#daytimestories

The Black House, The Blue Sky - Stars vs. Montag

Lovely summer tune.

Sitting at the bar of a popular sushi joint in Gastown, I openly worry whether I'm "too green" for a particular marketing job that I've had my eye on. My lunch companion says "Well, don't you think you could just bullshit your way through it?" I laugh an impossible scoff. This suggestion is coming from a woman from whom I have much to learn, and who has what I regard as a "damn cool job."  A chance encounter brought us together, and so far, she has connected me with some upstanding humans and asked questions that have prompted lots of introspective pondering to find "what I really want in a job."  It seems that this is what my entire summer is going to be all about. 

I don't even have a chance to think about an answer to her question, and just blurt out "Of course not!" But then on the walk home, I really start thinking about all the bullshitting I've done. I realize that in a lot of my jobs, I've had to bullshit - putting on the air that I definitely know what I'm talking about, while madly scrambling to figure things out behind closed doors.  I always did figure it out. Even on those jobs where I was completely alone, no support, just little green me pitching digital strategies to a force field of opposition - I always figured it out. 

This made me arrive at the conclusion that perhaps no matter how much experience we all may have, there are always going to be situations that we are "green" to. Even people in high ranking positions that appear to know the answer to every question have moments of pure unadulterated bullshit. So perhaps my biggest fear in appearing "too green" can be used to my advantage? I've been green to a lot of projects/jobs/situations in my life (because no situation is exactly like the last), but when faced with the question: "can you get it done?" my answer is always "yes, right away" -and I like to deliver on my promise. 

One somber afternoon, before summer arrived in Vancouver, I was sitting on the sofa in my living room reading a book on my iPad while a delicious smelling candle burned in the background. So basically, business as usual. I watched my silly (but loveable) dog as he traversed the sofa and placed two paws on the coffee table.  Bringing his little snout to the fire, he sniffed the candle and immediately recoiled in a yelp.

"Fire is hot, Monty, don't do that!"

Yes, in that moment I felt like "dog mom of the year." I shudder at that title, by the way, because I feel like people who call themselves "dog moms" regularly audition for "Hoarders" and/or pitch shows about their lives to TLC. Anyway, Monty did not heed my warning, stretching his little body out again to sniff the flame - this time from a slightly greater distance. Cautious, he approached the flame with his snout and recoiled again. Dog kids - amiright?  

Note: This story was originally written by me and published on March 8, 2013.

Around this time last year, my boyfriend was spending every waking moment convincing me that we should get a dog.  "It’s not the right time" I’d say. “It’ll be an added expense" I’d whine. But wouldn’t you know it, in 2 weeks he wore me down and we went out to the boonies to look at a pup we saw on the web.  We got to a terrifying “old-washing-machine-on-the-front-lawn" kind of house, that was rundown and basically falling apart. When we walked inside I saw birds, cats, french bulldogs in crates, and a gated-off area with a bunch of Bichon Yorkie puppies, not 8 weeks old. I instantly gravitated towards the biggest one, (one of 2 boys in the litter). “We call that one Chewie ‘cuz he likes to chew everything" said the rotund home owner.  In that moment, I wanted to adopt ALL the animals and give them away to good homes.  My boyfriend was adamant, we would NOT be getting a boy dog.  He stated that they are harder to train, and I wanted to believe him since he has had dogs his whole life. I, on the other hand, had never had a pet in my life and the thought of sharing my time and space with an animal was something very new to me.  We picked up “Chewie" and put him on his back to see if he’d cooperate and act docile. And he was calm.  Well, as calm as an 8 week old puppy can be. He was by far, the cutest and least “Yorkie" looking dog and in that moment, when I held him on his back, I knew that was it. We were taking him home.  When we pulled away from the broken down shack, in my boyfriends slick BMW I felt like we were the “fancy city folk" taking a puppy away from his family. He cried in my arms and burrowed his face in my stomach. 

Today, almost a full year later, Monty is one of the greatest parts of my life. Yes, we changed his name from Chewie for obvious reasons.  I never thought I would ever love an animal as much as I love my dog, and what’s crazier still is that any dog I see, anywhere, I want to love/pet/coo at because all dogs now have a gentle and loving face to me.  Silly dopey eyes and a constant willingness to be happy is enough to make anyone love a dog, I think. But never having had pets, I never really knew what it meant to love an animal.  I’d always considered myself a dog person (confession: I seriously hate cats), but wouldn’t go out of my way to pay tons of attention to a stranger’s dogs. 

You know when you decide, all of a sudden, "I'm going to start journaling" and you riffle through your things to find a diary or journal? You crack that baby open and realize "ugh there are pre-adult scribblings in here about how hard my teenage life was." So you're faced with the option of tearing out those pages OR sliding the journal far away from you, going out and just buying a new one. Well this is kind of what I'm doing, but I'm keeping some of the old entries and transitioning them over here. Doing a bit of story editing, if you will.