Last night in St. Cloud. It seems hard to believe that tomorrow night, I won't see Cache running gleefully down the stairs and hallway at bedtime, excited about sharing the bed, and that there won't be any more late night Desperate Housewives watching with Elissa for a long time. This is what happens when you take on someone else's life--you get comfortable in it, and you don't realize how much you're going to miss the everyday occurrences till you have to leave. I'll miss my messy little basement room.
I can't believe that with all the technological advances of the modern age, we don't yet have instantaneous transporters.

On the other hand, I will be seeing my boy and my dog soon (and my cat, gerbil, hermit crab and fishie), so there's something to be happy about.

On a happier note, Elissa and I taught Cache to play dead! I must remember to take a video of him doing it before I go.

Yay! I'm happy because I'm going to be having some cashflow in the next week or two...
Aaron is doing a Craigslist deal for me in Dallas on one of my bags I don't want anymore, and I got a really great upgrade phone from AT&T that I can sell on Craigslist as well, since I already have a phone I love. The income from the bag will be able to cover a shirt I bought here that I've been feeling a bit guilty about, and the phone...well let's just say,

A&E Boots, here I come!



I figure since I'm currently unemployed, the least I can do is cover my frivolous purchases the best I can.

Having been in St. Cloud for a while, in addition to hanging out with Elissa, which I haven't really gotten to do since college (three years ago!), I've also gotten a chance to get to know Cache, her dog. Cache is the first dog I've gotten close to other than Dwight. It's fairly difficult to get to know most people's dogs in the way that their owners know them--and because of this, other people's dogs pretty much end up just seeming like dogs. Nothing special, just some creature who exists in someone else's house.

But with Cache, it's different. Not only have I fed and pottied him more than a couple times, he's also my sleeping buddy, since the cats get to sleep with Aaron B. and Elissa. So I've come to discover the way Cache gives "hugs" on the couch by putting his front paws around your lap, and then slowly collapses so that his torso is in your lap, and then twists upside down so that his tongue hangs out and his chest is in the perfect place for a nice scratch. And the way he takes advantage of any weakness in the morning--if he sees me open my eyes just once, he will not rest until we are up and out of bed, on the way to potty and preferably food as well.

In getting to know Cache, I've been surprised at seeing how easily everything seems to go for him. First, it was the fluid way his joints moved as he walked, in contrast to Dwight's stiffer-legged gait. Cache seems as indestructible as I had always thought all dogs were before I got Dwight. He is perfectly fine to be grabbed by his scruff, thrown around in rough play, and to slip around on the hardwood floor. Second, on his first ever trip to the dog park, Cache seemed to immediately grasp how to communicate with other dogs. Whereas Dwight at first seemed to only understand vocal communication--if a dog barked at him, no matter how small the dog was, he would back down; otherwise, he would continue chewing and licking another dog's ears even if the other dog's hackles were standing up. Finally, Cache takes negative reinforcement fairly well--his ego seeming quite as indestructible as everything else about him. Dwight, on the other hand, kennels himself if I happen to raise my voice.

In the end, these difference don't matter much in the scheme of things. Having Cache as a comparison has merely helped me to understand how much of Dwight is dog-ness, and how much of him is pure Dwight-ness.


But on more contemplative days, I can't help but to notice how Cache's differences from Dwight seem to mirror the differences between Elissa's life and mine. Elissa's life in St. Cloud is ordered--things stay where they belong, and the kitchen table is rarely, if ever, obscured with unfinished projects and scrap paper. She has things to do and a schedule on which to do them...and she follows this schedule for the most part. After three years of med school, I've gotten used to eating when I feel like it and taking my fun wherever and whenever I can get it, even if it means driving around a dead city at 4 am in the morning. I believe it was similar for Elissa while she was finishing her master's degree just a couple of months ago. But her life now includes a sunlit house with a deck, a huge, kelly green yard, and a dog who seems to encapsulate the order and all-american-ness of it all.

And so, on these days, I wonder: if I find a dream job, and move into my dream house, will Dwight magically stop limping forever and become a perfectly healthy dog, to mirror my perfectly healthy life? I suppose one can always hope.

Currently blogging to you from Elissa's couch in St. Augusta, Minnesota! Cache, Elissa and Aaron B.'s dog, is laying on the carpet in front of me making a huge mess chewing up his rope/tire toy, and I have a view of the deck and bird feeder outside from where I sit. I am in love with their deck, despite the fact that I have not spent much time on it. I can just envision myself sitting on the deck on a comfy chair to drink some sort of hot liquid and read a book every morning. Of course, I have not done so, but I could very much envision myself doing so....

On that note--why are drinking hot liquids considered such a posh, grown-up thing to do? I see people my age hanging out at coffeehouses all the time, sipping an indescript hot liquid from a cardboard cup that closely resembles a baby's sippy cup, and then either tapping away on a laptop or reading a book, and looking very satisfied with their lives, and how they turned out.
This makes me wonder if Aaron's strong aversion to hot liquids of any kind (though he will lift his ban occasionally for tomato basil soup from Le Madeleine) is connected to his equally strong aversion to "growing up."
His theory is that people grow up and turn into stodgy adults by first pretending to be an adult, until they forget how it was before they started pretending. So we keep ourselves young by letting ourselves do what we feel like, when we feel like, as much as possible. And I defend Aaron's right to wear his pants at whatever level he chooses, and his right to let his beard get as long as he wants it to on the weekends to his mother, who I sometimes think, wishes she had Bill Gates as a son...with or without the money, she just wants the sweater vests and pants at belly button level.

Signing out--I am off to rot my brain by reading Cosmo magazine, which I bought yesterday at the grocery store on impulse.