we all fall down

This morning I saw an older gentleman scrounging through the leftover sled bits piled at the top of a popular hill in Prospect Park. He found a decent sized scrap and proceeded to ride down the hill like a kid. It looked like a lot of fun, so I tromped up there and found my own scrap. As I readied myself to sit down on the sled, my feet flew out from under me, and I landed on my tailbone. HARD. And now it hurts like it's never hurt before. Sitting. Standing. Walking up stairs. Down stairs. Bending over. Forget crossing my legs. So yeah, we ran 6 miles in a blizzard without falling, but I tried to slide down a hill and jacked up my rear. Good times. Against my better judgment, I went down the hill anyway! because I couldn't help myself. The dog was not pleased by my decision. He stopped scavenging for food long enough to run after me looking confused and alarmed by my new way of walking. I rode down about three times (I know, I know, piling on the bad decisions) and then hobbled home over the uneven mounds of snow. Thankfully, there were some well worn paths made by all the skiers and fellow dog owners. That cut down on the amount of uneven surfaces I had to navigate.

Towards the beginning of our walk (pre-incident), I noticed what I thought was my contacts fogging up, much the way your glasses do when open the oven door or come in from the cold. I was trying to puzzle through whether it's even possible for contacts to fog up when I realized I was seeing steam rising from the snow evaporating. Surreal. And now for today's haiku:

in good health, we push
limits, but in sickness* they
feel like cattle prods

*i wanted to say something with the word "injury" but didn't have room for 3 syllables or the patience to fiddle with it until it worked out

picture: the hill upon which I nearly (possibly?) broke my butt, as seen this weekend teeming with children, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, digital 

haiku with poo

The first night we had Red, I cried in despair because the dog was too strong, too wild on leash, too insane about the cats, and just too much of everything (including too cute to give back to the rescue). In many ways, it was the wrong decision to keep him. Neither cats nor dog have adjusted to each other, as evidenced by the daily occurrence of dog yodeling and cat hissing. Given Red's propensity for trying to eat small furry things, we continue to keep them segregated, which is a huge drag. BUT, in many ways, keeping this silly dog has been one of the best decisions ever. We have made friends we never would have stumbled across in our pre-dog lives. We spend more time outside than ever because of our sometimes overzealous goal to make the dog tired. I can't think of any other reason that I would be walking through Prospect Park at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, and I'm grateful for the chance to connect with something outside of my monkey brain. When we go hiking, he tears through the woods like he's never seen a chipmunk in his life. When he gets tired, he stops underfoot on the trail and looks up at you like you're the one being an oaf. When you scratch a certain part of his neck, his lips draw back in the goofiest dog smile. He farts while we eat dinner and he gets hiccups when the braver of the two cats confronts him at the edge of his crate. And when I come home, boyfriend is always wagging his tail, albeit sometimes from the comfort of his napping spot because he sees me every day, does he really need to get UP to greet me? Surely we would have more money and get more sleep without a dog, especially one prone to accidents, but we would have a lot less silliness, connection, and unfettered play in our lives. I meant for the last line of today's haiku to be warm and fuzzy, but this is what happened instead:

steaming winter poop
muddy feet after spring storms
stop stealing my seat

top pictures: hiking in upstate New York late this summer, cross-processed slide film; 
bottom picture: hiking in Shenandoah National Park in June, film