lifeinflux

Of mice and bears… the story of adopting one Kodiak B-Bear

// October 7th, 2009 // 7 Comments » // Uncategorized

Even though I embrace and accept that I have a major case of OCD, I confess to occasionally losing my mind for a moment and indulging in crazy, outlandish and extremely spontaneous decisions.  They are never little decisions either, except where hair product purchases are involved.    They are usually huge decisions that should require careful thought; however, I make them on the fly and am lucky so far that they ultimately better my life in the long run even if they usually have huge, immediate and occasionally catastrophic impact on my life as usual at the time.  Wandering around Europe with no money, living in my car for three months after telling my dad’s side of the family to kiss off,  picking having a baby over my career and my company, marrying Jason, and divorcing Jason are all examples of this behavior.  So why would adopting Kodi aka Kodiak Bear on a whim be any different?   For months, I’d been searching the rescue shelter pages for a lab or lab mix.  Why so specific?  Well, first, I love labrador retrievers, particularly English labs with their big, square heads.   And second, I love their disposition and willingness to get dirty and wet and go frolic about with you with a devil-may-care attitude.  I know many dogs have similar dispositions but seriously, how many dogs would do this on a regular basis?

By the way, don’t try that at home, kids.

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Setting goals or boy, would I like to sleep in this Saturday morning…

// September 12th, 2009 // 18 Comments » // Life

Throughout my life I’ve set rather lofty goals for myself.  Usually, I achieve my goals at huge personal sacrifice to myself or to other things going on in my life.  Or I don’t achieve my goals because I am overwhelmed and burned out from trying to accomplish too much, all at once.   Recently, I read a great article by Paul Norwine.  To summarize, he says that rather than setting a series of goals, you should narrow your focus and concentrate on specific goals, one at a time.  This allows you to a) have a life while achieving your goal and b) ups your success factor by a significant percent.  Why?   Well, you won’t be distracted by other goals for one.  Second, you won’t overwhelm yourself or burn yourself out by doing too many new things too quickly.   And god forbid you multi-task because then you may reach your goals but you won’t have paid the attention needed to learn from the process or enjoy the end result.  And frankly, the end result may not be as good or powerful as it would have been with some single-minded determination and focus.

My first goal is teaching the pets about the sacredness of Saturday and  Sunday morning.   I figure it can be done.  It only took me eight of my daughter’s ten years on earth to teach her that waking Mommy before 9 AM on a weekend should only be indulged in when bleeding or because the house is on fire.   Otherwise, the rule of thumb on weekends is for Drue to go to the bathroom, get her own drink of water and then snuggle up in her room, reading, until hearing the inevitable thump and moan that alerts the world that I am up.   Drue has embraced this weekend rule with dignity and grace and even occasionally lets me sleep in until 10.   My pets, however, are a different story.
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