Unraveling the P issue, The difference a year makes

So Cindy and I officially transitioned from fostering to adopting Elsa, even though that was pretty much determined from day one.  The girl that runs the rescue was at our house when I got home verifying Elsa was in a good situation which did not take long to do.  We had a good day from a housebreaking perspective with no accidents in the house all day yesterday.  Elsa made up for it this morning.

So as soon as we wake up Cindy takes her outside.  Elsa immediately pee’d and came immediately back inside. The routine we have gotten into is after Elsa eats breakfast Cindy takes her back out for a number two.  Well as I was on my computer catching up on email while eating my breakfast I heard a scratching noise in the dining room.  I look over and see that Elsa had just finished up taking a dump in front of the two unicycles that charge there.  I immediately yelled and Cindy came scrambling up in disbelief since she hadn’t even fed Elsa breakfast yet.

So it was disappointing that we still do not seem to be able to make her understand this is not acceptable behavior.  Well as I was putting on my shoes to leave for work I saw Elsa put an exclamation point on the problem.  There was a big puddle of urine right near the area rug in the great room.  Wow.  I was under the impression that she was more or less house broken already.  It looks like we have to start the process all over again.

I mentioned the other day how much different my Thanksgiving holiday is this year, not having to worry about timing a 3,000 plus participant holiday race.  That feeling has continued to grow as we get closer to the big day.  In the past the day before Thanksgiving meant me leaving work early in the afternoon to go to packet pickup where I started to work on the reams of paper entries I had to get into the system.  The work would extend well into the night where I also had to get the truck fully loaded with equipment so we could pull out of the driveway at something crazy like 4AM.  When I would try to fall asleep the night before I would struggle as multiple mental checklists were floating around in my head that I couldn’t turn off.

The morning of the race was always one big blur where the scene goes from quiet to a mob scene in the span of 20 minutes.  The ever present sense of chaos was always just under the surface, only loosely controlled at best.  Of course a good chunk of this sense of chaos and disorganization came from areas that I did not have responsibility for or control of which added frustration into the whirling tub of emotions.  When the race was finally over the sigh of relief was prolonged but was quickly followed by the dread of knowing I would be repeating the process, on a smaller scale, over the next few months.

To say I am relieved this scenario is no longer the case would be a severe understatement.  I look back at that hamster wheel I was on and wonder how I did it for so long.  I guess the answer lies in my people pleasing personality and my sense of responsibility to the runners that participated in the races.  I took executing my part of their race experience seriously, always trying to act as I would want someone else to if I was the one running the race.  It feels great to now be able to look out over the horizon and not see the dark clouds of future races always hanging low in the skies.

My Thanksgiving is actually still going to involve a race but as a participant, not a timer.  Ironically Cindy and I will be running in the holiday race that the running club broke away from four years ago, The Gobble Gobble.  That split, which involved some Iraq WMD level deception was the turning point in my time with the club.  It was definitely where things started to go downhill, accelerating on the way down.  It will be nice to get face to face again with some of the local running crowd, most of which I have not seen at all since my exit from the club race scene at the end of January.

I am looking forward to a fun four day weekend.