Let me start off by saying what has to be said: Our country has had a shocking, sad, exhausting and traumatic week. A lot of people have lost loved ones and yet another blow has been struck against our previously impenetrable sense of security in our hometowns.
My thoughts are simple -- I pray that while everyone recovers from the pain and the loss and the fear, they can remember that we do not have to allow the hard times in life to drain us of our inner strength, joy and peace. Ever. Those are gifts to us and no one but the giver can take them away.
That being said, I've been saving up a few funny little bits and pieces from my life of late, and figure that it's pretty much always appropriate to laugh at ourselves. It's also always appropriate for you to laugh at me, as far as I'm concerned ... unless I've just fallen down in a parking lot or gotten a bad hairdo or something. Then it would be pretty mean.
Here we go ...
So in a last-ditch effort to breathe life into my terminally ill New Year's resolution, I forced The Police into making a pact with me that we would both start waking up very early and going to the gym together. Because I have more tenacity than I have sense, I have blatantly refused to accept my nature and genetics and a lifetime of morning drowsiness, and am determined to be an early-riser.
The result of this has been that every morning over the past week, we've dragged ourselves out of bed at 5:45 a.m. That's while it's still DARK outside, people. Dark. We sluggishly pull on our clothes and drive out to the gym. Without even discussing it, we hit upon a mutual agreement that during this painful time, it is best that we refrain from speaking to one another. Nobody talks. We just sort of grunt and squint and gesture.
To me, the most interesting part of this whole experiment is that it seems to be a total roll of the dice as to who will be the most grumpy each morning. Sometimes it's him, sometimes it's me. But a general rule of -- don't talk to me, don't touch me, don't provoke me -- has kept the "incident" rate at a minimum. And I think we can both agree that we like finishing up a day's work and not having to face going out for a run or to the gym in the heat. Or cold, or rain, or whatever. It doesn't matter if it's cold or raining at 5:45 a.m., because the world is already a miserable, miserable place at that hour and pretty much nothing short of an atomic blast could make it worse.
I complain, but I am happy about our new attempt at a grown-up schedule. The flip side of it, however, is also adjusting to going to bed at 9 p.m. instead of midnight -- which is equally as hard for me. So this week I have improved my mile run time and made progress in general, but I have also been more sore in the muscles and sleep deprived than I can remember in a long, long time. Basically at this point, my ego likes me and my body hates me. But I'm hoping eventually they'll learn to get along.
It's possibly because of the aforementioned sleep deprivation that conversations like the one I'm about to share with you occur in our house. I'm not going to edit it or try to explain it, because ... well, I can't. I'll just preface it by saying that it was way past our bedtime, and for some reason we were talking about our little dog, Ellie, and how she's not the brightest bulb in the box. Dumb, is more like it. She's sweet, she's precious, but in the brains department ... not so much. I do try to defend her, though:
The Police: Honestly, if she were a person she would definitely be completely dependent on the government or the kindness of strangers.
Me: Maybe not! She has special talents! You never know ...
The Police: Yeah, sometimes you do.
Me: Maybe she's a savant ... like, maybe she's really good at math, and we just don't know it.
(Here there is a pause while we both reflect on this, and then at the exact same time blurt out that we should test this theory -- although I said we should get her a calculator and he suggested an abacus. We decide that while impractical, an abacus is definitely cooler. This leads into a 10-minute diversion while we watch YouTube videos of kids in Japan who can do extremely high math with an imaginary abacus -- just their fingers. It's amazing. Google it. There's a little boy who wants to be the math-imaginary-abacus-champion or something, so he practices for two hours every weeknight and 10 hours every weekend day -- this is why they beat us in tests).
... Obviously I've gotten myself sidetracked here. We finished up the conversation by agreeing that Ellie is either one of the most pitiful creatures that has ever lived, or an evil tyrant who is controlling us through mental and emotional manipulation.
I realize that you are not in any way expected to care about the personality quirks of my dog. I just thought I'd share the fact that I may be attempting to teach her long division and the use of an abacus. But first someone will have to teach me.
Over and out.
sharris@blythevillecourier.com