Fragile

It doesn't take much to upset a delicate balance.

Now, delicate is not a word that I'd use to describe our boy dog. Floppy. That word is much more appropriate. Generally, he's pretty dumb and happy, and we like having him around. And in truth, even though we got him as a puppy, he's never been particularly destructive.

Of course, he does love peanut butter. And if the spatula head happens to be stuck to the peanut butter, well, he'll go ahead and take that down as well.

This lead to the wonderful adventure of puppy stomach surgery. Oddly enough, he had a very similar surgery to the one that I had almost exactly a year ago. They fortunately did not have to do anything on the same scale as they did with me, but he's stitched up with staples and drooling in his pain med sleep as we speak.

It's shocking normal activities suddenly become terrifying. The way he stretches his body is a concern for the staples. Whether or not he can reach his scar determines the necessity of a cone. Every outside trip is watched and mentally documented. He can't tell us if something is wrong, so it's up to us to determine for ourselves. The responsibility is heavy, and the worry can take your focus away in a heartbeat. The puppy body is off, and there goes all the balance in the world, it seems.

Certainly an overstatement, but it shocks me how fragile these little ecosystems can be. Four days of late nights and celebrations last week completely derailed me from a lot of the grounding efforts that I developed in January. I was finally able to get up and go for a run at my proper (read: early) time yesterday, only to choose, rather definitively, to stay in bed today. Besides that, schedules over which I have no control keep morphing without warning, our office is undergoing a slow, steady thump of construction, and the little stressors keep mounting, more and more, each day.

Most of these irritations are minor. On a normal day (or to a normal person) they might completely bounce off, but pile them on and they're suddenly some multi-Transformer machine of misery. Today, my last straw came when I wasn't sure if I could get my run in after work (which I totally dropped this morning in favor of laziness), having allowed a lot of steam to build. I reminded myself of those Snickers commercials where someone is behaving horrendously to those around them. Luckily for me (and I suppose for the Snickers folks) the answer is not far away. I ran.

In my case, things can be put back together almost as quickly as they fall apart. All it takes is a few good choices. Had I made the right choice this morning, it would not have been a problem at all. The difference is that a quick fix does not necessarily mean an easy fix. It is not easy to leave the house before the sun comes up, but it does solve a whole lot of other problems in my day before I even have to face them. And it may not be perfect, but it certainly beats trying to piece my life back together with little bits of chewing gum.

Or surgical staples.