you can't fool me!

and i most certainly will not pose for a picture with you.

sheesh.

today, atlas is 9, so i am wishing a happy birthday to my dear little puppy.

i love him more than the sun, moon, and stars.

i love him times a million and forty seven and thirty three. (that's today's number. i make up a new number for him every day.)

he is the best four-legged friend a girl could have, and i am grateful for every single day i get to spend with him.

(insert a pause as i get up from my chair and give him a kiss on the nose, because he is watching me with an eagle eye as i sniffle away while typing.)

today, i am full of love for atlas, and i am full of love for all dogs. our world really is better because they are in it.

i am following a number of threads, and they are all leading me to the same place – to the wanting.

thread the first.

for a long while, whenever i asked the question, "what is between me and earning money?", the answer that came was usually some variation of, "i don't want to earn money".

this was supremely frustrating to me. it seemed illogical – of course i want to earn money. it also seemed more and more hopeless – i have worked through so many layers of this belief and yet there it would be again. it is so frustrating to want to earn money and to find that you are – yet again – in your own way.

this came up again a couple of weeks ago. i asked, "what is between me and earning money?" the answer was, "i don't want to earn money" and then i cried, though i didn't really know why.

i sat with the question and answer. i felt a swirling in my belly. when i felt into it, what came up was, "what if i want to earn money and then i don't? what if i'm not enough?" i had the sense of an abyss, of terror, of wanting something to happen but it wasn't happening and i couldn't make it happen and so i decided that there must be something wrong with me. i had the sense that i stopped wanting in that moment because not wanting was a better reason for not getting something than feeling like there was something wrong with me, that i was wrong.

when i talked to the fear of wanting to earn money during a meditation, the image i got was of a very tiny baby screaming as loud as it could. it said that it was afraid that the pain would be so great that i would disintegrate, and the only way it could keep me safe from that pain was to keep me from wanting.

thread the second.

i might have mentioned this before, but i am reading your dog is your mirror (kevin behan). i just read a chapter that was very interesting to me. in it, the author talks about wanting. he talks about how, as we become aware of our self in relation to others, we begin to realize that others have something to do with our wants coming true. he talks about how we learn to justify our wants to satisfy the people we need in order to get what we want. he talks about how the only way we know how to make sense of our wants being corrected or denied is to create judgments like "i am not good enough to have what i want" because we are not old enough to have the necessary perspective.

the general idea of the book is that dogs manifest our unresolved emotional issues. he says that it takes his dogs about eight years to manifest his deepest stuff.

when i look at atlas, and the things i most love and the things i find most annoying about atlas, they are all related to wanting. interestingly, when atlas turned 8 1/2, which was also the time of our 8 year anniversary, i remember saying to one of the girls at the pet store, "it's like he woke up one day and said, 'i am 8 1/2 now! we shall do what i want from here on out!'"

in atlas, i can see a perfect mirror of my relationship with wanting. i can see that i think you have to subdue or ignore or set aside your wants in favor of what other people want in order to be good or liked or wanted or accepted.

thread the third.

i was sitting at the dinner table yesterday, feeling guilty that i wasn't giving atlas some of my meat sauce. never mind that it was my dinner and i had already fed him. i asked what was behind the guilt. i could feel that it was something that would make me cry, only i was trying to avoid it.

i sat with it for a while, and then i realized what it was. when i see atlas' hopeful expectant expression, it reminds me of me – and how i never get to feel that. i am avoiding the guilt of disappointing him by feeding him, because i am afraid that if i feel the guilt, i will feel my own loss, and i am avoiding that at all costs.

except i felt it in that moment, and now i do feel lighter.

i don't know where all of this is leading exactly, but i think it is leading me toward a better relationship with wanting, and with wanting what i want, and i am really looking forward to getting there.

look what atlas found on our hike in forest park yesterday! a stone house!

my beloved furry friend came home from the doggy ranch on monday. he was there for an entire week. i was at rally (rally!) from monday through thursday, and i let him stay for an extra few days of fun in order to have some me time.

let me just say, for the record, that a week of sleep is a beautiful beautiful thing. it turns out that there is really only one thing standing between me and a full night of sleep – and his name is atlas. (well, that is not entirely true. i am the one who let him sleep on the bed in the first place. clearly i did not think that through. then again, i am doubtful that the knowledge that i was giving up a good night's sleep for the duration of his life would have changed things. in the face of his cute puppy-ness and his whining, i would have done the exact same thing.)

i usually drive to rainier and pick him up, but this time, he came home on the doggy ranch bus. have i ever showed you a picture of the bus? it is the best. thing. ever. there are pictures of the bus about five rows down on this page. please go look at them. they will make you smile. if you have a dog, you will want to send your dog there. (if you live in or near portland, you should. double dog ranch is like doggy heaven on earth.)

anyway, when i spotted atlas on the bus, he was sharing a seat with another dog, a dog that was about as large as him and much furrier. i am not entirely sure how they both fit in the same seat. sam said that when atlas got on the bus, he ran all the way to the back and hopped up on the seat with scout. sam let them sit together, and scout licked atlas' ear the entire drive. apparently they were the best of friends. isn't that sweet?

atlas has such a good time with his friends at the doggy ranch that i often wish he had a doggy ranch friend (or a good doggy friend in general) in daily life. except that in daily life, it is also true that he really just wants to be with me. i guess that's ok too. sleep or no sleep, i always like to be with him.

"what?!" you say. "you have a dog?! i'm shocked! i had no idea!"

i was not actually trying to take a picture of atlas. i was trying to take a picture of the stream of water, but atlas kept sticking his tongue in my picture. silly pup.

if you want to laugh regularly, it is good to have a dog.

atlas and i were out for a walk one day. i was off in my own world, taking pictures, when i thought i heard munching.

i was right. atlas was foraging for berries. i finally tasted one – crossing my fingers that they weren't poisonous – because he would not stop eating them. they tasted like a very mealy old apple.

i still have no idea what they are, but atlas approves.

i am sorry to say that the main reason i noticed the moon was because atlas was glued to the sidewalk for over half an hour, watching a cat in a tree. my attention span – for cats – is not nearly as long as his. atlas would have kept watching forever but, at the half hour mark, i decided it was time to head home.

did you watch the superbowl? or wait, is it even over? did i miss any fantastic ads?

right now, i feel like life is full of possibility. someday, i might have to tell you about how i discovered a very unhelpful unconscious belief and about the subsequent dissolving of that belief which is what brought me to this place. for now, i am just reveling in all the energy i have to work on my business. (given the belief, it is actually a miracle that i have managed to accomplish anything at all. i am somewhat astonished at what i managed to do in spite of it.) it feels like i have a million ideas and i finally have the motivation and inspiration to work on them. yay for that.