This, That, The Other (& Pokemon Go) 

I was pretty excited to hit the ground dancing this morning…  Until I rolled over and my back felt that gross-squish feeling it gets when things just aren’t right…  Not exactly painful, not like a tickle but somewhere in between.  Just.  So.  Wrong!  So I called Zumba off for the day and decided to run one of my 5ks that I planned for the week instead.  Zumba has me shaking my hips, bending this way and that, jumping, hopping, twisting…  It can agitate my back.  Running just has running.  I can keep a nice, solid core for several miles to support my back before I start to have problems.  Today I was able to make it just a little past mile three before I started feeling ‘it’, which was perfect because the lake I ran around, Greenlake in Seattle, is almost exactly three miles!  The extra mileage on there was me walking a bit more as I tried to out walk the ‘injury’ but that didn’t happen.  That was ok, though, because my son, who loves Pokemon but doesn’t so much love moving, was introduced to the world of Pokemon Go!

If you haven’t heard about Pokemon Go, it’s basically a game that uses your camera to view the world, and in it, you find Pokemon hiding!  You see the Pokemon, go toward him and swipe your touchscreen, thereby releasing a poke all and, hopefully, capturing your Pokemon who you can train to battle for you!  The negatives people are pointing out are that its one more opportunity for people to have their noses stuck in phones, that it’s not driven by creative play, people aren’t paying attention to where they are going and are getting hurt or hurting others and, lastly, crime and murder can happen!  So many things.  Mostly it translates to people wanting to practice cynicism with a small amount of concern thrown in for good measure.  Can you get hurt?  Yes, but I can also get hurt in a myriad of other ways if I don’t pay attention to my surroundings.  Does it have people in their phones?  Yes, but they are also talking to one another, helping one another, sharing clues, secrets and locations for Pokemon.  Communication is happening in public spaces among strangers on a scale I haven’t seen in ages!  Furthermore my kid wants to go outside to run all over the neighborhood!  My kid, who prefers watching tv or reading books- that kid.  He’s outside with a Pokemon hat, Pokemon shirt, a man purse filed with Pokemon cards, Pokemon and poke balls running around, immersed in a world of reality and imagination, finding Pokemon, running everywhere and is having the time of his life!  And you know something even better?  Once the Pokemon trainers catch their Pokemon and want to evolve or train them, to do so they have to complete distance challenges.  One Pokemon requires a 10k before it evolves.  Seriously!   I love Pokemon Go! (In context and used in appropriate spaces appropriately and without disturbing the rest of the population any more than the guy on the bus who listens to a boom box instead of headphones.)

Freddie Sparkles got her first Schnauzer hairdo today.  Bradley ran the clippers while I pinned her down.  Sounds lovely, eh?  After a moment of squirming, she settled down into my lap and went to sleep, making it pretty easy to get her done.  She only truly objected when we were trimming the insides of her ear and we caught the flap.  She jumped a tiny bit and bled a lot, but I think the bulk of the trauma lies with us, Bradley and me!  She went back to sleep while we just felt terrible for ladling on such abuse!  At the end of it all, we ended up with a tiny little schnauzer who reminds us of those Victorian children who were always trussed up in adult clothing- oddly adorable!  Love that pup.  ❤️