Expect the unexpected

On Thursday night, I went to the Zen Center to teach the meditation intro class, then I stayed for the weekly Dharma talk and Q&A. A man sitting behind me asked the Senior Dharma Teacher about his first meditation retreat, beginning his question with a sheepish admission: “It didn’t go how I expected.”

Immediately other long-time practitioners and I erupted into laughter: yes, indeed! Retreats never go how you expected, because life never goes as expected. As the man sitting behind me described how he’d hoped the week after retreat to go smoothly with plenty of time to practice, but instead his time had been frittered away with unplanned obligations, I smiled and nodded. Been there, done (and continue to do) that.

I submitted the last of my Spring semester grades this past Monday, then I had hoped for a gentle reentry into Summer leisure. Instead, I’ve spent the week checking off to-dos, some planned and others unanticipated.

This week I had a routine mammogram (check), scheduled eye exams for later in the summer (check), and found, booked appointments with, and completed seemingly endless new-patient intake forms for a new dentist (check, check, check). I made a list of summer tasks–so many things to clean, weed out, or organize–and I started filling my calendar with Zen Center obligations, weekend outings with J, and a July trip to visit family in Ohio.

All of those tasks were expected–things I’ve been meaning to do for months, but were delayed until the end of the semester, when I’d have more time. What I didn’t expect, however, was for the heating element on the dishwasher to die–a repair I’ll schedule next week–or for Roxy to eat an entire leather leash yesterday, necessitating an emergency trip to the vet for x-rays today. Who would expect a dog who has never been a chewer to suddenly develop an appetite for leather?

Tomorrow J and I have tickets to a Connecticut Sun game–plans we’d made months ago–but whether or not we go is contingent on the state of Roxy’s digestion. Will she vomit chunks of leather like she did this morning, meaning a return trip to the vet, or will the special food they prescribed help everything “come out in the end” quite literally?

Only time will tell. In the meantime, I never expected I’d spend this morning sifting through dog vomit, looking for chewed bits of leather, and I never would have predicted that now I’d prefer to find bits of leather in Roxy’s poop instead.

Today’s photos are from a short walk I took at Hammond Pond Reservation after Monday morning’s mammogram, before the week turned hectic.