R: Out of gas a half a mile down the road

We can't keep meeting like this.

I've got a strange kind of melancholy. Several details of my life are not exactly what I would like them to be and I'm having a hard time with it. That's old news though. Work, blah. The endless journey of fertility, blah. I mean, these are big deals but they're well-trod territory.

Last night we went and got Hank, our new foster dog. It was kind of a whole to-do, given he was coming in on a flight at nearly midnight, and to pick him up we had to borrow my dad's car, which is far, far advanced over ours (yes, as of this week it is our car, not one we are long-term borrowing as Mel was able to find some time during the week to get that done!) We went to Mel's parents' for dinner and to help with some stuff (I thought maybe Papa H needed help putting the barbeque together but he got it worked out, just needed help moving it and the old one), and to hang out until we figured it was time to go. I was fighting tiredness since I had been pretty active all day/week, but behind the wheel I was alert and fine.

Driving a strange car late at night to a distant place I don't usually go was a very dislocating experience. I got the feel for the car pretty quickly but it was huge and you had to be careful of the blind spot (I only got tripped up on this once.) We got to the airport a little early after a slight detour thanks to a miscommunication with the GPS, but ended up waiting in the cell phone lot for about 2 hours while the dogs were offloaded, in what was represented to us as an unusual amount of time. It was not a super-fun experience but it was kind of intimate to just sit there in the dark and people watch together, so that was nice. I just wish we had brought snacks.

We got our boy and brought him home, getting in around 3. We spent some time letting him sniff around and accept our pets, he was very sweet all night. We finally went to bed after 4, and unfortunately I got up early with or without the alarm.

Today we've just kind of been letting him chill. He really likes it in his crate. One issue is that he wasn't fitted with a proper collar and harness as we were told he would be, so I had to go out and pick some up first thing in the morning, and if I'm being honest, the stuff available at CT and Wal-Mart (the only places open before 9 that sell pet stuff... besides maybe the dollar store) was not really good, so I had to make a second trip in the afternoon but it did the trick in the sense of having somewhere to latch his leashes (which I also had to buy) for the duration of his brief pee break. Luckily, he is not a bolter. Now I think I've got it.

So it's bittersweet because I'm happy we have the dog, but it's disruptive to an already very unstable and borderline untenable lifestyle we have, with my commute and some health problems Mel has been having.  It makes me sad that we didn't do this, I don't know, last year, even with everything else we had going on we would have easily been able to fit it in. And I would be home and life was just so much more... better then. Salad days.

So it's like I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for things to go wrong (again,) for reality to pull the rug out from under us as it tends to do. In a way, I hope someone gets to adopt him soon, which is definitely not what Mel would want, but it would be a relief to know we got through the experience. Mel is already kind of like, "I love him, I want to keep him, let's be foster fails." And it's not for lack of love for the dog that that makes me antsy.

He's snoozing away, making adorable noises that I think are relaxation and not disgruntlement. I offered to let him out but he just kind of rolled over. Good boy.

We'll have more on this story as it develops

Keep on rockin

Scotto