Another Rainy Monday

Oh, but it’s a gloomy day out there today.

The sun tried to peek out once around lunch time but before that and after that, the skies have been grey and it’s done little but pour with rain or threaten to pour with rain.

We’ve had so much rain lately that even I’m fed up with it. I usually love the rain. After all, it’s one of the reasons I wanted to move back from L.A. Ironically, it’s quite depressing to have sun all the time and to know without absolute certainty that even though it’s a little cloudy in the months from May-September that it’s not going to rain and, if it does, it’ll be a few raindrops that are just enough to make the dusty cars look terrible. I got fed up with sunshine all the time. I know, I know- readers who are in the wet and soggy Midwest (including my mother) will laugh and say I was crazy. However, try it sometime. It’s like getting to eat your favourite food for every single meal, whenever you like. Eventually, it stops being your favourite meal and you yearn for something different.

This may explain why I’m tired of the rain. For the past two weeks, we’ve had five days of rain to every two that are sunny. It’d be nice if that flipped and we’d have two days of rain and five days that are dry.

Still, as the saying goes, into every life a little rain may fall. In our case, it’s been quite a lot of rain but, well, it makes the grass green, the seeds grow and all that. It also makes my garden a soggy mess and depresses my dogs.

It’s hard to have depressed dogs. They sit around and mope. They sigh a lot. They enter a drowsy state of ennui. It’s actually not a little unlike my mother when it’s been rainy or snowy for a while (sorry, Mum!).

The worst thing is- and my mother does not do this- is that both Sookie and Rory seem to hold me personally responsible for the fact that their outdoor playground has become a mass of soggy muddy puddles and every time they go out, this wet stuff falls from the sky and soaks them.

It’s hard to explain to a pair of dachshunds that I do not control the weather. It’s actually quite hard to explain anything to a pair of dachshunds for any length of time. Rory tries to understand. She looks at me with alert eyes and does that adorable little head cock that dogs do when they recognize a word. In Rory’s case, her favourite word is “treat”. Her second favourite is “dinner.” This would explain why, when I took the girls to the vet on Friday for their annual check up and injections, I discovered that not only was Rory a whole pound heavier than Sookie but if she gets much heavier, I have to put her on a diet.

Rory used to be the smaller of the two dogs. Methinks that her preference for doggie ‘junk’ food over nutritious doggy food is not a good thing. Methinks I have to limit her snacks even more than I already am.

Anyway, back to the rain. The dogs are fed up with the rain. Rory does attempt to stay active. She often runs around and has a good chomp on a toy. Meanwhile, Sookie goes into a state of malaise where she lies on the sofa and refuses to move. She prefers to sit on my lap. I prefer her to sit on my lap except for times when she’s ventured into the rain out of necessity and returns, wet and muddy. These, of course, are the times that Sookie prefers to sit on my lap because it’s warmer.

When it does stop raining and both dogs deign to go outside, they immediately go to the infamous sewer grate. After the rain, there are fun happenings there- there is the sound of water streaming many feet below us and, even more exciting, there is a pipe that is cascading water down from the surface level to the stream below. The dogs find this absolutely fascinating. They find it so fascinating that whenever we go on a walk, Rory must investigate all the sewer drains to see if they, too, are doing interesting things.

I’m a bit tired of sewer drains. Fortunately, if I provide the pebbles, Rory has figured out how to drop them into the drain herself now. It’s weird but I figure it means she’s not Up To No Good. I’m sure the sewer department would disagree but, hey, they haven’t had to chase her after she’s got out of the worlds’ smallest hole in the fence.

It looks like both tonight and tomorrow will continue to be wet so there won’t be much sewer drain activity or any outdoor activity of any kind until at least Wednesday.

It just means that I’ll have a couple of sulky dogs on my hands. I’d like to make them understand that I can’t control the rain but, well, even if I did, they’d still blame me.

They are dachshunds after all.
Happy Tuesday!

The Comfort of Canine Companionship

Today has been a very stormy day. The skies have been blue one moment and then an ominous grey the next. We’ve already had hail and as I look outside, it seems as though the skies are preparing for more.

When it gets grey and stormy, it’s hard to believe that just a few hours before I was sitting outside with the pups at lunchtime, throwing little rocks down the sewer drain so Rory could hear them splash. She’s a smart dog. She’s got to the point where she now tries to take the stick or rock from my hand and drop it herself. I’m still not sure what her fascination is but it’s very cute.

Sometimes, I think I might find my dogs too cute. I feel like I’m one of those mothers who when they’re asked politely about their kids, whips out her phone and shows pictures. I don’t always do that with the girls but I have done it before. It’s just that they are my furry babies and we have a nice little family unit going on together. We have our routines. If we veer from our routine, the pups sulk. Both dogs have a very specific way of sulking. Rory will go in her crate and bury under a blanket. Our issue can only be resolved by my laying on my stomach, putting my head in the crate and making a fuss of her. Yes, this may seem a little silly. Yes, I stick my head in the crate while laying on my stomach more often than I’d like to admit. It does the trick and usually, Rory forgives me.

Sookie’s method of sulking is to cast me a hurt look and then sit with her back to me. She refuses to look at me and when I pet her, she pulls away. She likes to drag it out. Whatever crime I’ve commited against her to cause her to sulk is heinous enough that it takes a while for her to forgive and forget. Unlike Rory who can usually be appeased by a hug and a treat, Sookie will not surrender to the power of a treat at all. She will forgive me when she’s ready.

I have rather sensitive dogs. I find it a constant juggling act to make sure that I don’t spend too much time fussing over one of the girls and not the other. If I do, this will inevitably lead to sulking.

In the evenings, Sookie and I are tend to be quite mellow. By 9 p.m., we can both usually be found sitting on the couch either watching TV or reading. Well, I watch TV or read. Sookie is smart but she hasn’t developed the ability to read yet. That would be very cool, however.

Anyway, while we’re sitting calmly, Rory is not ready to relax. She’s still in full “play” mode. She has taken to lying on the floor, staring at me with a mix of curiousity and defiance as if to say, “What on EARTH are you doing? It’s not time to sit! You must PLAY! WITH ME!”

If I don’t pay any attention to this look, the barking begins. It starts with one little yip. Then if Sookie and I both continue to ignore her, Rory ramps up her efforts and she becomes far more persistent. Usually, I end up playing with her for a few minutes and Sookie will join me. My prime directive is actually to get the girls to play together so I can go back to my book. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.

I probably shouldn’t give in to a dog so easily but Rory is hard to ignore. She’s a very good communicator and I can always tell what she wants. I’m not sure if that’s good or not, honestly. I love that she’s so intelligent although at times, I have to be careful. For example, if I’m not planning on taking a walk with them because it’s raining and it’s coming close to the time we normally go, I can’t say the word “Walk.” If I’m talking to someone on the phone, I have to spell the word out. Fortunately, Rory has not yet learned to spell.

It’s not that Sookie isn’t bright. She is. She’s got her own methods of being annoyingly intelligent. For example, if I’m bathing Rory and her turn is next, she’s found a new hiding place of getting up on the bed and hiding under the covers. The first time she did this, it took me a while to find her. She’s also a very good alert system and she warns me of any intruders.

It’s interesting. I probably spend far too much time with my dogs. I know them so well. They also know me. Sookie is very good at knowing when I’m feeling blue and she becomes my ‘teddy bear dog’ and likes to cuddle with me on my lap. There’s something to be said for canine companionship.

I admit, I probably talk/blog about my dogs too much. I used to get annoyed at people who were parents who did nothing but talk about their kids. Yet I can see how it’s easy to do.

Life is much more fun when you get to share it with someone or some dog. Even the small things make it entertaining.

Even when it’s something as simple as throwing rocks down a sewer drain to hear them splash.

Happy Thursday (and thanks for reading about my dogs!)

Bad Moods are All Relative

There are some days you don’t realize you’ve woken up in a bad mood until the day is halfway done. For me, I woke up a little groggy this morning and proceeded to pass the morning at work in true groggy fashion: By drinking a lot of coffee and keeping quiet in my office.

It was only at lunch time that I realized I wasn’t in the mood to speak with people when I had a candidate call to ask about a job posting I had on Monster.com and I wanted to ask her if she could read because all of her questions were clearly answered by reading my posting.

This is not a good sign. Normally, I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume there’s a reason they’re asking questions that should be obvious. I did not snap or bark at my candidate, however. I merely politely answered her questions through a veiled layer of irritation.
Then, I also realized that I was in a bad mood when I was driving home for lunch and I was feeling grumpy because I was hot. Given that it’s March in the Midwest, I should be thankful that it’s hot rather than freezing cold. It’s supposed to snow on Thursday. It’s currently 73 degrees outside. I believe I have mentioned the schizophrenic nature of the Midwestern spring. It makes it awfully hard to know how to dress, I have to admit.

Still, I managed to get through the day without being rude to anyway. The pups helped cheer me up. Sookie has taken to not only greeting me at the door at lunch time but also after she’s done her business outside, running back in to say hello again. It’s very sweet and makes me feel very loved. Rory, unfortunately, is still obsessed with the storm drain in the garden and this seems to obsess her as soon as she gets outside. Today, I spent five minutes throwing rocks down there so she could hear them “splash.” Unfortunately, for some reason, this sent her into a slightly mad bout of whining and running frantically around as if she just had to get into the drain for whatever reason. I’m still baffled as to why she likes the drain so much but I’m hoping she gets bored with it eventually.

Besides, her distraction is Sookie’s advantage. Sookie is fully aware that Rory is too busy to spend much time with me and thus, The Sook, as she is often referred to by me, takes full advantage of being able to get petted and cuddled by me.

It really is amazing how much a happy dog can cheer me up. Even though I still wasn’t in the best of moods this afternoon, I no longer felt like throwing something at anyone.

Also, I realized that I couldn’t have been in that bad of a mood anyway. I realized this when my coworker came in, picked up my stress ball from my old job which has a bamboo skewer embedded in it and asked me why I had a skewer stuck in the ball. My explanation was that if he looked, he’d see an eyeball drawn on the ball and the skewer was stuck in this eyeball. This, I explained, was how I dealt with the fact that I really couldn’t stab my ex-boss in the eyeball with a skewer and so when I felt the urge to, in fact, stab him in the eyeball, I stuck it in the stress ball instead.

This caused my coworker to put the ball down calmly, say “Oh,” and move out of my office. I realized after how violent that sounded but given how much I disliked my old job and the fact that my boss was very passive-aggressive and ineffectual, it made sense.

Still, violent tendency or not, it was nice to realize that even though I’d been in a bad mood this morning, I’d never once had the urge to stab anyone in my office in the eyeball with a skewer, pencil or other uncomfortable object.

This means that my bad mood was not that bad. Also, working in a place that doesn’t incite you to have violent, bloody or mean thoughts towards your coworkers definitely scales down the bad mood a bit in the first place.

I don’t think I’ve smiled maniacally once at my current boss in the six months I’ve been at this company. I’ve never pictured strangling him with a yoga strap and I’ve never wanted to throw something at my coworker’s head. I’ve said it again and I’ll say it before, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I found a different job.

My stress ball has never been happier. I should probably take the skewer out of its handdrawn eyeball but it is a nice reminder of how far I’ve come.

Also, it reminds me that even on a day when I’m in a bad mood, things could always be much, much worse and that thought alone is enough to put me in a better mood.

Happy Wednesday!

Manageable Mondays and Sewer Drain Mysteries

I’m happy. My Monday was not too Mondayish today, after all. I’d like to salute the power of positive thinking for that. It could have been a bad Monday. After all, when you wake up at your normal time and it’s still dark, that’s not a great incentive to get out of bed.

I don’t do well with Daylight Savings time. I’ve mentioned that before. As I said yesterday, you can change the clocks all your like but my internal clock KNOWS it’s all a big, fat, mean trick. I think I’d prefer it if, perhaps, we got to spring forward with the clocks at a more appropriate time than 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning. For example, how about we do it, say, at 3 p.m. on a Monday? Wouldn’t that be nice? One minute it’s 3 p.m. and you’re dragging but you still have 2 hours to go and then, boom!, the clocks skip forward and it’s 4 p.m. and there’s only an hour left!
You may wonder why I don’t say it should happen at 4 p.m. so that the 9-5’ers can just leave but, well, in my odd way of thinking, I think it might be harder for supervisors to just let you leave. If you do it at 3 p.m., it gives everyone an hour of looking at the clock, cheerfully counting down that final hour and it’s not so…sudden.

Hey, it makes sense in my head and that’s what’s important, right? Of course, since this won’t ever happen, it’s all theoretical anyway which means we’re stuck with the cruel trick of losing an hour ON A WEEKEND and then being abruptly awoken by our alarms on a Monday only to discover it’s still nighttime outside but we still have to get up.

It didn’t help this morning that I had two dogs that also did not want to get up and couldn’t understand why that horrible alarm clock went off so early and interrupted their sleep. Believe me, Rory and her Moaning Myrtle impersonation let me know that it was quite rude to disturb her and she did NOT want to get up.

But we did. I’m glad we did. The day, as such, has not been too bad for a Monday. It’s not sunny but it’s also not gloomy outside. It’s just grey with a side of brightness. My day has actually been busy which is rather nice on a Monday. It means that the day went by quickly and I didn’t have time to sit at my desk in a funk, wondering if the phone was going to ring.

Of course, I did sit in a bit of a funk. I felt like I didn’t really wake up all morning. I moved in slow motion and had trouble focusing for the first part of the day . However, thanks to far too much tea, coffee and Sprite Zero, by lunchtime I was mostly awake just in time to run home to spend 30 minutes with the dogs.

It’s nice to have a doggy diversion in the middle of the day. When I finished up my lunch, I went outside to see what the girls were up too. Sookie came bounding towards me in greeting which is always a lovely thing. Rory, however, was riveted to our storm drain.

I’m a little perplexed by this. She’s become absolutely fascinated not only with our storm drain but all of the storm drains along our street. It’s a little disturbing. Sometimes, after it rains, there is an odd banging from the drain in our garden and I can see why she and Sookie might want to investigate. Today, however, the drain was quite quiet. Yet Rory stood there, looking into it. When I went to see if I could see/hear anything, I couldn’t hear anything but I did notice that Rory was trembling.

This, of course, alarmed me. What was she seeing/hearing/smelling that had her rooted to the spot and afraid? I coaxed her too me and she backed up so that she could press herself into my bent knee for comfort but she still stared down into the drain.

I never did figure out what she was waiting for in that drain. With my vivid imagination, I confess I was a little alarmed in case Pennywise the Clown appeared. Yes, I’ve read/watched Stephen King’s It one too many times. Given that Rory is a) a dog, b) can’t read and c) has no comprehension of who Pennywise the Clown is, I don’t think that could possibly be that which fascinated her but I’m still curious.

My non-Pennywise theory is that there may have been a creature down there at some point. I’ve seen an elderly raccoon amble its way across the street and disappear down a storm drain so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it tried to get up into our yard. I’m glad it didn’t. I have a feeling Sookie and Rory would like to think they could take on a raccoon but having had quite a bit of experience with raccoons in my life, those things can be quite vicious and I think it’d give the girls a run for their money.

I did finally manage to distract Rory away from the sewer. I’m sure that when we go for our evening walk, she’ll once again pull me towards each drain along our route but since she’s on a leash and can’t actually go down the drains, I’m not too worried.

When I went back to work after lunch, the afternoon passed quickly. We’re supposed to have heavy rain later on tonight so tomorrow is likely to be grey and soggy. I’m just glad that it held off today. Wet Mondays are not fun, they elude the power of positive thinking which is hard to get going on a Monday anyway.

Although, today it worked. Phew!

Happy Tuesday!