'Shed happens'

Check out my friend Amanda's Cafe Press site for wry and gorgeous items with her designs (like this)

Any one who pals around with a dog is probably going through the same thing right now. If we collected all the dog hair and undercoat tumbleweeds or results of using our furminators, I dare say we could present Rudee with an inventive new fiber to spin.

I started a new assignment this week (which I LOVE) and in the giddiness of utter joy to be in the company of an incredibly talented team with supercool work to do, I happened to mention during our first staff meeting together that they needn't worry if they see dog hair on my clothes. It's simply the natural process of my devolution into a canid. And I promised to have good boundaries around talking about dogs. (Wish me luck?)

But more than dog hair is shedding at the 44th Street Accidental Microkennel. This morning I woke up and my jammies were so loose I had to hitch them up so I wouldn't trip on my way to the water closet. I'm mystified as to why. Having written countless wellness articles and edited many many manuscripts by physicians, I, of course considered the possibility that I may have one of the symptoms of the dreaded disease that begins with "D" and requires people who have it to poke their fingers each day and check their blood.

At the end of my risk assessment quiz, I got the following result: "You can't do anything about age, but you can eat right and lead an active life." Check, check, and check. So, at least for now, I've crossed one worry off my list. Still, my normal obsessive rigorous workout routine has been interrupted by having shoulder surgery, so I can't attribute the shrinkage to any intentional effort to burn more calories (unless sleeping A LOT and letting my body heal uses more calories than I thought). But the mystery remains.

So here are the possibilities:


I'm not eating like a honey badger*
as I did during the month of March.
That's when I was turbowriting the final report for a research project. Snacking like that is a bad habit that started during my cub newspaper reporting days. Can't seem to work well under pressure without something to nosh on--constantly. I thought was eating healthy things -- nuts, dried unsweetened mango strips, fruit, whole-grain crackers, hummus -- but maybe it's just possible I consumed an insane amount of far more calories that I should have. And now that life has returned to normal, my metabolism has caught up with me.

Spring cleaning works on bodies, too.
We're launching into an intense clearoutthebasementintwoweeksorelse project, because EarthDoctorSon and Sarah Jane are, drum roll please, moving in with us!!! Their goal: save money for things like buying land and paying off school loans. We're planning to convert our nasty basement into a hip, eco-friendly 20-something pad. Sarah Jane is a design phenom so I just know her creativity will inspire all of us. And EarthDoctorSon will ensure that we purchase only locally grown food, have happy bees, harvest fruit from the mushroom garden he built here 2 summers ago, and decorate our little urban patch of garden with a cool-looking hippie guy who seems to know every soccer player in the Twin Cities. But I digress. The point is that when you get into the groove of shedding stuff, maybe you're body joins in the party and sheds pounds. Who knows! Stranger things have happened--like people devolving into dogs.


Whilst being in a state of joy,
one's body eliminates what it doesn't need.
I know that sounds pretty woo-woo, but think about it. Have your ever run into someone you hadn't seen in a long time and they looked way thinner than you imagined possible amazing and you asked how they're doing and they tell you they're following their bliss and life is good? I have. Several times. Now, maybe when one is joyful, one is more inclined to tiptoe though the tulips and gaze at their food rather than wolfing it down and those two activities work in cahoots to shed calories. But I can't help thinking there's something more, hmmm, let's say "mystical" at play. Though I'm not wild that it's going to take 3 months to get the use of my right arm back, my shoulder surgeon said my left wing is probably just fine. YESSS! Maybe I'm done with repairing warn-out parts for a while. At least it feels like that, and the prospect of not being in chronic pain because I choose to be active is intoxicating. Couple that with our grand intergenerational living experiment and my awesome new work assignment, and we've got one very joyful me.

Off now to don my hazmat suit, goggles, N-95 respirator, and latex gloves to decontaminate the basement (You. think I'm kidding, don't you?)

. . .

*Do you know about Randall and the honey badger?


FAIR WARNING:
If you are offended by swear words, PLEASE don't view this video -- it's full of them. Also, if nature documentaries that feature predators eating their prey make you faint, PLEASE don't view this video. But if bad language, sarcasm, dark humor don't bother you, you may laugh your --s off.