Another Dog

This weekend, I realize, I've been mentally preparing for the big procedure tomorrow - my first colonoscopy. Right now, I'm sitting in my bathroom ready for the next phase after just downing the medicine. BTW, my dosage was pretty decent - tasted like a super sweet drink. Speaking of which, I feel like all I've had today is sugar. The clear diet really limits the intake. I had some broth throughout the day but have found when I get a hunger craving I reach for some ginger ale. 

I had pretty much cleared my calendar this weekend in preparation. Figuring I'd need to run errands and get things in order around the house. From what I've heard and seen on tv shows, I'm preparing for being out of commission after downing the last drop of the meds. And know, as I write this, I realize I may have imagined something worse than it really will be... Or I just need to give it time to kick in. 

Anyways, yesterday, after having a nice long consultant with a gardening coach, I was hopping in my car to go pick up the medicine and grab the special diet food at the grocery store. As I was pulling out my driveway, this random dog comes trotting down the sidewalk.  I stopped suddenly and hopped out since I didn't want him (turns out it was a girl)to head into the street or go towards the super busy street. It was a friendly dog and happy to see me as I get out of my car. The strangest thing was that she not only had a collar with tags but also had a leash on that was dragging behind her. I looked around and no one in sight except a jogger coming from the same direction. At first I thought the dog was the joggers, but nope. He stopped and helped me try to figure out whose dog. And even held the leash while I pulled my car back into the driveway. The tags were just rabbi tags and no other info. 

So I ended up having a bit of a detour - my new friend and I went for a walk to the local police station. Along the way there was a lot of sniffing of posts and many marking with the pee. And as we got close to the station we even stopped and had a poop. Luckily, the leash had a built in poop bag holder so I could take care of her business. 

I brought her into the station and the officer had a chuckle when I explained the situation. They don't have tons of random dog drop offs, but apparently this guy is the one that is usually on duty when they show up. My new friend was happy to go with the officer and that was that. 

I did look around my neighborhood a bit more after I got back to see if I could find anyone looking for a dog. And part of my imagination wondered why she was on a leash, like mayber her owner fell and was hurt and the dog ran off. But nothing. And went and ran my errands.  I'm debating about calling the police department to find out if everything worked out. And hope she was reunited and everyone was ok. I'm just happy our paths crossed because I do think she might have ended up in the middle of traffic. 

Well, I don't want to tempt fate, as I feel my tummy working through the meds. So I'll sign off and post this and queue up a fun movie to watch in my new hang out space on the throne. Wish me well. 

Decluttering Books

In my decluttering journey, I feel like I've come along way but also am aware I'm only part way through the process. Books is a good example of where I feel I'm in the middle. I used to keep almost all my books and only thinned them out occasionally. With more books coming in than going out, overtime, my bookshelves were overflowing. I used the Ciscero quote to enable my book acquisition - "A room without books is like a body without a soul."   Side note, I first saw the quote in my local bookstore in college - tricky marketing. 

But these last two years, I've been slowly unpacking my relationships with books and what's behind the surface. Logistically, I took all my books and sorted them into two main categories - books I've read and books I've not read or not finished yet. Of the books I've read, earlier this year, I sorted them again into, books I read and I really enjoyed and would want to reread and worth carrying up several flights of stairs when moving. I was brutal and really questioned if I'd reread the book again.  Making it clear that for every book I reread that meant I couldn't read a new book during that time spent. And interestingly, I was able to weed out quite a few books I enjoyed and liked and would recommend but didn't need to own any longer. My keep pile is suprsimglu small and I feel like I could revisit again and make it smaller. 

What really helped was that in the pile of books I had read I noticed some mental themes. For me I was holding on to a lot of books from two periods of my life: young adult books and books I read in college (not text books). I split the books into three piles and found I could be ruthless weeding out books I've read these last twenty years but the other two groups I was much more sentimental. Was I really going to reread Little House on the Prairie series, and if so, couldn't I just get a copy from the library. Same with some of college books - I loved the Russians and Dickens, but haven't ready any in years. I still have books from these two groups but they are now separated out and I have a time limit.  I'm giving myself some time to see if I'd reread any, otherwise they go. And I'm slowly, mentally, uncoupling the sentimental side of keeping the books. 

But the biggest pile was books I had aquired that looked interesting but I hadn't gotten to yet. I'm slowly realizing they are part of my "fantasy self". The self that knows what's in the books - I've read them already.  Just like with beautiful things, I can't have and own every beautiful thing I see. I don't have enough space (or money). Same with books, I can't read every book I find interesting, there literally isn't enough time in my life. So again, I've been learning to add the filter to prioritize. 

Which gets me to the point of my post. I've been volunteering at my local library helping organize and prepare for their annual book sale. I like the work because it's basically sorting the books into categories and then organizing them on the tables. Last year, I ended up with an armful of books I took home. And had resigned myself that I'd probably do something similar but hopefully not as many, especially since I was out of space on the bookshelf that housed my unread books. 

But surprisingly, this last week. I found myself using some good questioning techniques. I was sorting through the cookbooks and would set aside a few I was interested in and at the end I looked at the books and found that, one, I liked the cookbooks I already owned better (prioritization), and two, that often I was sucked into the idea of the lifestyle (fantasy self). Either through beautiful pictures/graphics or with the idea of the dish. I'd love to eat it and even be able to cook it, but in reality this was a big jump from my current cooking style. Granted, I may want to shift my cooking style, but you only need one cookbook or handful of receipts - not a mini library. If you have more than one book to experiment with, you start feeling burdened for not being your fantasy self, that you've already failed.  And in the end, I put all the books back. 

As I worked through the other sections, same thing - I saw a book that looked interesting. Set it aside. And in the end decided I had enough at home. And at the end of volunteering, I left empty handed. The questioning of priority and fantasy self helped me but also the time delay. Waiting and reflecting after the initial discovery helped the endorphins settle down.  

Now the question will be, will I escape without any books in the next week - the book sale is next weekend and I still have a bunch more volunteer time. And I'm ok if I bring home a few - it's not an absolute. But more about understanding why I want to have the book and being more mindful about my acquisitions. But I feel pretty confident I won't have a huge stack like last time. It's all about progress and not being perfect. 

Weekend Update

Saturday was a beautiful day for the bike orienteering. I had a slow morning which turned into a rush to get to the orienteering meet before the event started at 10. Which meant I took a look at my bike and thought, "the tires are fine". They could use a little air but not having much time to spare I rushed out the door figuring it would be good enough. As I'm biking to the meet I can clearly see my front tire is a bit flat and more importantly, it was a challenging ride. I lucked out and found a hard core adventurer who was pumping up his bike tires before the start and borrowed his pump and fixed my bike tire situation. So that was the first mistake I made, but fixed it before the race. 

We're given the maps ten minutes before the start and the time rushes by as you try to figure out the best route to take to maximize your points, avoid the steep hills and busy roads. This year I was trying out a new strategy - target the bonus points. The more you get, the more your score goes up exponentially. But the bonus controls, of course, are in the far corners of the map. I ended up deciding to go clock-wise, and hit the north west corner first. 

I do have to say this happened to me last year. It's strange bicycling for three hours in near by towns, using a map that has roads and topographic features but no labels. You don't know from the map what town you are in or any of the street names. So I get focused on the course and then realize I'm near where I go for my cat supplies and recognize an intersection - it just suddenly appears and is a bit discombobulating.  

An hour into the race and I'm doing well.  I avoided any steep hills, I'm feeling in shape and finding all the controls pretty well. I enter this one park to hit the next bonus control and it's just so beautiful. There are so many beautiful marshlands with the gorgeous plants. It's so picturesque, I want to take a picture, but I'm focused and plus I know it wouldn't capture the moment. As I find the control, I think, I should come back and explore this park. Lots of great trails to explore and beautiful setting. As I'm biking through the park to hit the next neighborhood, I pass a classic middle-American landscaped portion of the park with an American flag and I think wow, this looks just like a similar corner of the park I was at last weekend for orienteering. I thought it would be neat to take my next visitor to both places so they can see how similar they are. To my defense, this part of the park is very much like a big box store - you see variations of the same thing everywhere. Not very unique. It's not until a little bit farther down the path do I realize - yup, it's the same place I was at last weekend. 

I came to the park from a different direction, but comparing the two maps from this weekend and last weekend and looking at my route, I should've recognized parts sooner. You know what it was, the perspective is different when you're on foot versus quickly biking. I was so surprised how certain I was there were two parks that looked alike versus realizing it was the same place. I have to say I chuckled over that for a good fifteen minutes of my ride. 

My next mistake was I forgot two things I did last year.  One was to set the deadline for getting back to the finish 20 minutes early. You get penalized for every minute you are late. And because I'm bad at estimating how long it will take, I built in a buffer last year - got back to the general vicinity of the start area and picked up a few extra controls near by, without feeling too rushed. Somehow I forgot I did this and this year, I was just hoping I'd squeeze everything in in time. Near the end I was starting to re-edit my route but even so, I was feeling rushed and by now I was getting tired, two hours in. But a quiet kind of tired. The kind you don't notice because the thrill of hunting for the controls overshadowed them. Which leads me to my second thing I forgot. I forgot I had packed a lunch last year. I remember packing a trail mix of sorts and snacking on that. And I was lazy and just had leftover breakfast which was just waffles and not a good hearty breakfast of veggies and protein. Lesson learned, fuel the body. 

I think it's because I'm in better shape, my muscles weren't sending up any signals of being over worked, like last year. Actually, two days later and my leg muscles aren't even that sore. A little but not as much as I thought they'd be. Last year that was the first thing that went so I'd slow down and conserve my energy.  And last year I told myself I should train before hand so my muscles for biking are in better shape. I forgot to do this and had wished I had, but then found I was farther ahead than last year. Don't know how that happened. 

I think I went wrong where I should have had the advantage. By now I'm in the south west corner of the map. Well not really, I cut out a whole section because I'm not that good. But I knew where some of the spots were because they were along where I'd commute for work. Looking back, I should have skipped these because I didn't really have the time. I did them because I could see where they were in my mind and they didn't seem that far. One control was in the park just down the street from my house. In the park that I know is at the top of a pretty steep hill. But I'm always in my car so don't really absorb how steep the hill is. After getting off my bike twice to push it up the steep portions of the hill, I eat up half an hour and finally get to the control in the park in my backyard. And it's dawning on me I'm not going to have enough time and the next bonus control is on another even steeper hill - near the water tower in town. The hill with the view of Boston - it's that steep. I mean not only do I have a topographic map that only has the steepness of hills, I've literally driven up all these hills hundreds of times. 

But again perspective. It's one thing when you're in a car. And another when you're on a bike. I figured I could hit the last control, scrap the rest and head straight back and hopefully make it just in time or only a few minutes late. I'm thinking all this in the park as I'm walking my bike up yet another hill, in the park. I get to a point I can bike and start biking, not too fast mind you, and as I'm about to leave the park, the dirt path turns right, onto paved sidewalk/driveway of sorts, I wipe out. It was going downhill a bit, I wasn't going too fast, but there was a bunch of loose gravel on the paved portion which causes my bike to slip out from underneath me as I take the turn. I wonder if this had happened at the beginning if I would have been able to recover in time. It all happened in slow motion - I fell to my right and was able to catch my fall on my hands. 

And then a wave of just being tired hit after the initial pain. For a second there I was like, no problem, I can pick my bike up and keep going, I have 30 minutes still, I can make it to the last control and then the finish. And then a moment later, I was like, nope, I'm done. I realized I wasn't in a rush to get anywhere any more. Even outside the race, no rush to get home. I had no plans for the rest of the day. So I picked my stuff up and just lay on the grass and chilled. It's weird, because I don't really do that much in any portion of my life. But my body definitely needed a moment. It was weird because it took me a bit to unpack my previous plans. I was like, I'm just a few blocks from home, I biked to the event so it's not like my car was there that I had to pick up. Literally, there was no reason not to just go home. 

I took it easy going home and by then I was so hungry. Also, another mistake, I didn't have pre made food ready for the post race. And since I'm pretty healthy these days, I didn't really have anything to just munch on. But I got myself fed and started cleaning up my wounds. My hands barely have any scratches. No one will notice them at work. Even my legs escaped pretty unscathed. I have a little bit of a raspberry on my right side of my right calf.  I'll have a bunch of bruises along my right side - a big one is forming on my right buttock. What really took the bulk of the hit was my right elbow. I just slid across the pavement on it and gauged it pretty deep. And man it's hard to clean an open wound on yourself. Luckily, I found the trick was to take a shower. I wanted to clean up anyways, plus I was concerned the sunscreen could get into any wounds. I found it was the best way to easily clean the open wound. 

The other injury is my thumb on my left hand.  It feels like it's sprained a bit where the thumb connects to the palm. All in all nothing too bad.  Some soreness throughout the body but not anything out of the ordinary. And the timing to take a nasty fall like this could not have been better - I mean if I had to take a fall in the first place. The next day, I was helping a friend organize a room and her husband is a sports injury doctor. So I had him take a look at my injuries. He did a bunch of poking and prodding and lots of questions. He went from joking around as my friend's husband, into Doctor mode. I felt like I was having a private, at home, consultation. And the verdict is all good. Give everything some time to heal and if things don't improve in three weeks come in for a follow up. Already, after two nights sleep, things are feeling much better. My elbow is starting to scab over and doesn't hurt unless I bang into it. And the rest of me is my normal bruising feeling I'm used to. And on Sunday I was till able to whip my friends bedroom into better shape. I was a little slow, but still at about 90% of my regular self. I took it easy, but the point is most things weren't impeded by my injuries. Turns out we weren't tackling her closet of clothes, it was just all the clutter and extra storage of stuff in the bedroom. She was quite. impressed with what we accomplished and reiterated she thought I should go into business as a side hustle. I was curious which of my lessons learned I could share, and would stick. It was the old adage of "like with like" that we came back to each time. It's a good place to start. For her, she had a lot of plans for things - to mend, to fix, to turn into something else.  So they all went into the same spot - "incomplete actions".  

So all in all a great weekend. I'm hoping I'll still be up for orienteering next weekend - it's the only canoeing event all year. But talk about an activity where you need a healthy elbow. I'll have to wait and see. And nothing like a bonus day (Labor Day), to take it easy and chip away at some chores. The weathers nice, so some more gardening for me. My hope is to get everything in shape before snow comes so next spring, it's not too bad.