Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

Alternative title: Flushing the system
Alternative alternative title: Some pun about waterworks
Alternative alternative alternative title: Why doesn’t she love me?
Alternative alternative alternative alternative title: Biggest Snot Bubbles Ever

So. It’s not really an unreasonable time to be up and about. Well. It isn’t unless you factor in that I didn’t actually get to sleep until late. If I’m lucky I’ve had four hours, which might explain a few things. Well. I wanted to be getting up at a more reasonable time and, for me, this is reasonable. And it’s because of the dog for a second time but in a more roundabout way. Yesterday it’s because she was desperate for a poo. So much so that she pushed my door open to get me. As it’s summer it isn’t shut like it usually is. Also I had a pretty potent lavender air freshener in there because I read that lavender, among other things, is good for repelling moths. We’re infested. I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve stopped catching them and putting them out the window and started to unceremoniously smush them. The air freshener seemed to work for a week or so but not now. I think the next wave were just waiting to hatch during that time.
Anyway. I’m taking a while to get to the heart-breaking story. I decided not to try and go back to sleep just to write this. Well. That and to snuggle the dog. Hardly surprising. Here’s a challenge for you. Determine whether I ramble more when I’m tired in the “mornings” or the “evenings” (I use “” because for me they’re practically reversed. But as a very loose definition of morning I’m using it to denote when I get up and evening for when I go to bed). I sure am making a lot more spelling and just general typing mistakes.

So. What the heck happened?

Well. I was dreaming. Not sure how I got to that point but the first I can remember is that we’re in the ocean. I think we can still see the beach off to the left so we’re not stranded at sea. I’m either on my holidays with family and friends or on a kind of marine research trip. We were in a boat to start with. I think. It didn’t feature heavily. Because all of a sudden a massive shark came along. It was pretty docile. Not sure why but we’re in Australia then, because it’s a “brown” shark. Not sure why because it’s grey as a great white, greyer in fact (I can’t see the bottom of it so don’t know if it had a white belly but I assume so). So. It’s a grey shark. Completely, as far as I can see, a grey shark. But it’s called a brown shark. This is a great find. Serendipitous in fact because these are really rare and this it’s a very big specimen. So for marine biologists it’s a very very important shark.
It seemed quite friendly and we ended up following it/it let us ride along on it’s back, holding the dorsal fin. I noticed he (I decided it was a he) had really really big blue eyes and I thought, that’s unusual. Now we really are on holiday because now the shark is basically like a very cool, but terrifying to some, make sure you never forget that if it wants to it can kill you in an instant, boat.
It brings us to a pier and we deduce which pier it is. There are people, mainly holiday makers, on it and food stalls and activities reminiscent of a fair but not quite. Now we have a choice. Stay with the shark or get off here, because it seems it brought us here to get rid of us.
The pier full of people becomes a beach full of people and this shark is pretty amazing to be swimming so far into the shallows, some people are even sunbathing just at the edge of the shore so it startles them. I have to be careful here. This could turn very ugly very quickly. I have to try and keep the people calm and, more importantly, the shark. I know it would be best to just let the shark swim away. It deserves to be free and go about it’s business. But now the shark isn’t a shark. It’s my dog, curled up like she’d snoozing and floating on the surface of the water. But she’s still a shark so I still have to be careful.
I let her go to float off in the sea but at the last minute reach out and grab her by the paw and she floats closer to me again. She nearly gave me a warning bite for that. Now she is still dangerous but as a dog and not a shark. I know I still have to let her go so I do. And she nearly floats away from me again but I grab her paw again. Little to no protest this time. It’s pretty clear now that this isn’t a shark anymore, it’s my dog, so the beach/ocean setting is unnecessary.
So. Mum and me are walking down the street. We’re on holiday, I guess in Jersey, since that’s where we spent most holidays. For those of you not in the know. That’s Jersey the Channel island. I never thought there was any need for distinction until I met a girl at uni. who was from Jersey. She was pleasantly surprised I knew which one she was talking about since, apparently, when she’d told most people this before they instantly assumed New Jersey and are all like, really? You don’t sound American. But I digress. As if I’d do anything else.

So we’re on holiday. The dog is with us but not actually on the lead. It’s more a symbolic lead. And mum’s telling me we can’t keep her. You know we can’t keep her. The implication is that we’ve found this dog while on holiday? But We’ve established a bond over years. So we found her in Jersey, kept her all these years, but now we’re back we have to let her go?
And I’m protesting this. We could. People do it.
No we can’t. You know we can’t. (There’s a whole legal thing and paperwork and quarantine to deal with if we take her home with us. This isn’t said but it’s the context.) We have to let her go.
Eventually I agree, very begrudgingly. And now I’ve agreed the non-existent symbolic lead is gone and the dog walks off without a care.
We keep walking a little and I watch her, trotting along quite cheerfully. She’s on the other side of the road now. No one really notices her.
I can’t. I won’t let her just walk off and disappear. I don’t care about all the other stuff. I say as much and run to the edge of the road. I call Yui. She stops and looks like she’ll come to me. But there’s traffic. I tell her stop. Which is odd because the command is actually either stay staaay or wait. We’re at a crossing so we just need to wait for the lights to change, and they do. I run to my doggy and cuddle her. I’m can’t exactly say she’s excited to see me or to be cuddled. She just stands there But I don’t care. I tell her I want to keep her and I don’t want to live without her. Those are my actual words.
“I don’t want to live without you.”
Then mum comes over while I’m hugging the dog and I wonder what exactly she’s doing. I’m wearing a belt (which is odd because I don’t wear belts anymore, I wear braces but still). While I hug the dog, more of a head lock now though, to make sure she doesn’t escape, mum takes off my belt and puts it on the dog as a lead. For some bizarre reason she’s still wearing her collar so mum slips the belt through and does it up. Now the dog can’t run away.
And then I wake up.
I spend a while thinking about this. I get a little teary but don’t go into full on crying. Then I think, what if this is a metaphor for when the dog dies. I’m sad. I want my doggy. But Only one ear has dried.
Remember I told you before that I wear earplugs and when I wake up my ears feel wet? Well. Now I’m pretty sure that must be the coating of wax that your ears secrete while you sleep. And it hasn’t been able to dry like it should have. So now I take out one earplug, let the wet feeling try to flow down that ear as best as possible and dry before doing the same to the other ear. It must be wax because when I came to this conclusion I forgot to dry one at a time so had to lay flat to dry both ears, like I would usually do. But laying on my back for too long is uncomfortable so I rolled onto my side for a while to drain/dry one ear but the other started to feel a little heavy inside. I think this was because the wax was now pooling around my eardrum and starting to solidify.
So now I try to remember to do one ear at a time. It takes longer but I think it’s worth it for what I perceive to be overall ear health.

So. Just one ear dried. It was laying on my side to drain/dry that ear that caused me to have this dream. Because I fell asleep.

So. I want to cuddle my doggy but only one ear is dry. I had a similar problem yesterday when she needed to go out sharpish. I just had to let the other ear drain/dry while standing. So I decided to do that again.
Then I thought more about the dream. And then I started crying. It’s okay because mum’s at work today, so I can cry and snivel all I want and no one cares. Then I came down to cuddle my doggy. She was sleeping in her den and, predictably, didn’t really want to be cuddled, nor did she realise/care that I was sad. In her defence she doesn’t see me cry so she just assumes it’s another random noise I make. She put up we me cuddling her but that was about it. In some cases, when the owner is crying, and therefore sad, the dog will actively try to stop them by nuzzling up to the them and trying to lick their face, or so a documentary says. They had owners pretend to cry and monitor the dog’s reactions. The dogs tried to stop them, indicating that they care on some level.
I’m actually crying. I’ve got snot bubbles and everything and my dog doesn’t care. Why doesn’t she love me?
Well. In fairness she may not know what crying is. Also, if they’re truly as perceptive as some people think, then she recognises that I’m probably always sad, even when I don’t realise, so me being sad is normal for her. She never tries to comfort me when I’m sad. I always have to seek her out and annoy her with cuddles.

But anyway. Eventually this subsided and I felt better. It feels kind of nice to flush out the system once in a while. And, as an added bonus, I made some of the biggest snot bubbles I’ve ever made. That was actually kind of fun.
One thing I wonder. Would I still have cried as much if I’d had a proper sleep and didn’t feel tired? Like I said. I would’ve tried to go back to sleep but I wanted to cuddle the dog and write it up. I can’t go back to bed now. That’d be kind of ridiculous now anyway.

Bluebiird out.