last night was a typical night for me-- saw a movie, grabbed a take-out sandwich for dinner, met some friends in a crowded irish pub for st. patrick's day, left at about 10 pm, walked home, dubbed around in the wind down period i have before going to sleep, turned off the light about 11:15, fell asleep shortly thereafter.
i had this dream that i was at H&M, trying on t-shirts. every time a new t-shirt went on, i'd hear a dog bark. t-shirt, dog bark, t-shirt, dog bark, over and over. i woke up confused-- why would there be a dog barking? i've never heard a dog barking before, and madame G who lives above me has cats (10 CATS!!), but no dogs, right?
wrong. mme G did have a dog-- a puppy by the sound of it-- yapping in the room right next to mine. not barking-- this dog was emitting the kind of YIPE! YIPE! song that cartoon characters make; it's the high pitched puppy bark that sounds like someone is shoving needles up the dog's nose. the frantic yipes were then interspersed with the most melancholic howling hommage to the moon i'd ever heard.
now. nearly every night mme G's cats wake me up-- either they're having some sort of territory fight or their scratching around in a chase on the linoleum above my head. whatever. i've grown accustomed to it and chalked it up to the shittiness of living in close quarters with neighbors and no carpet. but a yapper dog in the middle of the night-- there's only so much i can handle.
i layed in bed and thought, ok, i'm giving this 10 minutes, then i'm going over there. i lasted about 7 mintues. i looked at my clock-- it was 12:47 am. so i got out of bed, put on my shoes, grabbed my keys, walked outside in my pajamas and knocked on her door. i could see the silhouette of the dog behind the frosted glass pane and saw mme G approaching with her key. she cracked open the door.
"oui?"
yes, i said, in my craptacular french, i'm sorry to bother you so late and all but i'm trying to sleep and the dog is really loud in my room and it's very late at night.
does she apologize? no. she says something to the effect of:
"i found this dog in the street and he has no home. he was abandonned and i had to take him in. what am i to do?"
and i'm thinking, i don't give a shit what you do as long as the dog shuts up but i say, yes, i understand the dog is young and scared but really, it's so late, and i have class very early in the morning and it's impossible for me to sleep.
she said something else that i didn't understand and shut the door. i sulked back off to my room. she clearly had no sympathy for me because i had no sympathy for the dog. i love dogs-- believe me-- but barking dogs at 1 in the morning really stretch my patience. i believe she took the dog upstairs to her apartment (god only knows what her cats thought of their new roommate) but i could still hear the random yelp, and by that time, i was wide awake. i was awake until about 4, all seething and irritated. 6:30 this morning, yapper dog was brought back downstairs.
i appeared in my 8:00 class today bleary-eyed with 2 hours of sleep and carrying a mug of tea. it's totally inappropriate to bring hot drinks to class in france (they don't have the whole take-away coffee phenom here yet) but i didn't care. my students were fascinated. they asked, how did you bring that here? uh, i carried it. without a lid? yup. do you live far away? nope-- about 100 paces. what will you do with that mug when you're finished? carry it home, of course.
after lunch i took a four-hour nap. i later found out that the dog was going to the vet to see if it had a microchip and if not, was going to the stray animal refuge.
for the first time ever, i'm on the side of mme G's cats.