Life with Lucy: Statistics

Past research shows that looking pathetic greatly increases my chances of getting whatever is up there.

Life with Lucy: Sunshine in Seattle

Mom, what's that big bright thing in the sky?

A creature of habit

            During the early days of my time in Seattle—the weeks I was healing my sprained ankle, the snow storm, the glasses incident—they all happened at the same time as a very quick, intense, and short-lived relationship.  After this relationship (which ended shortly after the glasses incident), I fell back into my typical routine with relationships, or lack thereof.  To be sure, there were boys in my life who stuck around for a while, but there were no actual relationships.  I feel as though I need to discuss my flaws in this area, because it underlies a lot of the choices I make.  I am aware of the big and glaring piece of my life that is missing, and has been missing for a very long time.  This gaping hole should be acknowledged.

I am, if nothing else, a creature of extreme habit and routine.  I frame my life around my routines.  They make me feel sane, as if I have some sort of control over what happens in my life.  They give me comfort, because I know what to expect from myself.  They provide structure in my life.  And the best part about all of this is that my routines are unobstructed by the unpredictability of another human. 

I have routines both big and small.  For instance, here is what life is like for me most days after work:

1)  Come home

2)  Run with Lucy

3)  Shower

4)  Make Dinner

5)  Eat dinner

6)  Drink hot tea or a glass of wine (depending on my mood)

7)  Spend an hour or so reading, writing a blog, or watching Hulu or Netflix (also depending on my mood)

8)  Get ready for bed

9)  Read in bed until I fall asleep

This larger routine can be broken into smaller routines.  There’s the shower routine:

1)  Shampoo

2)  Wash face

3)  Put in conditioner

4)  Shave, if necessary

5)  Wash body

6)  Rinse out conditioner

Or, the get ready for bed routine:

1)  Brush teeth

2)  Put on face cream

3)  Floss (added this step about a month ago, very proud of myself)

4)  Empty bladder

5)  Take Lucy out to empty her bladder

6)  Get into bed

            Lucy has ferreted out the intricacies of my routines and formed her own based upon them.  When we come home from our run, she heads straight to the bedroom to wait for me to shower.  Then she disturbingly watches as I get dressed.  She can tell that if I put on my PJs, it will be a normal night.  If normal clothes go back on, she knows that a wrench has been thrown into the routine this evening.  She eats her dinner while I make mine, then patiently waits as I eat—sometimes at the table, sometimes on the coffee table at the couch (wow, I know, a bit of variance here).  Once the dishes are washed and I curl back up on the couch (either with my computer or a book), she knows it’s ok to creep up into her corner of the couch with me.

            Lucy and I are both discomforted by changes in our routines.  We both get edgy, waiting for something unexpected to happen.  This is not to say that we are not flexible and open to change.  There are nights I go out to dinner with friends or for a run with my team.  We adjust to these changes, but I typically limit them to one, maybe 2 nights a week.  We integrate these changes into our lives and find ways to form routines around them to make them work.  Weekends are different, less predictable and routine, with many more options for flexibility.  However, whatever choices I make, Lucy adjusts her routines to mine.  She doesn’t demand too much of me.

            My extreme need for my routines, my “me” time, usually works for me.  I handle a lot of stress and activity in my life with relative ease because of these routines.  They have altered slightly over time, but in essence since I got Lucy and started teaching and running, no matter my location (Brooklyn, Queens, Magnolia, the U-District, or Phinney Ridge), these routines are the same.  It may make me sound crazy, maybe a little OCD, but I love my routines.  And I’ve come to the realization in the past year that perhaps my love for my routine is a big reason why I am eternally single.

            Being in a relationship means that you have to share.  You have to share your life, share your time, share your routines.  You have to make space for the unpredictability of change.  You have to take into account someone’s feelings, needs, wants, and desires in your most basic of routines.  I have trouble letting someone in that close to me.  For the most part I think I’ve tended to keep the boys I’ve dated at arm’s length.  In the past, I thought that my inability to keep someone close was their fault, but I’ve been able to step back and look at things from outside of the box.  I now realize that it might be me that doesn’t let them very close.

            Looking back on my life since coming to Seattle has helped me realize this.  But, the problem with this realization is that the longer I’ve gone with it being just me, making my own decisions, the harder it is to let go of that.  To try to factor someone else in.  To put it simply, I think I am just too good at being single for my own good.  But that doesn’t make me any less tired of being single.

            I’m ready for a relationship to work, but for me to do that, I have to let go of a lot of things.  I have to let go of a little bit of the freedom I’ve enjoyed for so long.  I have to let go of some routines.  I have to be flexible.  I have to be willing to share my precious solitude.  It will be hard for me to do this.  And right now, I guess I don’t have to worry.  There is no one knocking at my door asking me to give any of this up yet.

            My hope for the future is that one day (honestly, I hope one day soon), someone will stumble into my life who I will want to give these things up for.  Maybe it won’t feel like I’m giving these things up, but creating a new and different routine in my life—a routine I want to share with someone else.  Maybe the fact that I haven’t wanted to give these things up yet just means I haven’t found someone worth giving them up for.  Maybe there’s still hope for me.  Maybe.

            In the mean time, Lucy and I will keep running.

Life with Lucy: Sleepytime

Can't...keep...eyes...open...

The CAN

            Lucy is a big wuss.  She is afraid of a lot of things.  For anyone who read about our first expedition out on the streets running, you know that she is afraid of high pitched beeping noises.  She is afraid of fans of all kinds.  She is most intensely afraid of large box fans, but her fear also includes everything from small personal fans to most bathroom vents and all overhead oven vents.  She runs away from the spattering and sizzling of cold food hitting a very hot pan.  She doesn’t like large, loud crowds.  In general, she dislikes any sort of loud sound.

Although she is loveable and friendly and will warm up eventually to almost anyone, she can be picky about people she meets on the street.  She is fearful of children and their unpredictable, volatile energies.  She cowers away from small, elderly people who hobble a bit as they walk.  If you’re wearing a hat, she may not like you.  If you have a beard, she will probably be a bit stand-offish at first.  Throughout her short life, there have been 4 unrelated people (of varying ages, heights, genders, and ethnic backgrounds) that she simple will not let come anywhere near her.  The origin of this extreme aversion is unknown—the only commonality I’ve found is something that can only be described as an “odd” quality in their character and energies.

The list of Lucy’s fears and anxieties is endless, but what she is far and above afraid of more than anything else is noise.  As a puppy, I hesitated to use this fear against her.  I was still half-listening to the advice of the Clicker Lady who told me to only use positive reinforcement.  Then there was Cesar Millan, always telling me to assert my dominance and show Lucy who the alpha dog really was.  But up to the point where Lucy ate my pair of glasses and sent me into a panick-stricken spiral, neither of these methods had ever worked to stop her from stealing and eating all my stuff.  So after the destruction of the pair of glasses, I resorted to a method which, up until then, I’d considered to be cruel and unusual punishment for her. 

Growing up, my family mainly had Golden Retrievers.  Golden Retrievers are well behaved and easily trained for the most part.  However, one of our dogs, Abbey, which we got when I was in middle school, was prone to stealing things off of counters.  She wouldn’t do much with the things she stole—she was never nearly as destructive as Lucy could be—but it was still an annoyance my mother would not tolerate.  And so emerged the CAN (yes, all caps, because it is just that demanding of attention).

Abbey, who now rests peacefully in the ground
next to several other deeply loved pets (including my little
 Maya) at my parent's house in New York.

The CAN is an empty aluminum soda can filled with about 10-15 pennies and taped closed.  Simple, but highly effective.  When we first started with the can, we’d watch for Abbey to reach up to a countertop or tabletop and steal something, then toss the CAN near her.  The jarring sound of pennies flying around in an aluminum can is enough to make anyone take a second thought about what they’re about to do.  With time though, Abbey wizened up to the method and simply began stealing items when there were no humans around to throw CANs at her.  So then began the “traps.”  My mother, in her attempt to outsmart the dog, decided to start rigging traps for Abbey.  She’d place a sock just barely hanging off the edge of a table.  Tied to the end of the sock was a string.  This string was then stretched out of sight where it was attached to the tab of the CAN.  Now, when Abbey “stealthily” tried to steal from the counter top, a CAN would come tumbling down on top of her.  Traps were set up throughout the house.  I admit that we all experienced just a little satisfaction when we heard a CAN go crashing in a random corner of the house.  Eventually, the CAN served its purpose and was shelved with no further thought.

Until Lucy ate my glasses.  Suddenly, I couldn’t get my hands on a CAN soon enough.  The next day, once I could see again, I grabbed one of the empty beer cans out of the recycling, emptied some pennies out of my purse, and waited.  As soon as Lucy came running out of a bedroom, proudly showing her latest theft, I threw the CAN aiming to let it land right next to her.  However, the reaction was so immediate that she was gone before the CAN hit the ground.  As soon as she heard the pennies start rattling in the air, she began running.  Tail between legs, she dropped the thieved item, scurried to her safe haven in the bathroom and shook with fear chills for 10 minutes.

Did this make me a mean parent?  Did it put me in a bad light that I used my dog’s most extreme fear to make her behave?  If it did, I was beyond the point of caring.  SHE ATE MY GLASSES.  She was going to STOP eating things.  And this worked.

The next time she stole something, I repeated the action.  After the first two tosses, I didn’t even have to throw the CAN anymore.  The minute she appeared with a stolen item, all I had to do was pick up the CAN and shake it.  She didn’t need any sneaky traps, the sound of those pennies was so fear inducing that she quickly gave up on her favorite game of “chase me around the house, I have something you want!”  I made a few CANs and strategically placed them around the apartment so that they were handy when necessary.  But eventually, we reduced ourselves to one CAN.

The CAN was a miracle for me.  After 3 years of chasing and destruction, suddenly, after just a week or 2 of CAN training, life was peaceful.  Lucy was well behaved.  It was amazing.  I can’t say that she didn’t slip, but she got to the point where merely touching the CAN was enough to let her know that she needed to stop.  The sight of the CAN was enough for her to know that she was being watched.

It’s been almost 3 years since then.  There’s still a CAN hidden in my apartment, for those rare times when it may be needed.  But I don’t really touch it anymore.  I’m beginning to think that I may in fact need to get rid of it.  Sometimes, I’ll accidentally touch it, sending Lucy into a fearful sprint to hide in the bedroom.  We may, finally, have come to the point where we’ve outgrown the CAN completely.  And as happy as that makes me, it also makes me a little sad.  Because it means that Lucy is mature, which in turn means that Lucy is getting older.  She’ll be 6 years old in a few months—and I know that’s not that old, but it’s quite possible that Lucy has reached the halfway point in her life.  And I feel like there’s so much left that we have to do.  There’s so much life left to be lived, and I’m just not ready to begin thinking that Lucy is getting closer to the end of her life than she is to the beginning.  And so we’ve stumbled upon my CAN.  The passage of time…oh what an unrelenting enforcer.

Life with Lucy: Boobytrapped

If you leave, you will trip and fall and break your neck...it's best to stay here with me.

My secret hiding place

            When I was little, I loved the idea of a secret hiding place.  A place you could sneak into and disappear from the rest of the world, just for a little while.  A place you could just be with yourself, with your own thoughts, on your own time.  My favorite book was The Secret Garden.  The idea of having an entire garden just to yourself…it seemed wonderful to me.

            Maybe my fascination with solitude was derived from my lack of it.  I lived in a busy home.  In my elementary years, my family lived in a house in Richmond, VA.  I have 3 siblings—2 younger brothers and an older sister.  My sister and I shared a room until I was in late elementary school.  Both my parents, still happily married as they always have been, 2 cats, and a dog also lived in our home.  There were often more than just us 4 children.  We all had neighborhood friends that came and went from our home in waves throughout the day.

My little brother recently visited our VA home
and took this picture.  It certainly doesn't look
the same as it does in my memory, but the
castle-like quality is unmistakable.

            Sometimes, I just wanted to be alone.  I had a number of secret hiding places.  As a kid, I thought our house in Virginia looked like a miniature castle.  It was offset on our property with a yard on one side and a small, narrow passageway between the house and the privacy fence on the other side.  The passageway was just wide enough to fit one person and was covered by overhanging trees and bushes.  In the castle-like theme, or family took to calling this the Secret Passageway.  There was also a neighbor up the street who had perfectly trimmed hedges.  In one spot they cupped back into the yard right near the garage.  If you crouched down behind them, you could hear everyone passing on the street while hidden from the house itself.  I often brought a notebook and a pen there with me after “running away.”  I usually got worried and made it back home before anyone realized I was gone.  There was also a large tree with branches perfect for climbing in our yard.  I would climb as high as I could, usually as high as the roof of our 2 story home, and sit there for what felt to me like hours (in kid time, who knows how long this was).  I could look down onto the yard and watch everything happening.  I could spy on my sister and her boyfriend.  Or on my brothers and their mischievous friends getting into trouble.  I liked to watch the world from far away, to take it all in on my own terms, in my own time.

            As I grew older, I still relished my alone time.  Once I had my own room, I liked shutting the door and just having my own space.  In high school, I’d wallow in my despair behind closed doors—I even remember a few times not only shutting myself away in my bedroom, but I’d curl up inside my closet and close the door.  In college, I couldn’t stand the lack of privacy in dorms and moved out of them as soon as possible.  This isn’t to say that I always wanted to be alone, just that I relished my solitude every once in a while.

            In the final years in NYC, I felt as though I had too much solitude.  I had too much time to think, to turn thoughts over and over in my brain until they weren’t thoughts anymore but screaming cries of frustration instead.  I wanted to something to occupy my thinking time, to get me focused on something else.  And so Lucy appeared.  And so running took root.  Focusing on training Lucy, navigating the dog park social world, teaching myself to run, becoming a healthy person—all these things allowed me to take brief reprieves from my own mind.

But after I moved to Seattle, things changed.  I began branching out of my introverted self, exploring the extrovert that I’d hidden away for so long.  My time was occupied, I had things to do.  Suddenly, I found that running was no longer my distraction from solitude but my only source of solitude.  In Seattle, my world flipped upsidedown—no longer did I worry about having too much lonely time.  I worried about having too little.  And so, as it has proved to do a few times since, my running transformed itself to suit my needs.  Instead of being a distraction, running became a release.  It became my only time to stop and think about me, to give my thoughts the simmering time they needed.  Lucy and I would hit the streets of Magnolia, and suddenly my mind was a spinning wheel.  I’d work through all the events of the day, the worries that still nagged from previous days, all the thoughts that I didn’t have time to think otherwise.

This is one of the things I love about running.  Running will be whatever you need it to be.  Running will be a life-changer.  Or it will be the rock that has steadies you through moments of turbulent life.  Running will be your solitude.  Or it will be your distraction from solitude.  Running will be your time.  Or it will be the time you give to others.  Running will be your exercise, your stress relief, your calming agent, or your energizer.  Running is more versatile than I could have ever imagined when I chose to take that first step out the door.

During my first year in Seattle, I needed running to be my secret hiding place.  I needed it to be a place I could run away to when things got too crazy, too overwhelming.  I needed it to be my fount of sanity.  And, reliably, it was.  Most of the time, running isn’t a hiding place for me anymore, but sometimes when days get tough and life gets dizzying, I can choose to find that secret hiding place again and tuck myself away for a bit to find comfort in its solitude.