Harsh Our Mellow

These days, you’ll find me squished somewhere between my goal for things to get back to normal work-wise and to give Lilly more than just what’s left of my time and energy. That means balancing three veterinary trade magazine deadlines this week and life. To that end, I used my “lunch” time yesterday to take a long walk with Lilly up the road and back.

As usual, we walked until we could see the Continental Divide. You’ll notice in the lower right corner a dog house that sits on the road. It’s covered in stuffed animals. I suppose it’s meant as some kind of landmark — like “turn at the dog house.” But, it always makes us giggle.

Along the way we also spotted a discarded toy (dog’s or child’s, we do not know), but Lilly was VERY interested in it, so I let her sniff away.

We also spotted some neat clouds that made us happy, except after I shot this, I was looking down to zip the camera into my coat pocket and tripped over Lilly, giving her a little scare. (As you can see, weather in the 40s-50s has melted most of the snow from last week.)

{I’m sad to tell you that the photos for this post got lost in a massive blog glitch.}

After an hour in the sun, despite a bit of wind, we were feeling pretty good. Even though Lilly’s ears are back a bit, this is a happy girl.

We tucked this quiet time into our hearts and made our way home, where a lesson of some sort or just crappy-ass timing collided with our newly minted mellow. Suffice it to say news via voicemail upon our return harshed whatever calm we’d mustered — yet another family medical emergency. I’m too tired to even talk about it.

I’m finding it really hard bank the self-care benefits I can muster when they are instantly used up.