Have you noticed how time flashes by these days? When I was a teenager, spending a night at home alone felt like an eternity. The minutes crawled by. A half-hour TV show felt like a commitment. Writing in my diary took 10 luxurious minutes that I always seemed to have. Doing the washing up? Felt like it took an age. My study plan listed five-minute breaks. I easily had 45 minutes to talk on the phone.
A night at home now goes by in a blink. I spend more time thinking about all the things I will get done tomorrow instead of getting anything done now. If you want to talk on the phone, I probably can’t. Then it’s either a book or a show, I can’t possibly do both. Cooking? Then no book or show, by the time I’m done I’ll be ready for bed.
I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but sometimes I wonder if this speeding up of time is evolution’s way of making it easier to age. When we finally get frail and our health span falls short of our life span, the time will be zipping by so swiftly we won’t really care. Most of us seem to get longsighted, too, just as our wrinkles start to deepen; nature can be kind as well as brutal.
I had a minor motorbike accident a couple of weeks ago, dropping the bike and squashing my foot. I went for an x-ray after two days of hobbling around to be sure there was no fracture. There wasn’t. I still can’t put pressure on my big toe, but the dogs must be walked (@couchfish is on his way to the UK by train) so I’ve been hobbling around the block and down to the beach with them. The funny thing is that this foot was already sore; a swollen ankle and inability to point my toes (so an inability to sit on heels) that has gone on for more than a year with no real cause. I think it’s just hormones, as the other foot had the same thing, but got better early last year with a few straight days of 90-minute Bikram classes. I had 14 days of 90s in Portugal this April (I re-did a hot yoga training) and while it got a bit better, it was still bothering me. Then today, approaching a rubbish bin outside Potato Head, my other foot stepped on a wooden pole concealed just underneath sand that has been eroding away thanks to the footpath construction along Batu Belig beach. It broke the skin and I swore, it hurt so much. Is the universe telling me to put my feet up?
I lost a corporate contract that I had for 25+ years on the first day of the Portugal training. I’d never communicated with the person who emailed me, who thought I’d started with them during Covid, and didn’t realise we had a contract. I completed the 30 days the contract provided for, and then precisely, oddly, 30 days after that, I received a new version of the email they had said was not being sent anymore. They mustn’t have realised I was subscribed. It was so terrible I was embarassed to have been associated with it. I told them so, and somewhat like a petulant child sent them what I would have done, asking whether they wanted to reconsider. This time (after they promptly unsubscribed me), someone I did know called and said that (i) they had handled things badly and (ii) the new version “will get better over time,” presumably code for “it’s AI-generated.” I think 25+ years is probably 20+ years longer than anyone has a contract these days, so I had a fair innings.
Feet up, then.
And though the dogs need walking, Aldo doesn’t need anywhere near as much time aside from that as he has for the past 2 years. Raising a dog like him was 80% of the work of raising a toddler during daylight hours (at least dogs, or at least Aldo, is easier at night with rarely a bark). I would never get another dog aged under two. I happened upon a Thread of a stack of people proudly saying they had got their rescue dogs aged around two or so, after they had been re-homed multiple times, none of them twigging that the reason they were able to handle them was because they had aged into relative calm. A trainer told me that all dogs are assholes aged 10 months to two years and it was the most validating thing I had ever heard. He’s still not there yet, but he’s so much better. The two things that got us here: using a figure 8 lead (perfect for neutralising strong dogs) and vinegar spray (perfect for repelling packs of Bali dogs descending on you unexpectedly on walks).
Raising and training a dog is also set against ideological battlegrounds similar to parenting. Balanced versus force-free. Let them sleep on the bed, don’t let them sleep on the bed! Avoid triggers, approach triggers! Crate train, don’t crate train! Use an e-collar, don’t use an e-collar! Use Bravecto, don’t use Bravecto! Raw versus cooked. Don’t feed chicken! Don’t feed pork! Give organ meat, but not too much! Add oats, don’t add oats! Give ancient grains, don’t give any grains! Give bones, but no, not machine cut bones! I even have Opinions about many of these important issues now.
But you’ll have to hear those another time. I’ve put my feet up AND it’s bed-time.
If you have read this far—thanks for not getting too bored. That em dash is not an indication of this being AI-written, FYI. Decent writers have always used em dashes. This is a super soft launch-restart of what used to be a regular thing. I didn’t even bother with photos in order to hit send rather than procrastinate for another hour finding them. I hope to experiment a little bit in the weeks ahead. More on yoga? More on dogs? More on my feet? Who knows!