NaBloPoMo Day 1: Surly Monday and Walking it Off
As previously stated here, I have no good excuse for being shocked at how unremittingly hideous my mood is today. Facebook memories for previous November firsts include phrases like "mired in suckitude" and "November has hit like a migrainey wrecking ball". To be fair, there was also a memory of Eve and I watching tv with Matt and mocking him mercilessly over not being able to figure out what the expression "someone donged it" meant, even from context, and my friend Liz declaring that Matt should be given an award for not defenestrating his disrespectful wife and daughter, so it hasn't ALL been bleak.
I told Matt I wasn't going to stay up too late last night, and then I stayed up too late last night. Finally went to bed and had the worst episode of restless legs in months, for hours. Woke up SO angry. Decided to go for a stupid walk for my stupid mental health.
The trail was so beautiful it felt like a knife-edged line between benediction and ridicule (only because I'm an asshole). I got a little bit lost and did the trail a couple of times to have more river-adjacent time. I sat on a rock and stared at the water. I tried unsuccessfully to be Zen.
As I got back to the trail head and got in my van, a man with a gorgeous yellow lab carrying a log were coming off the trail too. The dog was off leash, and they both stopped. The dog dropped the log, the man slipped it's collar and leash on and then THE DOG PICKED UP THE LOG AGAIN for them to walk home. I tried to express to the man how utterly charming and life-changing this little scene was to me. I felt like the Italian man Lucy and I came across once on a walk. He was gardening, so he was right down at her level. He just kept petting her and exclaiming "I love! I love!"
Nice that this smol shithead can do the same thing for others that that much-better-trained dog did for me.
Then I came home and also came across these memories, which would surely lift the surliest spirits:
Comments
I hope the zen takes at some point. When I'm struggling, I find getting outside every day makes me feel, if not exactly good, better.