scattered and fried

Well, I am sufficiently toasted, and I don't mean the fun kind that involves bubbly drinks. I just mean effing tired. In an effort to get even closer to my bed, I'm going to keep this short with a snippet from my commute because that's the most accessible experience from today, and it's vaguely more interesting than writing about dinner or watching the end of Sneakers. Although I did realize that Robert Redford and Brad Pitt sound almost identical if you close your eyes and listen. Breaking news! Okay, enough with the nonsense. It's time for the real nonsense:

when the doors clatter
open it's like a scatter
drill from marching band

picture: one of my good friends and her naughty cattle dog who likes to lay all over her and chew on her neck, Bluemont, VA, August 2010, digital 

going nowhere

What a ridiculous day it's been. Here's a little taste, complete with run-on sentences: A friend from work has a second job in a private practice, which used to be located in the same office as our clinic (it's complicated). The private practice recently moved to a building down the block. Convenient for our friendship! But our usual in-between-clients merriment (or venting) now involves a commute. We hung out in her new space during a 35 minute lull, and I saved about 10 minutes for transportation time. It's literally 1/3 of the way down the block, so a 4 minute walk at most and then 2 elevator rides, both coincidentally to/from the 8th floor. No big deal, right? Until the elevator takes 4 minutes to arrive because only 1 of them is working, and then it goes up instead of down, and then on the way down it stops at every floor. In lieu of cursing the whole ride down or continuing to panic, I got out at the 7th floor and ran down 7 flights of stairs. Then I ran over to the clinic building and nearly cheered out loud when the elevator came almost immediately because it is notoriously slow. Running, by the way, was a huge mistake. The pain I experienced confirms that my busted tailbone is very much still busted. Lucky for me this same friend also has a sensitive rear and let me borrow her "infinity cushion" aka donut until my very own donut arrives in the mail. Ah the joys of butt pain. And now for the short form:

waiting for my ride
tick tock is all i hear til
ding! on every floor

picture: the doors to the elevator shaft on one of the abandoned listening towers at Teufelsburg, outside of Berlin, Germany, September 2010, film, Canon Tlb 

baby steps

I went to the dentist today. Haven't said that in about 5 years. Maybe 6. For reasons that involve visceral memories of sitting in a chair in an open cubicle office system with a military dentist pulling teeth out of my mouth. I also have horribly cavity prone teeth no matter WHAT I do so going to the dentist has always meant work. I'm not talking about some minor discomfort while the hygenists flosses the crap out of your gums or the sting of being poked in with the hook instrument. I mean metal whirring, grinding, scraping, packing, extra shots of novocaine kind of work. It's not pretty and it's makes me nauseated just writing about it. But I've had some major tooth aches in the last month or so, and I've had trouble chewing on one tooth for about two years (yes, I know, things don't magically get better if you avoid them). One of my dog friends told me about this guy called the "Jazz Dentist" who utilizes compassionate dentistry, which from what I can tell is a nice way of saying he knows people are scared shitless of him and worry that he's going to rip them off, so he supplies the latest in happy drugs and doesn't suggest work that isn't absolutely necessary. I say: give me the drugs. As it turns out, after having a thousand little x-ray plates shoved in various parts of my mouth, I have a cracked tooth thanks to said military dentists and their use of mercury fillings (or "amalgams" as the dentist dictated to his assistant - I loved this for reasons I can't quite explain. my mouth is FULL of amalgams). I have another mercury filling that needs to be replaced. On the plus side, there are no new cavities or an infection, which was my major concern. I forced myself to make the appointment to deal with the cracked tooth before I left the office. Success! Now that you have my dental health status that you didn't ask for, here's the short take:

open, now bite, now
stick out your tongue and say ah
now, wait! come back here!

picture: my friend's dog Simon, who always looks mildly worried, Bluemont, VA, January 2009, digital 

walk this way

I have the exercise memory of a goldfish. Worse: a gnat. I don't really know what kind of memory gnats even have, but if it's anything like their purported attention spans, then it's an accurate comparison. All of that to say, I am feeling antsy and annoyed at my current running moratorium thanks to my fancy free decision from yesterday. I went for a walk to our food coop this morning to get some fresh air and every step hurt, especially ones that involved any quick movements (e.g., trying to avoid giant ankle-sucking pools of brown slush). So it doesn't look there will be any running in my immediate future. As I've been told by several people, this will get better (thanks for the reminders). I just have to avoid driving Charrow crazy in the meantime with the whining and the constant favors (bending over to pick things up causes the most discomfort, even when done with proper form). It already feels like I haven't run in weeks, which is ridiculous because it's been 3 DAYS. Apparently I live in an exercise time warp. Here's a short take on what it's like to go through the subway system when you're in pain, but there's nothing apparently wrong with your body. People get so huffy! And I'm often one of them. oops.

i want to carry
a sign that says don't assume
you know why i'm slow*

*this is something I am guilty of all the time: seeing someone ambling for no apparent reason and assuming they are self-centered assholes when in fact I have absolutely no idea what they might be dealing with.

picture: view from an S-Bahn platform, Berlin, Germany, October 2010, film, Canon Tlb 

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 

snow blind

The snow has stopped, and all is right in Red's world again... until tomorrow when it's officially bootie season (salt burns his feet to the point of limping). We took him for a two hour walk in the park this morning, because that's how long it took to walk our short route through two feet of snow. What a slog, but it was sunny and relatively warm. The dog has been a snoring lump since we got back, and I've been in a trip planning fugue. To the point of almost forgetting to write my silly haiku for the day. So here's today's exercise in commitment along with a few more pictures from the park.

we squeaked and crunched through
fields of white dotted with dogs
beware the sledders!

(because they were definitely not concerned about running us over)

white out

Remember how I used the word allegedly when referring to that snow? There's no doubt about it now. The sky has been white since we woke up to about 6 inches of snow, which I'm guessing is now somewhere around 26 inches. Cars are useless white mounds and the streets are (or were, before nightfall) dotted with dark blobs that slowly transform into parents pulling their children in sleds or people walking with shopping bags or fellow dog owners forced outdoors by the call of doodie. We tried to take Red to the park this morning, but he curled his lower lip and hunched over as the snow pelted his face. It was pathetic, so we took him home.

I decided it would be fun to walk to the park anyway, so we left Red in his favorite place (the crate with a fresh peanut butter kong), and trudged back out to see what we could see. There were more people out than I expected, and there were plenty of dogs romping in the snow. We even saw runners tip toeing around the drive in the park. Neither of us expected that. but... Challenge accepted! So we went home to change into running gear (think gaiters and 3 of just about everything) and joined the ranks of fools on foot. We made it about 6 miles along the various loops of Prospect Park. The first 5 were pretty fun, minus a seriously painful windy stretch near the ball fields. I stopped to take a zillion pictures, people were skiing, sledding, running, walking, flopping around, etc. But by the last mile, the snow had really started to fill in because it was coming down so hard. It was like running along the edge of the beach where the packed sand gives just enough to make all your leg muscles work twice as hard. Manageable, but the novelty had definitely worn off.

The rest of the day involved a hodgepodge of resting, more walking in the snow (much to the dog's chagrin), and watching movies. I'm thankful that we don't have any pressing needs, and we can basically continue on as shiftless travel-planning blobs until Monday when we have to figure out whether we're going to work. I assume the trains will be running by then, but it's still snowing, so who knows! In the meantime, here's a short take:

woke to howling wind,
sipped coffee as the snow swirled,
who's ready to run?

top picture: a slice of the activity we saw this morning in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, iPhone 5 
middle picture: a very unhappy Red willing me to take him, Brooklyn, NY, iPhone 5
bottom picture: charrow about 1/3 of the way through our expedition, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, iPhone 5