Culture shock

I think I can appropriately sum up the last few weeks with these words: culture shock. It's quite interesting to go from living by yourself to living in a house full of people. Besides my parents my younger brother Sam has friends who stay here on a regular basis (hopefully the last of the circus is leaving tomorrow) and the entire lower level of the house often feels (and smells) like a big frat party. So I use my parents bathroom, run my fan on full blast at night, and found a little nook upstairs that I can park myself in when I want to read a good book or just not be in my room. Even though I love my brother, I'm going to be incredibly excited when he packs up for college, so that I can enjoy things like access to a TV without teenagers controlling the remote, and a bathroom where my things fit on the counter and the floor does not have any questionable spots on it. I seriously feel like I'm living in the movie Animal House.

I spent a couple of days this week babysitting for a family friend. I had completely forgotten how difficult it is to take care of 3 kids-- and all of this was compounded by the fact that I can't remember the last time I babysat for kids who weren't allowed to watch TV. Do you know what that means? It means I'm exhausted. They were cute as heck, but man, I am way too selfish to be a mom any time soon.

I went to my first Al-Anon meeting in Winona this week. It was... interesting. In Al-Anon, many meetings open with the meeting leader encouraging everyone to keep the focus on themselves and not on the alcoholic. This meeting did not. No one really talked about themselves or their programs or things they wanted to do differently. It felt like a big complaint-fest. I don't know that I'll be back to that meeting... it was a little discouraging.

Charlie is doing well. He's calmed down considerably after Sam's grad party. Now that things are a little more predictable around here he's settling into the groove of things. Even though I think he's doing very well, it's still been a difficult adjustment for my parents. Two somewhat related stressors have been the fact that he had about 3 or 4 accidents in the house his first week, and that the attempts to contain him while we are not home haven't gone well. To remedy the accidents, I've been taking him on two long walks a day, and he's doing really well with that. As for leaving him alone, we've moved to option C. Option A was keeping him in my room with the door closed. That resulted in a shredded door, shredded carpet, and bloody paws from his frantic clawing. Option B was to keep him in my room with the doggy gate up. He hopped it. So we are moving back to Option C: the crate. I am terrified because of how it went when we first tried the crate option (if you don't remember, he chewed himself out, twice. Blood everywhere). But this time I got a different kind of crate and have a tentative plan to keep him from harming himself while he's in there. It's worth another shot. My parents don't want him roaming the house freely while we are gone, which is totally understandable. And being able to crate him would solve a lot of problems-- like spiteful peeing while I am gone. I'm also reading a book on aggressive dogs, so we're going to start implementing new training methods pretty soon. Lots more changes are around the corner for Charlie.

I am still on the hunt for a job. Being unemployed is hard, but it's a little encouraging that I've seen a handful of my high school classmates since I've been back in town who are in the same position.

I bought some Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy with some of my babysitting money. I'm off to enjoy a bottle!