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Holy piriformis, Batman!

Seriously, my piriformis was angry today. Or maybe it’s the gluteus medius? I don’t really know. I’ve been too busy to try to look things up and figure it out.

Work has been insane since last Friday. We are rolling out a new program and there are all kinds of customer satisfaction things to think about, and then there was a programming glitch — well, not a programming glitch, really, so much as a human logic glitch. The programmers did their job just fine. The people who were trying to figure out the logic of some of our initiatives (including me) came up short on the “figure out every possible permutation” challenge.

So starting Friday morning, and continuing on until close of business Tuesday, I was locked in a room, thinking and re-thinking three strings of logic that couldn’t, in the end, be reconciled.

But it was fun, you know, getting the headaches.

While all my other work, already on absurdly tight deadlines, backed up.

***

I practiced valiantly each morning, though. When work is that crazy, morning practice is all about getting it done and moving on. Which is fine. In those instances, the practice is a surface upon which “real life” is anchored. During those times, practice and life aren’t integrated. Which isn’t — I suppose — optimal, but so be it.

I have a slip of paper here that I found in the yoga room this morning. On it, a note-to-self: Sometimes practice is all about the processing and transformation of despair.

Interestingly, we use the practice to *generate* despair, too. I mean, in the end, I imagine practice can be a despair processor for life-in-general. The funny thing, though, is that we generate all kinds of angst around the very practice itself, and then use that to refine the processor. Kinda funny.

***

When you are both alive and dead,
Thoroughly dead to yourself,
How superb
The smallest pleasure.

Bunan 1602-76

***

I just went out on the patio, realizing Tyler was being too quiet. Managed to sneak up on him: he was lying there with a little pile of dirt between his paws, which he’d taken from a planter and was happily eating. Nothing better than lying in the sun, eating some dirt. He looked up guiltily when he realized I was there. He is so freaking cute.

Now he’s here on the couch, trying to get hold of one of his favorite things: a hair tie. In this case, the hair tie I’m wearing.

***

Tyler is now on an elimination diet to try to pinpoint what, exactly, he is allergic to. The Cop brought him to his favorite vet in the world, which involves close to a two hour drive time (each way!). She is running blood tests, and in the meantime, an elimination diet.

And to top it off, Tyler is eating a vegetarian elimination diet. Brown rice, pinto beans, tofu, some green veggies, apples, carrots. That’s it.

The difference in his health is astonishing. His skin is no longer all pink and angry; he doesn’t scratch relentlessly; he sleeps better. He is so much happier.

Last night, I gave him some flax oil, and he had an allergy attack. I looked at the kibble we were feeding him. Yup. Flax. We’ll see what else the blood tests tell us when they come back.

The beauty part of this diet is that I am making huge pots of rice and beans. We keep all of the dog food on the middle shelf of the refrigerator. Maxine has always had a raw food diet: ground meat and bones, chopped veggies, raw eggs. Now there’s a tupperware of beans and one of rice and a container of tofu.

The Cop was kind of horrified the other morning as I made my lunch before work. “Are you eating the dog’s food?” he asked, as I pulled tubs off the middle shelf.

“Yeah! It’s great!” I replied. Very handy.

***

And now Tyler is fast asleep beside me, lying on his back with a length of climbing rope clenched in his teeth.