Life's little doldrums
What if you kept getting up each morning and nothing crazy happened? And you went through your entire day with nothing out of whack?
Sounds like heaven? For a writer and observer, it sucks.
My life has become…boring. I get up, eat breakfast, make my daughter’s lunch, read the paper and take her to school. I go to work and write stuff. I answer questions and I answer the phone. I talk a walk, eat my lunch and continue to do the day-to-day stuff that I always do.
I go home, start dinner, eat dinner, turn on jazz, and read. I brush my teeth, I go to bed.
For a week now, nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
And it sucks.
Not that I’m wishing my life to be more complicated. It already is. It’s just gotten a little stale.
Of course, a few days ago, I was in Italy, so I’m sure that has a lot to do with it.
There was one interesting happening. Wednesday morning, the neighbor’s dog kept barking. It woke us all up, since it sounded like the dog was in our yard.
It was.
I got up at 3 a.m. to see what I could see. My wife was up. Both kids were up, but didn’t actually get out of bed. I tried ear plugs. The dog’s barks cut through the foam. I had had enough.
I went outside to investigate.
The dog, a new one that’s older and completely untrained, is barking and growling at me from the neighbor’s driveway.
“Shuddup!” I growled.
It snarled louder. And barked. Then sat and started shaking uncontrollably. It was completely out of its comfort zone, alone in front of the house – and I couldn’t get by to let it into the backyard. So I talked to it calmly. For 10 minutes.
Then I went back to bed.
Either the neighbor heard me, or the dog felt comforted. It didn’t bark from the time I went back to bed until 5:30 a.m., when I got up.
Call me the dog whisperer.
I was hoping for some juicy confrontation last night.
“You mind if I go over to the neighbors and talk to them about their dog?” she asked when she got home.
Delicious. Something to witness. Something to write about.
“Go right ahead,” I said. “And be nice.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” she said. “Two nights in a row that dog woke us and the kids up.”
She was in a mood; sharp-tongued and ready to make her point. Anything could happen, and probably would.
Alas, the neighbors weren’t home. And the dog didn’t make a peep last night.
The life doldrums continue.
Sounds like heaven? For a writer and observer, it sucks.
My life has become…boring. I get up, eat breakfast, make my daughter’s lunch, read the paper and take her to school. I go to work and write stuff. I answer questions and I answer the phone. I talk a walk, eat my lunch and continue to do the day-to-day stuff that I always do.
I go home, start dinner, eat dinner, turn on jazz, and read. I brush my teeth, I go to bed.
For a week now, nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
And it sucks.
Not that I’m wishing my life to be more complicated. It already is. It’s just gotten a little stale.
Of course, a few days ago, I was in Italy, so I’m sure that has a lot to do with it.
There was one interesting happening. Wednesday morning, the neighbor’s dog kept barking. It woke us all up, since it sounded like the dog was in our yard.
It was.
I got up at 3 a.m. to see what I could see. My wife was up. Both kids were up, but didn’t actually get out of bed. I tried ear plugs. The dog’s barks cut through the foam. I had had enough.
I went outside to investigate.
The dog, a new one that’s older and completely untrained, is barking and growling at me from the neighbor’s driveway.
“Shuddup!” I growled.
It snarled louder. And barked. Then sat and started shaking uncontrollably. It was completely out of its comfort zone, alone in front of the house – and I couldn’t get by to let it into the backyard. So I talked to it calmly. For 10 minutes.
Then I went back to bed.
Either the neighbor heard me, or the dog felt comforted. It didn’t bark from the time I went back to bed until 5:30 a.m., when I got up.
Call me the dog whisperer.
I was hoping for some juicy confrontation last night.
“You mind if I go over to the neighbors and talk to them about their dog?” she asked when she got home.
Delicious. Something to witness. Something to write about.
“Go right ahead,” I said. “And be nice.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” she said. “Two nights in a row that dog woke us and the kids up.”
She was in a mood; sharp-tongued and ready to make her point. Anything could happen, and probably would.
Alas, the neighbors weren’t home. And the dog didn’t make a peep last night.
The life doldrums continue.
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