Sunday, April 21, 2013

Boot Camp

I haven’t wanted to talk about this… which sounds stupid, because it’s about a dog… but it’s a painful topic.

We finally “gave up” on Guinness and his relationship with the cat. It’s been a problem since he came home, but we’ve been putting it off. The separation anxiety was ridiculous, too. He was breaking out of his crate(s) and this was even a bigger problem than the cat aggression. We didn’t feel safe leaving the house. Who knew what he was capable of? Could he get upstairs and get the cat? Would he turn on Apache? Would he hurt himself on the crate trying to break out?

We finally decided on sending him back to his breeder for a few weeks of intensive training. They worked on cat aggression, they worked on the separation anxiety and they drilled obedience into him.

Then we brought him home.

He wasn’t our dog. Something was different about him. He became really aggressive toward Apache, to the point where J got really worried (I mean terribly anxious/depressed) that he’d hurt Apache. (It’s not out of the realm of possibility - Guinness has caught and killed a bird before.) After only four days of being at home, he went after Apache a fourth time and wound up being boarded that night.

I needed to rewatch the videos the videos they sent us and I didn’t like what I saw. Guinness looked broken, afraid. Definitely not our dog.

When I brought it up to the breeder, he went OFF on me. Blamed it on J’s behavior when he picked Guinney up. Said J needed to be medicated. All sorts of terrible things. To say I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him would be an understatement.

Abso-fucking-lutely uncalled for.

We went there yesterday to pick him up.

We left him behind.

(I wonder what he thinks about us… I feel terrible.)

It was decided - after much clearing of the air - that they would bring Guinness to live with them, in their house, for the next few days. With cats and a dog who really hates cats who should spur Guinness into the bad behavior we’re seeing here at home.

He’s not a bad dog, and he has a lot of elements of both his parents in him (bonus of going back to the breeder - they KNOW what makes Guinnes tick better than anyone in the world. Probably even us.), which was a huge thing when it came to deciding on the best way to work with him.

The change in J’s anxiety level has been astonishing.

I know he won’t be perfect when he won’t be home, but I have hope that he’ll be close enough to the dog we know he can be…

But, holy shit, does it suck being apart from him for this long.

Friday, April 19, 2013

I… can’t… even

If you want the whole story, go watch the fucking news… IF (and that’s a big if (ha!)) they can figure out the fucking truth.

All I know today is that one of the owners of my company was basically locked in his apartment today due to this crazy bullshit.

To top it off, supposedly they found a bomb about 30 feet from where Mr. Bossman parked his car. Supposedly. That’s his story and that’s all I have to go on.

I am so over this shit.

——

There’s so much to talk about and so much I don’t want to talk about.

I think I’m going to listen to “Neverwhere” again. Or maybe I’ll start listening to “Cabin Pressure”... it feels like a radio show type of night. Plus, you know, Benedict Cumberbabe.

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Second guessing

Over a month after my first interview, I received an email asking me to go back for a second interview… from the company with an office in the UK.

I’m trying to tell myself that I did the right thing by taking the local job instead of holding out hope for this other company, but it’s hard. Moving to the UK was such a concrete thing when I had a job. Now that I was forced to re-evaluate the timetable and all the other things, I’m questioning EVERYTHING.

I know it’s not healthy.

I know I’m fine at my new job.

I know I like it there.

I know I’ll be just fine there.

I know I’m being stupid.

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

(And seriously? Who waits for over a MONTH before they decide on the second round of interviews? It makes me feel like I wasn’t anywhere their top choices.)

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

I understand only train station

I’m officially the UCONN GIRL! at my new job.

I suppose that’s not any worse than being known as “New Hampshire!”...

It’s two days in to the new job, so I can’t say anything about it. Right now, it’s a job. A job that pays well. A job with people I like.

That’s good enough for me.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Three weeks, three days.

Three is a magic number, right? In case you haven’t been playing along with the home game, that’s the exact length of time I’ll have been unemployed before…

(drum roll please)

I start my new job on Monday.

I’m sorry. Let me rephrase that.

I START MY NEW JOB ON MONDAY!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This one was a wild ride. They never hire people - it’s a family business and there hasn’t been any turnover in forever - so it really was a weird experience. I was trying to keep my cool and not do The Interview Spazzout. (Seriously. That’s a thing.) It was hard, though. I have so many mixed feelings about how I left my previous employer that it was hard to get through the “What happened? Why were you laid off?” without either a) bursting into tears or b) getting angry. It’s complicated… even if you think you know the full story about life at my former employer, you don’t have a fucking clue. So, yeah, that.

It was funny - the guy doing the interview was a UConn grad, so we shot the shit a lot about the campus and that sort of thing. We talked about the dorms at South Campus being torn down / rebuilt and I said something about how I wasn’t at The South Campus Massacre because I was on the road with the hockey team or something. (I really wish I could remember where I was - I only remember hearing some friends telling stories about being pepper sprayed.) He like breaks off mid sentence, hauls ass to his office, and comes back with a UConn hockey puck. 

It was surrreal. It was almost like he was trying to impress me. (Which, I have to be honest, I TOTALLY loved.) Other than that, I really felt comfortable there. At this point in my career, accounting is accounting is accounting, so the personality fit is more important. Is MOST important.

I don’t know. It’s 30 companies as compared to the five I had been working for. But it’s all the same industry and there’s a system in place, which makes it way different. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t things that need to be improved… plus they’re moving to a new software system, so hello! Double learning curve. Just my type of thing.

We’re actually doing a temp-to-perm thing, and I’ve already told another company (that I would have liked to work for) that I’m currently unavailable, but I don’t see myself leaving at the end of the temp period. I don’t see them letting me go, either. I think it’s just to make them feel better.

The only thing that really sucks about this is that it’s a local company. I just don’t have the experience, the software expertise and the CPA designation needed to get a comparable job with an international company. I don’t know what this means for our plans to move to London… but when I started looking, I knew I’d be stuck in the States longer than I wanted to be.

Oh well, we’ll figure it out sooner or later. We always do.