I find this time of year pretty hard. The world winds itself up for Christmas and the retail hell that that entails. Exercise that I’d promised to have started months ago has finally, belatedly, lurched into action. (What’s that? Eat less? Eject the person who said that this instant.) And projects that I’d hoped to have finished already recline in various corners of the cave, sighing heavily, and I try to attend to them when and where I can, very, very aware of the remaining days hours of 2008 flicking by with alarming speed.
But when I step outside the house, and The Dog’s on her bestest behaviour because we’re either a). going for a run or b). I’m about to play fetch with her, the warm perfume of jasmine envelopes me and I can’t help but inhale, and smile. For thirty minutes, I need only worry about a). moving one foot in front of the other or b). keeping The Dog from hoovering up chicken poo.
Afterwards, when I return to the house, I have more immediate concerns like chest- and leg-pains, or a canine who collapses in places where I’ll trip over her. I remember that if I don’t leave the cave, I won’t be caught up in the season’s rioting. I’ve assuaged my exercise guilt. And the projects lean forward, body language quietly screaming Pick me!, and things don’t look so bad after all.
