burnt toast life

the biggest mistake of my life (it’s probably not what you’re thinking)

Actually, I have no idea what you’re thinking. Who are you? Do I even know you? Is anyone actually reading this? I don’t even care. I have a big glass of red wine and a couple of dogs laying at my feet. Life is good.

Anyway, every couple of years I like to spend a few agonizing hours playing “what if?” I’m sure we all do it. I like to do it right as I’m about to fall asleep, or better yet, when I wake up for no reason at 2 a.m. The game is quite simple: just imagine the outcome of your life if you would have done this and done that. How much better it would have been. Because that’s all we can focus on, right? How much better it would have been? What we’re missing out on? It’s probably not accurate to think that way. I just finished an intriguing book called The Post Birthday World, which explores both sides of “what would happen if she did” and “what would happen if she didn’t” one chapter at a time. I won’t spoil it because I highly recommend it, but I’ll just say there was no right decision. There were pluses and minuses to each life she could have lived. And that’s a pretty smart way of handling it.

ANYWAY. Regrets, I have a few. I wish I had gotten my shit together in high school and figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wish I had never wasted my time and money on a worthless school like The Art Institute of Philadelphia (damn con artists). I wish I had started writing sooner, I wish I was writing more now. I wish I never signed up for a credit card. I wish, I wish, I wish. But in a more tangible way, I really wish I never bought that car in June.

I swear, no single decision has more completely and swiftly impacted my financial life.  I remember, for one second while sitting at the dealership, hesitating. And I could have just walked away right then. I should have. I didn’t.

Why did I buy the car? I wish I could say because my trusty old Blue Civic finally died. But no – she’s still chugging away. If I’m being honest (and why would I not be honest rambling to myself?) it was sheer vanity. I look around and I see my peers with new-ish cars. I talked myself into believing that I deserved it. And so, with my arrogant head held high, I plunged us from a comfortable existence into counting every penny. From spending without thinking to logging into my bank account before stopping at Wawa for coffee. One car payment can do that? Seriously? Yes, yes it can.

I went from having a $0 car payment to having one I’m too ashamed to disclose. And the worst part? I just have to live with it. It’s not like they have an exchange policy. I seriously hate myself a little bit every time I slide behind the wheel. But damn, the built-in Bluetooth is nice. I am definitely in love with that.

Silver linings: well, I have learned to be a lot more conscious of my spending, simply because I have to be. Gone are the days of aimlessly wandering through Target and leaving with $200 worth of “What the hell did I just buy?” I don’t whip out a credit card to pay for whatever I need; I don’t even carry credit cards anymore. And Eric and I finally got rid of our personal accounts and joined forces 100%, so I’m a little self-conscious about spending what I used to spend on trivial shit. It’s just not worth the fight justifying $50 visits to the nail salon.

We’ll bounce back, of course. Maybe we’ll look back and laugh. In the grand scheme of bad financial decisions, I don’t think buying a car ranks up there with bankruptcy and such. But I’ve learned an important lesson about biting off more than I can chew, and I learned it the hard way. Target…. I miss you.

how to become a mother overnight

I swear, this blog isn’t just going to be about puppies. But the dog is new and the blog is new, so this is what I have.

It’s no secret that Eric and I want to have children, but haven’t been blessed with one yet. I guess that’s a very short and compact way of summing up a much more complicated reality. But anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The point is that I used to mock people who treated their dogs like children, talked to their dogs like children, and behaved as though their dogs actually were children. Now that I have a dog, I’m starting to understand why this is so easy to do.

It all started at Marshall’s when I was shopping for a dog bed and various other accessories. I started perusing the dog toy section and thinking, “Ooh, this one’s cute. Should I get the wittle bitty lambie or the wittle bitty lion? Oh my, but then there’s a giraffe, too!”

baby toy? dog toy? both..?

Yeah. It felt suspiciously like shopping for a small child, and the similarities were not lost on me. Plus, from the moment we brought him home to live with us, Eric automatically became daddy and I became mommy. Ryder’s new tag bears our last name. It’s like we effortlessly adopted a very furry child.

And like having a new baby, I feel desperately guilty every morning when I leave him and anxious to get home to see him. The romanticized notions are basically gone, and he gets in my way and annoys me daily – you know, like when you have a kid. I’m proud of what he has learned so far – you can already tell he’s getting more comfortable in his own skin and he’s even learning how to walk properly. Our little boy is growing up so quickly…

One non-baby related thing that makes me very happy about Ryder is that he has forced me into exercise. For the past year I have made up excuse after excuse to go back to bed for an hour after waking up at 7 to pack Eric’s lunch. Every night I would go to be saying, “Tomorrow will be the day. I will stay up and do my Pilates video or maybe even go for a run. I will not go back to sleep.” And then morning would come and the bed would look so inviting that I would abandon exercise in favor of sleep. But now that I have this very active pup, I’m guilt tripped into walks in the morning. Well, the first morning was a guilt trip. Now I actually enjoy these walks, probably as much as he does. I actually have more energy during the day, and I feel just slightly less guilty about crating him all day. Eric and I even started taking evening walks, too, rather than flopping down on the couch the minute we get home from work. So all in all, this dog has improved our lives and given us a pseudo-child.

Don’t get me wrong – we still want a real baby. But he’s a nice distraction in the meantime.

must tolerate dogs

I’m not a dog person.

This may even be an understatement, especially since several friends responded to my text about getting a dog with, “What? Did pigs start flying to announce that hell froze over, too?”

The truth is that I never wanted a dog. A few years ago I would go as far as to say I disliked them, but really only when they were jumping or drooling on me. However, I married a “dog guy” and we talked about getting one since the idea of sharing our lives together finally became reality. He insisted that he needed a dog, and over time the idea grew on me. I even began to romanticize the notion, imagining a stoic companion to keep watch beside my armchair while I sipped hot cocoa and delved into a good book. In my doggie daydreams, of course, I never imagined a poorly behaved pup.

Eric and I clashed on what breed to get, and somewhat violently. I wanted a small, pocket-sized dog to carry around in my handbag and strut with down the street. His inclinations leaned more towards large, bad-ass dog that could be his best friend and not threaten his manhood while on walks. He wanted a pitbull; I wanted a pug. We both agreed that whatever dog we picked absolutely had to be a rescue from a shelter and not a pet store purebred. Since we disagreed on just about everything else about our future pet, the matter was laid to rest for the time being.

Then Friday afternoon rolled around. My mom forwarded us an email about a 7 month old Golden who needed a home – and fast. The email came with 2 snapshots, a sad tale of allergies, and a warning that whoever wanted the dog needed to make a decision before Saturday evening. We called and set up a meeting for the next morning.

We could tell Ryder was going to be a firecracker from the first time we saw him straining against his leash as his family walked him down the street. There’s just something about the way he walks – it’s as if he doesn’t quite know how to coordinate his front legs with his back legs. It was immediately apparent that this was a high energy, high maintenance dog – but he was a purebred Golden worth $1,000 that we were getting for free. He was a big dog (Eric’s happy) but a loyal, friendly dog that’s great with kids (Amanda’s happy).

Then we heard a bit about why the family was getting rid of Ryder, and that’s when I knew he was absolutely, without a doubt coming home with us. Eric already chastised me for speculating and giving credit to hearsay, so I’ll just say this – they (supposedly) did not give him the love and attention he deserved, allergies notwithstanding. It became apparent that he was my “burnt toast dog,” which went along well with my burnt toast husband and various other burnt toast people/items in my life. But that’s another story for another time.

So Ryder is our dog, and so far things are going well. He is rambunctious, excitable, and has endless stores of energy. My biggest complaint so far is the ridiculous amount of dog hair and dog dandruff all over my clean floor. It’s pretty obvious that he has never been to the groomer, so hopefully once we get that out of the way the shedding will be less intense. We took him to the dog park on Saturday afternoon and he had an absolute ball, plus he seems to play well with others. He sleeps curled next to our bed at night and follows Eric around the house wherever he goes. He clearly needs to be trained and to get comfortable in his element, but I can tell he’s a good dog already. We definitely made the right decision – though I still would not call myself a “dog person.”