Rethinking this year's plans

Photos of the New Year's Eve party coming this weekend. I actually remembered to pull out the camera and take pictures, although since I was the one documenting the process I am in few of the actual shots until AFTER midnight, by which point I was just tipsy enough to not care about the annoyed eye-rolls my friends gave when I thrust my camera at them and demanded, "take a picture of me and (insert name here)!"

Happy 2009, Internet.

We kicked it off by throwing a big party at our house, which drew about 40 people throughout the night. We had a ton of food, since apparently I have inherited the No-One-Must-Ever-Leave-My-House-Hungry gene from my mother, and I felt bad tossing some of the leftovers out yesterday morning, but no one likes ham and turkey tortilla rolls or artichoke jalapeno dip that has sat out overnight. We had a great time with good friends and toasted the beginning of 2009 with champagne from little plastic cups. Also, when Bella wasn't busy hiding from all the guests, she ventured into the kitchen and hung out under the table where people would occasionally toss her a cube of cheese or a chip so all in all, everyone won that night.

My parents left for a cruise yesterday. My aunt and uncle went along with them and since Little Brother is away at boot camp, SK and I have been tasked with dog-sitting for my mom and dad. Mica is almost 4 years-old and is a Labrador/Corgi mix (yeah, imagine THAT). She's pretty chill and she is spoiled out of her mind by my mother, but I figured that she'd be a piece of cake to bring into our house for a few days. She gets along with Bella, although really Mica just tolerates her and then walks away into a corner to hide when Bella becomes too much for her to handle, and yesterday afternoon was a breeze.

And then we went to bed. She sleeps in a kennel so we brought her kennel into our room and put it on the other side, away from Bella's, so they wouldn't whisper to each other all night about boys. Almost immediately, Mica started to whine. Not the continuous, high-pitched wails of a puppy with separation anxiety, but the occasional, sad moans of an adult dog not happy about deviating from her normal routine. She settled down after a while, but was clamoring to get out of her kennel as soon as my alarm went off this morning. Bella sleeps as long as we sleep. Actually, she sleeps as long as SK sleeps, so I never have to mess with her in the morning. She stays in her kennel, spread out and comfortable, until SK wakes her up. Mica is quite the opposite and was ready to PLAY when I tried to hit snooze for the second time.

I got ready with her walking around our room, nails click-clacking on the wood floor, waking SK up every few minutes. Bella occasionally lifted her head up, snorting her disdain for that much noise that early in the morning and turned her back on us. Mica trotted around happily behind me, and when I left the house, I told SK I would leave her in the living room - her normal hang-out in my parent's house.

Apparently, she wasn't havin' it. SK called a few hours later to report that promptly after I left and she realized she had no one to talk to in the living room and that there were playmates in the bedroom, she sat at the bedroom door and HOWLED. SK let her back in and tucked her up on the bed with him where she calmed down and fell asleep again for a while. I was laughing on the phone while he was telling me this, but as soon as I hung up a wave of stress and sadness washed over me - this is what life would be like if we got another dog, which is something we've been seriously considering. Unless we could clone Bella's personality (minus the remote-eating and the major anxiety she experiences when lots of people are around), we might end up with a dog that wants to get up early on Saturday morning, and a dog that isn't content to hang out in her kennel with a toy while we're watching TV in bed.

And this, my friends, is why I claim I will never have kids. I can't even DOG-SIT without freaking the hell out.