Thursday, 11.14.2013 - 10:10 am.
This week I've been particularly busy. I'm interviewing students (again) for the research project and I have to call them and set up an appointment and talk to them. The third part is not bad at all, the second is ok, but the first one is a drag.
I go and make calls from my boss' office, I sit right in front of her just so I'll feel pressured to do it and won't slack off. It's worked out well, really. But I still have a long way to go. So far I have three interviews out of 20 required.
This week, also, I've stopped biting the insides of my mouth. It's a lifelong habit of mine that causes me delight but also has caused me irreversible damage. I suppose it's an addiction to a lesser scale, so I have to be alert. While I don't feel the need to bite anymore, I continue with the triggering behavior, which is sliding my tongue all around the inside of my mouth. But I'm happy about my progress and I will keep up with this.
Another thing this week: I've had the same dream pattern three nights in a row. I'm traveling by plane with loved ones, be it Andrew or my family; we stop at an airport, we take another plane, I get home. And there's some minor trouble in between. Like, in my dream last night (or this morning), I forgot to pick up my bags at the airport. No, I didn't forget, I just pretended they didn't exist and when I came home, to my parents' house, they asked where they were. I had to contact the airline to search for it. I was coming from Australia and I'd gotten a lot of loot. All in the bags.
I have no idea what's with the pattern, or the content of the dreams. I...like...traveling? That is indeed a recurrent theme in my dreams pretty much since I left my country and started going places, but three nights in a row? Help me, Freud.
Oh, you know, I just realized: that whole "picking up my bags is essential but I'm skipping that task and then I'll regret it" is pretty much something I saw on a Seinfeld episode yesterday. Seinfeld runs into a friend who's going to a meeting, the friend blows it off to go grab lunch with him, and during lunch he realizes it was really important that he attended the meeting. Huh. Thanks, Freud!
Remember Andrew and I rescued a puppy at the end of september? Anyway, we did. And we kept her at our friend Karin's vet clinic until last week, when we decided we'd bring her to the apartment. I ADORE dogs, but our living conditions aren't the best to have one. But this one was small, and it was temporary. We were looking for a home for her. It was expensive to keep her in the vet any longer, that's why we decided to bring her with us.
The day before we go pick her up, I get the news: there was an accident at the vet clinic. She was out in the back yard for the first time, with Karin's two dogs. She's this tiny, crazy thing and she finds an electric cable coming from the ground and bites it. She's instantly gone.
I was scared of having her in the apartment but a part of me was looking forward to it...maybe she could learn to use the sandbox like the cats and so we could keep her forever. But while I shed my share of tears and was heartbroken, I couldn't help thinking it was for the best. It didn't look like we'd be finding her a home soon. And we can't have a dog, it's a small apartment without a yard and we're thinking of going abroad in a few years (we're taking the cats, which is already a big problem in logistic and financial terms but no one's getting left behind, not after the way I lost my Nena when I came to Chile and my mom got cancer). The puppy, all in all, didn't have a family. It could have happened to another dog, a client of the vet clinic, and hell would ensue. An electrician was called inmediately after they found her and tried to bring her back to life.
Karin's parents took the puppy to the country and buried her along with the rubber chicken she loved. My comfort is that, in most of her three months of life, she lived well. When I found her, being looked after by another dog, she was underweight and sick. Who knows for how long she'd been living on the street since she was born. She was pampered at the clinic, everybody loved her. She had a warm bed, all the food she needed her, hands to pet her, and friends to play with. Every dog should be so lucky (every animal, humans included, should be so lucky, but so it goes).
Now I have to go get ready for a few interviews today, assuming, hoping the students will show up. I don't feel so good. I've been incubating a flu, it seems, but also I've read so many bad news and horrible things being done by people to other people, and those things are stuck in my head and I feel so repulsed and impotent.
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