Pets, rain, coffee.

There are a lot of animals in the house. We have Elka, our doggie. We have Pip, my in-law’s dog and we have Ivy, my sister-in-law Emy’s, dog. Pip and Ivy are long-ish term boarders in the house, they moved in at Christmas time and I expect them to be here until mid-March. In the past, I’ve taken care of both Pip and Ivy for weeks/months very happily – though never at the same time. I love Jeremy’s family. I would never say no for this ask. The care is not entirely straightforward, the cat is diabetic and requires insulin shots (Emy has gotten the blood sugar steady enough to get rid of the preprandial glucose check which did involve a kittie version of a finger stick and glucometer which I have done previously) and the last time Pip was here, we were worried about a cough that cropped up and had to manage that and also, it’s almost impossible for one person to walk Pip and Elka at the same time. Elka will walk briskly and basically heels on the leash (though now Jeremy walks her on an extension leash, while I still prefer the six-foot leash, so she’s worse for me as she expects more freedom when I walk her). Pip is a mosey-er, sniffing and peeing every 4 feet and can be a stubborn walker where you end up spending a lot of time coaxing him to walk about 20 feet. We don’t have a fenced back yard, so there is no “letting the dog out”, there is always a walk. So it means a separate “going outside” about 3-4 times a day. Anyways, I was irritated that Jeremy assumed that I was going to take care of all the animals all the time (which is what I had been doing in the past), so he promised me that this go around, I would not have to do anything with the animals. And so I haven’t! Whenever someone barks and whines at night, he gets up to let them out. When someone pees in the house or has diarrhea or throws up a hairball, I don’t clean it up. He manages the insulin shots – though the first week, he was waving a used syringe around in the air gesticulating while talking to me which really freaked me out, so I taught him how to properly handle sharps and make a homemade sharps container. So when he left for a business trip on Sunday night, he kind of asked me – uhhh, so should I hire a catsitter or dogsitter for the week I’m gone? and I laughed and said, no no no, I got it.

I went out into the woods on Sunday morning for a long run. It was 35 and slightly rainy. It’s almost the kind of weather that I eschew running in because it’s miserable. If it was raining any harder, I would have been miserable, but it was just drizzling and I enjoyed being outside on the trail with the 3-4 other grizzled runners. I try to remember to bring a whistle on these runs, just in case I break an ankle and need to whistle for help. When it’s this cold and wet, I worry I’d get too cold too fast if I stopped.

Jeremy decided to take the new Silver line to Dulles. It took him about 2 hours to get there instead of a 30 minute car ride. He is a funny guy. We do spend entirely too much time together, this trip to California will be good for him and good for both of us. It’s a weird business trip, there is no more “California office” – I mean, there is physically an office, but no one is there. Well I think one day there is a retreat there and that’s why he’s going, but he’s basically doing social things, strengthening ties to people he wants to be in touch with. He is meeting his boss in person there at his boss’s house. That’s both very weird and very of-the-moment. Jeremy’s seen the inside of a room of the house for years now and he’s been Jeremy’s boss for many years, they are friends, but it’s the new way, I guess. He’ll see Vince in Davis tonight.

I actually had a very nice weekend. Saturday especially, I had that outing with Rachel and I also went to a pool rolling session for kayaking in the late afternoon and, unusually, I had a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks which tasted exactly like warm, melted ice cream at about 2 pm and I felt very alive and happy the rest of the day (though I didn’t sleep well Saturday night). I told Jeremy about this alive/happy feeling and he’s like – yeah, that’s why the whole world loves coffee, you silly person. Haha. Jeremy is so particular about coffee that at least 15% of his carry-on luggage is coffee or coffee-making equipment. I was like you are going to San Francisco – they have coffee there? (the Asia travel does have Starbucks, but often they don’t open until 10 am. Asia is a culture of late coffee, not morning coffee) and he’s like – I want to make it first thing, before I go out of the room and then I ask, there is a coffee maker in the room? and he said that is bad coffee.