Today is a thoughtful day for me. I have to be careful not to equate thoughtful with depressed, because I think in the past I tended to let the things I was thinking about get to me. I'm better these days at this; I can identify true depressing moments and just quiet, thoughtful moments as two separate things.

What am I saying? So far, this blog is boring as hell.

Anyway, it was a nice weekend. On Saturday, I walked the dogs in the morning when it was still cool out. Walking Indy and Hailie at the same time is just one extended upper body workout. They are both pullers, which I know I need to work on and make them walk a little calmer and with a loose leash, but on Saturday I just wanted to walk fast and not deal with pulling them back and keeping the leash short next to me. So there they were, like two sled dogs hitched up side to side, pulling the sled that is me down the street. The best way to handle them is to put both leashes in the same hand and brace my lower back and use my biceps to keep them at least somewhat in control. I had to switch hands every ten minutes or so.

I like walking alone sometimes. I love walking with Greg, or a friend, but there's something relaxing about being by myself on a walk with the dogs. About halfway through the walk, they both slowed down and began to walk in a civilized manner, and I know it's weird, but I felt like all three of us were in synch. It took awhile to get to that point, but once we were, the walk was just about breathing the fresh air, looking at stuff along the way.

We passed about four yard sales, all of which were thoroughly stocked with crap. I was thinking about the crap-- at one point, the people holding the yard sale made a choice to bring that crap into their home. They might have even really liked the crap in question. Maybe the crap was once a top-of-the-line object, the newest thing on the market. But now, it's outdated, old, beat-up and doesn't work as well as it once did. So there it is, in the driveway, with a piece of masking tape on it proclaiming someone could take it away for themselves for the low, low price of only $2.00. I don't think I felt sad about the crap. Crap has its day, and then crap must leave and make room for new crap. It's the circle of life. Only this is about crap.

There are also a lot of homeless people in our neighborhood. The dogs and I walked past one yard with tall, matted grass and neglected trees and a leaning fence; one night when Greg and I walked past this yard, I was totally startled to look down and see a man sleeping in that grass under the tree, only a foot or so away from the edge of the sidewalk. I jumped a little and gasped, because you don't expect to look down and see someone's body on the ground as you're walking on a dark, quiet night. I wonder if the people in that house know that sometimes, the homeless sleep on their grass at night. On Saturday, no one was there in the grass, but I wondered if that guy ever went back and slept in that spot more than just the night we saw him.

At the park, there was a game going on, probably Little League. The two teams were in black and in red, and two homeless people--a man and a woman-- were sitting at a picnic table watching the game across the way. They looked dirty, with their plastic grocery store bags on the ground and the table top around them, the half-full Gatorade bottle on the table in front of them, as they laughed and pointed at the game. The man yelled something along the lines of, "Go black! Yeah! Get 'em out, get those lousy reds out!" and it made me smile. Me and the dogs kept walking, past fathers in t-shirts practicing throws with their sons and little kids on the basketball court, making noises to attract Indy's attention when we walked by. I know it was Indy they were egging on, because Hailie looked the first time they made their noise and seemed to shrug and get back to her happy little walk, but Indy did the whole stopped-in-his-tracks, head-cocked and ears-up thing when he heard it. So the boys kept making the noise as we walked, and I just ignored it and smiled as I pulled Indy along. It sounds like those kids were jerks, but for some reason, it didn't bother me. They were kind of cute about it. Laughing, getting excited when Indy tilted his head in their direction.

Today, I am thinking about that walk and how I felt alive that day. You know what I mean? There are so many long, monotonous days of doing the same thing everyday...sitting at the same desk, eating the same thing for lunch, thinking about the same issues. For me my current issues are thinking about my health and weight (I want my body to feel good, so I am working to balance what I eat and get enough sleep and exercise to get there); thinking about the wedding; thinking about the marriage itself; thinking about why I care what other think of me so much, and how I can correct it; wondering how I will approach changes I see coming up as my life transitions into the next phase, and how some people I care about will react; handling my job in a more healthy way so it doesn't get to me when I am ignored or not given credit for things I write-- thinking the "it's just a paycheck" thought and actually beginning to believe it... the list goes on.

I don't do stuff like that walk alone much anymore. I had forgotten how cool it can feel to just let go of the junk that clatters around in my brain all the time and just look at the world around me again, and appreciate things like the enthusiasm of the dogs on their walk, the fact that people who are down on their luck can sit in a sunny park on a Saturday and have fun cheering on a kid's softball game, and that I am actually growing a little wiser everyday and learning to put everything in its place, as they say. So what if anyone says something negative about a thing I do or a choice I made. So what if I have extra fat on my arms. And most of all, so what if I haven't written anything fiction-y for a very long time. None of it defines the person I am and am becoming.

I read something this weekend--I don't remember where it was-- that said, in essence, stop worrying and start doing. The dogs don't worry about shit; they just do whatever and get happy over things like getting dinner or being taken outside on a long walk. And their happiness is unmistakable; it's not polite, restrained happiness. I think I want to try jumping up and down in excitement more, and laying down with a long, contented sigh at the end of the day.

So that's my plan.