lulu
we're getting serious about a dog, serious enough to call the pet rescue and ask to come visit a dog named lulu, whom kath found online and e-mailed to me today. she is a beagle mix and is classified as "senior", which means 8+ years. she is house trained and fixed and a little on the slow side, apparently, but i'm thinking that means she's not likely to get away from us, or to bound up the stairs (and into carpetland) before we can catch her, which is a plus.
we haven't heard back from the rescue place yet, but we've downloaded the application for adoption and filled it out. we admitted to dead fish but not to the iguana that justin left with his ex-girlfriend when they broke up.
i went to the pet store tonight and looked at the eighty million varieties of dog food and almost as many different collars and leashes. i really want this dog.
it seems a little bit of a cliche - the couple that loses their baby gets a dog instead. and to be honest, there is a hole that i hope the right dog will at least make a little less deep. but a dog will not replace my son. and i hate that. thinking about these things makes me think about the fact that johannes is gone for good. any future attempts at conception will not bring him back. we get no do-overs with him. there will never be a time when we won't have lost him.
my mom called me this evening before i left work, and i told her at the end of our conversation that i was looking at dog beds online, and i e-mailed her the picture of lulu while we were still on the phone.
she asked a couple of questions about who would be responsible for taking care of a dog, and then laughed heartily as she asked which one of us was going to get up at 5 a.m. to take a dog outside, as though that were the most hysterical possibility ever in the history of the world.
i acknowledge that i am extra-sensitive right now, but i was insulted. after being prepared to get up at all hours for a child, i think we can handle the responsibility of a dog, and an older, docile one, at that. after she got her laughter under control, i said quietly, well, if we had a live child at home, we'd be up a lot more often than that. she chuckled and said, well, i suppose you're right about that.
if she thinks we can't handle the responsibility of having a dog, how in the world did she think we would be able to take of hans? i called her when i got home and told her that what she said hurt me; she was speechless. she could not draw a correlation between taking care of a dog and taking care of a child, even after i tried to explain it. she tried to explain that she was just shocked that we were considering a dog - even after the multiple times i've told her we were thinking about it. then she said, well, she just found the prospect of us having a dog amusing, which did nothing to lessen the hurt.
the call ended awkwardly, so now i'm afraid there's going to be this icky awkwardness between me and my mom, who is probably my best friend in the world after justin. her inability to understand why i'm hurt highlights the fact that no one else's loss of hans is like our loss. i don't like the loneliness of that knowledge.
and i'm pretty sure even lulu's companionship could not make up for the loss of my mom's.
we haven't heard back from the rescue place yet, but we've downloaded the application for adoption and filled it out. we admitted to dead fish but not to the iguana that justin left with his ex-girlfriend when they broke up.
i went to the pet store tonight and looked at the eighty million varieties of dog food and almost as many different collars and leashes. i really want this dog.
it seems a little bit of a cliche - the couple that loses their baby gets a dog instead. and to be honest, there is a hole that i hope the right dog will at least make a little less deep. but a dog will not replace my son. and i hate that. thinking about these things makes me think about the fact that johannes is gone for good. any future attempts at conception will not bring him back. we get no do-overs with him. there will never be a time when we won't have lost him.
my mom called me this evening before i left work, and i told her at the end of our conversation that i was looking at dog beds online, and i e-mailed her the picture of lulu while we were still on the phone.
she asked a couple of questions about who would be responsible for taking care of a dog, and then laughed heartily as she asked which one of us was going to get up at 5 a.m. to take a dog outside, as though that were the most hysterical possibility ever in the history of the world.
i acknowledge that i am extra-sensitive right now, but i was insulted. after being prepared to get up at all hours for a child, i think we can handle the responsibility of a dog, and an older, docile one, at that. after she got her laughter under control, i said quietly, well, if we had a live child at home, we'd be up a lot more often than that. she chuckled and said, well, i suppose you're right about that.
if she thinks we can't handle the responsibility of having a dog, how in the world did she think we would be able to take of hans? i called her when i got home and told her that what she said hurt me; she was speechless. she could not draw a correlation between taking care of a dog and taking care of a child, even after i tried to explain it. she tried to explain that she was just shocked that we were considering a dog - even after the multiple times i've told her we were thinking about it. then she said, well, she just found the prospect of us having a dog amusing, which did nothing to lessen the hurt.
the call ended awkwardly, so now i'm afraid there's going to be this icky awkwardness between me and my mom, who is probably my best friend in the world after justin. her inability to understand why i'm hurt highlights the fact that no one else's loss of hans is like our loss. i don't like the loneliness of that knowledge.
and i'm pretty sure even lulu's companionship could not make up for the loss of my mom's.
posted by laura at 10:43 PM
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