Yup. Life happens when we’re making other plans.
It had been a stressful week. I just needed to decompress, so I reached out to my friend, Laura, who, it turned out, needed some downtime even more than I did. We agreed to take our dogs for a walk in the Badlands, a wilderness area just 20 minutes away from my Bend, OR home. We’d invite another friend, Sarah, to join us with her pup, and follow up with drinks and a bite.
The plan shifted slightly when Laura asked a few hours before we were to meet whether I wanted to go to the Badlands or the off-leash dog park just a mile from my home. Figuring, correctly, that she was feeling even more tapped out than before, I suggested we keep it simple and opt for the park.
I regretted that decision the second I opened the door to my new-to-me Eurovan. Somehow, I kept my 15-month-old English Cocker puppy, Moke, from bolting out while leashing him and Misha, my 4 ½-year-old Aussie-Shepherd mix. Meanwhile, I had to lift the 15 ½-year-old Aussie-Golden Retriever, who sadly has since passed, onto the ground without dropping her, despite being pulled by a combined 100-plus pounds of dog.
Feeling terrible about my all-too-obvious dog-training failures, I made my way into the park, trying to remember to expand my ribs as I breathed and control the mounting tension. Halfway to the grassy area where we were to meet, I realized I’d forgotten to put on my knee brace. After a pup, thankfully not one of mine, had bashed into my knee and wrenched my medial collateral ligament (MCL), my physical therapist had directed me to wear the brace whenever I skied or hit the dog park. It turns out that they see even more injuries from dog parks than they do from the mountain. Considering that Bend is a ski town, that’s saying a lot.
I abandoned the idea of trying to renegotiate the parking lot as quickly as it hit. Just then, two dogs dashed past me on the path, and the warning that my minor knee injury could easily become a major one flashed neon. Still, I opted to continue on at the expense of any kind of relaxation the outing could have brought.
I met up with my friends and managed to avoid the pupper skirmishes happening all around us. Those are, after all, why we dog owners bring our pups to an off-leash park. I just didn’t need them to happen at my feet, which seems to be the preferred stage. About 45 minutes in, I noticed Moke on his back some distance away and threw out a plea to the universe that my puppy not be rolling in something disgusting. No such luck.
I didn’t actually notice the problem until our group—three people and six dogs—were back at my place, with wine poured and appetizers served. I had just joined in a toast at the patio table when Moke put his front feet on my chair and popped up to survey the feast. His ear and the left side of his neck, I realized, were covered in dog poop. Before I could react, he had made his way over to Laura.
Trying to avoid contact with part of a dog when said dog is in perpetual motion triggers a particular dance move, especially when one is sitting at a table. The more Laura tried to squiggle away, the harder our friend, Sarah, laughed. Of course, Moke wasn’t trying to jump on her, so that probably helped.
While I clearly couldn’t avoid dealing with the stinky issue at hand, giving my puppy an immediate bath also wasn’t in the cards. I tried to wash his ear in the bathroom sink, but holding a squirming 30-pound mess of a puppy didn’t make that easy. I realized I would have to get the job halfway done in the kitchen sink, which would mean sterilizing everything in and around the area once we were done, in addition to giving Moke a proper bath as soon as my guests left.
Can you say decompress? I sure couldn’t. Not that day.
How does any of this relate to writing?
Sometimes, life happens despite our best-laid plans. You carve out time to write—or to chill out—and you just can’t. Period. So, you do what you have to do at that moment. You also make a point of taking advantage of those stretches of time when you can crank out those pages, get that research done, or just relax and restore if that’s what you need most. Life will, by definition, impede your writing. Your job is to ensure that you time block plenty of openings for writing and take advantage of as many of those as you can.
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