"Oh Captain, My Captain"

My dog has been doing the most adorably depressing thing. Every afternoon, when I get home from work, she spends about half an hour sitting on the back of the couch staring out the window. She's waiting for Shane to get home.

When I put that picture on Facebook my brother said, "She's riding your couch like a captain at sea." It made me laugh, because that sort of is what she looks like. Either that, or a woman on the widow's walk looking for a ship to come home....
The cat has been taking it just as hard. Shane claims it's just because he doesn't like his routine broken up, and because Shane is no longer there to let him outside at night, but it's more than that. Zap gets super needy when Shane's not home, so I end up with two pets who feel entitled to constant attention. When I sit down to read, my lap is full of purring, grumbling creatures who demand petting.
Last night I let them out when I got home from rehearsal (more about that in a second) and when I tried to call the cat in for bedtime, the little jerk hopped the fence into the neighbor's yard and ran away. So I left him out all night. After my alarm started going off this morning, in the few minutes of snooze time when I was still dozing, I was surprised and saddened that the cat didn't come running in to say good morning the way he usually does. It wasn't until I actually woke up that I remembered he was still outside. I raced to the back door, anxious, and he was waiting there for me, very happy and relieved to be coming inside and eating breakfast. I was surprised that he wasn't yowling about being left out all night, though, and overall he seemed much calmer about it than he has in the past.
I realized that this is only Shane's second full two week shift. The others have been interrupted for one reason or another. And this time, there will be no mid-shift meeting at Silvergulch. I'm doing the summer opera and the accompanying concert and we have rehearsals every night from 7-10 through next week. Which also means that we won't get to Skype unless we specifically make time for it in the early evenings. This is going to be hard.
I can't complain about the rehearsing, though. It's fantastic to play with a group again. Really I can't even explain what a relief it is, like taking a breath of fresh air after being cooped up for a long time. It's hard work and it's exhausting, especially in a week like this one where I'm already sore and tired for various reasons. (Among them, I started biking to work again. Oh, that hill!) But it was also utterly relaxing and I was a little sad when rehearsal finished. Both the concert and the opera are totally new to me, things I've never played before. Like Mahler's 4th Symphony. It's hard, not so much the notes but the technical aspects of putting it all together, and it's the sort of piece that makes you happy to work for it.
I had planned to not really use the truck at all for the next two weeks, but I had forgotten about rehearsals. I could ride my bike with my instrument on my back, but there's not really enough time between work and sleep to get over there and back in a reasonable time. However, the truck made a decision for me. It kept lurching last night while I was driving it, and it stalled almost every time I had to stop. So now I need to consult with Shane about what we should do, and in the meantime I've arranged a carpool to rehearsals. Looks like I'll be keeping my resolution whether I want to or not.