Good Morning

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek so much to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

--Prayer of St. Francis, although not evidently written by St. Francis

Safety!

In the interest of normalizing safety, I took a selfie in my new skiing helmet and posted it on Facebook:


I figure skiing with a helmet may well be like wearing a face mask during a pandemic. If enough people do it, it will seem normal. I got a lot of "likes" and encouraging comments. I'm not the picked-on little kid I was growing up. People actually kinda like me, so I have some social capital. :) I hope it is enough to make me someone to emulate!

Look how sweet these girls are though!

This photo was taken before our skijor! They don't jump up and down the way sled dogs do in teams. They are my little guardian angels on earth. :)

I also got kneepads, but much less admiration for those. But hey it hurts to fall down on ice!


They are really disciplined pullers!


And here is the last of our cheese from our Montana trip in January:


We will have to visit again when this coronavirus mess is over. They got a new puppy we will have to meet!

Look how cute she is! She is a German Shepherd, and her name is Echo:


She's got little bitty toe beans!

Rooflections

These are things that I know to be true:

1) Starbuck-A-Roo loved us, very much, and will never stop.

2) We loved Roo, very much, and will never stop.

3) We were very blessed to have spent six years together. And I will be forever grateful that although her end was premature, sudden, and shocking, it was instantaneous and without pain, and she was probably in the happiest husky State of Being: Running at top speed with a giant smile on her face.

4) I have no regrets. I understand that any time someone is hit by a car, there is some degree of culpability. There is a borough-wide Leash law, and although off-leash dogs are all over the neighborhood trails and parks, in theory dogs should be Within Your Sight and Under Voice Command At All Times. But dang huskies! Even Roo-liable Roo was only 90% reliable. Honestly, when Autumn and Linden used to run off, it was not cars that I had worried about. My highest fear was that they'd get into someone's livestock and get shot. And they were way less reliable than Roo. It is really unexpected that while they lived to dotage, Roo was the one to get hit. But these are the odds that we play, and those are the chances that we take every time we let them run free. I told her musher when I called her to tell her the news, that while I had no regrets, I was still deeply sorry that this was the outcome. She said not to be sorry, that "huskies need to run free". She said we had done a wonderful job loving her and taking care of her and finding opportunities for her to be who she is, the Roo who was so extraordinarily loving that she had to have a heart on her chest.

5) BUT I am going to be more careful from now on. I'm going to skijor with Cricket for a while rather than letting her run free, until I learn what she is like as a single dog. Their personalities really change with companions, and with lack thereof.

6) But we do need to get Cricket a new Friend at some point. Dogs are social animals, and I think it is not healthy or kind to leave them home alone all day when the humans are gone. She has been coming to work with me a few days each week. Already, I see a different Cricket. She is more extroverted and less shy, although in a serious and unpuppylike way. She has always been such a serious girl! We do have some thinking to do on what kind of dog we need to look for. With Serious Autumn and Goober Linden, it was easy to blend in any dog, since we already spanned the range, so of course the addition of the sweet, amiable Roo was a piece of cake. When Roo was alone, it was easy to let her be alpha and blend in the shy, but affable, Cricket. I think we could benefit from another sort of gooberdy dog to balance the Serious Cricket, but gooberdy dogs seem to annoy her... Well we have some thinking to do.

7) I am going to have Cricket evaluated to be a therapy dog. She is such an attention whore in my office, it seems she'd be a good fit.

8) There are so many clichés about love and death and heartbreak that we have repeated so often they have lost their emotional punch, but they still have meaning. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. We are stronger for our losses. It only hurts this much because we loved that much. I feel the depth and truth of these things, and I believe in them, I truly do.

Arvay's Life Lessons

Last October, I turned 40. I wanted to write a commemorative blog post involving Deep Thoughts, but I couldn't come up with any. What I have been doing is trying to become a Better Person, by being more self-aware, more deliberate, more forgiving, and better with setting boundaries.

Believe it or not, I started with aphorisms. Here is one that has served me well:

Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind.

It helps when it seems that someone is being mean or rude for no reason; well, you have no idea what their reasons are. The classic scenario that people use as a talking point is "suppose they are on their way to visit a family member undergoing chemotherapy", but I interpret it even more broadly. Suppose they are people who have always had ugly lives, or have always had ugly personalities for no reason. Aren't they being punished enough?

Here is another one. This is huge, and believe it or not, I learned it from an advice column:

Avoiding conflict is not the highest goal of a conversation or a relationship. Sometimes a fight needs to be had.

How I wish I had utilized this earlier in several of my bad relationships! Years of your life can be wasted with someone who is not worth your time, because you avoided discussing an important issue because you wanted to avoid an argument. A good relationship can withstand a sincere, fair, and well-intentioned argument. If the argument you are avoiding is one that will involve pointless cruelty, it's time to go. Which brings me to...

You have the right to ask for anything you want out of a relationship. But people also have the right to say no.

And when someone says no, believe them. Don't hope they'll change, or pester. Then act accordingly. Decide whether you are willing to compromise. If you decide you can live with it, live with it without resentment. If you decide you cannot, then walk away.

Everyone loves a "sense of humor". They put it in dating profiles. But being funny isn't a *value*.

It's not worth sacrificing an actual value for humor. It's not worth hurting someone's feelings to be funny. A stunned look on a friend's face at a joke made at her expense was enough to seal this deal for me.

Related:
Sarcasm is a copout. Humor is often used to dodge sincerity.

Sincerity involves sticking your neck out there, and requires courage, even if the biggest risk is being mocked.

An example is my post on Sam's Club closing! I was going to close it by saying, "And this is my essay on why Big Corporations are Evil. I hope I get an A", or a photo of me squeezing the dogs. But I decided to leave it. Because it's my sincere thoughts, and I won't distance myself from their seriousness with humor. Because I want you, readers, to take that post seriously.

I'm going to keep you posted on my Personal Development. It might involve reading Proust!

Sarcasm is a cop-out. Sincerity takes courage

After the upsetting incident of finding my grad student in hazardous working conditions, I have started thinking about safety training in general. I've noticed that quite a few people are not only cavalier about safety; they are actually cynical and sarcastic about it. When folks are told to go to this or that safety training, they roll their eyes. Managers even sigh and say, "Hey guys, I know it's annoying and a waste of time, but we gotta follow the rules if we want our department not to get in trouble, okay?" Or even "Look, it's just a stupid online class; click through the slides, check the box and the end, and that's all it takes." I have to admit that I have been guilty of this attitude when it comes to other Human Resources trainings. Not in anything safety-related, but in HR-matters that I found mundane. No more! I am firmly pro-training and will never, ever, ever roll my eyes at it again!

I have actually learned things at safety trainings! Also... new information about human physiology is being learned all the time! Chemicals that were regarded as safe for handling in the 1970's are not so today. Certain positions to sit and stand that were considered acceptable in the 80's are now known to cause long-term joint damage and injury. The maximum safe exposure levels to chemicals are being lowered all the time. The level of noise exposure that is known to cause hearing damage is much lower today than it was even a decade ago. Here are some specific things I have learned:

* The maximum weight one should carry without assistance (20 lbs)
* How to handle a mysterious liquid found spilled on the floor (assume the worst and call the Haz Mat team)
* The proper position to sit long-term (shoulders, arms, and elbows neutral, head neutral)
etc

I'm 40 now! I'm doing more thinking about the person that I Am and the person that I want to Be. That person that I want to be is not sarcastic, or cynical. She doesn't roll her eyes at HR trainings! The next time we have one coming up, I'm not going to roll my eyes and tell my coworkers how to cheat on the test at the end. I'm going to say it was a good use of time.

How about you, dear readers? The next time you remind someone to put on safety glasses or earplugs how about saying, "Put these on! They may save you from becoming blind!" instead of sighing and saying "I know this is silly, but you have to follow the rules."

Cynicism is a cop-out. Sincerity takes courage. Even if it's just the courage to appear uncool. Let us try together!