I will start by apologizing for being terribly behind in my blog reading and commenting. Juliet is a cardiac nurse in a very specialized procedural area. Because of the nature of her job she must sometimes carry a pager in case of a cardiac emergency at the hospital.
At roughly 2:30AM this morning the nasty little pager went off and we were on our way to the hospital in moments. We share a car and when my wife is called in the middle of the name I must take her for peace of mind and her safety. Juliet is incredibly responsive to this kind of emergency. She knows life and death hang in the balance of her efforts and I am happy to contribute in any way I can to ease the stress for her.
The crappy part of this is that both of us lose sleep. I feel it is only fair in some ways that I feel what she is feeling and at the same time it certainly crashes the very fragile state of mind I need in order to write.
On top of all of this. The owners of the apartment above us have a large bulldog puppy who howls with separation anxiety all day. I have reported this to the apartment and they have yet to do anything. I work in complete silence, no music, no running water, no radio. This poor lonely animal is miserable and scared. The pathetic owners of this dog should learn some lessons about how to rear a young animal. When the dog becomes really agitated, and it does, it begins to run all over the floor and sling things back and forth. I can see the entire image of the creature in my head and I am sad for it; yet I want it to stop. It is like the "EYE" in the Tell Tale Heart. I cannot stand the noise and I am going to make a final complaint to the office today before I go outside and take this to the authorities. We live in an overpriced apartment so that I know most people are out working and I will have the days to myself to work. This is clearly not going well. This paragraph sounds like the diary of a teenager because I am sleep-deprived and near lunacy from this canine silence cannibal. I try not to wish ill on people or animals. Today I am close to funneling a little 91 octane under that apartment door and sending this place up like river party in Apocalypse Now. The Horror.......The Horror....... (in Brando voice)
Enjoy the happy photos which were taken while out on a hike of South Table Mountain where dogs were on leashes and happy with their owners. This area was appropriately desert-like as the humidity was a whopping 2% (not a typo) when we made this journey.
I promise to be back to my commenting self once I take a Xanax, have a nap, and get some earplugs.