Compromise

"Five and a half years we have lived together. You and me, babe...we're in this together."

I found myself uttering this sentence to my dog tonight. I have officially become one of those people, the people who talk to their pets as though they are people. I'm sure she completely understands, so shut up.

Having a dog is better than living alone. I am not someone who easily adapts to the living habits of others, but she makes sure that I have to do so. We negotiate. She does not eat my underwear if I put them in the laundry basket, or strew garbage across the house if I don't let the trash overflow, or pee on the floor if I take her for a walk before I leave. So, my bad single person behavior is limited by the presence of this other being who depends on me to do certain things in order to keep her from destruction.

This is scarily like other relationships I know that are between two humans.

I still leave work papers all over the coffee table, scatter shoes everywhere, and wait too long between dishwashings, but we don't need to talk about that. These are not things that disturb my dog, after all.

I think people with pets make better friends and partners, because they're used to adapting. Some things about our pets are simply not going to change, and we seem to be much more accepting about that in dogs and cats than we are in humans. In fact, unless we are the Dog Whisperer, we go out of our way to work around certain personality aspects that can be annoying and inconvenient. I don't give nearly as much leeway to humans, which is perhaps one of the reasons I am still single. But I suspect it's good practice to have this dog around, who gets more upset when I leave than I wish she would, who barks when I want her to be quiet, and who occasionally rips up my carpet without consideration for my security deposit.

In case it's not obvious, I'm starting to feel like it might be okay to have a human partner. Laila and I have done pretty well for quite a while, but I'm having some empathy with Adam; the dog is great, but she's not quite the right fit as a partner. Unfortunately, the dating game most people seem to play makes me want to rip my hair out, and I don't know that I'm really suited to having another person around all the time. I really like people...but I also like having my own space.

Because nothing can ever just be easy...

I spent over three hours on the phone tonight talking to various customer service representatives. Technically, I guess I spent a lot of that time waiting to talk to them and listening to unfortunate versions of Christmas songs.

Round one was an attempt to connect my new laptop to the wireless internet in my apartment. I think I uttered the phrase, "I just need the password for my wireless network" approximately twenty-eight times. Nonetheless, we went through every possible troubleshooting technique that did not involve just giving me the password or telling me how I could find it. After an hour and a half on the phone with three different representatives from my internet provider, they told me to call the company that made my wireless router.

So, we began again: "I just need the password for my wireless network." The call probably would have been shorter if the heavy Indian accent and excessive background noise hadn't required repeating every sentence three times. We did everything conceivable to my computer before he gave up and told me I need an ethernet cable. In a fit of desperation, I asked if there was some way to reset my password via my old computer, which was already connected to the internet. He gave me directions to get into that website, and while he was still giving instructions about WEP and WAP and all manner of other things I don't understand, I discovered that the password is displayed right there on the site. Bingo! I had to interrupt him to explain that I I had entered the password and was online. After the fifth time I promised him that I really was online, he finally believed me and bid me farewell.

Then I went online to check out the flight I was supposed to be on tomorrow. Today I got a call that it had been cancelled because of weather, but there it was on the online departure list, allegedly on time and everything. Oddly, I was still also booked on another flight for Saturday morning. So, I called the airline, and after explaining the situation to three different people, managed to ascertain that the flight had been reinstated. Alas, my spot on it had not. One more agent, and we appear to be golden. Since I am infamous for having issues with airlines, we'll see how that goes tomorrow. If all is as promised, at this time tomorrow, I will be in Minnesota. Hoorah!