Frustration.

I. Am. Frustrated.

You could probably tell that from my post title.

Seriously, though, I am frustrated.

And it's not just one thing or another. It feels like it's everything.

The dog. The apartment. Work. Finances. The only things that aren't frustrating me right now are my relationship and writing, for which I'm profoundly grateful.

The dog, though...these last couple of days have been really rough with him. A few days ago he twisted his foot, and while we think he's fine, sometimes it looks like he favors it a little. I don't want to make it worse if there is something wrong with it, but I also need to make sure that he's exercised enough before I leave him to go to work. This was thrown into sharp relief the other day when I arrived home to find the apartment quite literally torn apart.

Torn. Apart.

Garbage all over the kitchen floor, things pulled off the table, the cat scratcher utterly destroyed, at least five cardboard boxes shredded and the pieces scattered to the four winds...I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I expected to encounter something like this, having a puppy and everything, but he's close to a year old, hadn't shown any particular tendencies towards this kind of thing before, and I thought he'd do most of his acting out while he was still adjusting to us. But now he's adjusted, and the acting out has begun. I really don't know what we're doing wrong, but he seriously has all kinds of attitudes going on right now. He's still mostly very good, but we can't get him to stop pulling on walks with the three of us (he's fine when it's just Nate or I with him), and he will not listen when I tell him that he has to wait to go in or out of doors. He absolutely insists on going first, which means that he thinks he's in charge, but...I don't know. I really don't.

He's also identified me as the "weaker" one, which I hate. I got so mad today when we went outside - he caught me by surprise and dragged me through the entryway instead of letting me go first. But the entryway has this stupid concrete step, so of course I tripped and almost bashed my head in on the pavement. I rolled him, though, and he submitted, but damn. I was absolutely furious, and worse, stressed because I only had so much time before work and had several errands to run. It made me not even want to take him to the field. He was pretty good from then on, though, so...I suppose I'm glad I did.

He's kept us so busy, though, that we've been too tired to really work on unpacking and organizing the apartment, which has built up this steady layer of grime (half figuratively, half literally, unfortunately) over the last week. I did some cleaning last night, but it barely made a dent. I hate being in there. I can't think, can't write, can't even relax. The mountain of clothes in the bedroom has gotten worse, not better. The kitchen is awkward and makes doing dishes utterly suck. It's just...AGH. AGH, AGH, AGH.

That felt good.

How do you keep a dog from controlling your life while still giving it the attention and exercise it needs?

At least it's a three-day weekend.