A Month of Ups And Downs

March has been quite a month for me.

Today is hard. Today marks exactly one month since my silly Bichon, Peanut, crossed the rainbow bridge. I know she isn’t hurting any more. I know she can see perfectly again and she can eat all of the nummy white bits of dog food that she hadn’t been able to eat is years and years. She’s free and playing like she hadn’t played since she was a young pup. I know she’s okay now. She knows she is loved… that she was always loved… that she was the bestest dog there ever was.

I’m hurting.

I miss her so much. I talk to her all the time. Her footfalls haunt the house.

The day she died was the 5k at Disney. The next day I ran the 10k because I could not let her have died alone and far away in vain. The next… 10 half marathon. I talked to her the whole race. I carried her puppy collar. It was an amazingly good and an amazingly hard race. But I did it.

And we came home. We came home to a very lost cat (his best friend was gone) and a very quiet house.

And we went to the SPCA and adopted… Goofy.

We went from a too fat Bichon who topped out at 22 pounds to a Mountain Cur Chocolate Lab mix (Goofy) who might go anywhere from 60 to 90 pounds by the time he is done growing. He’s almost 5 months old. He’s 46 pounds as of two minutes ago. BIG difference. And he has stopped wanting to use the cat as a squeaky toy.

But the house is less quiet.

Early March… elbow surgery. Now my weird bump is gone. I have a snazzy scar. I know it was only ganglion cyst. Life goes on.

It’s been 7 weeks today since my last infusion. I hurt. I’m emotionally flakey. I’m achey and exhausted and I’m very very ready for my infusion. By early next week (just in time for puppy pictures with the Easter Bunny) I will be able to start back to running. I am looking forward to starting to run with my new running buddy. He will need to learn to run with my intervals. I will need to change my intervals to help him learn.

I have started using Goofy as weight training. We put him in his crate at bed time every night. 46 pounds of lifting and carrying. When we do walkies, he pulls, usually pretty hard. I’m doing some funky weight training.

And today is a month to the day. I don’t know if I will ever be able to watch the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom ever again. I was sitting in the lion section in the front row when I got the call. But life goes on. And Peanut taught me so much in both life and in death. She has helped me and taught me and in my heart festooned with paw prints, she lays curled up and sleeping.

Today, I get my infusion. I can stop hurting and being exhausted and on the verge of tears every second. And life can not only go on, but get into a new rhythm of normal.

It’s all… what it is.

Love and Light
AprilJoy
3/22/2019