Water-Dancing and New Years Resolutions

I love having a big dog. It can be very gratifying being able to wrap your entire arms around her, and still they don't meet in the middle. Or gazing into her eyes as she decides you needs saving, otherwise you'll drown. Aoife and I have somehow come to an arrangement, and when she paddles out to rescue me she manages to stop and turn so I can latch on to her body, letting her tow me back to shore. The poor thing must find it infuriating to have me swim back out for another rescue. S and Aoife haven't perfected their parts -its all in the subtle detail -in their Water Dance, which results in the dog swimming on top of him, raking her paws/claws across his body and leaving quite a mess of scratches and blood.

We found a national park that actually allows dogs, just out of Dwellingup, so S, Aoife and myself travelled up for a picnic and some swimming.

Aoife becomes focussed as she paddles out for the rescue. Note: Intense eye contact.

I've latched one and she starts the tow back to shore.

The rescuer and rescuee have a cuddle moment.

I wanted to start this year well, and even though I'm not normally one for resolutions, I thought I may make an attempt of it. My original list was pretty long, and probably a bit unobtainable in terms of my actual free time. It went something like this (in no particular order - the jumble of thoughts here is on purpose, to demonstrate my inner thought process!):

Eat less sugar; Eat more healthy stuff; Do more exercise; Get back into riding my bike more and swimming more; Keep up the running; Start proper yoga classes; Join a writers group.

Well, the list has been edited as lots of them are similar, and I thought I actually want to be realistic and do NEW things. So here is the revised list:

1. Join a writers group, to help improve my writing and work on my novel more.

2. Join a yoga class (with S).

I've already looked up the terms for yoga classes and found out my local ones, and how Shawn can fit it in with his FIFO schedule, so thats a start. Even better, I contacted the WA Writers association, and then a writers group on their list. They happened to be having a meeting that night, so I went along! Yay! I've actually started with my resolutions! Hopefully I can keep them up.

Maybe I should have added:

3. Be more focussed when working on the thesis.

Oh well. There's always next year.