Page 1 of There Is Also a Dog
CHAPTERONE
jillian
I love my job,and I hate Christmas.
There, I said it.
I mean, I don’thateChristmas. I just hate that everyone makes such a big deal out of it. It’s just a day.
Well, I suppose it’s a season—but why shouldn’t people spend time with family and give gifts to celebrate whatever and tip the building staff and have string lights all over their homes all year long?
I mean, obviously, I can’t spend time with family very often because I’m so busy with work—but I’d have a Baby Yoda shipped to my niece on any random Monday in June or September. I have a very elegant, festive, mounted whitebark tree branch thing with little white lights on it in my Upper West Side apartment all year long. I also bake cookies for the office kitchen once a month—every month—not just in December.
Okay, I don’t bake themmyself, but I do buy freshly baked cookies from my favorite bakery. And I don’t just have them delivered either—I pick them up myself! Usually. More often than not.
I’m not a dick.
I just don’t see what all the holiday fuss is about.
And okay, I don’t love myjob—being a paralegal is very stressful, and my stressed-out New York lawyer bosses are demons from the toxic, fiery pits of Harvard Law School Alumni Hell. But I love what I do. I love my work. I love working, and getting things done, and being an essential and successful part of the legal system. Even when I’m not at the office.
For the four or five hours a week that I’m awake andnotworking, I love using at least a quarter of the money I earn to buy really nice stationery. Then I buy really nice containers for organizing that stationery. Then I buy cozy outfits to wear when I stay home at night and on weekends to admire all the nice stationery in well-organized containers. When not catching up on work or working out, I listen to true crime podcasts and sip wine through a straw while wearing weird Korean skincare masks and writing to-do lists on my exceptionally curated stationery collection.
That’s me living my best life in my happy place, and if you think I’m doing it wrong, then fight me.
Normally, I would be doing that at home in Manhattan, but Santa and his elves decided to give me a sewage backup into my bathtub this year. As if that weren’t horrible enough, the subsequent flooding and mold remediation has required me to evacuate my apartment for three days, from December twenty-fourth until the twenty-sixth. I could still be in Manhattan right now if there’d been any decent hotel rooms or Airbnbs or VRBOs left at the last minute.
I was even willing to stay in the Bronx!
Or with friends who had an extra bed or sofa.
But no one has an available bed or sofa now.
And it turns out I’m not even allowed to spend the night at the office for the next three nights.
Why?
Because it’s Christmas.
Not. Allowed.
Banned from the office.
I don’t have time to fly to California to be with my family because we have a big case going to trial in January so it’s all hands on deck at the office again starting December twenty-seventh. And I need the billable hours. And I hate to fly. And I love my family, but I hate California. Because the only thing dumber than Christmas in general is Christmas lights wrapped around the trunks of palm trees when it’s sunny and warm out. All those happy, healthy, tanned people driving around in convertibles…
Blech.
At least in Manhattan people are in a bad mood because it’s cold, traffic is extra terrible, shops are extra crowded, and everyone’s trying to figure out if the people they met in October are expecting you to give them a present when they invite you to a dinner party in December.
And I can’t even be in a bad mood around my fellow Manhattanites tonight because of sewage and out-of-town visitors who had the audacity to reserve all the hotel rooms and vacation rentals in my city and all of its boroughs.
So here I am, alone in a beautiful cabin in the Catskills. It belongs to a friend of a friend. My friend Maddie stayed here with her husband for a weekend getaway a month ago and insisted I would love it here. She then amended her statement to insist that I would love the cabin and the Wi-Fi signal strength and hate the location. This is why Maddie and I are friends. She gets me. I worked in a law firm across the hall from the one Maddie worked at for a while. She is the best executive assistant I have ever met, and she snagged herself the best-looking lawyer in Manhattan. This is why she is the only person who could convince me to drive two-and-a-half hours to a cabin in the woods. In the middle of winter. By myself.
Unless Zac Efron emailed me and was like,Hey, I’ve got this sick environmentally friendly cabin in the Catskills. I was just going to hang out here by myself with my shirt off for a few days, but if you want to join me, I’ll send you the address.
I’d be like,How’s the Wi-Fi signal, and do you promise to only speak when spoken to? Because I have a lot of work to do.
P.S. I loved you inNeighbors.
