The canine of defeat

Saturday’s Polar Dash 10K was notable for two reasons: I snagged a PR and, for the first time, managed to get beaten by a dog.

As context, I’ve been beaten in a race by just about everyone: old people, children (LOTS of children), blind runners being led by guides, you name it. I once, in a moment of truly shameful competitiveness, launched into a near-sprint in order to beat an amputee up a hill during a half marathon. It was NOT my finest moment. (Although I did flash him a thumbs up as I ran by. So there’s that. But seriously, when you’re in the back of the pack, the chance to pass someone – ANYONE – is both thrilling and rare.)

However, Saturday marked my first defeat by an actual canine.

Lining up for the unusually warm race (I busted out cropped pants and a t-shirt for the 40-degree start), I spotted a woman in front of me with a tote bag slung around her shoulder. But this wasn’t just any tote bag: this bag carried a white, shaggy, Muppety -looking tiny dog, who appeared totally content to just hang there like he (or she) lined up in a race corral every weekend.

Inching closer, I heard the woman say she and her husband brought the dog, but didn’t expect to run the race with it. Somehow, though, here she was, in the 12:00 +/mile area, getting ready to start her 6.2-mile race with the dog and purse in tow.

I turned to a girl behind me.

“We HAVE to be able to run faster than the woman doing the race with the DOG,” I said.

We eyed the lady suspiciously. She was blonde. Maybe in her 40s. Maybe in her 50s. Lithe. This description definitely did NOT apply to either of us.

“I don’t know if I can,” said The Girl Behind Me.

“Yeah, um. I’m not sure if I can either,” I said, eyeing Dog Lady like I was on my third drink in a bar.

With that, the race started.

I moved to the side and tried to find my pace and entertain myself, leapfrogging a few other run-walkers. I’ve been working hard to improve my pace, so I tried to accelerate a bit with every passing mile. The race had a few weird moments: the 5K group seemed to miss the turnaround. We all seemed to miss the first water stop.

Mile 4 dragged. At Mile 5 I decided to try to pick up the pace even more, figuring the faster I’d run, the faster I’d be done. That’s when I spotted her: Dog Lady was walking ahead of me. And holy hell, I was going to catch her.

I ran faster and inched closer. Every time I got close enough to start to pass her, she’d begin to trot, dog carrier in hand. It went like this for almost a mile. Then finally – FINALLY – around the 6 mile marker, I did it. I PASSED THE WOMAN AND HER DOG.

“HAHAHAHAHA,” I thought victoriously to myself, as I approached the last turn before the finish line. “ I'M GOING TO BEAT THE WOMAN WITH THE DOG.”

We ran under an underpass and entered Grant Park at the base of a hill that’d lead us to the finish line. That’s when it happened. Woman With The Dog began to speed up the hill. I have a firm policy to always sprint the end of the race, but she was starting well before I was ready. Pumping my arms and legs I tried to catch her as an onlooker yelled: “Look! First place in the dog division!"

I won't lie: I contemplated a "bite me" retort.

Blonde Lady kept going, crossing the finish line about five seconds before I charged through.

I stopped my Garmin and tried to breathe. I looked up, hoping to find her and her furry companion to at least say "thank you" for pushing me. Thanks in part to the two of them, I’d cut about 2:20 off my best 10K time that'd I'd recorded in November.

But by then, she and the dog had disappeared into the crowd.

Maybe next year we'll have a rematch.

Ennui.

Watch. Laugh. Repeat.

 

I first time I watched poor Henri contemplate his existential angst, I laughed so hard I cried.

In which it is chilly.

Yeah yeah. I know. It's Chicago. And it's January. And I live on a condo with insulation from the 1920s. And blah blah blabby blabby blah.

Whatever.

It was freakin' frigid in my house this week and my poor little 25-year-old furnace was struggling to keep up. (Fact: One night this week, I crawled under the covers, which included a cotton flat sheet, a fleece blanket, an old thin down comforter, a regular comforter, a bedspread and, just for added heft, an unzipped sleeping bag.) (Fact: I later kicked off the sleeping bag.) (Fact: I briefly missed the ex-live in boy and his heated mattress pad. Briefly.)

Anyway, since I first wrote about the geniusness of my sleeping bag inspired splants, my sleeping bag has been getting a lot of use around my house. However, since it was so cold, the Mutt Dog decided she should commandeer it for her own exclusive snuggling pleasure.

Can you spy the Mutt Dog?


Ooooh. Excuse me. I've disturbed her royal highness. Pardon me, Macy.


How about some treats? And we'll call it even.

I get by with a little help from my friends

The Mutt Dog is kind of clingy. And by kind of clingy, I mean, is plastered to my side at all times. Occasionally this is cute. Sometimes it's awkward (should, you know, a boy come over.) When I'm trying to baste a quilt, it's royal pain in my ass.






Lucky for her she's entirely too cute.

Muttastic.

Because I know you all need some extra Macy Mutt in your life... Who doesn't?

Dreams become reality.

You'd think that given the Hallmarkish title of this blog post, I'd be writing about great achievements and hardwork and, like, puppies and sunshine and babies and eep!!

Ha.

If you do, then you do not, apparently, know me or my deeply honed sense of sarcasm very well.

Let's rewind, if you will, to Saturday night when one passed-out-from-exhaustion Noodles collapses in bed. And so begins my night of weird dreams. There was one about being on an airliner that crash landed onto an interstate, but then we kept taxi-ing along the highway along with traffic and no one would listen when I demanded to be LET OFF THE PLANE! RIGHT! NOW! There was something work related and equally as traumatic. And then there was the weird dream that the mutt was puking on my covers.

Oddly, the dog vomit wasn't the most vivid of the trio. But it was definitely one that I remember, right down to seeing her move over the side of the bed where The (Ex) Boy used to sleep (good girl, btw, Macy) and seeing her tail bounce as she heaved.

In the words of the young prince of Denmark, according to Mr. Shakespeare, "To die. To sleep. To sleep: perchance to dream."

I wake up the next morning thinking, hum, weird night. Then my something hits my nose. Weird smell.

You can probably see where this is going. Plane crash? Work drama? Both slumbery, subconscious visions. Macy vomit? Not so much.

Sigh, indeed.

Good dog/bad dog: A study in contasts.

The Macy Mae Mutt at rest.


The Macy Mae Mutt decidedly not at rest.

About a big red dog.

Sorry to be absent. Life's been, well, chaotic. But in honor of my 100th blog post and the upcoming holiday, I thought I'd share a story of Christmas past. I included it in my holiday swap in lieu of sharing a Christmas traditional tutorial.

*********

Our Christmas Story

**********

I come from a small family. And so, as traditions go, there aren’t too many to share. (I’m going out on a limb and assuming you don’t want to hear about our annual Christmas tree decorating bicker fest about what ornaments are too God awful ugly to go on the tree…)

So instead, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about some of my favorite Christmas memories and about how our far-flung family celebrates my favorite holiday today.

So to start out, you’ll have to go back to 1986. I was five and showing early signs of my pain-in-the-butt tendencies. My mother was staying at home at the time and we were shopping in our area’s one mall inside a now-defunct store named Hess Apparel. She was trying to browse for clothing and gifts and I kept stopping her every few minutes to pester her about something. Finally, in a fit of exasperation, she saw a big gift-wrapped box on a counter with slips of paper (a contest entry, which we later found out.)

“(Noodles)! Why don’t you go practice writing your name and telephone number?”

“Okay.”

And off I toddled in my mary janes.

No one knows for sure how many contest entries I filled out. But enough to stack the decks for sure. Because two days later we received a call. I’d won a … SEVEN-FOOT-LONG stuffed red dog. Retail value: $800. We just had to come pick it up. That night.

It’s hard to really imagine the size of a seven-foot-long stuffed red dog until you look at it eye to eye and figure out how you’re going to wedge it into the aging two-door Honda that my dad drove. It wound up getting tied to the roof, its big ears _ roughly as long as I was tall _ flapping the whole way home.

My parents wanted to donate it. I had a meltdown.

After all, I had won the thing. And I was determined to keep it. And play with it. And sleep with it, which because of logistics became sleeping ON it. I named it Clifford, because really, what else would you name a Big Red Dog?

It took up half the living room and dangled over all four edges of my bed. My parents hated it. But I was smitten and as an only child, was convinced that I’d found my new best friend.

In an act of parental genius, my mom and dad decreed that Clifford could only live outside of the attic during Christmas time. So there he spent 11 months out of the year until that great day when we’d open up the attic and I’d haul him out of the corner and give him a huge hug.

Of course, over the years, Clifford became less and less a part of Christmas until high school when he stayed up in his attic hideaway year round. Too unseemly, my parents said. Too uncool, I thought. But I’d still climb up the rickety stairs and spend some time with my old friend.

Fast forward to present day. I live hundreds of miles and time zone away from my parents. And they’ve tried _ and threatened _ to throw away Clifford. Apparently, though, being an only child has its privileges. I balked. And they backed off.

Today I live in a shoe-box sized condo, with no room for Clifford even if he did live here. I have a real life dog, an 18-pound mutt named Macy Mae whom I adore. And because of my work schedule, my parents have spent the holiday traveling to see me, instead of the other way around.

Christmas is different here _ no big living room, no brick hearth, no wall of frosted windows looking down the sloping wooded hills toward the lake. So we’ve recast traditions. We still cook an easy Christmas Eve dinner before church of fresh steamed lobster or make our favorite crab imperial, paired with a crisp bottle of Chardonnay and some veggies. It’s easy to make and reminds us of home.

We sing the same songs at a new church and light candles and come home while snuggling into bed (and the air mattress.) We wake up, brew coffee, have scones and open presents. At home, my mom would start running around to get ready for dinner. But here, I put my foot down. Jammies must be worn as long as possible. I bust out the champagne (because what good is Christmas without a mimosa?) and we watch movies and talk about memories.

Inevitability, the story of Clifford comes up. My parents threaten to donate him. And the dance continues.

Pig? Or Mutt? You decide.

Farm animals, redeemed.

So what if more than two decades ago, a fierce, man-eater of a baby goat tried to gnaw off my cute satin-ribboned pig tail and the scalp that came with it? I'm a forgiving kind of girl. Especially when there's the promise of booze at the end of the day. (Eds: Cheese and chocolate are also exceptional motivators. So are puppies. Please, make a note.)

All that explains why I busted out my bad-ass cowboy hat and hit the suburbs with friends and their 7-month-old for an afternoon of pumpkin patches and petting zoos. Oh, and did I mention beer?

Behold the photographic evidence of Noodles and the barnyard set.

P.S. This cow was too freakin' adorable. Check out his fab eyelashes.

Dogs are a girl's best friend

Gene Weingarten's story this week about loving an old dog is a must-read for any pet lover. But caution: If you read the whole thing, you WILL cry.

What dogs do not have is an abstract sense of fear, or a feeling of injustice or entitlement. They do not see themselves, as we do, as tragic heroes, battling ceaselessly against the merciless onslaught of time. Unlike us, old dogs lack the audacity to mythologize their lives. You've got to love them for that.