stop, breathe, be

stop, breathe, be.

this was a little mantra that i learned in the mindfulness workshop i did in the fall. i have since forgotten all about mindfulness and have become particularly absent-minded and reactful (except that is a word i may have made up.... ) partially due to the hormone shifts in my body from pregnancy, but also because i have recently felt...overwhelmed (the work, the school the new dog?)

after having class all weekend (17 hrs of it) i was sort of looking forward to not having to work on monday. except that m woke up with a complicated mood and spent most of the morning crying and complaining and my patience wore thin. things improved as we approached the afternoon so i thought i would take the dogs for a walk as m enjoyed a nice post-lunch banana smoothie in her stroller. it was a lovely idea.

when we got home i thought i would be especially thorough and brush both dogs before releasing them back into the house since i had done a half-assed (but better than nothing!) cleaning of the floors earlier that morning.

i brushed buster and put him inside the house no problem, m decided to go in with him. then i brushed jett, and even though i noticed as we were walking back from the park that i mistakenly only attached her leash to her harness and not her collar, i forgot this small detail as i took off her harness on our front porch. she realized before i did that she was no longer tethered to anything. she took a couple quick steps away from me before turning around to look at me. panicked, but acting cool, calm and collect, i bent down and called her name as sweetly as i could before she turned and ran right into the street with her clumsy, energetic puppy run.

as she went down the middle of our street a truck turned onto our block. because of the stop sign at the corner the driver wasn't going fast and had plenty of time to see her run right in front of him before hopping onto the sidewalk to turn the corner. as i started to try and calculate whether i was going to somehow go after her and how that might happen without completely abandoning my two year old alone in the house (not to mention my inability to run at the moment anyway...), a woman with a stroller and a dog appeared on the corner.

jett quickly turned back before fully disappearing around the corner to say hello - she can never resist socializing with another dog. i called out a request to please grab the dog, that she was friendly, and the woman with the stroller and the other dog calmly grabbed jett's collar as i hobbled down the street toward them. as i did the truck driver rolled down his window as he passed me to let me know that i "should be more careful". thank you mr truck driver, what a helpful comment in this moment of frustration, panic and embarrassment.

for some reason i had dropped the harness and leash before going after jett so when i got to her, the only way to get her back to our house was to hunch over and grab her collar as i wobbled my 9-month pregnant butt back down our block. did i mention the pain my body is in as i am approaching due date time? none of this was helpful to my already crooked and throbbing right side.

when i got back to my house m and buster were standing behind the storm door having witnessed the whole pathetic scene
-did you catch her, mom?
-yes....sort of.
the good news is that when i finally closed the door behind me, i remembered one of the things i had learned about myself during my mindfulness workshop in the fall.
one of the ways i relieve stress in my life is to just cry, and i hadn't had a good cry in a while.
but today i did.
and i genuinely felt better afterward.