Pickles & Dimes

It’s been a very long, very stressful, very dumb work week for both of us (with no end in sight), to the point that Jason & I are determined to make it to the weekend no matter what. All week I’ve been repeating “happy happy happy” to myself like a lunatic yogi, but it seems to be working. Once Jason & I both get home, we’re able to shrug off our dark moods as if they’re heavy wool coats too warm for the weather, and fully immerse ourselves in the fun half of life: playing cribbage, making dinner, watching Shorty walk around with his bone in his mouth like Groucho Marx, hearing Abby meow for assistance in jumping onto the counter to drink from the bathroom faucet (she tweaked one of her legs and has been limping a bit, but seems to be getting better – I hope), and just generally living life without being interrupted nine thousand freaking times. (That was for you, Work.)

Today is when we can purchase our tickets to the first official regular season game at Target Field. In little more than a month, we will be watching baseball again. Outside. That is equally both awesome and terrifying, as the current level of snow appears it will be around until mid-July. But, still – baseball!

Baseball makes me happy. As do the following things:

- Strawberries, bananas and blueberries on oatmeal. It’s like, healthy and stuff, but delicious. Interesting.

- Being my own Jillian Michaels while running. During a particularly tiring part, but wanting to meet a certain time goal, I may have upped the treadmill speed and yelled, “Let’s do this b#tch!” According to Jason, that makes me crass. According to me, that makes me accomplish my goals. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

- Mountain Dew. Always.

- Shorty not barking at the policeman who stopped us this morning to inquire if Shorty had been running around off-leash in the neighborhood (he hadn’t). (He always barks at strangers.)

- It’s almost camping season.

- Someday soon I can maybe not wear mittens.

- In certain parts of our yard, if you look hard and scrape away some snow, you can see grass.

- Planning to run a 5K in June with Jason.

- Sunny now camping out in Shorty’s room during the day to keep him company.

- How every sixth word in this entry was spelled correctly, but was totally the wrong word (”site” for “sight,” “run” for “room,” “work” for “week.”)

I need a nap. That would also make me happy.

It’s been nearly 2 1/2 weeks since we’ve gotten our treadmill and endured an epic battle getting the 200-lb. thing out of the truck, avoiding the front of the ice-covered steps in favor of going up the side of them (Me: “I can’t do this because I can’t lift my leg high enough because the box is in the way and too heavy to lift higher.” Jason: “Just do it!” Me: “It. Is. Impossible, Dammit!”) and down 13 steps while Jason had the weight of the box to lean against his chest while I was hunched forward trying to keep the box from slipping down the stairs and crushing him (Me: “We should switch places. I can’t hold onto it like this. There’s no handles.” Jason: “No. Just lift it.” Me: “What if we just opened the box upstairs and brought the parts downstairs?” [Ed. note: I still do not understand why this fantastic idea was not greeted with enthusiasm] Jason: “No. Just do it!” Me: “There. Is. NOTHING. To. Hold. Onto!!!” Repeat for 30 minutes).

But we finally got it downstairs and assembled, and we’ve been using it ever since and recording our progress on a spreadsheet. We’re both eager to run and excited about getting fit, and I’ve been peppering Jason with questions about his approach to running: What music do you listen to? What do you think about? Do you try to run for a certain time or distance? How can you run for so long without stopping? Are you a robot? Etc., etc.

I don’t think I’ll ever have the runner mentality where I’ll be running and all of a sudden, whoops, 15 miles just flew by without my noticing, you know? The whole time I am running, I am keenly aware that I am running. My legs, arms and lungs are all quite aware, thank you, and my hair capitalizes on the opportunity to find the best way to plaster itself into my eyeballs.

The first time I ran, I looked at the display the whole time and stopped at a pre-determined time, not because my body actually felt tired. So since then, I’ve been zoning out, trying not to think about anything at all, and especially not thinking about how much time has elapsed, or how I’ll make a deal that I can walk once I reach a mile, or how I can slow down once a song is over. I’m focusing on my body instead. How my legs sometimes burn, how my breathing feels (I can definitely tell when I don’t use my inhaler since I have a 5-minute coughing fit afterwards), how my speed increases if Andrew W.K. or Rob Zombie are part of my playlist.

I’m no longer noticing how Shorty sometimes comes over and almost touches his nose to the moving belt; how Sunny looks prepared to leap onto the treadmill display, fall onto the moving belt and get shot into the wall, leaving behind a cartoon, cat-shaped hole; or how my disembodied, bouncing head must look through the basement window to the neighbors.

All I’m thinking about is how awesome it’s going to feel when I’m done and can record my latest progress. And how each time I get better and better.

Yesterday Jason and I dealt with the Ice Dam situation on our roof, which was already a drama onto itself because the roof rake we got was missing parts, which led to Argument #1 a few weeks back. Yesterday, we trekked to Menards and argued our way past customer service (“We don’t have a receipt! It was a gift! It’s missing parts! Just give us some washers!”) to have an employee hand us some washers so we could go home to assemble the rake again and discover the washers weren’t the correct size, leading to Argument #2. Then I put the rake together anyway all by myself, ignoring Jason and his-pointing-out-how-it-wouldn’t-work-monologue, who immediately hogged it from me once it was assembled and started complaining about the rake’s wiggliness (Argument #3) while raking 200 feet of snow off our roof (slight exaggeration), when one of the nuts came off because of the incorrect washer (leading to Argument #4 and Jason magically finding it in a mountain of snow), and finally resulting in Jason raking most of the snow off our roof before losing one of the bolts, probably on the part of the roof where the sun won’t reach until July, but hopefully giving our ice dam a fair chance of melting before we have to do something as ghetto as throwing a tied-off pantyhose leg full of ice melt onto our house.

In conclusion: we are ready for Spring. And to use a rake on places other than our roof.

I look at life in two parts: the boring half that consists of commuting, paying bills, waiting in lines, sitting in meetings, cleaning, etc. And the other half, which consists of fun things like playing with the dog, traveling, hanging out with friends and family, camping, playing games and enjoying hobbies.

Lately I’ve been letting the boring half creep into the fun half. Now the difference isn’t
50-50, but more like 70-30. And it’s pissing me off. And I know why. Because I always have to Be Worrying. About things I have no control over. Things like our stupid mortgage company (sad to say, I am actually happy to be back where we started A YEAR AND A HALF AGO with them, the company that takes incompetence to an unparalleled level), our taxes (having to pay only half the amount we assumed), and the ice on our roof (which, thanks to our stupid news channel, made me even more nervous about our roof collapsing by airing a seriously scary piece last night on ice dams that featured a guy sticking a finger into a soggy, leaky hole in his ceiling).

Then, this morning, after I took the dog outside and found myself visually inspecting everyone’s roof for signs of ice dams, I thought: “Come on. You just finished worrying and resolving the mortgage and tax problems, and instead of having fun for a change, you’re focused on this???”

It’s like I need to be worrying or I’m not happy. Or to quote Garbage, “I’m only happy when it rains.” (Actually, I am happy when it rains because I like rain, but that is neither here nor there.)

So today I decided to give worrying a break. To push back the boring half of life into just that: half.

I’m not going to waste the fun half of life by letting the boring half exhaust me. I’m not going to procrastinate joy until after I get every single issue or perceived problem resolved. I’m not going to worry about things I can’t control. Either I’m going to do something about it or I’m not going to think about it again until I can.

I’m going to make more time for fun things. Things like exercising (our new treadmill is great and I may have made a geeky spreadsheet to track my slow, red-faced, panting progress), hobbies, friends, anything that brings enjoyment to my life. I want to enjoy life now, really live it mindfully, and not worry it away as I fret over future problems that may or may not even come to fruition. I’m going to let Future Shauna worry about that. Grab life by the horns, so to speak.

Coincidentally, Jason recently told me that the Dave & Buster’s near our house now has a mechanical bull, which is one of the things I want to try before I die.

So let’s start with that.