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IFIIL – Little Delay!

Derek and I just got back from watching Milk with his brother, Brenton. It was a phenomenal film, and I hope that it helps to inspire some more change in California. I’ll leave that at that.

So basically, since we spent most of the day hanging out with Brenton and assembling furniture (new bookshelves and media cart, yay), my Friday went by too fast, and I didn’t have time to write up my 4th edition of It’s Friday, I’m in Love!

I have my list of things to share already, so it shouldn’t take too long to finish, but at the moment it’s tiem for bed! So look for IFIIL #4 tomorrow sometime! We have an optometrist appointment in the morning (yay new contacts!) and I’ll be writing it right after that. :)

Boston Baked Beans

I guess I’ve managed to find something to spice things up a little bit around here, despite my complaint/lament a week and a half ago about how nothing ever happens to me.

After a couple of months of thinking, talking, discussing, researching, etc, I’ve decided that I want to get a dog. Not just any dog. I want to get an adult rescue dog — because I don’t feel comfortable buying a purebred puppy when there are so many dogs out there who need good homes. I almost don’t want to get a purebred at all, but one of my stipulations is that the dog is already at least mostly house-trained and has lived in a home before, so I’m going to go with one of LA’s many rescue agencies, which usually specialize in certain breeds. Most of the time rescue agencies are actually rescue networks, and keep their dogs in foster homes across the city/state/country, so their dogs come with a bit more of a personality profile — you’ll know how well they’re trained, what kind of bad habits they have, any medical issues, etc. It’s not a shot in the dark, like it is with a breeder’s puppy or a dog you find at the shelter. And right now, I need something that is a little more certain. Maybe someday, when I’m a lot better off, I can do what my parents have been doing for years — get the pet and then figure it out as they go along — but for now, I need just a little bit more surety.

Since I’m also looking for a fairly well-behaved, quiet and small-ish dog breed, I’ve chosen the Boston Terrier — after all, they are “America’s little gentlemen.” Plus, they’re freaking cute. And there’s a Boston Terrier rescue based in Los Angeles, near Long Beach.

When we got our apartment, the ad we found it in said pets were okay with a deposit, but when we signed our lease, the lady at the management company said that since we only had Sammie, and since he lived in a cage and can’t really get out and wreak havoc, we wouldn’t need to put down a deposit. However, if we decided to get something else, like a dog or a cat, we’d have to have that added to our lease and put down the deposit at that time. Derek and I talked about it at the time, and decided we’d wait a few months and get settled in before we made the plunge into “real” pet ownership. We predicted sometime early in 2009 we’d be ready, and that’s realistically when we’ll be getting our dog, it looks like. Rescue agencies’ processes are a lot longer than most breeders’ or shelters’, as they involve home checks and reference checks and the like — none of this ‘come in, see a dog, pay some money, leave with a dog’ kind of stuff. These dogs have had hard enough lives, they don’t need to be going to a home where they won’t be taken care of.

So we’re starting the process. The first step is to go and talk to the apartment’s management company, and put down our deposit. We had wanted to do this before Thanksgiving, but the lady at the management company asked us to wait until next week, since this is a shortened week and she’s mostly booked up. Then after that we can submit our application to the rescues — I’ve looked at a couple so far, one is ideal because it’s very close but the others are doable — and get that process started. I assume this is when the home check takes place — they’ll come by to take a look at our place and identify any issues that might eliminate any of their dogs, such as, for example, stairs might not work for a dog with joint or bone issues. Then they’ll try to match us up with the right dog for us, based on our application/questionnaire, and then contact us when/if they find one that works.

Hopefully it won’t be too long of a process, as I’d really like to get a dog relatively soon, but realistically we’re at least a month away, I think. Here’s to hoping it won’t be much longer than that!

Mushy.

This is the stuff that I dreamed about, that I wrote longing poems about and wished for constantly for years. And now that I have it, it fills my heart so completely, so fully, that it’s overflowing into other parts of me, waiting just behind my eyelids and every moment inching closer to spilling over and out into a million little tears of joy and gratitude and happiness that I never thought I could know.

On the whiteboard in the break room at work, as Thanksgiving draws closer, they’ve laid out markers and an invitation for each of us to share what we’re thankful for, and each time I see it I want to scrawl across it in huge, bright red letters I AM THANKFUL FOR THE LOVE HE GIVES ME. I am thankful for how warm my heart feels. I am thankful for waking up next to him every morning, for hearing him grumble about how he can’t find any socks, for love notes exchanged every day via instant messengers, for being able to wrap my arms around him, for being able to wear his shoes, for how soft his bony shoulders can be, for the smiles that creep across my face when I look at him and see how handsome he is, for the sound of his keys turning in the lock when he comes home in the evening, for the way he holds me whenever I need him, for the faces we make at each other, for the cute little noises he makes in that place between half-awake and half-asleep… for the moments that we share, just him and me, ‘between the click of the light and the start of the dream.’ I am thankful for how beautiful he makes me feel, that I never feel too young or immature or goofy for him, that I never feel like I’m wrong or bad or flawed in his eyes.

I’m starting to feel more secure, more sure of myself, because of him. He’s not going anywhere, just like he tells me. He’s not going to leave and come back someone else. He’s in this for “the long haul,” he tells me. He promises me. He promises me someday, and forever, and he seals it with this little sparkle, this shining, enduring symbol of I’m-Not-Going-Anywhere. He promises me that the goal, the ending, is out there, not too far away, and we know what it is. The goal is forever.

I want everyone to feel like this. I want everyone to be able to look at someone and just know. Anna wrote a blog about swooning over her husband’s thoughtfulness and little expressions of love and kindness. For her, it’s a rush of blood, straight to her cheeks. For me, it’s this welling of tears and this swelling in my heart. And I want everyone to feel it for someone; I want everyone in the world to know this feeling at least once. It’s too precious, too amazing, to live a life and never experience.

Just now, he was laying on the couch, asleep, and I was sitting on the other end. I moved my leg to get more comfortable and he woke up a little — just enough to mumble out, “you’re pretty… you’re really pretty.” And then, he turned and fell back asleep, as if nothing had happened, as if he didn’t make me feel beautiful again (even as I’ve been fighting back those embarrassing happy tears the entire time I’ve been writing this and know that I’m turning an unflattering shade of bright red in doing so), as if he hadn’t just brought that overflow from my heart straight back up, through my throat and right back to… me wiping the tears from my eyes. Is this real? Can I keep this?