We are dog sitting the most adorable puppy in the whole world until Wednesday. I say “we” like I have done anything other than give belly rubs and throw toys all over the apartment. But I will argue these are the most important things.
Pepper belongs to one of my roommate’s friends and we have all individually wondered how to, respectfully, keep her and make her ours. There’s just something so wonderful about someone being that excited to see you every time you walk by. Or open the fridge.
At one point though, as I folded laundry - the fourth and never-ending round of laundry because I work best under deadline - Pepper nosed my door open. It slowly swung open and she stood frozen in the door frame, staring at me as if she was disappointed to find me here. In such a state of human diligence. She sniffed and walked away.
My roommate said she got moody on their walk too. Someone bent down to meet her and Pepper lost her shit, growled. This is the same dog who laid on her back, spread eagle, hoping for belly rubs from me after 46 seconds of introductions. The same dog who stands on her hind legs and claps for a stuffed alligator, hugs it, and then naps.
It’s because of our collective inability to allow for more than one emotion at a time that I am very aware that Pepper is a girl dog. And in a lot of ways she is how we talk about female humans as well.
“Amanda is a psycho.” The guy next to me at the coffee shop laughed. His friend agreed.
“Oh, she’s an actual crazy bitch.”
I couldn’t hear the rest of the context due to the headphones I was wearing. Headphones that, while not playing any sounds, were on to lessen the effect of people on my worn-out energy field. Extroversion be damned, teaching too many classes will drain you of your ability to give out any more attention from your senses.
“My sister is doing an experiment: Whenever men walk towards her, she doesn’t move out of the way first. So far she has collided with 28 men.”
A tweet that I screenshotted in 2014, and an experiment that I, also, try out from time to time. I usually can’t last the day.
There are days when I can take up this mantle, and there are the days that wear me out. When I cannot have this conversation again. The one where I explain to you that the sidewalk is for sharing.
How exhausting it is to be told to smile. How painfully frustrating to convey that i am not a thing you are entitled to when you get bored, that I do not have to always be happy because you are always so sad. How, standing in a doorway, staring disappointedly, I realize that you call all of your exes crazy, and that this would now include me.
Pepper is certainly allowed a full range of emotions, but she likes naps as much as me, and I am so very tired.