The Great Alpha Beta War of 2011

Since I moved in with my partner, things have been great. I like living with him, I love him even more than I did before and I'm grateful to have our home together to keep functioning while I'm bored.

We've had significant problem since joining households; my dog isn't happy with the new pack dynamics.

Suddenly, she's aggressive and confrontational when she had never been before. She still listens to my partner, no problem, but she'll harass and ignore me in turns until I want to lock her in the bathroom or something (which, for the record, I never do).

It's been suggested that the problem is that in our previous life, there were two of us and she was ok with accepting me as the alpha leader of our little pack. Now that the pack has expanded, she's not quite sure which of us is number 2 and which is the lowliest member of our pack. Having clearly accepted mister as the boss, she's fighting me for the second-in-command spot.

We'll just have to see how this all shakes out, I'm working on some training exercises with her to try and reestablish dominance and hopefully it will help. So far, it just seems to make her nervous.

Adventures in Unemployment

I have a friend who spent her period of unemployment calling it her "funemployment" and had parties and things to celebrate it.

I'm not really up to planning parties these days, but I am doing my best to enjoy the flexibility I have in my life right now to go where I want and do what I want, even if that means sitting on the couch listening to Billie Holiday and knitting. 

Insecurity creeps in, certainly, but I do my best to remember that I have been a productive member of humanity and will be again. Baking, cooking, cleaning, stuff like this help me feel like I'm accomplishing little things. Thinking about the future, about next year at school, my thesis and life after that also help me feel productive. 

I'm volunteering. Secretly, I'm not a very good volunteer. If people aren't clear with me about where I should be and when, I tend to not show up. I know those that coordinate volunteers don't want to do that because a volunteer doesn't have to listen to them, but I wish they would more often with me. helping out at the meditation center is great, though. It puts me in the meditation center to begin with, which exponentially increases the likelihood that I'll practice. The work they ask me to do isn't complicated or taxing, it's all completely manageable and, frankly, it's nice to be given permission to dust a staircase and just do only that for a while.

Anyway, life isn't terribly interesting right now, I'm mostly just keeping on and that's ok.