Last weekend, I repaid a favor I'd owed an old coworker for a while -- I housesat while he and his wife were off in the Caribbean. They'd helped me move at least once before (possibly twice, I'm not quite sure) and had invited me over for dinner on countless occasions, so when N. emailed me to ask if I'd spend a few days minding the dog and looking after the cats, I figured I should say yes. I wasn't terribly enthused -- I'm a homebody, you see. I like being in my own house, sleeping in my own bed, and being annoyed by my own pet. It suits my anti-social nature. Other than going to my mom's house, I don't like any sort of adventure that doesn't end with going to sleep in my own bed, thank you very much. But, as I said, I owed a favor. Plus, N. and J. have a beautiful house, with a big-screen TV and a Playstation 2. So, last Thursday, I headed off to the wilds of Randolph to play petsitter for five days.
Staying in someone else's house is weird, when they aren't there. They live on an insanely busy street -- there were minor traffic accidents almost every night that I was there. The first night, while getting ready for bed, I heard a screeeeeech... thud! from the street outside, and looked out the window to see two cars limping off to the side of the road. I went outside to see if the drivers needed help, but by the time I'd gotten dressed and found my shoes and cell phone, they were pleasantly exchanging insurance information, and seemed fine except for a broken headlight and dented bumper between them. They didn't even notice me, so I headed back in to bed. I got used to falling asleep to the sound of squealing tired and breaking glass, after a couple of nights of bolting awake, certain that the sounds meant that someone was breaking into the house. The accident on my last night there was the most spectacular -- someone turning out of a parking lot across the street was broadsided. Everyone in the cars seemed fine, but there a whole herd of police cars and fire trucks and ambulances swooped in, and stayed for about 45 minutes.
N. and J. have three very cute cats -- my favorite was their little Persian, who looked less like a cat than a very battered Muppet. She's grey, with a face so squashed-in that her nose is concave. Her fur is so long and fine that if you look at her, she tangles. She can't breathe very well through the squished nose, and she seems to have a cold, so she sneezes and snorts a lot. She also loved me deeply, and spent most of the weekend curled up on my lap, gazing into my eyes adoringly, and sneezing very wetly into my face. She'd creep into my lap (I'd barely notice, as she weighs about 4 pounds) and settle in with a contented sigh, followed by a deep, wet snort. Her favorite thing was to sit on the arm of the sofa and press her face to me forehead, snort, and go to sleep. She'd have stayed like that for days if I hadn't moved.
N. and J. also have a dog. A very, very hyperactive dog. A cute dog, yes, but an exhausting one. Also, a crotch-sniffer. I figured watching him would be easy -- he sleeps in a doggy-crate in their bedroom at night, and he spends the day playing in the enormous backyard. He has another crate stuffed with blankets on the porch, and as many toys as a dog could want, so I figured hey, he's happy outside. Ha. He's happy outside as long as he doesn't know there's someone inside. My first night there, I fed him when I got home, then planned to leave him outside until bedtime. Once he'd snarfed down his dinner, he scratched and cried and howled at the door until I felt guilty, and let him in. He raced in wagging happily, stuck his nose into a part of my anatomy I'd rather keep private, chased the cats, gnawed on my arms, ate the cat's food, stuck his nose into parts of the cats anatomies that I know they wanted kept private, gnawed on me some more, raced all over the house... I lasted about half an hour before putting him back outside, hoping he'd run off some energy. More howling and scratching at the door, until I caved and let him in again for a repeat of the earlier performance. I tried playing with him, to tire him out, but he just got wilder and wilder until I lured him back outdoors by opening the back door and throwing his chew toy out onto the porch. The instructions N. and J. had left said "When in doubt, leave the dog outside," so I knew they wouldn't think me a horrible dog-abuser if I left him out there until bedtime... I still felt guilty, though. Every night, I would come home, feed him, then creep back inside, turn off all the lights, and creep around in my socks, hoping that he would forget I was there and be content outdoors. I knew he wasn't cold or hungry, he just wanted company... but when he was inside, I couldn't take my eyes off him for a second, or he'd get into something. The only way to amuse him seemed to be to let him have an arm or two to chew on, which gets a bit old after a few seconds. I like dogs, I really do... but if I ever get one, it's going to be a much older, calmer one.
Last Saturday, Claire and Josh came to visit. We met up in Boston, and ate yummy dim sum in Chinatown, then spent the day wandering around all over town -- we bought pounds and pounds of gummy candies in a Chinese grocery, hunted all over Chinatown for good Sanrio stuff (which, alas, we didn't find) saw a teenage girl get busted for shoplifting at Newbury Comics, and ate dinner in Quincy Market. The spiffy new budget is working well enough that I could afford to eat (though Claire surprised me by paying for the yummy dim sum, which was very sweet of her indeed) and shop a bit, while still being able to pay my rent and a few bills the same week. Hurrah! Of course, I'll be weeping over money again in a couple of months when my student loans come due, but even those won't be so bad -- I consolidated, and won't be paying as much as I'd feared. Still, at this rate, I'll be paying them off until I'm 59 years old. Yippee. I need to marry rich, I think. Any takers? I can cook, and I'm housebroken!
Work has been very, very odd for the past few days. On Wednesday, feeling bored on my afternoon smoke break, I made a small paper cow. I put it on the circulation desk, and my coworkers and I decided to leave it there and see how long it took for my boss to notice. (She's a bit of a micro-manager. If a pencil is out of place, she notices.) My coworker Jane made a cow herself, and we put them in unobtrusive places on the desk, and waited for hilarity to ensue. On Thursday morning, I came in and found a that, in addition to the two white cows, Jane had made a small pink cow -- that was the one my boss noticed. She loved it. She thought the cows were the greatest thing, ever. (They are really cute. We call them morale-boosters, because they make us giggle. Hey, we take our fun where we can.) She immediately went to her office and found a stack of colored paper, and told me to make more cows -- she said we should each take a half hour a day to make cows. She also asked if she could have the pink one -- she wanted one for her office. Later on, she took a bright yellow one we'd made home. When I left Friday, there were about 15 little paper cows scattered around the circulation area -- a pale blue one next to my monitor, a few white ones hiding behind the tape dispensers, and a whole rainbow of them -- lavendar, green, yellow, pink, blue, and white -- lined up along a shelf behind the desk. We joked that we'd give out cows to our favorite students -- and when someone was rude to one of us, we'd mutter "No cow for you!" at their backs at they walked away. Much fun, yes, but very, very strange. I fear that when I get to work Tuesday (holiday Monday, hurrah!) the cows will have taken over the library.
