mickey moo

by Eli

the past couple days i’ve been house/dog sitting for sally and larry (and mickey). unlike previous house sitting stints, i’m doing this one all by myself (now mickey loves ME and NOT meredith) AND i’m working a lot at the same time. normally this wouldn’t be too much of a big deal, but brandon and i are working from 7:30am to 4pm this week, so that means that i have to get up at like 5:30am in order to have time to take mickey on a walk. normally, after the walk, i drop him off at the neighbors, and then drive meredith’s car over to the HotBox where brandon picks me up at about 7am. that has worked perfectly the past 2 days, and then completely fell apart this morning. please bear with me here:

last night i went to bed at about 10:30. i usually use my cell phone as my alarm, but i noticed that the battery was incredibly low so i used the alarm clock on the bedside table. i tested the alarm to make sure it worked, set it for 5:15, and then went to bed. the next thing i remember, the alarm was going off and it was 5:15. perfect! the alarm worked! i hit the snooze button, and fell back asleep. the next thing i remember the alarm was going off again and it was 5:19. it worked, but i couldn’t believe that the snooze time for this alarm was only FOUR minutes. FOUR minutes?! so i hit the snooze again, it went off again at 5:23. i hit the snooze one last time and started preparing myself to get up.

the next thing i remember i am woken up by my phone vibrating on the table next to me. i look at the clock and see that it’s about 6:57am and brandon is calling me. he says, “hey e, i’m out front (at the HotBox), are you ready?” i start to explain what has happened, and then my phone dies. essentially brandon hears me say, “hey b, sorry. my alarm…” and then it cut off. he tried calling me back a few times, but it went straight to voicemail because the battery was dead. i had no idea what to do, and i had to get a hold of brandon and let him know that i would be driving myself to work (using meredith’s car). my phone was dead (and the charger was back at the HotBox) so i couldn’t look up brandon’s number and i didn’t know it by heart. what to do, what to do…

i thought and thought and thought and thought, but my mind was still asleep and it took me a while to figure out what i needed to do. i had to get brandon’s number, and the best way to do that would be to call someone else who new it. i called hannah but no answer. damn! i thought some more and then realized that i still knew tyler’s cell number by heart. i called him, woke him up, and got b’s number (thanks, ty). i called brandon and let him know what was up, and then started getting ready to leave. it was about 7:05 at this point, and i had just shy of 30 minutes to get to work and clock in before being marked late.

the saddest part about ALL of this, though, is mickey (moo). for the past 2 days we’ve been going on a walk around 5:30, so he was READY to GO at 7. he watched every move i made looking up at me waiting to go outside. i threw on some clothes, grabbed by coat, and headed out the door. he was so excited to finally be outside that he ran down the stairs and started barking and spinning in circles, he was PUMPED! i felt so bad because i didn’t have time to take him on a walk and i had to take him straight over to the neighbors. it freaking broke my heart. i am looking forward to making it up to him on thursday and friday (my 2 days off this week).

i jumped in the car, raced to work, and made it with only ONE minute to spare.