Sunday, July 21, 2013 -Action Verbs

There are things I should be doing right now. I have a list scratched out on a folded piece of draft paper. Bend a vertical fold in the paper, start my list and each item is about four words. Short, crisp words.  Direct words - action verbs.  A get things done list. But not many things are getting done. Now that I am retired I have turned into a shirker. I shirk them off. Walk away; follow some other path in my head that seems more important, or easier.

Change out stairwell light

Dig out blackberries

Clean 2 windows/day

Demo pond

Weed-wack back fence

Mount chin up bar

And the chin up bar is for my partner, she is way more motivated than I am so at least I can feel part of her work out by installing the chin up bar. Haven’t done that either. That’s ok, she is busy doing push ups and sit ups and I get tired just thinking about her work out. 

Yep, I have turned into a retired shirker. When I was a firefighter, I never shirked anything.  The 24 hours shift started at 7am; get the turn over from the off going firefighter, all my gear on the rig, change into my uniform, and check out the entire rig. Then 8am meet crew for morning talk, and do my chores. Then the entire four person crew would get into the fire engine and we go to a park in our district and run laps.  Then back in the rig and off to the grocery store to shop for lunch and dinner. Back to the station prepare lunch for the crew, clean up dishes. Prepare for afternoon drills or fire inspections of local buildings. Then by 5pm it was cook dinner and clean up and some down time. During all of the daily events we were always in emergency response mode. The response was our priority and it didn’t matter if you were in line to check out at grocery store, running laps in the park, just about to sit down to a hot meal, in the shower lathered up, or asleep after already responding five or six times in the middle of the night.  Respond was what we did. It was why we were there.  I loved it. It was a go-go-go kind of job.

Now, I don’t want to respond to my to do list. Jade and Prana are staring at me because they know. They hang their heads and shuffle off. They don’t need a list. But they respond to a noise. Good grief, they shoot out of the house like we are under attack. We are puzzled and look at each other because we hear nothing different. Their feet spin out on the hard wood floors and then they hit the kitchen tile floor and all of sudden they are pumping hard and not moving, so their head drops and they lower their bodies a bit and gain traction and with a clatter their high rpm legs finally move them to the other side of the tile floor and they dig into the wooden floor and they leap off the back stairs, skipping the three steps down and soar into the air like deer flinging themselves over a hedgerow. And they are gone in woofs, barks and ferocious tails.

Their list is; eat, sleep, play, convince humans to go on walk, convince humans to feed them again, get ear scratches, bark and charge at any threats no matter how imperceptible and I am not convinced it isn’t all show so they look like they are defending our little place. 

So I glance at them while they nap with their feet all together like they are in mid gallop. Head forward and ears all limp around their face. Sometimes I hear a little bit of whimpering as they dream of chasing rabbits. Or maybe their whimpering is another dream. They are sitting in the office doorway with that Lab Tilt look and watching me stare at my list.  “Our list is a lot easier. Time for a walk, let’s go,” they say.  I look up and lay down the paper and stand. Time to go.