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Sarah behind the entertainment center, originally uploaded by shelbinator.

May you have no storm clouds to hide from on your special day.

Who’s gettin’ steak for dinner?!

Sure, I used to eat my vegetables as a kid. Broccoli in particular provided so many of the vitamins that went into the excellent health I have done everything in my power to undermine since I moved out on my own. Lots and lots of broccoli, just as long as, mind you, it was covered in a counterproductive amount of molten cheese.

Did I say cheese? Nay, I meant cheez. Cheez Whiz to be precise, a foodstuff so tasty it couldn’t possibly, or legally, be spelled the same way as that thing that comes out of a cow and is left alone with some bacteria. Or is it mold? Or a fungus amongus? Whatever. It’s just as disgusting as whatever it is in that jar of orange that post-war science made for a great nation like ours.

I’m starting to wonder if there were other unyielding demands I made of my mother as she nourished me with home-cooked meals that a normal person would eat with abandon but that a child must modify in some obsessive-compulsive way to make it edible. If there were, I officially apologize, though I’m sure it’s too late to clear my karma. The dog has adopted the same behavior pattern: every now and then, she’ll go for days without eating, at most eating her breakfast from two days ago at dinnertime before spending another 36 to 48 hours in anorexic protest. I used to ignore this — “She’ll eat when she’s hungry,” I figured — but you start to worry, you know? So I thought maybe if I just spruced up her food a bit….

And now the bitch has me trained. These hunger strikes come more frequently now, because she knows all too well it won’t be long before I’m drizzling a little bacon fat or dropping some leftover spaghetti in the bowl to turn the Nasty Dry Crap into the chef’s special. It’s not even necessary to actually alter the food in any way: it’s just getting me to dote on her that’s her goal. Oh, I know, some might say that it’s the smell that goes along way, but tonight, the magic ingredient was, without exaggeration, a crumb of parmesan cheese from my fingertip about the size of a grain of pretzel salt. I don’t want to hear any suggestions that suddenly her Bowl of Crap became a magical Bowl of Cheezycrap, this was solely a result of the satisfaction of her pathological need to be in charge. She watched me cook my dinner, she knew that it smelled better than hers, and then she saw me walk over to her bowl and flick 15 micrograms of People Food into her kibble. “I am still Queen. I shall now eat.”

Oh, I am well trained.

When one is too tired to write, there is always video.

Sarah, she don’t like to swim too much, so she just gets mad at the water.

One of my neighbors who don’t suck (NDS) works the swing shift most days, so she’s often coming home right when I’m taking the furball out for her post-Daily Show tinkle. On some nights, this even involves cracking a beer and shooting the proverbial shit on the stoop like neighbors do in cooler places of the world, like Chicago and New York. It was on just such a night not very long ago that we got to meet some of our new neighbors. Who do suck.

Their presence was already being announced to the block in the wee small hours of this school night by the thumping music coming from their open front door, just a couple doors down from our own. They had to leave the door open to let the music out so the three of them could engage in their own stoop-sitting approximation of a housewarming party, I imagine, or perhaps they had just discovered the lingering stench of the rather insane insomniac artist that had been evicted a few weeks earlier and were airing the place out. Either way, the noise caused the NDS and I to eyeball our new neighbors with suspicion from our own stoop, and even Sarah kept a cautious eye on the weirdos while doing her business for reasons known only to a species with better intuition about such things than humans.

Unsurprisingly, Sarah eschewed her normal hyper-enthusiastic jumping-and-licking greeting when one of the new neighbors — a slow-moving girl with a bovine friendliness about her — got up from her stoop and shuffled down the sidewalk to come talk to the only other visibly awake people in the ‘hood. I really thought she just wanted to pet the puppy. C’mon, everybody does.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey,” we repeated unenthusiastically, as the dog wagged her tail but remained underwhelmed. Bovita continued, “Um, you guys wouldn’t happen to have any drugs we could buy, would you?”

Let me just say at this point that I am not so naive a child of the suburbs that this was the first time I had ever been asked if I had any spare illicit substances, but it was the first time I had been asked that kind of question with such a lack of specificity. I myself have been known to start eyeballing the Schnapps in desperation when I realize on a hot Sunday afternoon that I’m out of beer, but at least that’s in the same general family of depressant. “Any drugs” just seemed like such a bizarre request to be put to complete strangers, particularly strangers that at the moment looked in their work clothes like they drove Passats and listened to Britney Spears.

“Uhhhhh,” I stalled, as the NDS and I looked blankly at each other, “nope, don’t think so.”

“Oh.” She sounded so disappointed, and in her overwhelming sorrow she apparently couldn’t quite muster the strength to walk away. As she stood there, stunned, I said, “But maybe Sarah does.” “Oh?” she asked, her big, bovine eyes lighting up. “Sarah, you got any drugs,” I said down to the furball.

Sarah looked up at me and cocked her head. Then she looked at the idiot. The idiot looked at Sarah, and looked back up at me. I looked up at the idiot, then back down to Sarah. “Well?” The idiot looked down at Sarah, actually hoping for a positive response.

“Hmmm, nope, guess not,” I said, breaking her heart all over again.

“Oh…. Okay,” said the idiot, and she looked back down at Sarah again, who looked sweetly back up at her as if to say, “Holy crap, lady,” and the idiot, taking the final cue from my dog’s disapproving eyes, turned around and shuffled off quietly.

I am the worst dogboyfriend in the world. Because I am a retard and have my iCal set up to show Monday as the first day of the week, I mistakenly thought my dog owning anniversary/Sarah’s arbitrarily declared second birthday was today instead of yesterday, until it was too late to take her out for beers. Well, beer for me, water for her. Blast.

Here’s to you, Boober. You’re the best. Even though you seem to have made me totally queer.

…does it take to get to the center of a Sarah-pop? I imagine I will learn the answer to this question, at least to the nearest hundred or so, over the next few days as my stupid dog tries to extract herself from her cherry candy shell.

I buy her rawhide bones. I buy her Kongs and squeaky balls and even a puzzle. She has a squeaky monkey, a squeaky George Bush (different doll), and a non-squeaky teddy bear. But none of these things interest her nearly as much as anything that resides on the coffee table.

This is not a neglected dog: she comes to work with me almost every day, she sleeps on the bed with me, and we take occasional walks in the park to chase the squirrels. Most of the times she has turned destructive, she has been left alone for less than 3 hours, far shorter than the one day a week she’s usually home alone for my whole 8 hour work shift. Today, I went to Office Depot for all of 2 hours, giving her more than enough time to get bored with the DryErase marker she rendered unusable and turn her attention to the cherry Blow-Pop that had apparently fallen out of my pocket onto the couch last night. (I’ve been keeping suckers handy when I plan on facing situations that heretofore have required nicotine, and there’s nothing like a YDAtl exec meeting to make you dream of cancer.)

When she got down to the center of the pop, she decided that chewing gum was just not her thing, and kindly left most of that on the flokati rug in my bedroom. But both of her forearms all the way up to her elbows are spattered with sticky, crunchy, red candy goodness. This makes it all the more charming when she performs her normal beg-for-forgiveness routine of timidly offering her paw to shake; then I’m stuck to the animal I’m chastising, and come away with more dog hair on me than usual.

So if you see a black English shepherd strolling through midtown going smack-crunch, smack-crunch, smack-crunch down the sidewalk and sporting a really f’d up haircut, say hello, ’cause that’s my girl.

If you’re old enough to be cool, you know I’m quoting Bill Cosby. Apparently, if my dog were capable of growing up to be a comedian herself, she’d be able to tell a very similar tale about growing up thinking her name was goddamnit. She’s more likely to come to that than to her own stupid name.

I’m defending my PhD proposal tomorrow (notice the word proposal there; it’s unbelievable how many of you wankers gloss right over that detail when I answer your stupid “Why are you so stressed” questions and you go “Oh wow your dissertation?! So you’re almost done!” and I have to spend 15 seconds in my happy place trying not to strangle you with your own tongue), taking a procrastination break right now from my pile o’ PowerPoint slides to share this thought. Between this presentation, the attendant proposal document extracted from my rectum last week, and the security studies program final research paper and presentation hammered out for the three weeks prior to that, I’ve spent quite a bit of time wrestling with Microsoft Office products to put complex thoughts into pretty, digestible form. This is not, of course, what Office was designed for; it was designed to crash, to misplace figures, to AutoFormat in the exact opposite direction of your creative intent, and let’s not forget to harass you with an obnoxious talking paperclip.

Needless to say, there’s been quite a bit of profanity reverberating through my household.

My dog’s been rather discombobulated by the irregular sleep hours; she likes to be near me a lot, and for about 22 hours a day that means being somewhere the lights are turned on and keys are being tapped, so she’s definitely not getting her beauty rest. Occasionally she’ll decide that darkness is more important than proximity, and she’ll slink off to the next room to catch a few Z’s away from all the activity. But sure enough, Microsoft will do it to me again, and I’ll let fly with some verbal abuse goddamnit! because of this MF’ing POS A-hole program bastard WTF!

*Poof!* The dog reappears under my legs, or trying to slither into my lap using only her chin as if her front legs had gone totally limp. “Calm down, girl, you’re fine. You’re a good girl.” She just sits there staring at me, shifting on her hindquarters every few seconds as her lack of friction on the hardwood floor thwarts her attempt to be pressed firmly up against me, and giving a big sorry look like she just threw up on my down comforter. (Again.) (Yes.) (I know!) “Seriously, Sarah, good girl. You’re okay. It’s the computer box, not you.” *Pathetic stare.* “You’re a GOOD GIRL. Now piss off!” *Pathetic stare with fidget.* “SARAH, GOOD GIRL, BUT GO BE A GOOD GIRL SOMEWHERE ELSE. GO! GO BE GOOD! GO AWAY! GOOD GIRL AWAY!”

I’m not paying for a therapist, I don’t care what happens.

It’s not that Sarah’s a bad name, it’s a fine name, a great name even, but the fact that the bad 80’s love song is actually spelled “Sara” and not “Sarah” has done nothing to keep it from getting stuck in my head for the last 53 hours. Nonstop. (And now hopefully it’s stuck in yours.)

Maybe someday I’ll be able to call this girl without hearing that damn song reverberate throughout my skull. Who knows, anything’s possible — Sarah has, for instance, already gotten past peeing on my kitchen floor.

Dr. Katy listened to the fact that my daily routine pretty much consisted of coming to work late with a hangover, being unproductive and hating my work, going home and sitting on the couch, watching TV, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes to forget the fact that I just hate where I’m at in my life. What used to be bad attitude was becoming an oppressive sense of despair, to the point that I started worrying about it becoming a “condition” if I didn’t do something about it. I’d always thought dogs and PhD programs were incompatible, but having recently finished hers with a dog, Dr. Katy said it’s not only do-able, it’s outstanding. First, there’s the pure psychological benefit of the pet — the contact comfort and affection, having someone to talk to when you don’t think anyone else wants to listen. Then there’s the mechanistic effect: the dog will demand regular exercise, which not even hashing motivates me to do anymore. The dog’s food budget will also cut into my beer budget. Ultimately, I will be less able (and hopefully less inclined) to come home, flop on the couch and drink too much beer.

That didn’t stop me from trying to have my cake and drink it, too. Monday night I had a few beers at the V and a few more at home with Charlie, and a few (too many) cigarettes. This would normally result in a slow Tuesday morning, rolling in around 11am, but NOT when there’s a dog who has to piss at 6am in the next room.

I learned quickly from that punishment. This morning Sarah and I were running in Piedmont Park by 7:45am, and I’m feeling rather spritely for it. Sure, part of my good mood today stems from having gotten the pooch past her first-day jitters, so I can finally get her out of the crate in the morning or after work without getting a gleeful piddle for my troubles. If we keep this up and the piddling’s a thing of the past, I think I have one of the best dogs I ever could’ve hoped for. Two years old, apartment-sized but respectable, plays well with others, not skittish of anything smaller than a forklift (we learned at Petsmart), and already knows “Sit,” “Stay,” and “Down” really well.

Now if she’d only take to the frisbee….