the boy is mine

Tonight on my walk home with Harvey, a stranger accosted me and accused me of stealing my dog. He said he'd seen the dog before and that his mother knew the dog. Claimed that the way Harvey was jumping and barking at him was unique to him — as if Harvey was doing it out of some sort of familiarity. As if that issue isn't one of the main reasons I put him into puppy training! He jumps and barks at everyone! He's a puppy! He's a ball of friendly energy! Alright! Stopping. Deep breaths. 

I probably shouldn't be documenting this at all because it is just total insanity. It's just one of the many forms of nonsense I face being a lone woman on the streets of downtown Long Beach. But it got me thinking how much Harvey has grown and changed in the last 5 months. I got him when he was 13 weeks old and now he's about 8 months old. A lot of change happens in those months. It kind of feels like he's been here for much longer than 5 months. The little bitty baby dog is gone, replaced with a nearly 17 pound monster.

Also — has this dude never seen dog breeds? You'll find a lot of dogs within a breed who look a lot alike...Why does this bother me so much?!

Maybe it's quarantine related. I mean, I've been with this terror almost exclusively for 5 months straight. I'm the one who feeds, protects, and cuddles him. I'm the one who's cleaned pee and poo from nearly every part of this apartment, including my mattress at 3am. I'm the one who's gone up and down four flights of stairs multiple times a day so he can have a walk. I'm the one who's been bitten and scratched and pulled muscles trying to restrain him. I'm the one who's bathed him and clipped his hair. I'm the one who's dropped the money at the vet for shots, ear infections, neutering, and most recently, a UTI. How dare someone say he isn't mine. He is entirely mine. He is my everything. Saying he is not mine may very well be the craziest shit I've ever heard. The only thing that would possibly be crazier is if they said Gizmo wasn't mine. 

In summary, the boy is mine. And I've got 5 months of daily photo documentation in my phone if you need some fucking proof. 

i fell in love with a spineless narcissist

 

Quarantine is rough. While I'm not alone in feeling that way in a global sense, I am physically alone. Surely there are plenty of struggles that come with being isolated with a significant other, roommate, or family members, but I tend to think it would be a little less mind-melting than it is to be in lockdown alone. I may also be feeling that a little harder because I'm one of those lucky people who went through a break-up in quarantine. And worse yet, I went through a secret one. 

I've been in my own kind of isolation for the last couple of years — with this secret. Very few people in my life knew anything about it and it's not easy to explain. So, I'll just blurt it out: I was involved in an emotional affair with an engaged man. That's the first time I ever wrote that out and, let me tell you, it was a kick to the gut. I am not proud of it. Nevertheless, it was so incredibly hard to break off. Yes, you read that correctly, I was the one who broke it off. Not the engaged half of this equation. Some people are of the opinion that an emotional affair is not a legitimate affair, but I think a majority of those people are of the male persuasion. 

I guess it would also be harder to face yourself if you admitted that you were doing something blatantly wrong behind your fiancées' back. I guess if you considered an emotional affair legitimate you would have to take responsibility for leading someone who loved you on and wasting her time for the last 3 or so years. It's no doubt easier to drift back and forth on the line between friends and more-than-friends than it would be to break something off with someone you do have feelings for. I mean, in the end, that's what was happening. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to continue to text and call me late into the night, to surprise me with gifts and feel like a hero when it was convenient for him to do so. He liked showing up at my apartment and getting lavished with attention on his own terms. He wanted to maintain control and to feel like the good guy even when he wasn't. He didn't want any of that to stop. But he has to sleep at night and he has to look his fiancée in the eye and tell her he loves her. So, he has to tell himself that this is normal friend behavior. 

I fell in love with a spineless narcissist and I miss him. Don't be like me. 

the new normal.

COVID-19. The novel coronavirus. A global pandemic. Safer at home. Lockdown. Work from home. Zoom. Disinfecting. Toilet paper. 6 feet apart. Masks, masks, and more masks. These words are the new normals. This is the new reality. This is 2020. 

Beginning sometime in beginning of March, my boss began experimenting with working from home. He was able to see the writing on the wall a little bit clearer then our idiot President. He wanted to be ready for the possibility of working remotely, if necessary. He's not right often, but he was right on this call for sure. So, we did WFH test runs. The first one was a real reality check for me. I lost Gizmo, the absolute love of my life and my constant companion for 15 years, in early January. While I don't quite know how I got through January and February, that day in March was crushing. Being alone all day in our empty apartment was devastating. The quiet and stillness was suffocating. Going to work was a respite for me. It was the one place Gizmo was not missing because he was never there to begin with. The anxious pessimist in me just knew deep in my bones that we'd be working from home for a long time, and I knew if I had to be alone for that long I was going to have a nervous breakdown. That very day, in between bouts of manic pacing and rivers of tears, I went looking for puppies. 

Enter Harvey G. 

I found him on Recycler, which I hadn't heard of until that day and felt like maybe it was a weird, unscrupulous place to find a puppy. But it turns out, Recycler has been a source of classifieds for Los Angeles since 1974. In fact, the Recycler helped to launch the careers of many LA bands including the Dead Kennedys, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Hole. So, I guess in that sense, he's in somewhat good company, depending on your opinion of these bands. Despite my apprehension, on March 14th, 2020, my mother and I drove to Simi Valley to see if the little puppy from the Recycler was real. He was. He is. And now he's mine. 

Harvey entered my life as the world entered a global pandemic and the state of California issued a state wide stay-at-home order. He's never known a life without me working from home. He's never dealt with being home all day by himself for 8+ hours a day. He's rarely had a walk without me (and a good amount of other people) in a mask. He rarely sees anyone except for me. Most seemed to think it was perfect timing, but I'm not so sure. I made a lot of mistakes when Gizmo was a puppy that I feel I may be unintentionally repeating with Harvey. Now at the time I got Gizmo, I was deeply depressed and drowning in grief. I shut myself in. I didn't socialize so I certainly didn't socialize him. And so he wasn't friendly to strangers or other dogs. He was more than a little neurotic and clingy and I blamed myself. God knows I loved Gizmo probably more than I should have, but I had planned to be so different with my next dog. So far, I don't feel like I am not doing a very good job, but for very different reasons. 

Now, Harvey and I have been in quarantine for 154 days now. 5 months. 22 weeks. 3,679 hours. However you want to dice it. Doesn't look like this is ending any time soon. So, in an effort to do better despite the challenges I cannot control, I signed Harvey up for six weeks of pet training at the local Petsmart. It's a small, socially distanced class, but it's an opportunity for him to be around other dogs and strangers and to learn some skills that will hopefully make it easier to go forward in socializing him more fully. 

That is, if we're ever allowed to socialize again. 

hello 2020

 

Wow. I haven't used this blog since 2013. Seven flippin' years. According to researchers, the body replaces itself with a largely new set of cells every 7 to 10 years. So, that means I'm a brand new person since my last blog post. Sorry, it's just science. 

It's actually kind of wild. In January of 2013, I was a 29 year old college student; I was a senior and in my last months of hell. I was living in a large, yet somewhat dumpy apartment in Lindenwold, NJ with only my little black mess, Gizmo. I was working part-time at DSW and trying to work out a way to get an internship in California. Now, I'm 36 years old and I'm living in a smaller, yet nicer apartment in Long Beach, CA with only my little blonde terror, Harvey. I'm working (from home now) full-time at Roland U.S. Corporation and working out a way to not lose my mind. A lot of things have changed and yet so much has remained the same. 

I could go on and on and pick apart the expectations I had at 29 vs. the reality of 36, but I don't know how productive that would be. I'm not sure I'm ready to throw myself off that cliff. I'm trying to keep myself on solid ground. I stopped documenting my life in order to keep my head above water. I was a journal keeper most of my life, but after a few months of living in California, writing about my days got me in a very dark place. Documenting that I did nothing and saw no one was defeating. Dictating all of my heart breaks and disappointments got to be too much. I came to California with a lot of optimism. I was looking forward to leaving a lot of ghosts in NJ, living closer to my mother again, and getting a fresh start in the sunshine. It'd be an understatement to say that things didn't turn out so sunny.

I didn't open this old blog to rehash the last seven years. Overall, what's done is done and cannot be undone. But maybe in order to regain my former self, I have to regain parts of myself I've left behind. Maybe I need to have something to read in another seven years, even if it's only me who's going to read it.