Askew Tornadoes

I often talk to myself when I’m taking the dog for our morning walk. There is rarely anyone out on our country road at that hour to hear my mumbling, so I take advantage of the opportunity to pre-game the discussions I’m going to have later that day.

Unlike me, the dog hasn’t had his coffee before those walks, so doesn’t want to be bothered with any conversation that doesn’t contain the phrase ‘do you want some cheese?’. Also unlike me, the walk is his morning coffee, so he becomes a mayhem tornado as soon as we get back to the gate. His resistance, torque and velocity are all inversely proportional to the amount of time I have to get to work¹ and the amount of prep and commuting I have to do before I get there. I don’t take him for walks while I’m in my work clothes, because my business casual summons all the chaseable critters to the road. I’ve already proven to myself that my wearing a suit during a walk is the same thing as giving the dog permission to take off running into the woods or the neighbors’ horse pasture.²

I also talk to myself when I’m taking a morning shower. To be fair, during the work week, it’s often not to myself myself, but to an imaginary representative of the rescue association we got the dog from. I present a brilliant-if-I-say-so-myself argument for returning him for rehoming, and the imaginary representative counters each argument with annoying persistence and competence.

And yes, gentlepeeps, this is why we still have the dog. I have to out argue the voices in my head.

Speaking of work, I’m just not gonna talk about it here. I won the debate I had with myself about it yesterday while cleaning the house. This was reflective cleaning, not rage cleaning. I didn’t hate at the universe until it realigned itself; I just accepted that it was askew³ and needed a little constructive nudging.

1. He is so mellow on weekends, especially now that the weather’s getting cooler. ↩︎
2. It’s really not the same thing, but clearly it’s not enough for him to just get white fur all over my dry clean only. ↩︎
3. Much like my brain, with the whole needing to keep learning thang. Deutsch ist noch nicht schwer, aber ich spreche es noch nicht gut. ↩︎