Today was an odd day - scary, exciting, pleasant, overwhelming and depressing as fuck. The scary and exciting - I'm talking so scary that at some point I had to drive into the woods and poo - part was the fact we are not allowed to leave our city limits. There is almost no traffic and there are a lot of roadblocks - I saw three, yet, Hermes' fortune, always on the other side of the road. These are anti-covid precautions, as the virus is still spreading and killing people, more than those in charge can explain or act cool about.
The most pleasant part was the moment I found the perfect doggo for dad - a small brown mix with lagotto romagnolo, for almost no money, a boy, ready for pick-up. It was the perfect dog and I got so excited, I called instantly. There is a problem, though. My mum isn't too thrilled about having two dogs, even though the hole left behind by the death of their old rottweiler is palpable. But that was, in my design, going to all vaporise once she sees the adorable joy bundle. The General thought it was a tremendously bad idea, because the penalty for crossing city limits is 400 euro and I needed to cross more than one. Both ways. This stubbornness of mine caused him to lose complete control over my wellbeing and that does not sit well with him: he hates it.
I drove, petrified, for hours down the most pleasant, sunny, abandoned roads and it was lovely. The puppy was slightly less like the lagotto, but we liked one another instantly. A soft, clean, fluffy, calm, trusting puppy. He cried for a little bit, once we started driving, hating the transport box, but after five minutes of my humming and talking to him and listening to pleasant jazz, he calmed down and would just look at me or sleep in the nest of doggy toys I stuffed in the carrier.
More luck than brains, not a single patrol stopped me. I kept wondering if I should use the smaller roads, but every time I could see the smaller roads across the valley, more cops were there, expecting it. Once I reached my city, I called dad to ask, hypothetically, if he had a dog of his own, what he would name it. I wanted to keep the puppy for a couple of days and teach it some basic fun commands, but we were due to go uphill tomorrow, so that was the plan, to surprise them then.
At home, the puppy was awesome. Still too young to comprehend almost anything, but the stress of travel caused it to sleep, so once he rested, ate and drank and peed and pooed, and watched a movie in the General's lap, full puppy mode came on: he found all the old socks from under the bookshelves, he found that there is nothing more desirable than a whole box of packing peanuts and he really wanted to prove he can murder most of the toys hitherto serving as his pillows. He's sleeping now in the next room, with Lyra, the lights turned off.
Alas, my sister reacted to the photos of the doggo like an onslaught of unexpected diarrhoea, forbidding me to take the dog up, calling me selfish for imposing more stress on mum, telling me to go visit them sometimes (er...), and see how old and unable to even take care of themselves they are, how I should take care of the animals I have (as opposed to what I'm doing now?) and how I'm making her furious with these crazy ideas of mine. My response that it is a dog designed for elder people, that it's a good one coming from someone who leaves her own dog up with them for four out of seven days a week to go party, and how I can decide for myself whether or not they can or cannot handle a Labradoodle.
But of course she called mum and that was that. If she allows it, then it's allowed, if she suggests it, than it's the right thing to do. Otherwise, door stays closed. Mum called not to even come up tomorrow. Of course, dad doesn't pay for her anything and thinks she should get a job, so, guess that explains most of her actions regarding him.
Am not really interested in being a part of that family at the moment. Fuck 'em. I do miss dad and feel like shit about being treated like shit by a pair of reject side characters from Misery, but the next time he tells me how lonely he is and how much he misses his old dog, he should probably consider I'm the kind of a person who drives across the country to get a puppy to make an old man happy
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