This was one of the tougher weekends I’ve had. On Thursday, I got a call about a potential forever family for Sesame… which was both sad and happy. Obviously sad because I would miss having her around, but, it would be wonderful for her to have a permanent home. And, truthfully, there were some things about living with Sesame that were a hassle (constant fur all over the house, never being able to do something on my own without a huge production). This was definitely bittersweet!
While I usually try to wrap up work on Fridays by 5:30 or 6, this Friday, I worked a bit later than that, so I just heated up some leftover chicken tikka masala for dinner and paired that with some curry cauliflower rice. It was a quiet night, with just some reading and relaxing before bed. That has pretty much become my norm on non-Friday weeknights – work till dinnertime, make dinner, then curl up on the couch with a book until bed. Not too exciting!
The next morning, Sesame and I tried heading to the trails for the first time in a few days, since it had been pretty snowy most of the week, and then (I assumed) muddy on the trails. Unfortunately, they were still pretty wet, so we ditched that plan and went back to the sidewalks. While my original plan was a 4 mile hike, we turned it into a 3 mile jog once we hit the sidewalks. And waiting for me at home was Budget Bytes’ Peanut Butter Brownie Baked Oatmeal! I am seriously so obsessed with the Budget Bytes baked oatmeal recipes… they only take about 5 minutes to put together, and then they bake about 45-50 minutes (I’ve found that going over isn’t bad at all), which is the perfect amount of time for me to get a workout in.
For Saturday’s workout, I did a Peloton HIIT and Hills class with Kendall; it was good class that helped me work up a solid sweat! I really haven’t been spinning that much lately, so it felt good to get a 45 minute class in. I finished my workout up with a 30 min Women’s History Month Bodyweight Strength class with Rebecca Kennedy. This was my friend Heather’s 100th strength class, and I was excited to take it live with her (and a few of our other friends too). This workout involved 100 pushups (sets of 10 spread throughout ten minutes), single leg deadlifts, lunges, lots of planks, and some burpees at the end. The music was on point, Rebecca was awesome as always, and I was especially excited that when I tagged Rebecca in an Instagram Story post to congratulate Heather on 100, Rebecca reposted it and added her own congrats! Heather has been crushing the bodyweight classes at home, and it was so much fun to celebrate “with” her.
After I cleaned up a bit, it was time for a bittersweet activity… a second walk with Sesame, over to the school parking lot where we would be meeting her potential adoptive family. On the one hand, I wanted them to love her and give her a good permanent home. On the other, I wanted to keep her longer! It was our first time walking in the middle of the day (vs early morning), which definitely threw off Sessy’s routine and piqued her curiosity when I took her out. She ended up being pretty difficult on the walk since there were so many people and other dogs to see. But in spite of Sesame’s anxiety, the family loved her, and we made arrangements for them to pick her up the next day :/
I spent the rest of the night pretty mopey. I was really sad that it was my last night with Sesame! As a special treat, I let her come up on the couch with me (usually that’s off limits) and cuddle while I read. I figured since it was her last night with me, I didn’t have to worry that she’d be confused when I banned her from the couch in the future! Haha. And it was lovely to snuggle up with her for a while.
While curled up on the couch, I was reading the news, and saw this Harvard Med study saying we might need to continue social distancing until 2022. Partially because I was already in a sad mood, and partially because that is really distressing news… I freaked out. It’s hard enough to be cooped up at home (though I know I am definitely fortunate to have a large and beautiful home to stay in), but being solo except for Sesame and not being able to have any human contact for five weeks has been pretty tough. I have honestly been really proud of how I’ve been handling this total isolation… but if it continues for two years??? Man, all bets are off whether I can continue to not see anyone I know for all that time. Combine that with the fact that I was about to lose my furry companion, too, and Saturday night felt pretty hopeless.
But, I also knew that I seem to have one sad night a week, and that things would likely look better in the morning. I dried my tears, said goodnight to Sesame and put her to bed, and went to bed myself. And the next morning… I was right! In spite of the fact that I only had a few more hours with Sessy, I woke up in a good mood, and that mood surprised me by continuing throughout the day.
I intentionally took Sesame for an extra-long run: both to tire her out so she’d be calmer for her transition to her new home, and also because I wanted to get as much time as possible running with her 🙂 She was good as gold on our run! We ended up running a full 7 miles, her longest run yet, and she was able to keep a loose leash most of the time. Such a massive improvement in the month I’ve had her… I still remember that one painful walk where it took us over an hour to go a mile, because I had to keep stopping while she freaked out about other people / dogs. She definitely was still interested in the people / dogs we saw on the route, but I was able to mostly keep her moving forward and focused on running. I wished this weren’t our last run together, and spent a good chunk of the run trying to figure out if there was any way it would make sense to keep her. (Sadly, no.)
We got home, I opened the blinds on the kitchen slider door, and Sesame settled in for her favorite activity – a post-run nap in the sun. I decided to treat her and lay down on the floor with her, and she was so happy for that! We had fun rolling around on the floor together for a bit 🙂
I got a few more cuddles in, and almost before I knew it, Sessy’s new family arrived. They were ten minutes early, but perhaps that was better, so I didn’t agonize over my last moments with Sesame? I had already put a box of her stuff out on the front steps for the family to stow, and had also written up a massive three page single-spaced Google Doc with everything I could think about Sesame’s routine and quirks. So all that was left was to clip Sesame’s leash on, step outside, and hand it over. So sad!
But as soon as Sesame left, I clicked into gear. I knew that Sunday would probably be a tough day, so I had intentionally lined up a bunch of Zoom calls with friends and chores to get done around the house. First, I had plans with my friends Heather and Kirk to attend their church services online (at Vail Church) and then have coffee afterward to discuss. I needed to get watching to be done in time!
I headed down to the treadmill and queued up my iPad for the service. I’ve been enjoying walking on the treadmill while watching church, and alternating between powering up a 10% incline and then trading down to a 4% incline but picking up hand weights for some arm action. I didn’t agree with the message at this particular service, but I really liked the pastor, and it was a lot of fun to get to debate and discuss with Heather and Kirk after! I’m hoping this can become a new Sunday tradition for me.
After church, I took care of a bunch of chores around the house (including a lot of laundry and vacuuming to try to get Sesame’s hair off everything… it’s anyone’s guess which will last longer, my lovely memories of her or her fur everywhere!), made a quick salad for lunch, and then went for my first walk sans Sesame… for my first visit with a friend since I went into quarantine!
My friend Chris invited me to come sit a safe distance away in her driveway and catch up, since she knew I’d be sad without Sesame. It was so sweet of her, and also so wonderful to finally see a friend in person for the first time! I am still not sure if I’m entirely comfortable with making a habit out of seeing people in person (even at a distance), but on Sunday, it was really lovely. And after my bad night Saturday worrying about having to social distance for two years, this was reassuring… if I can see friends from a distance, this might be doable.
Once I got home, my plan for the night was to try out the Vemos Chrome extension to watch a movie together with my mom – Home Again, with Reese Witherspoon. Vemos lets you sync a video across multiple devices (so if one person presses pause, it pauses for everyone) and also see each other on camera while you watch. But problem number one came when I went to boot up my personal laptop (my work laptop doesn’t allow installation of Chrome extensions)… and it wouldn’t start! However, I was quite proud of myself that I was able to learn via Google how to take the whole laptop apart and disconnect / reconnect the battery… and that got it working! I love when I can feel like I’m handy 🙂
Unfortunately, my mom didn’t have the same technology luck, and she couldn’t get the extension to work 🙁 We finally gave up and just pressed play at the same time, then texted each other throughout the movie. Not quite the same, but it worked! While I watched, I breaded and fried some cod for dinner – something my mom and I used to do together a lot when I was growing up. Even though we didn’t have video, it was still nice to do that “together”!
I ended Sunday reasonably happy. While it was definitely different not having Sesame around, I tried to focus on the positive aspects – more time to myself, a cleaner house, and potentially some new routines. I may need to update my quarantine goals post! But for the upcoming week, my plan is to keep going for a walk / run first thing every day (like I had to with Sesame), expand my 5 minute Peloton core class to a 10 minute Peloton core class (since I’d have a few extra minutes not having to take Sesame out)… and potentially get more serious about strength training, which I’ve been neglecting a bit. Stay tuned for more!