I'll admit it. Being unemployed is starting to be a big drag. Huge drag. After the excitement of driving out here, finding an apartment, and finding the kittens we will (one day, when they're big enough) adopt, a little bit of a break was nice. Sleeping in a little, finding our way around town, these are fun activities, and when you add to that the joy of (finally) living in the same apartment together, the girlfriend and I were doing pretty well. But the days and weeks just keep on stretching out, each emptier than the last, and we are starting to get a little sick of each other. Not all the time, not dangerously sick of each other, but starting to wish that either one of us had someplace to go for extended periods of time during the day. We mostly don't. Not because we don't want to, but because we don't have very many friends and we definitely have very little money. Really, really, a very small amount of money.
My mom asked me the other day what I was doing with my time. She thought maybe we'd be doing sightseeing and stuff like that, but these things cost money that we don't have. So I thought about it, and here are the top 5 things I have been spending my time doing, in no particular order:
1. Playing on the internet. Probably my biggest time eater, but, hey, those blogs don't read themselves! And I have applied for a bunch of jobs via the internet, as well, so it's not all wasted time.
2. Wandering around town finding stuff. This includes discovering that I am, in fact, too poor and too middle-class to really enjoy living in Walnut Creek. Any town that has a Tiffany's, a Nordstrom, and a Nieman Marcus in a 1-block area is a little too rich for my blood.
3. Obsessing about money, kittens, and/or furniture. We don't have any money. We want the kittens to come home. We wish we had all of the furniture and other things we left in Indiana.
4. Watching TV on the internet or DVD. We don't have cable. The first Sunday we had the internet, the girlfriend (being the best girlfriend in the world) found me the Colts game streaming on the internet. This is awesome. We also have been working our way through Season 2 of Dexter on Netflix and Season 1 of Xena, which I have on DVD. Don't judge!
5. Reading. I don't think I have read this many books in this short a time since I was in high school and we got actual vacations. I read Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose, which is a book I highly recommend and enjoyed. It was an excellent read and has definitely inspired me to read more books and short stories, including one by Flannery O'Connor that I really should not have read before I went to bed. It also has reawakened my childhood ambition to write a novel. I had a series of stories that I wrote in elementary and early middle school that I thought were really awesome, but I never pursued writing as a career. Now that I'm unemployed, I can continue to think I might be good at that but probably still not do it.
I also highly recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynn Truss, which is a pretty funny look at how punctuation is supposed to function in writing. I will admit to being a bit of a stickler for good punctuation and good grammar (ask the girlfriend!), so I am enjoying it. Plus, Truss is a good writer and makes her exasperation funny. If you're not a grammar and punctuation stickler, you should probably not bother...
So I'm hoping to be employed at some point in the near future, if only to vary the routine a little bit. Oh, and so I can get out of the house now and then.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Ode to the DMV
Oh, DMV, why must going to you be such a thing to be dreaded? Why must I arrive at 7:45 am and not leave until 11 am? Why do I have to stand in three different lines, each staffed by its own overworked and underpaid surly civil servant? Is it not enough that you take my time and my money? Must you take my sanity as well?
Have you ever noticed that there are no clocks in the DMV? I assume that this is so that when you're sitting there hour after hour after hour you have no clear idea of how long it has been, until you emerge, squinting into the light, and realize that you've been in there for four hours. There is no time in the DMV, or rather, there is only DMV time. You sit in that hard plastic chair that is very nearly comfortable but not quite and watch a parade of your fellow-citizens trying to do their best to be law-abiding. Teenagers sweating over their very first written test so they can get their learner's permit, slightly older ones taking the driving test, senior citizens taking the eye test and the driving test to prove they're still safe to drive. People renewing licenses, changing titles, getting their pictures taken. And you sit. And wait. They call numbers in no discernible order. You feel rage rising in your chest under those fluorescent lights as you stand in one line after another. Here is where you check in and get a number. Here is where, when that number is finally called some 2 hours later, you hand over your paperwork and your money. Here is where you get your picture taken and get the exam you have to take. Then you get back into that last line to have your exam graded and stand while the DMV employee tries to remember how to enter information into the computer. Then, finally, the moment of truth, which is over all too quickly, and you have in your hand your paper temporary license from the state of California. And you're wondering to yourself this whole time (or I was, anyway), why we can't just have a NATIONAL LICENSING AND REGISTRATION SYSTEM?
I kid you not, this took 3 hours, and I got off lucky. The girlfriend is still at the DMV because she has to change the registration on the car, which meant that she couldn't even get a number to get in the first line until after she'd gone and had the car inspected. So she was some 20 people behind me in our particular class of "customers". She's still there, four and a half hours later. Something about a smog test, I don't know. Bureaucracy. You gotta love it.
Have you ever noticed that there are no clocks in the DMV? I assume that this is so that when you're sitting there hour after hour after hour you have no clear idea of how long it has been, until you emerge, squinting into the light, and realize that you've been in there for four hours. There is no time in the DMV, or rather, there is only DMV time. You sit in that hard plastic chair that is very nearly comfortable but not quite and watch a parade of your fellow-citizens trying to do their best to be law-abiding. Teenagers sweating over their very first written test so they can get their learner's permit, slightly older ones taking the driving test, senior citizens taking the eye test and the driving test to prove they're still safe to drive. People renewing licenses, changing titles, getting their pictures taken. And you sit. And wait. They call numbers in no discernible order. You feel rage rising in your chest under those fluorescent lights as you stand in one line after another. Here is where you check in and get a number. Here is where, when that number is finally called some 2 hours later, you hand over your paperwork and your money. Here is where you get your picture taken and get the exam you have to take. Then you get back into that last line to have your exam graded and stand while the DMV employee tries to remember how to enter information into the computer. Then, finally, the moment of truth, which is over all too quickly, and you have in your hand your paper temporary license from the state of California. And you're wondering to yourself this whole time (or I was, anyway), why we can't just have a NATIONAL LICENSING AND REGISTRATION SYSTEM?
I kid you not, this took 3 hours, and I got off lucky. The girlfriend is still at the DMV because she has to change the registration on the car, which meant that she couldn't even get a number to get in the first line until after she'd gone and had the car inspected. So she was some 20 people behind me in our particular class of "customers". She's still there, four and a half hours later. Something about a smog test, I don't know. Bureaucracy. You gotta love it.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The Job Question
Having tackled first the 5 day cross-country road trip, then the epic "staying on the couch in someone else's one-bedroom apartment" experiment and the dogsitting fun, the girlfriend and I have finally ensconced ourselves in an apartment, albeit one with very little furniture, and are awaiting our furry bundles of joy. How, you may be asking yourself, is all of this going to be paid for. Or, perhaps more bluntly, "are they ever going to be employed?" Believe me, we've been asking ourselves this since we arrived in Walnut Creek, now nearly a month ago. I, in particular, have been feeling pretty down about the situation, because the economy is bad and I look on paper like someone who has very few skills that anyone outside of a college teaching situation would want or need. This is not a good time of year to be looking for those sorts of jobs. I have been trying to find other kinds of employment, with very little success.
I did, however, get an interview with one of those SAT prep course companies last week and was at least good enough to make it to the second interview, in which I will have to teach the same HR guy I talked to last week about misplaced and dangling modifiers. On the phone.
For those of you who are unaware (read: not as grammatically nerdy as I am), you make a misplaced modifier when you make it modify something you didn't want it to. So:
Rolling down the hill, Bob was frightened that the rocks would land on the campsite.
The way it's written, Bob is rolling down the hill and is afraid rocks will land on the campsite. This is probably not the writer's intent. It is more likely that the writer meant:
Rolling down the hill, the rocks threatened the campsite and frightened Bob. Or
Bob was frightened that the rocks, which were rolling down the hill, would land on the campsite.
So there you go. With any luck, I should be able to convince the interviewer that I am "energetic, engaging and enthusiastic" and "able to teach complicated concepts clearly and easily". And then I get my first part-time job, which would be between 5 and 10 or so hours a week, depending on the season (I didn't realize there were seasons for SAT prep, but there you go) and how many private tutoring sessions I get to teach.
It is a little demoralizing that I've been looking for a job for a month and this is the first nibble I have gotten, but I guess that's how it goes. The girlfriend had a final(ish) interview for the nonprofit job, so now we're just waiting for them to get their stuff together to make a decision. She also has an interview for another job on Wednesday, so hopefully she, at least, will soon be employed full-time. Keep your fingers crossed!
I did, however, get an interview with one of those SAT prep course companies last week and was at least good enough to make it to the second interview, in which I will have to teach the same HR guy I talked to last week about misplaced and dangling modifiers. On the phone.
For those of you who are unaware (read: not as grammatically nerdy as I am), you make a misplaced modifier when you make it modify something you didn't want it to. So:
Rolling down the hill, Bob was frightened that the rocks would land on the campsite.
The way it's written, Bob is rolling down the hill and is afraid rocks will land on the campsite. This is probably not the writer's intent. It is more likely that the writer meant:
Rolling down the hill, the rocks threatened the campsite and frightened Bob. Or
Bob was frightened that the rocks, which were rolling down the hill, would land on the campsite.
So there you go. With any luck, I should be able to convince the interviewer that I am "energetic, engaging and enthusiastic" and "able to teach complicated concepts clearly and easily". And then I get my first part-time job, which would be between 5 and 10 or so hours a week, depending on the season (I didn't realize there were seasons for SAT prep, but there you go) and how many private tutoring sessions I get to teach.
It is a little demoralizing that I've been looking for a job for a month and this is the first nibble I have gotten, but I guess that's how it goes. The girlfriend had a final(ish) interview for the nonprofit job, so now we're just waiting for them to get their stuff together to make a decision. She also has an interview for another job on Wednesday, so hopefully she, at least, will soon be employed full-time. Keep your fingers crossed!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Kitties on the Way!
Right before poor little Guliko got sick last spring, the girlfriend and I had begun to talk about eventually adopting a second cat, both because it would be nice for Guliko to have a friend and because I wanted to have a cat of my own. Guliko was clearly the girlfriend's cat. We discussed it for a long time, because Guliko was a very cautious kitty and we were not sure how she would handle having another cat in her space. The girlfriend, in particular, was worried that the new cat would bully or terrorize Guliko, which would be unacceptable.
Well, then Guliko got sick and then she passed away and we knew that we wouldn't be getting a new cat for a while, and shortly after that we knew we were moving somewhere, which was another good reason for not getting a cat, at least until we got somewhere and got settled. Even Guliko, who loved riding in the car, would have hated a 5-day trip.
We did, however, know that we would eventually get another cat. We both wanted to, we just wanted it to be the right time.
The first week we were at the girlfriend's friends' house, they told us that they had a friend who was fostering some new kittens for the Northern California Feline Rescue. They already had one cat, but they were thinking about getting her a friend. They asked us if we wanted to go along and meet the kittens. We said yes, of course!
Which is how we ended up falling in love with two baby kitties, even before we had a place to live or money to pay for them. They are:
Well, then Guliko got sick and then she passed away and we knew that we wouldn't be getting a new cat for a while, and shortly after that we knew we were moving somewhere, which was another good reason for not getting a cat, at least until we got somewhere and got settled. Even Guliko, who loved riding in the car, would have hated a 5-day trip.
We did, however, know that we would eventually get another cat. We both wanted to, we just wanted it to be the right time.
The first week we were at the girlfriend's friends' house, they told us that they had a friend who was fostering some new kittens for the Northern California Feline Rescue. They already had one cat, but they were thinking about getting her a friend. They asked us if we wanted to go along and meet the kittens. We said yes, of course!
Which is how we ended up falling in love with two baby kitties, even before we had a place to live or money to pay for them. They are:
Little Florian
Maeby
Aren't they the cutest? They were 6 weeks old on Wednesday. They have to be 8 weeks old and over 2 lbs so that they can be spayed/neutered before they come home with us, so we have a little time left before they will be here. Hopefully, one of us will have a job before then, also, because we do have to pay for them and they're going to need food and kitty litter. They will have had all of their shots and all that before they come.
We're really, really excited! Maeby (named after the Arrested Development character) is the runt of the litter and also a little explorer--she was climbing all over the last time we saw her. Florian (because it had to be Florian!) is a little more of a cuddly lap-sitter. They should be awesome. We get to go see them again tomorrow. The Feline Rescue people encourage adoptive parents to come visit a few times before it's time to take them home so they're not going home with complete strangers.
The girlfriend is a little nervous because with kittens you never really know what their personalities are going to be like when they're grown up, but I think that's what's cool about it. We get to raise these cuddly balls of fluff up into grown-up cats, so we get to see them develop into adults and socialize them and (hopefully!) not spoil them too much. I recognize that they're probably going to be INSANE for a while, especially once they're big enough to climb all over everything, but I think it's going to be fun.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
An Apartment and the Furniture Question
Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
~Robert Montgomery
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
~Robert Montgomery
When we first conceived of the plan to move to San Francisco with no jobs and only the stuff we could pack in our small Toyota, I knew it would be difficult. I had lived in Indiana for 10 years (TEN YEARS!)--way longer than I had expected--and I had been in school all that time. I had a bunch of friends that I had known for a lot of years, I knew where everything was, and I was part of a community based on mutual interests and the shared trauma that is a PhD program. I knew that leaving all that behind and embarking on a new life--even a new life with someone I loved--would be hard and, at times, even excruciating.
What I didn't realize was that I would be leaving behind something else that was perhaps even more difficult to live without. I was leaving a home: an apartment that I loved and a town that I at least had grown to like even if it was a small town in Indiana. I was also going to be leaving behind a lot of my stuff. I know that for many people, the act of divesting yourself of stuff makes you feel freer, lighter, maybe even more secure because you can prove to yourself that you don't need things. I think the girlfriend feels a little like that.
I, on the other hand, tend to equate "having stuff" with security, with comfort, in short, with home. With very little else about this leap feeling secure, not having "my stuff" suddenly seemed like a way, way bigger issue than it should have been. Add to that the (literal) homelessness and joblessness, and the whole world felt, and continues to feel, like a very insecure place. We have very little control over the job situation, outside of applying to as many jobs as possible and signing up for temp agencies, which we have been doing. The stuff we left behind in Indiana will continue to be in Indiana until at least one of us is employed so we can afford to go back and do something with it. But finding a place to live, that we could do something about.
All of which is a prelude to saying, we found an apartment. We did a lot of research on the internet and finally came up with a small, family-owned apartment complex that is a 2-story ring of apartments around a central courtyard with a swimming pool. It had an unoccupied, second-floor, 2-bedroom apartment and allows cats with no extra deposit or cat rent. It is pretty much perfect for us. We moved in the day we left the dogsitting gig.
You'll recall that the stuff we have with us either 1) came out with us in the Toyota or 2) was shipped in boxes to us. We brought no furniture. We brought no pots and pans. We brought 2 coffee cups, 2 forks, 2 butter knives, 6 spoons (for some reason known only to the dark reaches of the girlfriend's brain), 2 sharp knives, a coffee pot, a wine bottle opener, and a beer bottle opener as far as kitchen wares go. We also brought 2 pillows, a set of queen sheets, and 3 blankets. I could give you a list of all the other things in the car, but suffice it to say that we're pretty low on housewares of all kinds. We bought an air mattress to sleep on, a fry pan, a regular pan, some plates and bowls, and a desk chair. We got a lamp and 2 plastic lawn chairs from the girlfriend's friends and a desk and a thick foam mattress pad from a list called freecycle.
I have gone through the inventory of our household stuff because it is the area that we're still having the most trouble with. Without jobs, we can't justify going out and buying furniture, but that's what we really want to do--to turn our barren apartment into a home that feels like a home. To make it feel like it's a place we intend to stay for a while, rather than somewhere we're still just passing through. Don't get me wrong, it's a really nice apartment, it's just hard to appreciate it when there's no place comfortable to sit down, there's no place to put the few items that we did bring from Indiana so all our stuff is kind of everywhere, and we spend most of our time staring at it and wishing we could do something about it.
So here's hoping that the girlfriend will find out that the job she interviewed for last week is going to hire her and that I do a good job in the interview with a tutoring company that I have on Friday so we can get a few pieces of furniture and start making plans for how to get the rest of our stuff here! And that the freecycle thing continues to work for us. This really is a very nice desk.
Next time: Pets! Jobs?
What I didn't realize was that I would be leaving behind something else that was perhaps even more difficult to live without. I was leaving a home: an apartment that I loved and a town that I at least had grown to like even if it was a small town in Indiana. I was also going to be leaving behind a lot of my stuff. I know that for many people, the act of divesting yourself of stuff makes you feel freer, lighter, maybe even more secure because you can prove to yourself that you don't need things. I think the girlfriend feels a little like that.
I, on the other hand, tend to equate "having stuff" with security, with comfort, in short, with home. With very little else about this leap feeling secure, not having "my stuff" suddenly seemed like a way, way bigger issue than it should have been. Add to that the (literal) homelessness and joblessness, and the whole world felt, and continues to feel, like a very insecure place. We have very little control over the job situation, outside of applying to as many jobs as possible and signing up for temp agencies, which we have been doing. The stuff we left behind in Indiana will continue to be in Indiana until at least one of us is employed so we can afford to go back and do something with it. But finding a place to live, that we could do something about.
All of which is a prelude to saying, we found an apartment. We did a lot of research on the internet and finally came up with a small, family-owned apartment complex that is a 2-story ring of apartments around a central courtyard with a swimming pool. It had an unoccupied, second-floor, 2-bedroom apartment and allows cats with no extra deposit or cat rent. It is pretty much perfect for us. We moved in the day we left the dogsitting gig.
You'll recall that the stuff we have with us either 1) came out with us in the Toyota or 2) was shipped in boxes to us. We brought no furniture. We brought no pots and pans. We brought 2 coffee cups, 2 forks, 2 butter knives, 6 spoons (for some reason known only to the dark reaches of the girlfriend's brain), 2 sharp knives, a coffee pot, a wine bottle opener, and a beer bottle opener as far as kitchen wares go. We also brought 2 pillows, a set of queen sheets, and 3 blankets. I could give you a list of all the other things in the car, but suffice it to say that we're pretty low on housewares of all kinds. We bought an air mattress to sleep on, a fry pan, a regular pan, some plates and bowls, and a desk chair. We got a lamp and 2 plastic lawn chairs from the girlfriend's friends and a desk and a thick foam mattress pad from a list called freecycle.
I have gone through the inventory of our household stuff because it is the area that we're still having the most trouble with. Without jobs, we can't justify going out and buying furniture, but that's what we really want to do--to turn our barren apartment into a home that feels like a home. To make it feel like it's a place we intend to stay for a while, rather than somewhere we're still just passing through. Don't get me wrong, it's a really nice apartment, it's just hard to appreciate it when there's no place comfortable to sit down, there's no place to put the few items that we did bring from Indiana so all our stuff is kind of everywhere, and we spend most of our time staring at it and wishing we could do something about it.
So here's hoping that the girlfriend will find out that the job she interviewed for last week is going to hire her and that I do a good job in the interview with a tutoring company that I have on Friday so we can get a few pieces of furniture and start making plans for how to get the rest of our stuff here! And that the freecycle thing continues to work for us. This really is a very nice desk.
Next time: Pets! Jobs?
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Movin' On Up
When I last had the chance for an update, we were still living on the girlfriend's friend's couch and were getting ready to dogsit in the commune. That was nearly two weeks ago. A lot has changed. First of all, we had the dogsitting. Now, I like dogs. I like how much they like being around people, I like that they listen (unlike cats), and I like walking them, because it makes me walk on days when I would be much more likely to sit around on my butt and be lazy. So I went into this experience expecting to enjoy myself. However, when we went to actually *meet* the dog, I became a little, teeny, tiny bit worried. For one thing, the dog (Arty, short for Artemis) is 60 pounds and 18 months old. That is a pretty big dog with a lot of puppy wiggle left. For another, Arty is a Rhodesian ridgeback mix. This is a dog that was bred to HUNT LIONS! And also, a breed that, as a whole, is known for having a HUGE amount of energy.
So, to recap: big dog with lots of energy + still a PUPPY = super hyper dog. I mean, this dog needed to be walked 5 or so miles a day, just so she wouldn't be nutty and keep us up all night. And then there's the fact that she thought she should be fed all the time, including at 6 am. This is not a time of day that I have ever appreciated.
Then there's the fact that the girlfriend does not like dogs. Does not see them as nice or cool or fun or anything like that. She also is a little tiny thing, which is not a good attribute when you're walking a big dog. I did most of the dog walking.
The dog also apparently usually slept with the people we were housesitting for. That did not happen with us. What did happen, however, is that she would come in to the room, any time between 4:30 (I kid you not!) and 6:45 am and pace around the bed, whining and barking at us. We could attempt to ignore her for as long as we wanted to, but eventually one of us (the girlfriend) got up and went downstairs to feed her and let her out onto the back patio. She would be calm for a short period of time, but then become more and more obnoxious, until I was up and dressed and took her out for a walk. One morning, the girlfriend tried to walk Arty alone. It did not go well. We actually wised up after the first couple of days and took her to the nearest dog park, which let her run her energy out while having her ears, head, and neck chewed on by other dogs. This is apparently her favorite thing in the whole world.
It did, however, require us to put her in the back seat of the girlfriend's car. For some reason, this big, strong dog felt that she could not jump up into the car, no matter how much we tempted her with her favorite treats. One of us had to lift first her front end and then her rear end onto the back seat. It didn't matter that we did this three times, so she should have been able to figure out where we were going. I'm not sure whether she was being nervous or ornery, but there you go.
The only really bad thing about walking her was that every time you passed another dog, she wanted to play with it. She tried to run over to the other dog, pulling you along like flotsam in her wake, and, as if that wasn't embarrassing enough, barking her head off in joy at seeing another dog. Once, when we were walking her, we came up on a man with a baby in one of those baby bjorn things on his chest, walking a very small dog. She barked so loud she woke the baby and it started screaming and screaming...
The other really interesting thing about this dogsitting was the place we were staying. I reported last time that it was a commune, but I had it slightly wrong. We were staying in a Cohousing community. What is Cohousing? you may be asking yourself, as I did.
Cohousing is a form of collaborative housing that offers residents an old-fashioned sense of neighborhood. In cohousing, residents know their neighbors very well and there is a strong sense of community that is absent in contemporary cities and suburbs. Cohousing communities consist of private, fully-equipped dwellings and extensive common amenities including a common house and recreation areas. They are designed and managed by the residents who have chosen to live in a close-knit neighborhood that seeks a healthy blend of privacy and community.
So, yeah. That's what cohousing is. The condo we stayed in had two floors and the whole place is designed to be very energy-efficient, staying cool inside even on the hottest days without A/C. We were very impressed. It's the community part of the thing that we had a problem with. We must have met half of the people who lived there when we came to meet the dog and the owners. We had buddies, J and C, who were responsible for making sure we knew what was going on. C was actually out of time most of the time we were there, but J and their daughter were very welcoming (well, the daughter is a little over a year old) and invited us to a bunch of stuff. This included common meals and things like that. Everyone knew who we were and why we were there and said hi to us all the time. So kind of the opposite of living in most apartment complexes. It was interesting.
Next time: Apartments! Pets! Furniture! Jobs?
So, to recap: big dog with lots of energy + still a PUPPY = super hyper dog. I mean, this dog needed to be walked 5 or so miles a day, just so she wouldn't be nutty and keep us up all night. And then there's the fact that she thought she should be fed all the time, including at 6 am. This is not a time of day that I have ever appreciated.
Then there's the fact that the girlfriend does not like dogs. Does not see them as nice or cool or fun or anything like that. She also is a little tiny thing, which is not a good attribute when you're walking a big dog. I did most of the dog walking.
The dog also apparently usually slept with the people we were housesitting for. That did not happen with us. What did happen, however, is that she would come in to the room, any time between 4:30 (I kid you not!) and 6:45 am and pace around the bed, whining and barking at us. We could attempt to ignore her for as long as we wanted to, but eventually one of us (the girlfriend) got up and went downstairs to feed her and let her out onto the back patio. She would be calm for a short period of time, but then become more and more obnoxious, until I was up and dressed and took her out for a walk. One morning, the girlfriend tried to walk Arty alone. It did not go well. We actually wised up after the first couple of days and took her to the nearest dog park, which let her run her energy out while having her ears, head, and neck chewed on by other dogs. This is apparently her favorite thing in the whole world.
It did, however, require us to put her in the back seat of the girlfriend's car. For some reason, this big, strong dog felt that she could not jump up into the car, no matter how much we tempted her with her favorite treats. One of us had to lift first her front end and then her rear end onto the back seat. It didn't matter that we did this three times, so she should have been able to figure out where we were going. I'm not sure whether she was being nervous or ornery, but there you go.
The only really bad thing about walking her was that every time you passed another dog, she wanted to play with it. She tried to run over to the other dog, pulling you along like flotsam in her wake, and, as if that wasn't embarrassing enough, barking her head off in joy at seeing another dog. Once, when we were walking her, we came up on a man with a baby in one of those baby bjorn things on his chest, walking a very small dog. She barked so loud she woke the baby and it started screaming and screaming...
The other really interesting thing about this dogsitting was the place we were staying. I reported last time that it was a commune, but I had it slightly wrong. We were staying in a Cohousing community. What is Cohousing? you may be asking yourself, as I did.
Cohousing is a form of collaborative housing that offers residents an old-fashioned sense of neighborhood. In cohousing, residents know their neighbors very well and there is a strong sense of community that is absent in contemporary cities and suburbs. Cohousing communities consist of private, fully-equipped dwellings and extensive common amenities including a common house and recreation areas. They are designed and managed by the residents who have chosen to live in a close-knit neighborhood that seeks a healthy blend of privacy and community.
So, yeah. That's what cohousing is. The condo we stayed in had two floors and the whole place is designed to be very energy-efficient, staying cool inside even on the hottest days without A/C. We were very impressed. It's the community part of the thing that we had a problem with. We must have met half of the people who lived there when we came to meet the dog and the owners. We had buddies, J and C, who were responsible for making sure we knew what was going on. C was actually out of time most of the time we were there, but J and their daughter were very welcoming (well, the daughter is a little over a year old) and invited us to a bunch of stuff. This included common meals and things like that. Everyone knew who we were and why we were there and said hi to us all the time. So kind of the opposite of living in most apartment complexes. It was interesting.
Next time: Apartments! Pets! Furniture! Jobs?
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