I Am Now Officially The "Complaining Neighbor"

It feels very good to finally have a day off.
Admittedly, I wasn’t engaged in back-breaking labor for the past eleven days, but no matter what it’s a long time to go without a break.
Of course, it’s not like I slept in today; I got up at around the same time I would have if I’d had training again today.
That’s mostly because I went to bed fairly early last night, as I was extremely tired.
On Saturday my upstairs neighbor went out in the evening and stayed out all night.  I know this because her dog told me – and everyone within earshot – all about it.  He pretty much howled non-stop until sometime after midnight.  He would take little breathers, but they didn’t last long, just long enough for me to think that I might be able to fall into a deep enough sleep that I could tune it out completely, but just when I’d start to doze off he’d start up again.
He finally settled down a bit after midnight, at which point I eventually fell asleep, only to be woken up when he resumed howling at 3:30.  When I left here at 5:20 he was still going strong.
I have to admit that I really wasn’t that far away from running out to buy dog biscuits and rat poison and slipping him a special treat under the door, though ultimately I managed to restrain myself.  I did seriously consider grinding up some of my Tylenol PMs and mixing them with some kind of food (I was leaning towards butter, slathered on to strips of bacon) and slipping that under the door, as it would have been less likely to be lethal, but I was worried that the dog would be too dumb (or smart) to eat it and my neighbor would come home and find bacon buttered with crushed pills on her floor, or, I suppose, even worse, her dog dead on an OD of Tylenol PMs.
Even more troublesome to me than the fact that it was preventing me from getting to sleep was the way the dog’s actions made me feel and the things that it made me think about.  Dark and twisted as my mind may – or may not – be, I don’t really enjoy lying in the dark fantasizing about how wonderful it would be to see a dumb animal get splattered by a semi.  Worse, a semi that I was driving.
If I’m going to be lying in the dark fantasizing about things I’d much prefer that they not involve animals or death.
(The way my mind has been working lately, said “things” would likely involve either Liz Phair or Sarah Michelle Gellar.  Possibly both.  Actually, probably both.)
In any case, working a twelve and a half hour shift on under three hours of sleep is not a lot of fun, so my day was pretty much a royal pain in the ass.
I decided that when I got home I would go up and talk to my neighbor about her dog, realizing that it was a largely pointless endeavor.  Still, I needed to make it known that her dog is a nuisance.
I got home, saw that the light was on upstairs.  I didn’t want to go straight up, so I stopped in my place first to use the bathroom and try to gather my thoughts a little.
In the couple of minutes that it took me to do that she was out the fucking door, the dog was wildly howling in protest and I was standing in my living room with my jaw on the floor thinking, “No way did that just happen.  I’m in hell.  I must  be in hell.”
Head still reeling from this unbelievable turn of events, I sat down at the computer, fired up Word, and began to write a reasonable but strongly-worded letter explaining the situation, dog howling all the while.
As I was preparing to bring the finished letter upstairs I heard the unmistakable sound of the dog reacting to her return, which is to say a sound not unlike what one might hear in the ground underneath the track at the Kentucky Derby.
So I went up, knocked on her door, gritted my teeth as that sent the dog into hysterics, and waited.  And waited.  And waited.
Finally she opened the door, was unable to actually greet me, as she had to struggle to control the dog, which, while I never got a good look at, I could see was nearly as big as she was.
Admittedly, she was a rather petite woman, but that still translates to a pretty sizable dog.
Eventually, dog secured, she opened the door cautiously and listened as I complained as calmly and reasonably as I could about her morbidly dependent demon hound.
She apologized profusely, stating that she had “unexpectedly” been out all night, and said that she had no idea that her dog behaved that way when she was out, as no one had ever said anything to her about it.
Acknowledging that I didn’t know what could be done to easily resolve the issue, I simply stressed that there could absolutely not be a repeat of Saturday night’s performance.  She assured me that it wouldn’t happen again and that she would talk to the vet to see what could be done to deal with the dog’s separation anxiety.
I didn’t tell her that the best thing to do would be to just get rid of the dog.  No, I don’t mean kill him, I mean find a suitable home for him.
After all, this is a big dog.  Her place is the same size as mine, which is to say it’s suitable for one adult and, at best, a terrier.  Glancing into her place I could see that she had this pen set up for the thing that takes up damn near half of her living room.
I can’t understand why anyone would want to do that to herself.  Whatever she might gain in the way of “companionship” from the dog has to be offset by all of the hassles that go with keeping a dog that size.  If it made up its mind to do so, that dog could easily drag her for miles, and a simple demonstration of canine affection could easily be fatal.
And like I said, her place isn’t really big enough to easily be able to sacrifice that much space.  How could you ever have company over, especially given how needy the thing is?
Then there’s the fact that its behavior has resulted in her having to worry about the creepy guy who lives downstairs coming up and knocking on her door…
Of course, I’m largely overlooking the other aspect; that it’s rather cruel to force a dog to live under those kinds of conditions, but, well, fuck that dog.
Anyway, while I did manage to clearly register that this is a big deal to me, I did kind of hold back because, to be honest, the woman was actually a lot more attractive than I expected her to be.  I really wasn’t prepared for that.
She’s not really what you’d call a “looker,” but she’s fairly attractive, and I’d place her age as being somewhere around mine, possibly a few years older.
Given how much I hate her beloved pet, though, I don’t see a romance in the cards for us.
I’m not sure that my efforts will result in any improvement, though the dog was actually pretty quiet today.
I mentioned Sarah Michelle Gellar earlier, as for the past couple days she seems to have been very much on my mind for reasons that are unclear to me.  Of course, she’s actually on my sub-conscious mind, popping up in a couple of dreams, one of which was one of those kinds of dreams.
While in my estimation SMG is no RLC, I do find her to be an attractive young woman, so you would think that a dream of that nature involving her – particularly one so vivid – would be a welcome occasion.
Oddly enough, not so much.
Mostly that’s just because it really didn’t go that well.  
Without going into too many details, the dream was so full of ows and not so hards and quit pulling my hairs and don’t put that theres that I found myself thinking, upon waking, my first thought was “Even in my dreams I can’t catch a break.”
This morning SMG popped up again, this time in a dream about watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Buffy discovered that she had the ability to kill figurative demons.
For example, she was able to kill someone’s addiction to alcohol and someone else’s depression.
It was slightly more abstract than most of my dreams are.
In any case, I think I need to figure out what I’m going to do for dinner.  I pointlessly ventured out into the world today.  “Pointlessly” because I went to Super Target and pretty much just ate lunch in the Pizza Hut Express and left the place without buying any groceries or anything.  I’m not even sure why I bothered going, as it had been my intention to do my grocery shopping tomorrow anyway.
Oh well.