Hi y'all. So I said goodbye to my dog today. The new woman seems very nice. She has her for a trial period of a week, while I'm away on vacation. At the meeting place, within a couple of minutes of meeting her, my dog jumped into the new person's car and settled down in the back seat. That made it a little easier. I'm really missing her right now, probably because I'm a little woozy from wine and sadness. A few minutes ago I heard a noise that I thought was my dog doing one of her stretching-groans, but then I remembered that she isn't here. My heart feels all broken.

It was nice to be able to walk into town and have dinner while the sun was still up, without worrying about my dog baking in the car, or barking. I'm trying to focus on the reasons why I did this, but right now I think I need to feel bad for a little bit.

Thanks to everyone who commented. It helps.

So I'll be away this week, no blogging for you. Maybe you can take a walk down memory lane by reading through the Archives? I'm back Sunday, on August's Eve.

The time for a Big Decision has arrived. I put up a free ad for my dog on Petfinder.org, and someone actually responded, and she sounds like a really good match for my dog. Which means it's time to put up or shut up. When I got the email yesterday my heart unexpectedly sunk. How can I give up this close bond I have with my dog? The unconditional love I get? How can I let her down and break her heart, when she's been through so much in her life already? She helps me feel less alone, and it's very hard for me to ever turn away love of any kind. But a couple of things have happened in the past week that have made me pretty sure that my dog would do better elsewhere:

At Hugo's one night, my dog was (as she always has to be whenever I leave the house) locked inside of my car. And apparently she was barking so incessantly that a woman in a nearby building called the police, who loudly summoned me from the bar in front of a bunch of people I know. I had to walk out to my car and face the irate and exhausted woman who had called the cops. I was very apologetic. Luckily the policeman himself was very understanding, so all I had to do was move my car. But it was a definite low point.

This Sunday I didn't leave the house except to walk the dog. True, I amused myself by downloading a ton of my CDs onto my hard drive and then my ipod, making a couple of mixes along the way. But I didn't even have the option of, say, walking into town to grab a bite, or driving to Trader Joe's, or riding my bike to Pete's for ice cream.

...

I just had lunch with a couple of sympathetic co-workers, both dog-owners (one has a shelter dog), and they made me feel better about the whole thing. They agreed that if I was bringing her into a good situation, then it was the right thing to do in order to regain my freedom. There are two other people at work who are making me feel extremely guilty about giving her up... They don't know that I've started seriously looking for a new owner, but when I brought up the idea a few months ago they were both adamant that I keep her. One said that her anxiety will get worse with the new person, so to spare both the dog and the new person, I really just needed to keep on with the training (which I've been doing for years without success). The other said that she wouldn't be able to stand not seeing my dog at work every day. So why don't YOU adopt her, I was thinking, but I've asked her in the past and she can't or won't. Neither of these people, by the way, are ever willing to dog-sit for me.

So am I horrible? How horrible am I? The new person is arranging to meet with me this Saturday. I don't know if they will take her right away if things go well, or if they're going to wait a week (I'm going on vacation next week). And then I will be weepy and sad for a while. But then I will start to remember that I can once again ride my bike and walk everywhere I need to go in town, and I can do anything and go anywhere at any time of day, and I hope I'll realize I made a good choice.

Yesterday a co-worker noticed the black and white picture of a young and brooding Marlon Brando I've taped up in my cubicle. She sighed and I said, "Yes, wasn't he beautiful? And somehow knowing that he later became all tortured and anguished makes him even more beautiful." My co-worker nodded and said "hmm..." which could have meant either "I agree, sister, the bad boys totally do it for me," or "I think I've just figured out why you haven't found anyone 'good enough' during the past year."

Because this is the trick, the trick I and my girlfriends are trying to pull off: To find the guy who acts like a bad boy, but is a good guy in disguise. Who gets kind of introspective and cross sometimes, but never cross at you; and has done some things he regrets, but has learned from his mistakes; and who has had his heart broken a couple of times, so now he really appreciates the way you stroke his hair in a way that makes him like it, or how you laugh at the stupidest things as though you can't control yourself, or that you do things like find a pretty rock on the beach just to give to him. Because he knows by now that not all girls do that. So he treats you like a precious and rare creature, like a baby panda (they're endangered, you know).

And when he dresses up in a muu-muu and kisses Larry King on the mouth on national television, you will just shrug it all off, because he's treated you right and that's what's important.

I had a dream last week that I keep being reminded of due to the location and the celebrity guest-star: I was in the big back room of Essentials, the hip mod furnishings store on Main Street, lying on a bed with my sister as we watched and then listened to Freedy Johnston play a concert just for us. It wasn't meant to be just us, but it was early in the morning (thus the bed and the lying down) and he was charmed that we were there so he was doing the show. He was also simultaneously running a pirate radio station, and would occasionally take a break to broadcast some station i.d. or something. And of course he was helping out with the store. He was also acting a little crushed out on me. and in the dream this was uncomfortable: I had a feeling like I should really be enjoying the attention but instead I felt yucky and sad. (In real life, of course, I'd be all, "so when's the soonest we may marry?") During one of the songs he climbed up on the bed and was playing while lying next to me, staring up at the ceiling. The show seemed to go on forever, way past the point of my attention span. And when it ended, I noticed that a lot of my friends from town were there, having arrived late. So Freedy went over to talk to all of them. And I had to pack up a lot of stuff that I had brought while also rearranging the various things on sale at the store, and I was embarrassed about cleaning my cluttered mess in front of everyone. And that was that.


I do have a real-life Freedy story. Back when I was a band girlfriend, the Ms (I think...) opened for Freedy at the Iron Horse. We corralled him after the show and convinced him to go out to Bar 19 with us. And he said yes! A small crowd of musician friends gathered there and waited for a little bit wondering if he'd show, and eventually he did. We chatted about mundane things, and I think P got to speak to him one-on-one about the business end of making music. When it was time to go, the bunch of us walked from the bar back to the Horse (and our cars) together. It was all snowy and cold and gross mid-winter-ness, and Freedy was walking right in front of me, crossing the hump of snow between sidewalk and road, when he slipped and fell right onto his back. I let Freedy fall!

To this day I can point to the exact spot on King Street where it happened. Sigh.

What are you doing tonight?

You are watching the Amazing Race at 10 p.m. on CBS. If you missed the first one, go to Television Without Pity (in Links over there) and read the recap. TWP will make you love it.

What are you doing Thursday?

At 9 p.m. you are going to see Spouse, the Fawns, and Red Door Exchange at the lovely (and really way too small for this show) Bishop's Lounge. Because they are all beautiful, and I think the show is a mere 2 bucks, so you can afford to get one of their expensive fancy drinks.

What are you doing Wednesday?

That's up to you, sport. Take some initiative in your life for once.

I seem to have become unable to fall asleep in a timely fashion. I stay up too late, waiting until after the Daily Show to walk the dog and brush my teeth, and I'm yawning and bumping into things on my way to bed, and then I just lie there in the dark, wide awake. I'm not really even thinking about much, though I guess there's a general existential crisis. I think I'd sleep better if I didn't spend all evening inside my apartment, making crafts and watching TV and reading stuff online. It's almost like being half-asleep, doing those things.

Yesterday I did the very bad thing of taking a nap after work, which worked against me in two ways: It made me miss the show at P.A.C.E. I had wanted to see (and would have gotten me out of my apartment), and it made it just as hard to fall asleep later. Thank God the weekend is here to help put a stop to my secret shame.

Anyway. My blogging friend Jennifer wrote about her own overhearing-her-mom story, and you should read it because she is a hoot.

Remember way back on February 27th, when I went on and on about an old video game my sister and I used to play, and we couldn't remember the name of it?

Well it is found. It's called Agent U.S.A. I have my sister to thank. She downloaded a PDF of "Classic Gamer Magazine" from a link provided by the wonderful boingboing, and that zine had an ad for the game. I love the internet!

p.s. I was totally right about the "people" in the game being just a hat and feet.

Another highlight of the weekend was my sister and I overhearing my post-menopausal mother sing the praises of Astroglide to her also post-menopausal best friend. After she listed a few of the lube's various qualities, I blurted out "Oh my god, stop! We can hear you!!" They were standing not five feet from me, yet they acted surprised that we had heard. I blame the wine.

I spent the holiday weekend at my parents' house in New Jersey. It was fine. It was all very baby-centric, because my sister and her four-month-old was there. Which is fine, because I Believe That Children Are Our Future. I did remark at one point that I could lose an arm and no one would notice, which caused the people around me to joke, 'Yes we'd notice because then you couldn't hold the baby as well.' Ha ha. Ha.

We all went to a family friend's house for supper and fireworks on the Fourth, and because I had no choice, I had to bring my dog. The house is very close to the park where the fireworks are set off, and you can get a great view from the yard. I knew this would not go well. When the shells first started my dog just seemed startled, but then with each explosion she kept trying to back up, to get away from the noise and the flashing. Then she started panting and trembling, and I didn't want this to develop into a full-blown anxiety response (because I've heard other dogs who were upset by fireworks went on to become nervous wrecks during thunderstorms) so I took off. The group was busy seeing how my baby niece was reacting to the show, so I just told them I had to go, and we walked as fast as we could down the street in the other direction from the fireworks. Walking seemed to calm her, or at least give her a purpose, so I kept going. The friends' house is in a charming little town with historic buildings onstreets lined up nicely in a grid. It was cool to see them illuminated by the fireworks, the sidewalks mostly deserted except for the occasional person sitting in their yard watching the show. I turned onto the shadiest streets, trying to get some sizeable buildings between us and the noise. I kept walking and walking, onward and upward and away. By the time the big finale began, the dog was relaxed enough to stop and sniff at interesting things. So I turned us around and started walking back. About halfway there I bashed into the river of people walking home from the park. I had to swim upstream. When I got within a block my dad was waiting on the sidewalk as though he had been about to come search for me. "There you are," he said. My sister was worried I had been kidnapped, but my dad seemed more concerned that we were now unable to get a jump on the traffic. The drive home was slow and grim, the baby crying because we weren't moving (she had been calm throughout the fireworks show).

I was so good. I got into bed, lights out, before midnight last night. Finally, I was going to get at least 7 hours of sleep on a week night! My productivity at work was going to be phenomenal.

Then at around 2 a.m., I started dreaming that the city was under attack. I drifted up through a few layers of awakefulness and realized it was a thunderstorm. The lightning was non-stop. Flash, flash-flash! Flash, flash, FLASH-flash! And the thunder seemed to be rolling in both from nearby and far away, surrounding me. I had been in the deepest level of sleep, so I could barely move. But with my windows open all the way just a few feet from my head, I felt endangered by the violence of the storm. I live in an attic, after all - I'm high up and have nothing above me except a flimsy roof. So with all of the energy and adrenaline I could muster, in a desperate attempt to try to save my own life, I managed to turn over onto my other side and lay an arm across my head.

It seems to have worked, for I survived the night. But I did not get my full-night's sleep. Curse you, Thor!