The little bulldog is coming on two years old in a few weeks and considering he’s a rescue from an unknown provenance (other than “somewhere in Kansas”) he has turned out to be a pretty good doggo. He’s attached to me in a way that is kind of ridiculous and adorable — he sits under my desk throughout the day, loves to play tug and chew on meat industry by-products and in general is very dashing and adorable.
Except.
He has his peccadillos — and most of them were part of his package deal. He is a resource guarder, which our dowager pug has learned to recognize and leave him alone. He’s also nervous about certain things — primarily the vaccuum cleaner and sometimes things that fall due to unexpected gravity. But the worst thing? He doesn’t like being moved when he’s comfortable.
That sounds funny, right? Except it isn’t. He and I got to bed much earlier than Esteban and the pug — so Ole gets himself comfortable on Esteban’s side of the king bed. Which is fine, except when Esteban comes to bed, Ole growls at him. Obviously, Esteban is gentle and sweet — he talks to Ole so that Ole knows it’s Daddy, and then gently picks him up to move him.
At that point, Ole springs to attack mode — but instead of attacking the top dog who dares to disturb his good snuggles, he then tries to attack the dowager pug, who is like “I am an old lady! Sir!” and the only thing that will stop his transference rage is the squirt bottle. At that point, EVERYONE in the house is now wide awake and somewhat upset. Avi usually flees the bedroom and goes to sleep in the living room where she won’t be disturbed by some asshole UFC wannabe Frenchie. Esteban is upset and hurt that the Frenchie thinks he’s being attacked and might be afraid of Esteban now. I’m upset because Avi usually has jumped down injudiciously in the dark and won’t come back to bed, and the Frenchie then acts overly dramatic and refuses to sniff or lick Esteban’s hand at all (but dramatically will sniff and lick me, like “No, Mommy, you’re okay, but Captain Man Hands over there is the worst, let’s divorce him.”)
I’ve tried having him sleep off the bed, but now he acts afraid of me at bedtime, that I’m going to snatch him off the bed — this has had the opposite effect on our happiness and his trepidation about being separated at bedtime. We even tried sleeping with just him and me in the bedroom while trying the off-bed sleeping arrangement, so that he didn’t feel threatened by Esteban or jealous of Avi, but it hasn’t helped. We’ve talked to our trainers about this issue and everything they’ve suggested, from turning on the lights to talking to him softly to adding treats (which makes things worse because he’s a resource guarder so he is worried she’s going to steal his treat then) hasn’t helped either.
I’m this close to just sleeping in the guest room by myself and letting the three of them work it out on their own.
I am having a bit of a lunker day. In December, I applied for several big deal fellowships that would possibly fund me for a year, which would give me a paid year to write without worrying about finding a paying job, and also was going to extend for a fourth year of funding, which would offer other perks like medical coverage, student loan deferment, federal graduate student status, etc). But today seems to be the magic day when we’re notified that no, no fellowship for you pal. I got two No Funding notices today in a one-two punch.
The most annoying thing is that they come in as an email to go log into the portal as a decision has been made, and for a brief moment, it could be ANYTHING in there. Maybe you got funding? Maybe not? It’s Shrödinger’s Fellowship. Then you log in, find the fellowship, click on a link that says Decision and wait for a PDF to load and then have to read until the second line, after the part that tells you that you applied, and then look for the word “regret.” Sure, they could just email you the “regret” document — but that would be too easy, right?
Believe it or not, I’m STILL paying for my undergraduate student loans from the 90’s. I had consolidated them in the early 00’s, which lengthened the payment structure (I thought that was a good thing at the time — smaller payments were good, right?)
There’s one more fellowship that has to report back. It’s kind of the biggest monetary one, which makes me even more pessimistic — it’s one that only one PhD student from each major gets nominated annually and has to then compete with all of the other PhD chosen horses from the other departments as though our dissertations were apples to apples and not, say, apples to carburetors and oranges to artificial heart valves and the sound of wind through the trees. How can you even?
It will probably be a STEM doctoral candidate who takes it home, but just the same, it was an honor to be nominated by the English department to be their delegate.
In other news, I’ve had a tap from a past professional contact for a potential freelancing project. Esteban has been fairly adamant that I should focus on creative projects only, but with the pending recession/depression, it goes against my grain to turn down a job. My blue collar ancestors are nodding with grim wisdom from the ether — awards for being smart are great for egos, but there’s nothing more reliable than money you earned from putting your (metaphysical) back into it.
The comments want to know which movie or TV show has the best musical score/soundtrack in your opinion? What makes it the best?
