Just Another Day

Well, well.....after a whole, entire, gut-wrenching day of searching for this dang dog....and Mikey locked him in the frickin garage. I could seriously smack him silly for it. I must have asked him five million times if he remembered letting the dog upstairs or outside, because Chili is definitely his dog. There are some of the others who have bonded more with me, but Chili isn't one of them. I mean, he'll sit with me, and come when I call, but he's Mikey's little guy through and through. Mikey gets way more upset than I do when he runs off, but he still doesn't pay enough attention to him when he takes him outside or upstairs. It drives me crazy. I'm constantly telling him that he can't just let them out in the yard and come back inside to make coffee or whatever, you have to stand there with them so they don't leave the yard or go running off after someone's dog. Granted, I should have checked every nook and cranny in the house as well, I can't believe I didn't, I feel SO stupid. But Mike was so convinced that someone must have let him out whether they knew they did or not. He waited until it was almost dark and we'd been searching the town all day before he mentions that he went in there that morning to check on his glass and Chili was with him! Why didn't he check there first, knowing he'd gone in there. I'm so annoyed with him, as usual.

It's embarrassing to have to tell neighbors that you lost your dog, they think you're so irresponsible and thoughtless. And we called the dog officer and the local SPCA, and then you have to call them all back and thank them and tell them you found the dog. It just sucks. It took over the whole day because both Mike and I worry so much about our animals. We really are good pet owners, they get treated better than some people's children, for sure. But sometimes circumstances arise which are out of our control. But people are still very judgemental.
The stressfulness of the day was only exacerbated when we realized, shortly after we noticed Chili missing, that Seneca (our other and oldest dog) had done something to his right front paw. It looked as if he just broke his nail on something and busted his paw, but he was limping around and would screech if someone attempted to touch his paw. So we had to take him to the vet and couldn't look for Chili right away, at least not as thoroughly as we would have liked. So that probably contributed to making Mikey forget about going in the garage and messed up our search making it so much longer. It was just a bad, crappy day with a lot of stress over the dogs.

If Mike could just pull himself together and act like a man about shit, life would be a whole lot easier. But he's such a baby about everything. It's humiliating to deal with him when he acts like that. I called the vet beforehand to obtain directions, just to try to make things easier so we weren't searching for it with all the dogs in the car. Because we didn't just take Seneca who was hurt, we also had to take three of our other dogs because my brothers freak out if they bark while we're out. So we took three with us, put two in their kennel because it only fits two, and left one out because she's good; and Chili, of course, we thought was missing at the time so he stayed in the garage. So, we're all stressed about the dog missing, and Seneca is hurt, and the dogs are all stuffed in our little Honda Civic and we're on our way to the vet, just across town. It's not the regular vet my Mom goes to, either, because she refused to change vets when she moved and her vet is, like, over an hour away. So that was out for sure. No way was I going to haul us all that far away. So I found a different vet, in town, which is why I had never been there before. So Mike decides he's going to look up how to get there on our phone GPS thingy, which sucks and never gets us to the right place. And the stupid thing is telling us that the vet is right in front of us on the Exeter side of the highway, and I'm telling Mike that there's no way because I called for directions and the woman, who was IN the building told me that it was on the other side of the highway, in BRENTWOOD. Hence, the name Brentwood Country Veterinarian Hospital. But he's like, "NO, NO, NO it HAS to be here! The red dot is saying it's RIGHT here!" And I'm like, "Those fuckin' things are wrong all the time. It's just a satellite or something and it's just getting you sort of close. It sucks man, listen to me, the woman said it was OVER the highway. She made it very clear. It's a big green farmhouse, with a big red BARN, do you see a barn anywhere near us? Hum, DO YOU SEE A BARN?!?" And he just won't give up, and he's driving onto little side roundabout streets into office parks and shit all, "IT MUST BE HERE! It's telling me it's here!" And I'm finally saying to him, "Then you call her, you ask her what she meant if you're so convinced it's on this side of the highway." And after yelling at me that there was nowhere for him to pull over to use the phone and why didn't I just call her; and he's driving like a total asshole, pulling u-ies (is that how one would spell such a thing? You know what I mean), he finally calls the office himself. And of course, unsurprising to myself, she explained that they were, indeed, located on the OTHER side of the highway. That he needed to drive a bit further than he had gone the first time." And when I said, "Well, there now. Why can't you ever just listen to me, man. If you ever listened to me, we'd be there, and we wouldn't be this upset, there was no need for this. I think you owe me an apology." Do you think he gave me an apology? Oh, No. He actually had the nerve to continue to blame it on me; because I should have been more definite and sure about where we were going and I would have known that it was further than a mile down the road on the opposite side of the overpass. Because he did drive over the bridge just less than a mile initially, just to try to prove I was wrong. But the way the road is, with all the trees and houses, you can't see ahead very far, and they were basically just around the corner. How annoying is that? He does shit like that all the time.

With the way he acted on the way there, and the way he acts in general, in public, I didn't want him to come inside the vet office with me. So I made it seem like I just thought he should wait with the dogs outside because it was pretty hot yesterday. So I brought Seneca in and got him all signed in. No sooner was I inside the office with the doctor than I hear him out in the reception area harassing the receptionist. Asking her questions about the cost of this and that, and what about advantage, and what about the tracking device you can put in the dog's ear, he just goes on and on. He tells everyone everywhere we go that we're opening a head shop. Now that's fine, if you happen to be speaking to your target audience. But when the person you are conversing with is, say, a very elderly woman who clearly does not smoke weed, and probably doesn't even know what a head shop is, just spare the poor woman the confusion. You should see some of the looks I get when he's talking to people. He'll tell them really personal information they didn't ask for, or the worst is when he asks someone for help in a store when I already know what I want and where it is, I'm just still deciding. Like I'll be looking at the meat, thinking about what I should get, and he'll go to the butcher counter and make someone come out and stand there and tell him about each cut and ask a MILLION questions, it drives me CRAZY. And I can't even go anywhere without him because I don't have my drivers licence. Dear God, I hope I get it back soon, it's all a matter of money at this point. As soon as I pay up, I'm good to go.

Man, I have to stop bitching today. I have so, so much to do today. My brother wants to leave to get to Westport tonight at six. So I have to get the house all cleaned up so that it's not a disaster by the time I get back on Sunday with my Mom. I mean, it will probably be a disaster anyway, but at least I'll know I did what I could. But besides cleaning up the whole house, I have to get myself ready too. I really should go to the storage unit where all our crap still is from when we just moved, I need to get some clothes. I only have a small bit of my clothes out because we're staying in the basement, which really sucks. It's not really refinished; it's not dirt or anything, but it's not a real living space either. We're supposed to be refinishing it slowly, but it's going much slower than anticipated because it's expensive and time consuming. So we've made a bedroom size area as livable as possible, and it's alright. It's livable is what it is. But dreary and dusty and I don't want my clothes down there until it's all painted and stuff. But if I'm going to be working in my Mom's store I guess I need some nicer clothes. I've been told this Westport place is kind of fancy, it's, like, all mansions and rich people. We'll see. Last time my brother was down there, that girl that was in that show Sabrina, The Teenage Witch came in to buy mirrors or something and Scooter waited on her. That's kind of weird. I wonder if I'll see anyone famous?