'emotional ties, they stay severed'

it's 12.03pm on saturday afternoon, and i am coming upon my 18th hour at work at the kennel. yee-haw. surely must be some kind of record. other than the fact that i have not been able to shower, it's been cool. on night shift you essentially let all (83!!) dogs out one last time, and put them to bed around 9pm. they woke me up around 5 this morning, and i let them all out again before beginning a reception shift at 7am. i got to sleep for about 6 hours and get paid for it, so i can't complain too much. gus gets to stay here with me, and i also got to do some laundry. not a bad deal, even if i gave up a friday night for it.

i got a nice letter from dutton yesterday and it made my eyes water to realize how much i miss him. when i met this crazy little pseudo-goth-1/2 raver when i was a sophomore at w&m, i don't know that i would have imagined that he would last as someone i consider a real and valuable friend. maybe someone to run around and dance and party with, but more of a social friend. and 5 years later, i still love the kid and pine away for the days when we were separated by 563 yards and not the distance between richmond and northern va. dutton has an amazing way of helping me keep things - life, boys, drama - in perspective. he's smart in about a million different ways -very renaissance-ian- and a cutie with an incredible sense of style to boot. tripp has always swore, and still does, that dutton and i will get married some day, but i don't know that tripp has ever fully grasped our relationship, either. i feel like most friends fall into some kind of category, however unintentional. you have your going-out friends and your cry-on-their-shoulder friends and your old skool friends, and your rent-a-movie friends. you've got the friends you talk to about religion and literature. then there's the friends you sit around the house with, the friends you hook up with, the friends you listen to music and go to shows with. dutton for me has managed to transcend all of these little divisions and be a…universal…friend. my conclusion = what a cool person. gush, gush, gush.

i'm hungering for friends again now. my little self-imposed isolation act of a bit ago is over. i want to hang out and play. of course, as murphy's law would have it (btw - i wonder who murphy was - a real person, do you think??) everyone is unavailable in one way or another right now. what's a girl to do?

gus just saw me loving on another dog and quietly & deliberately peed on the floor at my feet. i can't really punish him; i know how he feels.