The Sunday Salon: Some reading and some petting

It's been ages since I did the last Salon post and I feel pretty clueless around here for a change. I've been up since two hours ago and the hour hand is only just slowly making its way to the 8 o'clock mark. Dogs and their early morning urges! It's been two weeks since we got Rue, and it's been a lot of revelations, learnings, changes, fun, and anxiety since then. The first week was all lovey-dovey. We loved the dog, she loved us. It was all a big happy family. We were pretty relieved that Rue was turning out to be low maintenance. As with things like these, once the honeymoon ended, the nightmares started. One day I came home to see that she had pretty much upended the recycle bin and started chewing on bottles and cans and strewn the litter in the hall. The neatofreak in me had a terrible panic attack. That same evening she ran out of the house (to do her business) but she didn't return back when I called her. Anyways, the point is, we found she has separation anxiety and I have seen pretty much all the symptoms in her - she follows me around all the time, she hates sitting alone, she jumps over-excitedly when I return from work, she chews crazily, she barks madly, etc. Did I really say low maintenance?

Still, she's already become such a core part of our home that I don't remember much about how things "used to be". I'm just hoping that we can get her to reduce her barking (I sit terrified every day that some neighbor will go and complain. *fingers crossed*) Right now, she barks at every Tom, Dick, Mary and their dog. Drives me mad!

Dog tales aside, my reading is slowly picking up. Or rather, I'm making it pick up. I doubt I'll ever get back to the 'plenty of time to read and blog' kind-of life, so I might as well make the time to do either when I can, which means warming up more to ebooks. Audiobooks have never worked for me, so I doubt I'll rush over to pick them. I'd rather spend my eyes-occupied time listening to podcasts or Lady Antebellum. Last night, I finished the first book of Patrick Ness' wildly popular Chaos Trilogy series - The Knife of Never Letting Go, which has left me with mixed feelings. I plan to read the next book in the series sometime later, after I'm done with the other two reads I started yesterday - Make It Stay for a book tour and Neal Shusterman's Unwind for serendipity. Both are going great, although I'm able to get through the former only in sprints.

At the moment, I'm looking forward to a lazy Sunday and plenty of reading, and some barking frenzy during Rue's training class that we have today.