I can't believe we're already at the end of January. Life feels like it's been so fast and so slow. Probably because so much has happened. We're slowly getting back into a routine though, which is nice. At this point we're both just staying busy with work and sort of trying to have extracurricular activities in spite of it now being the dead of winter. The good news is we now have a gym to go to again and we're planning for puppy arrival in early March.
Work has been crazy. Trying to learn critical care and being needy while our census is way too damn high has been tough. The past couple weeks I feel like I've had that mental regression where I've learned a ton, then my brain just temporarily throws it out the window so I can look like an idiot. Really just makes you want to put your head through some drywall because it would be less painful than looking like a dumbass in front of your boss who has her own problem patients. Needless to say, I gotta do a lot of studying. I also need to do better on my eating habits during work because the brain fog is real, augmented by the fact that eating too late at night is messing up my sleep. So much to work on!
Speaking of having a lot to work on, we started going to a new gym last week led by one of our favorite people. Oof working out in a mask is unpleasant, but it's really good to be working out again. It's been 10 months since we've been in a gym and it'll be a long road back for sure.
It's still hard to wrap my head around the fact that we're really getting a new puppy. Somedays I still forget everything that happened with Mack. I see ads for these slings so you can help your older dog get in and out of the car and I briefly think "we're almost at that age" until I stop myself and remember he will never see that age. I don't think it's denial, I think I just forget sometimes. The events of last month either feel so long ago, or they don't feel like they happened at all. Somedays I can't remember what the house used to be like when he was still here and somedays I can still hear him sighing at me. It's been so all over the place.
I'm nervous to get a puppy. I got over the hump of thinking it was too soon, because I really miss having a lab in my life and the girls miss having a 2nd sibling. But now I'm stuck in this cycle of anxiety that I'm going to take this perfect puppy and mess them up somehow. Mack was easy as hell to train. He was a blank slate that just wanted to make the people around him happy. The fact that I got to miss the puppy teething phase was gravy. Now, not only will we have a blank slate, it will be a very young, impressionable, blank slate with a troublemaker for a sister and 2 parents that have never brought up a puppy before. It's nerve-wracking. This is why I can't have human children - having to wait around and plan for 8 weeks is bad enough, let alone 9 months. So we're spending the time reading puppy books and planning.
I was finally feeling inspired the other day to try some photography. With the snow on the ground, I wanted to find a park to do some landscape shots, but it was so gloomy and drab, I figured finding a good spot would be difficult. Instead we threw a sweater on Mara and frolicked in the backyard.
It always shocks me how incredibly infuriating she can be, yet she's so damn photogenic. This dog has challenged me in ways I never thought possible. Remember when I said Mack was a blank slate? She was not. She was very set in her ways from Day 1 and unfortunately it meant that the things you usually want to enjoy with a dog, you can't with her because she either doesn't enjoy it or she's so hyper it makes it hard to enjoy the experience. Knowing what I know now about puppy socialization, her whole situation screams that she was never properly socialized as a puppy, and mixed with a stubborn personality, we got what we got and it wouldn't change. Several training classes later, she stayed the same, stubborn, hyper Mara. Because of that, we've never really bonded. I just can't do the uncontrollable energy, the stubbornness and the fact that you have to be really selective about which situations you bring her in. Also she snores like a diesel engine. Up until now we've tolerated each other, but with her getting older and us now having a vacation place in the 1000 Islands plus now Mack being gone, we've been trying to get her out and about a little more. She still hates the cold and wet though, and it's winter in Rochester, so that takes a little convincing.
At least on this day we were able to convince her. It probably helped having Matt outside too, because she will never stop being a daddy's little princess. I've been practicing my action shots with her because it's so damn hard to get her to stay still. Luckily this time it worked out in my favor. I loved that the snow was falling while we did it too. For this one, I basically just put the camera in sport mode and let it do the rest so I could work on aiming the camera well enough to keep her in focus, which is what I've struggled with. We even got Lilo outside for all of 30 seconds. She hated it, but it made for a cute photo with her dad.
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