Separation anxiety

Tonight marks the end of my normal school week and tomorrow night marks one week since I have become a new-puppy owner. I am thoroughly exhausted! Of course, I didn't really have a full week this week. Thanks to Snowpocalypse 2011, I was granted two full days off Tuesday and Wednesday. Next week, assuming we don't get another load of snow dumped on us. Let's pray it doesn't -- the drifts of snow in the front of our yard are twice the size of Juliette, easily. This of course means that this is the thing most attractive to her in our yard, two and a half feet of dirty plowed snow. In addition, the streets of Royal Oak were seriously messy tonight for school -- left hand turn lanes were completely filled with three and a half foot piles of snow that were creating a median of sorts. I have been hanging out in Royal Oak for school now for over six months now for school and tonight was like learning my way around the city all over again. The name of the game there is Learn How to Get Everywhere Using Only Right Turns. I don't recommend playing!

One upside of becoming a new-puppy owner is that my time line is dependent on what she needs. This means that when 7:45-8 a.m. arrive and she wants to get up and is whining, it doesn't matter that my internal clock is begging me to go back to bed until noon. Of course, I'm exhausted all day, I'm drinking more coffee than ever (I've gone through more than half a bottle of my favorite White Chocolate Mocha creamer in less than a week), but I do actually get more done and I manage to stay busy most of the day. The downside is that I'm naturally a night owl, and I am not yet used to the fact that my body doesn't want to sleep 'til anytime before 11:30 p.m. yet (hence the past midnight posts). Part of this is that I haven't adapted my homework schedule yet -- I'm used to staying up all night Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights to do homework and sleeping in Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Since I'm getting up earlier, I should be doing homework throughout the day ... But Juliette does not understand homework and it's very hard to stay focused when you have a cute puppy discovering new things every second! (Today, she was very frustrated with my math homework detracting my attention from her, and she proceeded to try and take it ... I am much too old to be trying to tell my professor that my dog ate my homework!)

Something Juliette has decided she does not like much is the noise of crowds on the TV. We are a TV, sports and movie loving family and we spend a lot of time watching things together as a family and as such, we have a big TV and surround sound. We've always been more of a sit down in the living room to eat dinner and watch something than sitting down at the table. We love the Detroit Red Wings here (although my dad really doesn't get into it until Stanley Cup Playoffs) and Juliette experienced her first hockey game in this house this week. When the crowd cheers suddenly or a commercial is played that has a stomping/clapping/cheering background to it, she will bark at it for several minutes. She is incredibly smart though, because she did realize it was coming from a particular speaker more strongly than the others and started barking at it specifically. The same thing happens with cheering crowds on American Idol. However, tonight one of our funniest moments happened while watching Idol. If you watch, you know who Tornado Man is -- if you didn't, Google him. I'm sure there will be some viral videos in the next few days. Anyhow, he was dressed strangely and was very, very loud and dancing weirdly and singing weirdly, and Juliette decided she needed to bark at him. We were already laughing, and her barking at him confirmed how we felt even more!

Juliette does however like music, which is great, because we are very musical family. She loves the Jeopardy music and she will sit in bed with me and watch Gossip Girl or on the couch and watch Grey's Anatomy with me and my mom for a long time. We love good music around here, and we're all singers and we play instruments. My dad always sings, and she's shown a fascination with him singing and perks her ears up and gets happy when he sings (this happened for the first time within minutes of bringing her into our car to bring her home last week).

She is also already showing her protective streak. Last night, I took her outside and several of our neighbors had put out their recycling and garbage already, though we had not, and she immediately took notice to the garbage of the neighbors across the street and started barking at them. She also protected me from our wishing well in our front yard! It's so funny and silly, but it's cute already that she is protective!

Tonight, I had my math class, which is already pretty painful for me. I like math and my teacher is not great. Normally, in that situation, I'd use the time already in class to study the chapters on my own and do homework. But my professor likes to wander the class as she teaches to make sure we're doing the examples, mainly because she doesn't know how to teach them, so she takes our papers up to put on the overhead and instruct based on how we did it. She also grades on attendance and especially participation, so getting caught working ahead or differently is kind of frowned upon. (This is the professor who, on our first day of class, handed us a worksheet that was labeled, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. The next class, she handed us a packet, the first several problems labeled 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 ... You get the picture. Today, she told us that if she'd added extra credit points to our test, our score would probably go up. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.) Anyhow, my little girl apparently really missed me. My mom conducted the experiment of letting her listen to me on speaker phone, and apparently it really got her perked up!

I think it's so cute that she misses me ... But it also makes me feel bad. I also miss her so much. I know that once we've gone through the schedule a few weeks, she'll be better about it. And I do think that my schedule is pretty perfect. She doesn't have any time alone, really, and my parents are so happy to have her and are very attentive. My schedule looks like this:

Mondays:
HIST 370, 9:30-10:45 a.m. at EMU
Break at home from 11:15 a.m. until about 12:25 p.m.
HUM 1900, 1-3:55 p.m. at Royal Oak
Break at home from 4:25 p.m. until about 5:15 p.m.
HIS 2520, 6-8:55 p.m. at Royal Oak

Tuesdays:
Free all day
Leave for Orchard Ridge at about 5:15 p.m.
ENG 2200, 6-9:55 p.m.

Wednesdays:
HIST 370 - 9:30-10:45 a.m. at EMU
Break at home from 11:15 until about 5:15 p.m.
BUS 1100, 6-9:55 p.m.

Thursdays:
Free all day
MAT 1150, 6-9:55 p.m.

My mom is home all day every day right now, and my dad gets home sometime between 3:30-5 p.m. most days, so she really has a full throng of people concerned with watching her around all the time. But I hate those few hours I have to be away. I was very grateful for snow days this week. They did make me procrastinate more than I would normally allow ... But she is so worth it.

Tomorrow, we are going to try an experiment: NAP TIME! I've decided that after she's had lunch and after I tired her out, I will put her in the crate for an hour or two to relax. She gets a little overtired in the evening and sometimes that makes her cranky with anyone who isn't me, and sometimes even if it is me. She loves to cuddle and sleep on the couch and stuff, but she gets woken up easily and tempted by other things than sleep. I'm hoping that maybe this will make her get a little rest and also give me time to clean up, nap myself, or do a little homework undisturbed. Obviously, I wouldn't do this on Monday or Wednesday, because she will be in the crate mid-morning anyway. We usually have lunch, go outside, play inside and then go outside again, and then she sort of naps wherever or chews on one of her Kongs or bones for awhile on and off. My mom did this with our first dog, Midnight, and she said it was really helpful. She also said she did it with both me and my brother, which of course makes sense.

For now, I'm headed off to lay down and relax. Tomorrow, it's a day of homework and puppy love and of course, my brother Kyle comes home to meet our girl! I can't wait to spend time playing with them both in the snow -- visitors and other people to play with (but not other pets yet) are welcome. :)