Sadie Sioux, Year Two

The other day, I found myself staring at the background of my phone. I'd come across a cool photo on Unsplash, the free image archive I use to make episode graphics for my podcast Academicasaurus. Someone had gone into an abandoned building, painted a door bright blue, and then painted a cartoon image of a woman taking a photo of the observer. Then the artist (I assume) took their own picture of it all. It's really neat, and I had a moment of thinking that, gosh, that would make a groovy lock screen.

But my lock screen is of Sadie.

So is my home screen.

It's been two years today. It's simultaneously hard to believe that it's been that long and also difficult to understand that it hasn't been a million years since she last stuck her tongue in my eyeball. I've still got 48 million photos of her on my phone, though I've had to start deleting some of them. Not because it was my idea, of course, but my iPhone storage is pretty much constantly "Almost Full," and most of that is made up of those Sadie photos. Despite my small scale excisions, I've still got a LOT of photos of that dog on my cellular device. I look at them, too. It's much easier now; I don't miss her like I used to (I mean, usually. It isn't awesome at this particular moment). It's become sweetly warm (what a description - who lets me write things?) to look back at what a ridiculous dog she was.

For instance, here she is trying to convince me that she gets a full half of my macaroni and cheese.

Here she is insisting that she should get some of my turkey sandwich.

Here she is apparently deciding that I'm spending too much time on projects that aren't her.

Sadie was very good at letting us know when we weren't giving her enough attention. Usually she wanted to do her own thing, but it was important not to make the mistake of forgetting that she MIGHT want attention SOMEWHERE along the line, and thus she would take it upon herself to get in the middle of things quite often.

Here she is letting me know my attention needed to be properly refocused.

Here she is telling me that it's food o'clock. 

Here she is expressing her distaste for the rugs in my parents' entryway.

Here she is being cooler than me.

Here she is being more metal than me.

Here she is having in-depth conversations with Dad.

And here she is letting him know that she deserves the rest of that peanut butter toast, thank you.

Here we are sharing secrets.

And here's why I'll love her forever.

And also, see every other exhibit above.

I know that it doesn't really matter if I have her as the background of my phone, but it's still nice to see her whenever I check my texts or whichever app is currently getting my procrastinator's focus. And it's not like removing her from my phone will make anything bad happen. It's not like I'll suddenly forget about her, or that it means I've stopped caring. So why can't I convince myself to put up a new phone background?

It's weird. I mean, it's not like a phone's lock screen is some kind of sacred artifact. Good thing, too - given the sheer amount of times I've accidentally dropped or flung my phone, I'd be guilty of death-penalty levels of desecration. But still, the concept bothers me. On the one hand, I feel like it's probably time. But on the other, I don't want it to be. I've said it before, but I'm not a particularly nostalgic or romantic person. I don't spend a lot of time thinking wistfully over what used to be, so the fact that I am this unwilling to take Sadie off of my phone's background feels strange and extreme.

But then...it's my phone. If I think it feels weird to take her off, then I shouldn't. It's not like anyone else is looking at my phone.

So here's Sadie. Still my fuzz butt froggy baby, and she's still the lock and home screen on my gosh darn phone even after two long, short years.

(I mean, not with this picture, but you get what I mean.)