As I sit down and start to write this I am literally at my wits end. It is January the 4th, my first day back at work since December 18th and that day was my Christmas party so I was hammered drunk by 2pm.
What this means is that I am shattered. I didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off at 6.30pm, I somehow managed to drive with my one good eye to open up my office and crack on reading all the “New Year New Job” social media posts that pepper this time of year in my line of work…
My actual day at work was pretty shitty, but it is what it is, and I head back home driving about 30 miles an hour all the way because the sun is streaming into my only functioning eye. As I round the corner into my road I am greeted by every member of my family in the street screaming at something or someone.
I let out a pretty audible sigh as I saw this because I was tired, I don’t know what has happened, or what I can do about it, but I know that I am already over whatever it is.
I got out of my truck to see Fred now laying on the floor close to tears and Laura shouting “Poppy” at the top of her lungs.
At this point it is important to give some details on “Poppy”. For the last 10 or so years Laura has “gently encouraged” me to get a dog. A combination of us moving a lot and me wanting a dog as much as I want to go to the beach meant I had managed to give this literally zero consideration, however now we are settled and Harriet is old enough to bug the shit out of me about it every minute of every day meant I caved.
In February I put a deposit down on a dog in Tennessee, the exact type I would have been happy with, it also meant I had kicked the can down the road as the puppies weren’t coming until next February. Approximately 25 minutes after I paid the deposit for the new puppy, Laura started texting me pictures of rescue puppies dotted around central Florida. Another $100 I might as well have burned.
This continued for about a month and it is no exaggeration to say I would get 15 pictures of different random dogs a day… Eventually in a moment of weakness I cracked and two hours later I was in a parking lot the other side of town picking up what I was told was a Beagle/Lab mix puppy that would grow to 25lbs.
13 weeks later this rescue puppy weighs 23 lbs already and we are about 95% sure she’s about 1/3 of her fully grown size.
Also… This dog is a fucking menace. A literal fucking tornado of a menace. I try not to swear when I write these, but I have no other way of expressing just how fed up I am.
So back to tonight. Laura is screaming Poppy, Fred is on the floor in tears and Harriet could not care less. I survey the situation and figure I should go to my seemingly injured Son first. As I head over, my daughter explains that the dog has got out.
It’s the first day I have been out of the house in weeks. I’ve had a pretty crappy day and now the bastard dog I never wanted has got out.
Along with Laura screaming she is squeezing some sort of ice hockey puck shaped rubber toy that makes a high pitched squeaking noise. I am pretty certain that this is the noise that is constantly played in Hell. To the dog however it is like mermaids siren. She comes running in straight into the house to start what has now as I sit here been 3 and a half hours of squeezing this thing and making the noise.
Fred has survived the ordeal and is walking in complaining about acorns in his foot or some other nonsense and by the time I stumble in after my day at work the dog has entered a mental state that is tough to describe. It’s almost as if Laura has given the dog peyote.
All I want is an hour of peace. Just an hour to decompress after the first day back in the office. What I have got is 15 minutes of high pitched squeaking, followed by 10 minutes of incredibly loud barking because the toy is stuck under our sofa. This, repeated over and over and over and over again. Before I go to bed tonight, which will be very shortly because it’s the only time the dog shuts up, I have no doubt Poppy will piss on the floor. It’s almost guaranteed.
During the course of me putting this together the game has become Laura and the kids throwing the toy and the dog fetching it, if anything the noise is worse. I have asked several times for everyone to just calm down a bit and for some quiet, in what has become a futile shield held wobbily against the impending encroachment of the dog jumping on my head at any moment. I moved the laptop briefly to ask everyone to calm down and Laura threw the toy at my nuts. It still hurts, but apparently I need to “man up”
24 hours ago I was really annoyed that my time off had ended, right now I might go and sleep in my office.
The Shroders in Florida 