CRUMBS

• The shoes Jim wears most every day to work are Ugg chukka boots. I think we are now on his fourth pair in the last two years. He likes the the way they feel. I like the way they look. Sophie likes the way they taste. Before we were married I’d bring Soph to Jim’s on my way to work so that she could spend the day with Gus the Labradoodle. Sometimes when I came to pick her up at night we would find that she had dragged one of Jim’s black boots from his closet, down the stairs, and out the dog door into the back yard so she could gnaw on the leather tongue. Even though she's not much bigger than the boot, it’s a habit she made consistent. And only with the black pairs. She leaves the brown ones alone. A few weeks before Christmas I came home to find that my little dog ripped open one of the gifts under the tree. I was annoyed and then delighted. Because among the piled packages beneath the tree, two wrapped boxes were chukka boots for Jim. A brown Rockport pair. A pair of the black Uggs. Guess which one she opened?

• Have I said this before? I just can’t get behind yoga leggings over your heels. It looks like you decided not to finish getting dressed.

• I bought an ultra light down coat and I don’t want to take it off. But when I do take it off I want to stuff its bulk into the tiny bag it came with. So warm! So comfy! So space saving!

• It’s a little bit heartbreaking when the guy who let me go in front of him in traffic misses the light but I make it through. I glance in the rearview mirror and hope that he’s not pissed. But since he's the kind of person who lets other people in in traffic, I’m thinking he's over it.

• Our Ninja blender arrived the other day. That blender’s blade is like its own slasher flick. Whitney suggested that I make little freezer bags of smoothie ingredients so we’re ready to blend at a moment’s notice. “rFozen fruit and maybe some spinach or kale.” Nut job. I’m not doing that. Fruit, yes, but no way on the vegetables. Why make a smoothie miserable?

• My job has perks a plenty. One: our end-of-year shutdown. I don’t work the last week of the year. I get paid for it without having to take vacation time. It’s pretty standard throughout my industry, and when I think about it, a truly terrific plus. It is a great time to whittle down my perpetually-put-off to-do list. (You know, since you could say that drug pedaling isn’t my only job; there’s the designing sometimes, now the yoga teaching here and there, and a long time ago in a galaxy far far away there was the idea of writing.) Also when I consider it I think, “Sheesh, we sorta earned the shutdown this year.” My company is launching a few new products next year. A pharmaceutical product launch is a big damn deal. We retrain on what we already know. We train on new stuff. We go to meetings. We get different managers. Our day-to-day sorta goes belly up. I’m pretty good at taking it in stride, but there are moments when I feel like my brain is shredding. 

• Lots of the posts that flood my Facebook and Instagram feeds are yoga-related. So and so is going to this month-long yoga teacher training in Peru. So and so is going to a 9-week Bikram yoga teacher training. This person is taking three weeks to go on a tropical yoga retreat. My question is this: How the hell? Do these people suddenly not have jobs?

• Halo Top in the freezer spells hope. Hope for the future. Hope for snack time. And potentially breakfast.