We WILL run

            When Lucy and I first started running, I thought that getting me going would be the biggest dilemma.  I had such a surprise in store.  After I had done all my online research and found several articles and websites willing to dish out advice for beginning runners, I went back out and tried again.  I began what amounted to a Couch to 5K program (although I had no idea that’s what it was or that the term even existed). 

            On my second run, I put on my Roo’s again and walked out the door to the cemetery with a well-developed plan in my head.  Just having a plan was a huge relief to me.  I’m a planner.  I like to know what’s happening next and when.  I like to have a general idea of how things are going to go at least a few days in advance.  On my first run, I had no plan and no way of knowing how things might turn out, which is probably why it failed.  My plan was a run/walk program.  I’d run for 30 seconds, walk for a minute and repeat this until I made it the full mile around the cemetery.  The eventual goal was to up the running time and reduce the walking time in increments, slowly but surely, until I didn’t need the walking anymore.

            The problem with this program was that I didn’t have a watch.  So on my second run, I took Lucy out and “counted” in my head 30 seconds, then 60 seconds and so forth.  As I got more tired after the first few cycles, I could tell that my 30 second counts seemed to be going at a quicker pace while my 60 second counts seemed to get slower and slower.  This was ridiculous.  Buy yourself a watch lady.

            The next day, I visited Paragon Sports in Union Square and bought a very small key-chain stopwatch.  I also went down to their shoe section and bought my very first pair of running shoes.  I was blown away by the whole process.  The employee put me on a treadmill, watched me run barefoot, “analyzed” my gate on a video screen, and then pointed to a wall of shoes.  I picked out the prettiest ones.  I had no idea what the difference between anything was, but I did as I was told.

            I was excited to get back out again.  My second run had been reasonably successful and I was ready to do it for real in my new fancy running shoes.  So on try number 3, I put my running shoes on (wow, what a difference from my worn out Roo’s!), put Lucy on her leash, and proceeded as normal.  5 minute walk to the cemetery.  Press start on the stopwatch and go!

            Wait no, don’t go.  Suddenly Lucy did not want to run.  She was pulling back on the leash, resisting forward movement.  So I beeped the watch to a stop.   I leaned down to give her some love and got her walking again.  So then I pressed start on the watch again to time my first 30 seconds and tried to take off.  I was jerked very roughly backwards.  I turned around to see Lucy behind me, 4 feet firmly planted on the ground, using all the muscles in her body to refuse to move.

            What in the world is going on?  How can I have this 70 lb dog, a lab/hound mix who could never get enough running in the dog park, suddenly decide she will refuse to run?  In the past I had learned that brute force often worked with her when need be (for example: there is a VERY good sniff on this tree that NEEDS to be sniffed and I am going to NOT MOVE until I am done sniffing—one yank on the leash with all my strength would defeat this apparently unstoppable need to sniff every tree).  Lucy is all muscle and very strong, but I could be strong and stubborn too.  I braced my body, grabbed the leash as if this was the most important game of tug-o-war in my life, and pulled.  This got her up and began forward movement, but as soon as I started my watch again to start going, she was crouched again, tail between the legs, looks of death and fear all mixed up in her eyes.

            I didn’t know what to do.  I was only half way down one side of the square-shaped cemetery and I had a plan.  Plans should always work out.  That’s what plans are for.  I kept repeating this action, yanking and pulling, starting and stopping, like a child who keeps repeating “no, no, no, no” over and over and expecting to not have to clean their room eventually.  Finally, Lucy’s stubbornness beat mine and I turned around and yanked her the whole way home.  I dropped her off at the door, shoved her in angrily, and turned around to go back to my plan. 

            When I’m frustrated, my runs often feel amazing.  I was so frustrated at this point that I took off and found it difficult to stick to my 30 second max running time.  But I wanted to be good, not push it, and not get injured like all the online articles said.  When I was done, I went home and glared at Lucy for the rest of the night, while she looked at me innocently, obviously unaware of anything she had done wrong.

            According to my articles, I should only run every other day until my body got stronger.  So the next day we walked and Lucy was just fine.  The day after that, I took treats with me.  When I started my timer and started running, she predictably planted her paws firmly.  I hooked the leash onto my elbow, leaned forward, and RAN, pulling her forward like a child drags a heavy wagon behind him.  I got to the end of the 30 seconds, stopped, and gave her a treat.  We repeated this 30 seconds running, treat, and 60 seconds walking around the entire mile loop.  I can only imagine the image of us running down the sidewalk: me needing to learn forward at a 45 degree angle to gather enough strength to drag my dog behind me as I ran.  I was surprisingly determined.  I was going to be a runner and so was my dog.  That was the whole point!  The next time I ran, I brought deli turkey instead of treats.  This kind of worked, but her reluctance to run was irritating and embarrassing. 

            It was after about 3 or 4 of these outrageous dragging sessions when I was sitting at home watching some TV.  Somehow, I must have turned on the alarm on my watch, which was sitting nearby.  It randomly started beeping.  Lucy, who had been curled cozily in her bed, jumped up, tail between her legs, ran into the farthest corner of the far away bathroom and started shaking.  OH. MY. GOD. The beeping!!  Lucy is extremely sound sensitive.  She has hound ears.  She hates loud noises and is even afraid of something about the sound that fans make.  The first time I turned on a fan on a hot summer day, she ran into a corner, peed, and shook uncontrollably for 20 minutes.

            I felt like an awful mother.  I beeped that stupid high-pitched timer every 30 to 60 seconds on our runs.  It was torture to her sensitive ears.  No wonder the refusal, the defiance.  She was trying to tell me something.  All that frustration, the dragging, the ridiculousness, the stupid BEEPING.  I should have known.

            So again, I turned to my laptop.  I went online and found the only timer I could find at a teacher-salary price that did not beep.  Unfortunately by the time it arrived in the mail, I had to stop running.  But that, my friends, is the next episode in this adventure…

We are runners, and we know we're crazy

            Yesterday was Sunday.  In Seattle, it was near 50 degrees and rainy with gusts of wind.  Typical fall Seattle weather.  Normal people, on a day like that, would try to sleep in a bit.  Then maybe do some errands, perhaps tidy up a bit.  Maybe it was even a good laundry day.  Some might take a day like that to catch up on some Hulu or watch a little Netflix.  Others might even read a book with a hot cup of tea.

            What did I do?  I woke up at 5 am in order to run the Amica Insurance Seattle Half Marathon with a few thousand other crazy runners.  I met my friends at 6 am to drive down to the start line at Seattle Center.  Then I met a few more friends at the start line at 7 am.  By 7:30, I was taking off from the starting line, ready to conquer the 13.1 miles ahead of me with one goal: break the 2 hour finish time that haunted me during my last half in June when I finished in 2 hours and 1 minute. 

            One minute.  It may not seem like a lot, but when you are in the midst of 13.1 hilly miles with the wind and rain, that one minute means running each mile 4.5 seconds faster than the last time I ran.  It means NOT walking that last grudging hill.  It means NOT slowing down when the legs start aching.  It means standing up tall, pushing forward, and remembering why I’m doing this.

            Wait...why am I doing this?  That question pesters me every time I race.  I hit the hard miles, want to slow down, want to stop.  Suddenly my mind becomes a battlefield.  The body is tired, but the body will do its job.  I know that.  I’ve pushed it beyond what I thought were its limits before, and it has not broken down on me.  It’s the mind that is unreliable.  In the middle of a tough race, I feel like I have two people in my head.  There’s Voice #1 who wants to stop, walk, give up, sit on the side of the road and say I’m done. It’s the voice that asks “Why on Earth am I doing this??"  It’s the voice that wants to send evil vibes to the spectator holding up the sign that says “No one is making you do this.”  The voice that wants to sucker punch the bystander at mile 10 or 20 who tells you excitedly “you’re almost there!”  As well intentioned as you may be, I am NOT almost there.

            And then there’s Voice #2.  The voice who says you can do this.  You WILL do this.  You will hate yourself if you don’t do this.  Pain is temporary.  You will make it through.  5 seconds faster a mile?  No problem.  That looming hill up ahead?  You will conquer it.  Yes, it will hurt.  But then the pain will stop and you will be stronger.  This is the voice that believes in all the motivational posters people hold up on the side of the road: “Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit,” “Just one foot in front of the other,” “If you walk, you’ll still be hurting.”  It’s also the voice that laughs at the funny stuff like the poster that proudly declares “WORST PARADE EVER” or the group of people on the side of the road handing out water cups full of beer.  It’s the voice that enjoys the race, enjoys the day, enjoys life.

            Yesterday, the argument between these two voices started pretty early.  I hit the big hill at mile 7 and already Voice #1 was poking me in the back of the head.  But I’d run that hill in training 2 times before and I could run it now.  So I did.  After running somewhere around an 8:40 pace for the first 8 miles, mile 9 slowed me.  At mile 10, I wanted to stop.  I asked myself what possessed me to do this again?  In my head, I cycled through all the races I have planned for the next 7 months and Voice #1 told me I was insane.  And I walked.  Immediately Voice #2 crept back in.  As usual, she won the argument this time and I started running again.  I ran through mile 11 and mile 12 and finally saw the mile 13 marker.  On the last big hill—just a block long and less than a tenth of a mile from the finish line, Voice #1 convinced me I had given it all.  I started walking again.  Then as I was about halfway up the hill, the pacer holding up a big “2 hour” sign passed me and suddenly I had way more to give.  I started running.  I ran past the pacer, finished the hill, ran up around the corner, into the stadium at Seattle Center, and crossed the finished line at what had to be somewhere between a 7:45 and 8:15 pace.  I raised my hands, celebrated my finish, and looked down at my watch.  1 hour and 59 minutes (official time I found out later—1:59:33.  Less than half a minute was the difference between me and my goal). 

I did it.  I beat 2 hours.  And nothing can beat that feeling.  And it’s not even about the 2 hours.  It’s about doing it.  Whatever it is.  There’s nothing like giving your all, pushing your body and your mind to its limits and achieving the goal.  I’ve found nothing else on earth that can give me a rush like that.  And the funny thing is, as soon as I was done, before a volunteer even had the chance to take off my timing chip 10 feet from the finish line, the only thing I could think was I could have done better.  Next time I will do better.  I think this thought at the end of every race.  At the end of my first full marathon in June 2010, as I hobbled across the parking lot at Qwest Field, high on the amazing feeling of having just run a marathon, I was already thinking about how I could do better.  How I could have pushed my body further.  How I could have pushed Voice #1 further back in my head.

Running is an addiction.  The more you run and the better you do, the more you want to run and the better you want to do.  But running isn’t about being the fastest or running the farthest.  Running is about winning in your own mind.  It’s about learning to ignore the voice puts you down.  It’s about finding out how strong your soul is.  At mile 20 of a marathon or mile 10 of a half (or for that matter, mile 1 of a daily run), will your soul be strong enough to fight down that voice that tells you to stop?  That tells you that you are weak, you cannot do it?  Will your soul be strong enough to push yourself harder and farther than you ever have before?  And when you run, and you realize that your soul is strong enough…it’s a feeling that just can’t be described in words.   

Crazy, happy runners at the end of yesterday's race.

Hmmm...that's not comfortable

Several posts back, I wrote a list of 10 things I learned from Lucy.  In writing this blog and thinking more deeply about life back then, I realize that there is so much more I’ve learned from her.  Or, if at least not from her, then because of her.  One of the biggest differences between how I felt about life in New York and how I feel about life now is my attitude towards comfort.  Back then, all I wanted was comfort.  A safe, unencumbered life.

Comfort is a funny thing.  I love to feel comfortable.  I love my routine, my stability, my hole that I settle into.  But I’ve learned over time that to settle too deeply is dangerous.  It’s those times when I get too comfortable that I start to lose myself.  I get stuck in my routine, my repetition, and life suddenly starts being about what I should be doing next—according to my self-imposed schedule.  This urge to finish the schedule overtakes the desire to be happy.  Comfort takes precedence over satisfaction with life.  So now, I push myself.  When I find I’ve dug too deep into a pit of comfort, I decide to scratch at the walls.  I’ve realized that in order to stay awake and alive, I need to be uncomfortable every now and then.  I need to try something new or do something different.  I need to feel a flutter in my chest, a slight pull saying “maybe I shouldn’t do this, I’d rather be at home.” When I feel that flutter, I know I’m alive again…awake instead of sleeping in cushiony comfort. 

The first time I pushed myself in this way, was when I decided to move to Seattle.  And then I decided to start running.  So today, I present for you an episode of discomfort:

            Early February 2008 in Queens.  I throw on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie.  I even find an old sports bra after digging through my drawers, struggling to remember if I own one.  I put on an old pair of ‘Roos (remember those?) with the soles so worn down and falling apart that they flap as I lift my feet off the ground.  I put Lucy on her leash and step out the door.  I walk for about 5 minutes to the corner of a cemetery nearby my apartment.  I had driven around it the other day—one mile around exactly.  And I start running.

            10 seconds later, I stop running.  Holy crap.  Running is hard.  Can’t breathe.  I walk about a block and a half and try again.  This time I make it 20 seconds.  My lungs are on fire.  Lucy looks at me like I’m crazy.  She jumps at me, seeming to say “Are we running or not?”  I ask myself, what was I thinking?  But I try again, wanting to do this.  Run for 2 minutes straight.  I feel like I just chain-smoked 2 packs of cigarettes, but I haven’t smoked in 2 and a half years.  Wow…how do people do this?  Walk for 3 minutes.  Run for 30 seconds.  Walk for 5 minutes.  Run for 30 seconds.  Must…get…oxygen…in.  Try again.  20 seconds.  I can’t do this.  Turn around and walk home.  Lucy looks at me curiously.  “That’s it?” she says.

            I silently apologize and walk in the door.  I shower, feeling horrible.  Then I sit at my laptop.  And I start reading everything there is to read about running.  Because this will work for me.  This is going to work.

How to change your life

            Sometimes you can watch your life change right before your eyes.  There are many reasons why this happens, and oftentimes this event occurs hand in hand with tragedies.  But in the winter of ‘07-’08, I watched my life change after I made the decision the change it. 

I always knew I would leave New York City.  I could never imagine myself raising a family there or living the rest of my life there.  Towards the end of college, it was not just “knowing” I would leave, but really I wanted to leave.  New York and I always had a love/hate relationship.  I loved New York.  I loved living there and experiencing everything New York had to offer.  I loved the experiences it gave me, the lessons it taught me, and the secret beauty it held hidden in its nooks and crannies.  New York is a beautiful, amazing, fascinating place.  It’s mind boggling to think about how the city functions, how closely everything is tied together, and how little you can know about it.

But I hated it too.  I hated how fast everything moved, and how little time there was to get things done.  I think there is some sort of bend in time and space centered on NYC which makes the days shorter.  There are literally less hours in the day there.  I also hated how lonely I felt there.  In the most compactly crowded city in the US, people don’t interact with each other.  They don’t smile at you on the street or say hello.  They think you’re weird if you even make eye contact.  There’s all these people living parallel lives who never allow their paths to cross…never take a leap and interact.   

The dog park was different.  We were caged there together every day, forced to interact and socialize.  I think once I got a taste of the possibilities of a life where people acknowledge one another, I didn’t want to lose it.  But then I did.  And I was just another body in the ant hill that is New York City.  Go to work, come home, walk the dog (or go to class), go to bed.  Do your job.  Make your money.  Repeat.  I didn’t want to do it anymore.  I knew that the day I finished my Master’s program, I wanted out.  Not just for me, but for Lucy too.  She needed to be in a place where she could feel dirt under her feet sometimes.

During my college years, I spent a great deal of my time with my best friend from high school, who was also going to college in NYC.  Freshman year, when I decided I didn’t like my school, I spent weekends in her dorm room, making friends with her college friends.  After my first Brooklyn apartment, Sierra and I decided to get an apartment together.  We rented a tiny 2 bedroom railroad style apartment.  A year and a half later, Sierra decided to move to Seattle.  And she left.  Almost every time I talked to her, she would mention what a great city Seattle was and how much I would love it if I lived there.  I’d laugh it off, the thought of moving across the country inconceivable to me.  I couldn’t be that far from my family.  I couldn’t make that big of a change.  But after 2 years of persistent whispering in my ear, Sierra had planted a seed.

My last winter in NYC, I spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen next.  Do I go back to Rochester, a city that had very little to offer me besides my family?  I had visited Seattle by that point and had indeed loved it.  Was it really possible to move there?  All these questions floated around in my head.  What would I do with my furniture?  How could I afford a move like that?  What would I do when I got there?  How would I get a job?  What would my parents think? 

I went home for Christmas vacation with these thoughts floating around in my head.  I packed Lucy up in the car and drove the 5 ½ hours home to my parents, not seriously thinking I would ever make a move like that.  But it was a nagging thought.  During vacations at home, I had started taking long walks with my dad.  My parents had 2 golden retrievers at the time that my dad would walk regularly.  When I'd come home with Lucy, we’d take Sadie, Abbey, and Lucy out tromping through the snow to get their exercise.  It was on one of these walks that I mentioned Seattle to my dad.  I was simply talking through my thoughts about my next steps in life, and my miscellaneous thoughts about this city across the country.  I jokingly mentioned how hard Sierra had been working to convince me to move out there.  And my dad listened.  I remember very distinctly a point in the conversation when my dad looked at me and simply said “It sounds like you’ve already made the decision.  Now you just need to do it.”  He pointed out that furniture is just things.  Sell it, buy new stuff later.  He told me I’d find a job.  He told me that he wanted me to be happy, and if being happy meant being across the country, that he was ok with that.  He’d rather me be happy and far away than close by and sad.

As soon as he said that to me, it was like life moved into a different gear.  From that moment on, I watched it change.  I watched me change.  My dad was right.  I had made the decision.  I just hadn’t realized it.  And I needed my mom and dad to be ok with it, to tell me I should do it.  It felt like my heart started beating that day.  Like I had been living on auto-pilot for so long and now I was alive again, making my own choices.  I would move to Seattle for me.  And for Lucy.

This new-found feeling of life and living also played a large role in my taking the leap to start running.  I went back to New York after New Year’s and was ready to change my life.  I didn’t want to just change my location.  I wanted to change me.  When I looked in the mirror, I wasn’t happy with what I saw and I wanted to change that.  I think that may be why running first occurred to me.  Not only would I have a quicker way to run down Lucy’s energy, but I would also be making myself a better person.

Months later, just before leaving for Seattle, my good friend Lauren (who photographed all my apartments as a going away present) told me I was different.  She said that ever since I made the decision to leave New York for Seattle, my whole demeanor changed.  I was motivated, I was happier.  And she was right.  I had changed.  I had watched myself change.  But I wasn’t done yet.  I had so much more ahead of me.

Guilt-driven movement worked for me

            I did not want to run today.  I had a long, tiring day.  I could feel the beginnings of a headache.  I kept nodding off in the passenger seat of my carpool ride on the highway.  And I was cold.  Winter has hit Seattle, and although temperatures may not ever get as extreme as they did in New York, the cold here is different.  It seeps into your bones and stays there.  My classroom is freezing and by the time I get in the car at the end of the day, I’m so cold I blast the heat the whole 40 minute drive home.  But the cold stays inside me, and the moment I turn the heat off I’m shivering again.  So the thought of putting on not-so-warm running clothes and plunging into the cold was not pleasant.  I also found out that I’ll be able to fit more runs in this week than I thought, so I didn’t necessarily need to run today.  I had every reason not to run. 

But then I got home, opened my door, and was greeted immediately by a bundle of energy and excitement.  I couldn’t look into those golden eyes and tell her, “Sorry, no exercise today…I just don’t feel like it.”  The guilt when I see Lucy weighs on me on these types of days.  Knowing that she has slept all day and most likely spent the last hour waiting by the door, I just can’t face the guilt of not taking her out for a run.  So I sucked it up, put on my running clothes, dove out into the cold, and went for a 5 mile run.  And it felt great.  It was just what I needed to turn my day around.

When I moved out to Queens at the beginning of my second year of teaching, I had every reason to want to crawl into a hole and stay there.  I was on the outskirts of a city that I didn’t even want to be a part of anyways.  My college friends had all jumped ship for better things long ago.  I was slowly losing touch my dog park friends—apparently when you leave the dog park, you just aren’t a part of it anymore.  I had 2 steadfast friends who I saw on occasion, but not frequently enough.  In addition to this, I can’t describe my 1^st grade class that year as anything less than hellish.  I had students screaming, throwing things, destroying my classroom, treating each other like a piece of garbage on the sidewalk.  And I had NO support from my administration.  Teaching that year is what I now call “teaching boot-camp.”  I knew there was something better out there, and my only consolation was the thought that if I could teach through this, I could teach anywhere.

I could have curled up into a ball, drowning in the depression I felt slowly creeping up on me, but on this sentimental journey through time, we are at the point where something inside me shifted.  It may have been gradual, or it may have been a sudden movement, but at this instant in time, I wanted something different.  I wanted something different for me, and something better for Lucy.  I had spent 5 years holed up in the giant gray walls of New York City and was suddenly missing all things green.  I wanted to get out of the city.  I wanted to breathe clean air.  It depressed me to watch my students, who typically had not ever left the 2-block vicinity of their home.  They had all of NYC at their hands for a $2 subway ride, but they had never seen it.  Most of their parents had never seen it either.  They had grown up on those same 2 blocks.  And these children would most likely repeat this pattern.  Although it was not so extreme, to an extent I felt like them.  I was trapped in the confines of one of the largest cities in the US and I wanted out. 

            I attribute this shift in large part to Lucy.  Lucifer had caused a pretty abrupt departure from the dog park, but that didn’t mean that Lucy’s abundance of energy had subsided.  I was still constantly chasing her around the apartment trying to save every spare sock and pair of underwear.  Every day I came home to the same bundle of energy I came home to today, although the energy seemed more concentrated and ready to explode back then.  We started with long walks.  Since Emily and I got home around the same time, we’d take Jackson and Lucy together for hour to 2 hour long walks after work.  We explored our new neighborhood, trying hard not to turn the wrong corner or walk too far into a part of the city we shouldn’t be. 

Pre-running days = me 20 lbs heavier than today

These long walks were invigorating, but they weren’t enough.  I wanted to get out of the city…be somewhere different.  So then we started with hiking.  Emily, who grew up with a very active runner/hiker for a father, was just as anxious as me to escape our concrete jail.  By this time, I had bought a car, as it was easier to maneuver around Queens with one and parking was free and easy.  We took full advantage of this luxury.  That fall we took several hour to 2 hour long drives outside of the city up into the beauty of Upstate NY.  Our mini pack of me, Lucy, Emily, and Jackson let our feet hit rock that actually belonged there.  For once, I could climb up above everything and see for miles and miles beyond the mere square of space I was standing on (without paying an exorbitant amount of money to be elevated to the top of the Empire State Building).  It was a freedom I hadn’t felt in a long time.  The air made me feel alive again. 

Lucy loving it, and Jackson trying to :)

And Lucy…Lucy was in her element on these hikes.  For the entirety of her short life, she’d been scratching her nails on the concrete sidewalks that are New York City.  Now she could dig them into the dirt.  She learned exactly how far her 27 ft flexi-leash could go, and would dash ahead until just before the point where the leash would stop and yank her roughly backwards.  She was a mountain goat, scaling rocks.  She was a fish in the water and would swim endlessly in any stream or lake we encountered.  She would actually dive into the water, trying to catch whatever floated below.  I’d never seen a dog stick her whole head underwater like that, blowing bubbles through her nose.  And I’d never seen the Hound in her come out so strongly.  She smelled everything.  When we took out and back trails, she would know every turn on the way back home, sniffing each bend, pointing us in the right direction.  I’d never seen her so on top of the world.  This kind of energy was different from her dog park running in circles.  She belonged in this wilderness.  Jackson chased along behind her, trying his best to keep up.

A dog where she belongs...

As great as these hikes and long walks were, time and weather became an issue.  When fall turned into winter, hiking couldn’t happen anymore.  And when winter temperatures hit well below freezing, it became a time consuming process bundling up in multiple pairs of pants, many layers of shirts, and the thickest gloves, scarves, and hats I could find.  I felt like a penguin walking down the street sometimes.  And of course, the cold only gave Lucy more energy that needed to be burned off.  Sometimes I would come home late from work and let lack of time and energy win out over guilt.  I couldn’t help thinking that there must be a quicker way to get rid of this puppy energy, instead of 90 minute walks.  I had even stopped cooking, because walking took precedence over every spare moment I had.

            And then one day, as the world was slowly defrosting from that ridiculously cold winter, it occurred to me.  Running.  Wouldn’t running expel the same amount of energy in a much shorter amount of time?  I don’t know how the idea sprang into my head.  I didn’t know any runners.  I had never been a runner myself.  I had no idea how to even start running.  But suddenly, I wanted to run.

Home is where the dog is

When I was in college, a year or 2 before I got Lucy, the movie Garden State was released.  I loved this movie for so many reasons, but mostly because I really connected with Zach Braff’s character.  A lot of the things he said resonated with me and I felt as though he was able to articulate much of what I was feeling at the time, but couldn’t quite put into words.  One particular line stuck with me:

“You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone...you'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know.”  

           

            I didn’t know I was feeling that feeling until Zach Braff said it, but as soon as I heard it, things clicked in my mind.  This fictional person on this screen had just articulated for me why I was feeling a certain loss, missing something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  I visited my family a lot during this time (they were a cheap 45 minute Jet Blue flight or a 5.5 hour car ride away), but whenever I went home something was missing there too.  It didn’t feel quite right.  And here, on this movie screen, it suddenly made sense.  I was going through that transition in life—my parents’ home was no longer my own.  Of course I still felt at home when I was there, but I didn’t live there anymore.  I didn’t even have a room there.  I had become a guest in my parents’ house.  And I didn’t know where my home was.

            “Home” has always been a difficult concept for me.  We moved around quite a bit when I was younger.  I was born in Kentucky and lived on a tiny farm there until I was 4.  Then we moved to Richmond, Virginia where I became a swimmer, spending every moment of every summer at the pool.  In many ways, I have more memories of that pool than I do of our Virginia home.  When I was 12 we moved up to my parents house in Rochester, NY where they still live.  I remember when I went to college, the first time someone asked me where I was from, I didn’t know what to say.  Do I tell them all the places I’m from, or just the most relevant?  And what’s the most relevant?  Rochester was where I went to most of middle school and high school, so if I consider everything after puberty being life, then that’s where I’m from.  But I lived in Richmond the longest—8 years there, only 6 in Rochester.  I eventually settled on telling people I’m from Western New York, which is the go-to answer for me still.  If it becomes important later, I fill them in on the rest.  All this moving around really seemed to confuse the idea of home for me.

            During the dog park days, I think Lucy had begun to feel a little too at home in the park.  She had many friends who were there at the same time as us every day and they had begun to form a little pack.  Lucy is very alpha-female and I think that she felt she was in charge.  If there was a dog that approached her pack that she did not like, Lucifer emerged telling them to go away.  After this happened a few times, I started to get a bit nervous taking her to the park.  I even started taking long walks with her before going to the park in an attempt to help her not be so wired there.  But things started to look less hopeful after a while.

            In our last few months there, Lucy and I had befriended a German Shepherd named Jackson and his mom Emily.  Emily and I got along really well and were both in some really “uncomfortable” living situations.   Despite the work that had gone into the loft I was living in, the situation with my roommates had become somewhat awkward, to state it lightly.  For reasons that don’t need to be elaborated upon here (because they have nothing to do with dogs or running), Lucy and I needed a new home, and so did Emily and Jackson.  We spent a few grueling weeks trying to convince landlords to allow 2 large dogs into an apartment and finally settled on a place in Queens.  It was hard for me to make this move, despite the fact that I had found a great roommate and Lucy had too—Lucy and Jackson developed a kind of brother/sister relationship where they bossed each other around, played, and then cuddled when they were done.  When we had to stop going to the dog park, Lucy still had Jackson and as I began to lose touch with all my dog park friends, at least Emily was still there.

            During my 6 years in NYC, I was very much a transient.  I spent a year in the dorms at school, then moved in with a friend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  I then cycled through that and 2 other apartments in Williamsburg in the next 4 years.  Williamsburg had come to feel a little like a home, even if I didn’t have a consistent apartment there.  I knew the neighborhood inside and out.  After I got Lucy, I felt I had learned even more about it from our long and winding walks.  The best way to get to know a neighborhood is on foot with a dog.  When we moved out to Queens, I felt as though I was being removed from everything familiar.  I loved our apartment, which was larger and cheaper than any I’d had in NYC, but I was losing my home again.  I started to wonder, am I someone who is ever going to be able to stay put?  Will I ever feel settled?  Am I ever going to have a “home?”

            After making the final NYC move to Queens, I decided a year later to move out to Seattle, the details of which will be discussed in the future.  A very good friend of mine went around and took pictures of all my apartments in the city and framed them as a going away present.  It hangs in a very central location in my apartment today.  

I’m now on my second apartment in Seattle now and every time I look at those New York apartments, I remember that lost feeling I used to have.  It’s good to remember that feeling because it was so all-encompassing to me for so long, but I don’t really feel it anymore.  I’ve come to the belief that home has nothing to do with where I live.  Right now, Lucy is what makes me feel like I have a home.  She was with me in NYC watching me struggle through my first 2 years of teaching.  She was with me in those last 2 apartments.  Then she moved with me to Seattle and settled in with me at our first apartment here.  She watched me adjust to life on the other coast, making friends, growing into my own skin.  She became a runner with me.  She is with me now in my 2^nd apartment in 3 years here in Seattle.  She has watched me survive my ups and downs.  She has watched me change, and she has been with me through all those changes.  She has been with me through every moment of the last 5 years of my life, and I can’t say that about anybody else.  I think “home” means that you are in a place where you feel loved, supported, and comfortable.  As cheesy as it sounds, right now Lucy is my home.  Hopefully one day my home will include more than just a dog—a family of my own making would be an incredible home.  But until that happens, I have Lucy. 

One of my students last year gave me a very nice bookmark as an end of the year thank-you present.  On the bookmark is a quote by Josh Billings: “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”  Nothing could be more true.

Life in a bubble is easy

            Stress in an unknowable entity.  You can’t see it, can’t touch it, can’t taste it, hear it, or smell it.  But wow, can you FEEL it.  You can feel it in your back and in your shoulders.  Or in your heart or your lungs.  And of course, the strongest place you can feel stress is in yet another unknowable entity: your mind.  I find it amazing to think about what stress can do to a person.  This indistinguishable thing can cause physical ailments like heart attacks, strokes, ulcers, random pains, a cold.  And then there’s the effect on the mind: panic attacks (which I’ve been told feel much like heart attacks), irrational behavior, depression, loss of appetite.  The list could be endless.

            Stress is universal.  Everyone feels it in some way, but the ways in which we deal with it differ drastically.  Some people need to talk it out, some exercise, some drink.  Some people have hobbies that are relaxing, and some get massages.  Then there’s a large part of the population that just don’t deal with it.  They let it fester until it grows into something so much bigger than it ever should have been.

            I’ve never been someone who lets myself get overly stressed about things.  I’m pretty good at letting the bad things that happen in my life roll off my shoulders.  I grew up in a large family, and in order to survive 3 opinionated siblings, there are times when you just have to let it go.  But not all stresses can roll off your shoulders.  The paper you have to write in college isn’t going to go away if you just forget about it.  Money is a constant stress that doesn’t disappear.  Learning about my student’s not-so-perfect home lives isn’t something I can easily “let go” of.  So for those times in my life, I’ve always had some pretty good ways of dealing with stress.  Reading and writing has always been helpful.  Swimming was a big part of my life up through high school.  I can be pretty introverted when I want to and often just being alone helps.  When I discovered running, I couldn’t believe what an amazing de-stressor it was.  When you’re running, it’s so easy to think about everything and nothing all at the same time.  Whether I’m with friends, or by myself with my iPod, stress just disappears while I’m running.

            But as we know, in the beginning there was no running for me.  So before there was running, there was the dog park.  The tiny dog park that sits at the foot of McCarren Park in Brooklyn is a bubble.  Inside the wrought iron fences, there are two entire social networks.  There are the dogs of course, and then there are the dog owners.  When you are in the dog park, nothing outside exists.  You get to watch dogs play (and what could be more relaxing than watching dogs play?) and talk about dogs with other dog-owners who are just as obsessed as you.  In the bubble of the dog park, real life disappears.

When I first realized how energetic Lucy was, I took her straight to the dog park.  She was a hit there.  She was so floppy and uncoordinated that she’d constantly trip over herself.  She was a roly-poly mass of flesh with a hound’s howl and ears so long that she couldn’t drink out of the water bowl without getting the tips of them wet.  Other dog owners loved her and looked longingly at her, wishing their dogs could still have that cute puppiness in them.  Every time a new puppy came in, you could just see everyone melt.  Lucy grew up there, and through Lucy and Lucy’s new-found friends, I made my own friends.  Suddenly I found that my life was centered around the dog park.

Here is what life looked like then:  Wake up.  Get to work at least an hour early.  Plan the day.  Feel lungs start to constrict as the morning bell approaches.  Welcome my first graders.  Drown for the first half of the day in a mess of learning how to teach and learning how to control kids who were used to simply being ignored or yelled at (or worse) at home.  Eat lunch with other drowning teachers and commiserate.  Spend the second half of the day floundering to stay afloat while counting down minutes until the afternoon bell.  Send the kids back into the projects across the street.  Try to breathe.  Take the subway home while trying to breathe.  Get Lucy and walk 15 minutes to the dog park.  Breathing gets easier.  Enter the dog park.  Breathe.  Big deep breath.  Breathe.  Spend anywhere from 60-90 minutes wasting time watching dogs play and talking to dog owners about unimportant things.  Revel in how easy it is to breathe.  Walk home.  Eat dinner.  Sleep (kind of).  Repeat. *NOTE: on weekends, replace “sleep” with “drink” and replace entire work day with “sleep.”

And so life went for a full year.  I survived that first year of teaching.  I made it through puppy training.  I integrated the social circle of the dog park into other aspects of life.  I moved in with a new roommate that I met at the dog park.  I was happy.  Or at least as happy as I’d been in a while.  Life was good enough.  Then, as always seems to happen after I become comfortable and content with my place in life, things abruptly changed.  Lucy developed an alternate personality with a few select dogs she didn’t like so much.  I have named this personality Lucifer.  Just when I thought I had it all figured out—the dog park as my life raft buoying me up above all the stresses forcing me down, Lucifer pulled it out from underneath me.  And for a moment in time, I began to sink again.

Lessons Learned

Here are the top 10 things that Lucy taught me in her first 3 years of life:

10) Don’t put food too close to the edge of the table.

9) Toys can be destroyed easily by a hound dog with a strong jaw.  Don’t expect them to last for longer than a day…tops.

8) Shoes taste good.  Especially your favorite ones.

7) Don’t leave dirty underwear on the floor if you intend to keep it.

6) Cats are fun toys.

5) Roommates should always keep their doors closed.  Their dirty clothes apparently taste way better.

4) Couches can be chewed.

3) Barking is really exciting.  Especially when you can do it really loudly.

2) Playing chase is fun.  If you live in a place where there are dirty socks that can be snatched and the house is a circle between the kitchen, living room, and dining room, running in circles to play chase is even more fun.  And if you try to be tricky and turn around to circle the other way, dogs are smarter than that.

1) If you run out of contact lenses, don’t leave your only pair of glasses on the bathroom counter while you are in the shower.  Even glasses can be eaten. 

Because I kept Lucy crated during the day, the only opportunity she had to be destructive was when someone was “supervising.”   Supervising a rambunctious puppy every second of every minute isn’t quite so easy, so draining Lucy of energy became my number one goal.  Ultimately, I wanted to be able to relax in my own home and not have hawk eyes on my dog every moment.  It took me a while to take her outside the apartment, as I was a bit paranoid from my previously mentioned traumatic puppy incident.  We relied on pee pads for about 2 weeks and I forced my roommates to grin and bear the constant barking and whining until the final puppy shots were had.  As soon as she had all of her shots and could step foot on dirty Brooklyn streets, my first idea for draining energy was long walks.  After all, as Mr. Caesar Milan always told me, in order to have a well behaved dog, you must have a tired dog.

I started taking Lucy to puppy training.  We went to something called “Clicker” training, where you wait for the dog to do what you want, give them a “click” noise with a little finger clicker they give you, and then immediately follow with a treat.  In this puppy class, it was all about positive attention—no negativity allowed.  Lucy absolutely loved attention.  In fact, she couldn’t stand it when our instructor turned away from her to work with another dog in our group class.  As soon as the instructor stepped away from us, Lucy barked.  And barked.  And barked and barked and barked.  Why wouldn’t she?  Here was this nice lady who taught Lucy to do fun things like sit, stay, wait, come, and leave it.  Lucy was a quick learner and every time she did something good, this very nice lady clicked at her and gave her a piece of turkey.  Yep, no simple dog treats here—cold cut turkey from the grocery store.

Clicker Lady was baffled by Lucy’s sudden love for her.  She claimed that she’d never had this issue before, that Lucy was an original and unique challenge for her.  Her suggestion: buy one of those rubber kongs (the hollow big kind that looks like three balls decreasing in size and squished on top of each other) and fill it with peanut butter.  That way, when Clicker Lady walked away during a class, I could give Lucy the kong and let her work on getting the peanut butter out.  This worked pretty well for about 30 minutes of the hour long class.  Lucy then spent the next 30 minutes alternating between barking loudly and continually licking the roof of her mouth to get all the peanut butter off.  Nonetheless, we suffered through 5 embarrassing sessions of this and Lucy came out of it knowing the basics I mentioned above.

When it came to leash training though, I found the clicker plus my little pouch of turkey, and holding a frantic puppy on a leash was all too much to handle.  And on the walks where I didn’t bring turkey along, all our training seemed to slip right out of Lucy’s mind.  So as soon as our 5 weeks were over, I dropped the clicker and turned back to Caesar who advised me to be the pack leader, be assertive, and use gentle force when necessary.  I got Lucy a pinch collar, one of the ones that Caesar described as taking a “quick bite” when you pull it tight.  It then sits lax around her neck when not being pulled.

            On our first few walks with this, I felt horrible.  I’d seen other dogs with the same collar and thought it looked torturous.  Knowing the theory behind it, I felt a little better but I couldn’t help wondering what others thought about me as I walked down the street.  I’m not sure how closely you looked at those puppy pictures of Lucy a few posts ago, but I must assure you that she was a very cute puppy.  When we walked down our Brooklyn streets, we could barely make it 2 blocks without being stopped by adoring onlookers wanting to pet the floppy puppy.  I always felt like when they bent down to pet her, they were judging me for this mean looking collar. 

            I got over this pretty quickly though and eventually settled on a method that involved the firmness of Caesar’s training, with the positive reinforcement of clicker training.  Again, as with teaching 6 year olds, a little of both is necessary.  When I go running with Lucy now, I am so glad that this particular bit of training was of such importance to me.  If you haven’t tried running with a dog before, imagine a dog running back and forth in front of you, pulling on the leash, lunging at other animals.  I’ve witnessed this with other dog owners, and it just doesn’t work.  Except for on certain rare occasions, Lucy is great on the leash.  She runs or walks right next to me, never stepping in front and often lagging behind.  She’ll show interest in other dogs, but thanks to my oh-so-vicious collar, doesn’t often lunge for them…although I still instinctively brace myself every time we go past one. 

As Lucy has gotten older, calmer, and more mature in the past years, it’s nice to remember sometimes that she still has a lot of those playful puppy tendencies from her early years.  Typically, when we run together she just trots along next to me, but on very rare occasions she gets this sudden burst of puppy energy, grabs her leash, and starts play tug-of-war, prancing, and growling.  This doesn’t usually last long, but it’s quite entertaining.  When she did this on our run yesterday, I started laughing as I usually do, unable to do anything but simply smile and let her have her fun.  It wasn’t until she pranced in front of me, made me trip over my own feet, and then dive to a crash in the middle of the gravely outer loop of Green Lake that I realized I should probably reread my last post and take a little of my own advice.  I can’t help but let this slide though.  No matter how much older and mature we get, sometimes a girl just needs to have fun.