Cynophobia, or The Irrational Fear of Dogs

Before we go any further, I'd like to ask you to look over to the left. See the picture of The Dog? See his meek expression? See how he's about as far from aggressive and intimidating as it is possible to get? Most of the time, when we're out walking him and we come upon someone new, their reaction is (a) to ignore him altogether because he's approximately the size of a body building ant or (b) to exclaim "Aww, puppy!" and pet him and generally fall in love with him.

Until this morning. This morning, I witnessed something so completely bizarre that it defies all logic. It actually boggles my mind. We have this neighbor who lives in our building and who, up until now, seemed pretty sophisticated and worldly. She's always on her cell phone sounding very confident and commanding. She dresses like a pro. Oh, and did I mention? She's a grown woman. And as it turns out, she's a sophisticated, worldly, confident, commanding, grown woman who is DEATHLY AFRAID of dogs.

The Dog and I were just heading out on our morning walk when she was entering the building. Now mind you, we were a good 15 feet away from her front door and given our slow and meandering pace, she could easily have unlocked her door, made it into her apartment, and re-locked her door before we ever even passed her. But irrational fear being irrational and all, she chose instead to emit a very high squealing noise and then run out onto the grass in her high heels. At which point one of her shoes got stuck in some mud, so she left the shoe. In the middle of the lawn. Then? She LEAPED over the hedge and ran onto her porch and--I'm not even joking--she HID IN THE STORAGE CLOSET. From my dog. My little 19-lb, fuzzy, not-at-all-threatening, cute and cuddly dog. Mind: Boggled.

Oh, and in a note of celebration, I made two (two!) phone calls this morning they were both normal and straightforward and did not make me hate the world. To borrow a catch phrase from McDonald's, I'm lovin' it.

Bee Happy

There's a wasp party going on out on my balcony right now and I am NOT PLEASED. Three of them first arrived on Wednesday, so we sprayed bug spray all around in the hopes of destroying any nests they may have built in the cracks. I was hopeful because yesterday, there were only two flying around out there. And today? There are six. On the plus side, they are kind enough to leave my balcony and go back to wherever they come from in the evenings, which is the only time we ever go out there. On the not so much plus side, I feel like I live in a beehive and it. is. HORRIFYING.

I fell asleep on the couch for all of 20 minutes this afternoon because every time I closed my eyes, I could hear the buzzing echoing in my ears. Ok, granted I can't actually hear them with the balcony door closed, but I have been blessed with an (overly) active imagination. Plus, the cats? Yeah, they're going NUTS. They've been sitting by the door all day long and every time one of the wasps flies a little too close to the glass, they throw themselves at the door. And I'll admit, watching them crash into the glass was pretty entertaining, the first 15 or 20 times it happened. But they have now done approximately 8,729 times and the entertainment value? IT IS GONE.

Overthinking the Wardrobe

Things I learned as I was looking through my closet this morning:

-I have a total of 6 white summer shirts. One of them is brand new and has never been worn or washed. Out of the five remaining ones, three have pink stains on them from being washed with red things, one has a marinara sauce stain on it, and the other one is now eight years old. You'd think I'd have realized by now that I should just stay away from the white genre of clothing.

-The cats have been using my dresses as a scratching post. Bad cats. Baaaaad.

-The last time I threw out/gave away a pair of pants? Probably in high school. Seriously, I have an ungodly number of pants. Except that at least 50% of them are too small. And then, there are the ones with the holes, the ones with the paint stains, the ones with the broken buttons and zippers. Leaving me with a total of maybe 8 pairs of usable pants. And yet, I have about 30 sitting in my closet. Why?

-I also have an ungodly number of sweaters. And yet, all winter long, I rotate among the same four. WHY?

And as a result of all this early morning pondering, not only was I late to work, but in my hurry, I also tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Gold star for me.

Shopping in the Hallway

Since it's almost the beginning of (yet another) school year, all the professors and grad students and administrative staff have cleaned out their offices and have left unwanted furniture out in the hall, in the hopes that at some point, the surplus people will come and take it away. We are also all hoping that until that happens, there is no fire in our building because all those desks and bookshelves that are sitting around aimlessly? (a) They would make great kindling and (b) they would block our escape route and probably cause a stampede.

Of course, until the surplus people come, all this stuff is a free-for-all so my officemate and I decided that today would be an excellent day to go out and scavenge us some new furniture. As a result of which, I have a BRAND! NEW! DESK! Except that by "brand new," what I really mean is "manufactured three decades ago." And I think at one point in its life, it used to be part of a bigger desk, but right now, it works perfectly. It's the right size. It's made of wood. There aren't too many scratches on it. AND it has three semi-functional drawers. "Functional" because they are big and you can put things in them. "Semi" because they don't close. Or rather, they don't STAY closed. And after I spent my first 45 minutes at this desk closing drawers that immediately sprang open again, I decided that my sanity would best be preserved if I taped the damn things shut.

And all was well. Until I needed to get a file out of one of the drawers and in the process of taking the tape off the desk, I ended up pulling out two screws and the drawer collapsed onto my foot. And tomorrow? I'm bringing in my tool set and challenging the desk to a duel.

Going Red, Going Green

A couple of nights ago, McMoose and I went a-wandering around our new apartment complex in the hopes of coming across the recycling bins. Needless to say, the search was in vain, so the next day, I called the apartment management to see if they could help me out.

Here's how the conversation SHOULD HAVE gone:
Me: Hi, I'm new to the community, and I was wondering if there are any recycling bins on the property.
Apartment person: No, we don't, sorry.
Me: Okay, thanks for your help. Good-bye.

Since my phone conversations are NEVER that straightforward, here's how it ACTUALLY went:
Me: Hi, we're new to the community, and--
Apartment person, cutting me off mid-sentence: Oh, welcome! How are you liking it?
Me: Um. Fine. Thanks. But the reason I was calling was--
Apartment person, cutting me off AGAIN: Oh, were you wondering about the pool? We always have new people asking about the pool.
Me: Nooooo. I was calling to find out if you have any recycling bins on the property.
Apartment person: We have a valet trash service, so if you put your trash outside your door, they'll get it for you.
Me: Uh, yeah...do they get your recycling too?
Apartment person: No, just the trash.
Me: O-kay...is there a recycling bin then?
Apartment person: We have a trash compactor, so if your trash gets filled up on one of the days when the valet trash service doesn't come, you can take it there.
Me: Right. I know. But what about RECYCLING?
Apartment person: We're in negotiations.
Me: You're in...negotiations? Ok...so...does that mean you don't have recycling bins right now?
Apartment person: We're a recycling friendly community and we used to.
Me: But you don't have them now, right?
Apartment person: We're in negotiations.
Me: Yeah, ok, thanks for your time.

I'm starting to think that maybe this person should go back to DARE so she can learn to JUST SAY NO.

Firestarters

Last night, for the first time since we moved, we went grocery shopping. Which means that for the past two weeks, we've had no food in the house. So at some point last week, when I wanted to fry some chip-like things and discovered that we had no oil, I decided to improvise by baking them instead. I mean, it's healthier, it's less guilt-inducing--I had nothing to lose. Or so I thought. As it turned good, some cookie batter had dripped into the oven during my baking frenzy of the day before and as a result, we had a fire in the oven. A small fire. But a fire nonetheless. And I walked around for a week feeling very foolish because seriously. Who over the age of 8 starts a fire in the oven?

But today, for about 10 minutes, I stopped feeling so bad about myself. Because today? My office mate nearly started a fire in the microwave. Apparently the container that her lunch was sitting in wasn't so much microwave safe and as a result, about 20 seconds after she turned the microwave on, a sickeningly sweet smell began wafting into the office. By the time she got to it and turned it off, the container looked like something that belongs in the Museum of Modern art and the crab cake? Let's just say it looked...well done. Very well done. So I walked around feeling mightily cocky--until I remembered the time a few years ago when I started a fire in my microwave by burning a bag of popcorn. A fire that was so bad that the interior of the microwave was turned permanently brown.

So now, my office smells like burned plastic AND I feel foolish again.

Cat Wrangling

Being the optimistic person I am, I made sure to put Yellow Cat and Black Cat in the bathroom this morning, just in case the maintenance people happen to have some free time on their hands and decide to come take a look at our pool/kitchen. Yellow Cat (aka my sweet, loving, friendly, beautiful kitty) was highly cooperative, as he always is, and allowed me to capture him and carry him to the bathroom, where he promptly jumped into the linen closet and fell asleep on a towel. Note to self: wash towels. Again.

And then, there's Black Cat. Aka McMoose's mean, manipulative, not-at-all cute monstrosity. Black Cat and I have a very love-hate relationship and most of the time, it's smack dab in the middle of the "hate" region. The only two times when we're ever in the love region is: (1) when I first wake up in the morning and she follows me around and sometimes permits me to pet her and (2) when I let her eat leaves from my plant. Needless to say, the Capture of Black Cat was an epic tale involving bloodshed (mine), hair loss (hers), and bruised feelings (both of ours). In the end, I finally managed to lure her with a cat treat, trap her in a closet, wrap her in a pillowcase and wrangle her into the bathroom, where she threw a temper tantrum and kicked every every piece of bed linen off the shelves in the linen closet. Note to self: wash bed linens. Again.

Meanwhile, the dog took all the chaos as an opportunity to get into the pantry and gorge himself on cat food. Which means that he'll probably throw up in his cage and I'll have to wash his blanket. Again.