The dog park near me is closed for maintainence on Thursdays and a woman with boxers wanted me to meet her at a Gilbert dog park. I did but it was a far away, crappy park and I’m not sure either she or her dogs are good for me or my dog, so I’ve decided to make Thursdays my day off. By day off, I’m thinking ‘freeform.’ It’ll be a day that I can work on larger one-off projects, like site promotion; it’ll be a day that I can recoup from the gym and take a nap if I want, or an afternoon movie; spend more time on bongos or notebooks or The Dog Whisperer, helping my mom or chillin’ with neicphews, going to the rock gym, buying some much needed clothes, do some soup concocting, catching up on emails or ticking bugs off my list. I’d like it to be productive, usually, but stress-free. So the dog park and patrons brought about a Recovery Program Enhancement.

Good thing, too, because after only three days on-schedule, I was tired and that’s discouraging. I didn’t presume to be home-free, but I did feel like I was finally on a steady track forward. I’ve reminded myself that I used to do one thing in a day and get tired. I still generally feel tired mornings after the park and breakfast. Monday I packed in a relative million non-stop things. No wonder three days of that got me dragging. I’ve thought that I could just design a life for myself and then with sheer willpower hop to it. That’s what I believe and that’s what I expected of myself. But there’s physiology involved. The body doesn’t work like that, and furthermore, the mind doesn’t either. I still wonder if getting this far hasn’t taken longer than it should have. If I’ve been a touch lazy, and maybe I have, but only in the context of the fairly high level of demand I place upon myself.

A Thursday disruption made sense last week also because Mom wanted to paint the downstairs family room. She would have done it herself, like she did her bedroom, if I’d've let her, but it makes her ache with soreness afterwards, and no matter how important my little daily diddling is to me, I couldn’t sit in the next room and let that happen. Thank goodness, too, because she missed the bottom rung of the ladder coming down after cutting in along the ceiling of one wall and fell down on the back of the couch. I caught her arm to keep her from hitting the ground, but by then she’d already broken two ribs. Poor thing. She’d been in agony since. I’ve broken one rib once or twice and it looks like two is more than twice as bad because if she finds a position to get one comfortable, the other isn’t. And it only took her a couple days to get thoroughly bored with sitting around in front of the TV.

Anyway, as a result, I finished the painting Friday and Saturday morning. That further disrupted my schedule last week, but my mother is far more important than my schedule. And I did get in abbreviated versions of most my chores.

Saturday it rained for the first time in about 140 days. I went to Ikea with my brother and his kid. He invited me along because we don’t get much chance to talk or spend time. His boy was cute, stopping at a piece of furniture every five and a half feet to say, “Hey guys, look at this!” The place was crowded and I felt more accutely than ever my being a part of something mainstream, family American.
Sunday my brother was blessing his new baby at his church and invited me to that, too. It had snowed over night and driving to the dog park in the early light toward the very covered Four Peaks was stunningly beautiful and astonishing after so many 80+ degree days here. I still had my shorts on, though, and after a tentative sniff and toe-dip, Buddy went running right through the newly formed lake at the park. Before I went to church, I cut the mohawk off. I couldn’t wear one of my trucker caps inside and I didn’t think my family would like sitting next to a guy with a floppy mohawk. It’d run its course, anyway.

Along in among these last few days, my mom and I watched Simon Birch, the movie based on A Prayer For Owen Meany. Simon/Owen doesn’t know why he likes to do certain things, but believes God has a plan for him and he seems right when all those quirks come together to serve a purpose. I don’t know that I believe in that kind of stuff, but I’m open to the possibility, and I have wondered if maybe my drug addiction, which has seemed in many ways so beyond me, has been a precursor for something more real and valuable. A similar thought crossed my mother’s mind after I caught her fall. I didn’t catch her in time to keep her from breaking a couple ribs but she fears what could have happened had she gone all the way down. In a more quotidian way, I’ve seen that she was lonely and besides some companionship and love, I might have had a good influence in other ways, too. Maybe my going to the gym helped her decision to sign up at Curves. Maybe cooking for me has got her eating better herself. Things like that.

Also during these last few days I’ve been away from my post here, the never-ending dreams continued to not end. Another mutation on the basic coke theme and another version of the shame theme starring my ex-boss and friend. This one included other friends. I had my shirt off. I was a bumbler.