand that it’s part of having and caring for dogs), and the kids have recently turned a corner of sorts and abandoned the strollers. Kate will go for short walks with just Gus and me. The promise of alone-with-Mommy time is enough to buoy her through the mile or mile and a half route. Matthew will also go on walks with me, although it’s slightly more stressful because he runs the whole way and I don’t always have full confidence that he will listen to my pleas to slow down and not run out of my sight when Gus makes a pit stop to pee on a bush. Still, we all let off steam and get some fresh air, so I take the stress with the benefits.

My favorite walks, though, are the ones with just Gus and me. Gus’s ears are perked up and he lopes along, thrilled to be smelling other animals, peeing on bushes, and stretching his legs. Just the act of walking with him makes him so HAPPY. Who else is so easy to please? When I am walking with Gus, I am alone with my thoughts but I am not ALONE. There is minimal talking (other than an occasional “good dog” or “this way”), which lets me smell the air, feel the wind, hear the birds, hear my thoughts. When I run in to other walkers, I am less self-conscious when walking with Gus because, again, I am not alone. I have a purpose in my walk.

Gus is also a great “pace dog.” Although he is about 11 years old (rescue dog, so no one knows his exact age), he is still pure muscle. His walk is probably about a 14-minute mile, and he tolerates my jogging, which is about an 11-minute mile. When I walk by myself, I notice that I’m exercising and I feel the stress on my ankles or back. With Gus, my interval trainer, I actually enjoy what I’m doing. The sight of his perked up ears bobbing up and down are enough to keep me going.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the mortality of my dogs. Maggie is almost 16 years old (I’ll write about walking with Maggie later this week), and I know that she can’t defy the odds forever. I do complain from time to time about the realities of sharing my home with two big, hairy dogs. I flip ottomans and kids’ toys and laundry baskets on the living room furniture any time we leave the house to keep the dogs off of the furniture. I am incapable of keeping up with the tumbleweed of dog hair on my hardwood floors. And if I don’t wash the dog beds weekly, you can tell as soon as you enter my house. But despite those minor inconveniences, I can’t imagine not having the greeting when I return home, the gentle presence when I’m feeling ill, and my walking partner who helps me stay sane.

Real Holidays

This year I had two entire weeks off from work over Christmas. We chose not to travel, and I thought this would be an opportunity for good solid TIME with my kids. In anticipation of this time, I had all sorts of plans. We would go to the zoo one day, we would go see “The Tale of Des.pereaux,” we would bake lots of cookies, we would arrange play dates, and there would be crafts.

Quick reality check: I was sick from the week after Thanksgiving until oh, about yesterday when I hit day 3 of the antibiotics to which I finally succumbed. Endless coughing and congestion lingered, then add pinkeye to the mix the day after Christmas, and top it off with 2 weeks of a sore throat. Needless to say, I didn’t have a lot of energy over the “break.” (As any stay-at-home mom will attest, being at home with a 2- and 4-year-old, particularly when they have access to and have been consuming obscene amounts of sugar, is not exactly a “break.”) Let’s review my plans:

1. The weather, which is almost always decent or even GOOD in my location within any two-week period in the year, was crappy. It was damp, it was cold, and on the rare portion of the day when it was nice, we weren’t all healthy. Skip the trip to the zoo.
2. “The Tale of Des.pereaux”…I hemmed and hawed about whether my kids could hang with the plot, after I read a little more about it. I thought it was way beyond the two-year-old, and I have yet to figure out an ideal time to take them to the movies, since Matt still naps in the afternoon. Instead, we watched Kung Fu P.anda, Sleeping Beauty, and Barb.ie and the Dia.mond Castle (Christmas gifts) about a hundred times.
3. Cookies: our oven has been on the fritz (a la “F2 Error” beeping at me when I haven’t gone anywhere near the damn thing). When we get the error, which is all the time, it shuts itself off. We have a toaster oven that has been saving us, but it’s not the greatest cookie oven. Also, did I mention that I was feeling sick? So the great cookie baking of 2008 consisted of “break and bake” sugar cookies, dipped in sprinkles, hastily cooked on Christmas Eve so that we could leave cookies and milk for Santa (who felt so sick that he and she had to bury the cookies in the trash because they didn’t even want to eat them).
4. Play dates: There was one play date, it involved two friends, and you already read the resulting quote from Kate. So, she never again wants to invite to our house more than one friend at a time. Well, at least we learned something. It was a tough thing to learn at 9 AM, though, knowing that the moms wouldn’t be picking up the girls until 1 PM.
5. Craft Day was intended to be part of The Play Date. Oh, the visions I had of artistic masterpieces and how I could do the crafts, too. What fun! My kitchen went from zero to chaos in 7.2 seconds. There will be a separate post about Craft Day.

So my husband and I have already discussed how maybe next year we won’t try for a “quiet Christmas at home.” Maybe there’s something to be said for a little travelling chaos. If we’re healthy in 2009, we’re outta here.

Quotes from the holidays

Did you have a favorite Christmas gift?
Kate: Jelly beans, gum, and the gummies. Oh, and the Barbie and the Diamond Castle Princess Liana.
Matthew: Spiderman phone (Kate gave him the phone, which is why it ranked above the Spiderman BIKE — very sweet)
* * *
Kate: We have to stop fighting. If you forgive, God will spare your life. Your life will be spared. God blesses you (pause) If you go up to heaven, I will blow you a kiss every day.
* * *
Matthew: Mommy not God.
Me: You’re right, Matt. Mommy not God.
* * *
Kate: I don’t like having more than one friend over at my house at a time. I don’t like two people playing with my stuff.
* * *
Happy New Year! Real writing will commence this week.