Sofa, Not So Good

I've started work - in a bank of all places. It's too early to say what I feel about it right now. It's yet another career line in my long line of career flops and once again, totally unrelated to anything I have done before. I sat around for a year not knowing what I wanted to do with my life and when this job found me I just decided I might as well make some money while I ponder. It's a lonely job - no one talks to any one - not much women, and I'm a little apprehensive about talking to the men without it being construed as something else. As I just started there hasn't been much to do. But I do feel the indirect pressure of what is expected of me in the near future a LOT. I leave home before my husband and return much after him, tired and depressed. I have lost all interest in cooking. Frankly, I do not have the energy. My biggest fear, even now, is not losing this job but losing out on the little things I like to do in the routine of caring for my husband like making him tea, or even a decent meal. These two weeks he has been taking my tantrums silently, doing the dishes, caring for the dog, packing my lunch, and a million other stuff. All I did was offer a brash comment that he was finally doing his part of the household chores. Though in the past, even when he offered to help I would say, nostrils flaring, "What the hell, I am jobless at home any way, it's my fate to do all this, I'll do it myself!" The poor man never won an argument. In fact I would say, marrying me, he has lost out on a lot in life. How ever, pulling my self-worth down even lower than it is was not the intention of this post.

My first week at work, Hyde behaved himself exceptionally well, I mean not even a chewed up roll of newspaper, or a hair out of place. Then the weekend arrived, it was his birthday and we decided to give him a really beefy, hearty meal, a whole LOT of treats and plenty of love (which he gets any way - but this time without me yelling at him). Since Monday how ever, he has destroyed so many things in the house, each night resulting in us shouting and banishing him to the balcony. Today when I walked in my husband had a huge smile on his face and big hug for me when he opened the door. When I glanced around the room, I noticed our brown sofa had been ripped open with some stuffing pulled out and the sponge showing through. I started bawling. See when a girl gets married, and has lived out of hostels and relatives homes for the past ten years of her life - she has a need to set up her house as beautifully as possible, or as her dog will allow. We spent a lot of money (it's a lot for us) on this fake leather sofa and it really was the only nice thing in our living room. It's actually a sofa-cum-bed. Our TV is on my brother's computer table as we couldn't find a TV stand high enough to avoid Hyde's shenanigans. Now, he has also ripped off the red border on the table and the wall piping for the aerial wire. All this is APART from the sink pipes that he has chewed up since he was a pup. We don't even use the hand wash sink any more because we have replaced that pipe so many times, we figured we'll just wash our hands in the bathroom from now on. The rest of the furniture is against the walls just so our dog has enough room to run and play. Basically, I was very happy with my home till this idiot dog started going nuts.

On seeing our sofa in this pathetic condition I bawled my eyes out, out of extreme frustration - first against my husband who promised, PROMISED me that we could manage a dog in our apartment, and then complete rage against Hyde who I was already imagining killing, strangling, abandoning somewhere. After the tears subsided - I thought about all the awful stuff that just went through my head and wondered how, HOW could I regret Hyde for...a piece of furniture? Then I cried some more. It's not just the hormones - it's complete helplessness at the situation. Giving him away was never an option. Keeping him means destruction to more stuff that we can't afford to lose. I guess we will have to read a million other doggy psyche articles than we already do on the Net and pray for a solution. Right now we are completely ignoring him. He will not sleep in our bedroom tonight where he has his own rug on the floor by my side of the bed. He knows what he did was wrong. Drag him to the sofa and you will see him cowering in guilt. Dogs do not care as much about food as they do for our attention and love. (But even for punishment we would never deny him food.) For all the destruction he did this week I forgave him (it's not that hard when you see his face) and let him sleep in our room, but NOT tonight. And while I am not so angry to send him away, it still hurts that he destroyed my first sofa, probably my ONLY sofa for a while. May be there are some lessons to be learnt from all this. May be God is saying, "Don't be so materialistic." But it was my first sofa. OUR first sofa. No other sofa in future will ever matter as much as this one. Even if it was pure leather. I'm crying as I type this but feel free to laugh if you want, cos I know I will a few years from now. I'm tired. Hubby is eating supper alone while I type this :o( (Yet another change in our life style that I really hate, but I just had to type this out.)