Dog

Fortune cookie wisdom #46

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You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.

When is this supposed to start again??

Sometimes I wonder if this is all there is. Just me waiting for the other shoe to drop stuck in an endless loop of meaningless tasks. Cleaning the house, just to watch it get dirty again. Why don’t things stay clean and orderly? Why is life so messy?

I have been on edge and out of sorts lately. There has been so much change in my life lately. I wish I could tell you that I embrace change, or like it, but I don’t. I haven’t been sleeping all that well and last night had a nightmare I was watching my cat drown.

In the mornings and at night sometimes, my cat stares out the window. I wonder if he is waiting for our dog to come back. We used to sit their together staring out that window at night waiting for the dog to come in for the night. Today I washed the remaining dog nose smudges off that same sliding glass door. He won’t be coming back. I vacuumed the rest of the pet hair from the rug he entered eternal sleep on.

Yesterday my daughter and her fiancé bought a house. This weekend she will be moving out. It is bittersweet. I got used to her living here for the last year and a half. I know it is time for her to move on with her own life and she is happy. But that somehow doesn’t make it easier right now. I’m not sure what will happen next. This will be the first time my husband and I have been alone since we had kids.

I know I should view this as an opportunity for growth. But it really doesn’t feel like that right now.

So here I’ll be waiting for the good luck….

January recap

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I had a feeling it was going to be a difficult year when the police showed up at my house in the wee hours of New Year’s Day. Besides going away to Las Vegas for several days, I’d be ready to scrap the whole month (if not the whole year if things don’t get better).

The first week of January I ended up getting COVID. At first I just felt a little bit off. I felt a little more tired than usual, lightheaded, crampy, and sore. For where I was in my cycle, it wasn’t too far out of the norm as I tend to be anemic. I thought maybe I was being a bit of a hypochondriac until I came down with a fever the next day. A couple days later, Angel felt sick.

Then after that, we ended up having to put our dog down. He was 14 years old with really bad arthritis, congestive heart failure, and cancer. He was on 5 different medications and he was gradually going downhill. He couldn’t see, hear, or get around well. He started shivering and biting at his paws, had a few accidents in the house, and lost a lot of weight because he wasn’t eating much. It was time. Part of me felt like we shouldn’t have waited so long and part of me feels guilty for putting him down. Maybe if I wouldn’t have accidently tripped over him a couple months back, he would’ve lived longer. I never thought I would overthink this and grieve so much over our dog, but I did. Thankfully the vet was very kind and compassionate through the whole process.

After that we went to Las Vegas. A couple days into the trip my husband started feeling a little off. Neither one of us thought all that much about it because it was almost two weeks after I had gotten sick. He spent one of the nights hanging out in the bathroom and after that had a stuffy nose, a tickle in his throat, and a dry cough. But we were in a dry climate hanging out in stale smoky casinos with our friend who was a smoker.

After we got home, Paul lost his job. His boss wants someone who can work year round since Paul took off last summer to run our seasonal business. This summer he was going to try to do both but probably wouldn’t have gave either business the attention it deserves. The news was rather unexpected and shocking. It creates a lot of uncertainty about the future. I think we will be okay financially, but the safety net has been taken away. As of right now, we are starting to gear up for our seasonal business this week. We have a booth at a trade show. I will start to work on the administrative end while Paul gets into sales. But after this summer, I’m not sure what is going to happen and I don’t necessarily like that.

The evening after Paul lost his job, he spent half the night coughing instead of sleeping. He heard his lungs crackle and pop. I could hear it too. The next afternoon he took a nap and slept most of the afternoon. When he awoke, he was burning up with a temperature of 103. He was still doing a lot of coughing and looked absolutely miserable. I decided to take him to Urgent Care.

The doctor thought he had pneumonia. Paul had a chest x-ray and two COVID tests, one instant and one not. The rapid test came back negative for COVID. They said they would send the results for the non-instant test through his patient portal. The x-ray came back better than expected. The doctor said he had a bad case of bronchitis, gave him a prescription for antibiotics, and he was on his way.

The following morning his patient portal said his COVID test was negative and he was starting to feel better with the antibiotics. He was feeling a little more hopeful he would be able to go on the annual ice fishing trip with the guys this weekend. Before that, he said he was like a country song. He lost his dog. He lost his job. He lost his health.

A couple days later, the day he was supposed to leave for the fishing trip, he got a call from the nurse saying his non-instant test came back positive. He was really puzzled because he thought he already got all the results back. The nurse said he had already passed the quarantine time and is no longer contagious. Since the antibiotics were working, he also had a bacterial bronchitis as well.

So, yeah, it’s been a looooooonnnngg month. I really hope we are done with problems for a while now.

Gratitude week 107

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I’m not going to lie, it’s been a shitty week. I started the week out with COVID and ended the week by putting my dog to sleep. So…I think I’m good on my share of problems for awhile. Oh, if I could bet against my luck I would be most fortunate indeed. Anyway…

  1. About the only good thing about having COVID is now I don’t have to worry about getting COVID.
  2. I’m glad my kids were all able to say their final good-byes to our dog. They all gathered around our dog when the vet came out to put him down.
  3. I’m grateful all my children are in good relationships and their significant others really helped them through the process.
  4. The vet who came out to our house was kind and compassionate. She did everything she could to be gentle to ease our dog’s suffering and our own.
  5. I’m grateful for the 14 years we got to spend loving our dog. I feel at such a loss, my kids lost their childhood pet and their childhood is over. It’s a strange feeling, the regret of not being able to go back. It’s over. It’s final. But it was good.
  6. I’m grateful that Arabella’s boyfriend is going to be taking her pet frogs home to his house today. I have been taking care of them since she moved out and it will be nice to give them back to her.
  7. I have an appointment to get my haircut today and just got my nails done for the trip.
  8. I am getting excited to get away for a couple of days. I seriously think betting against myself would be a wise plan in Vegas. But I’m not much of a gambler.
  9. I was FINALLY able to get a good night’s sleep last night.
  10. It will be nice having high temps in the mid-60’s for a few days. Right now the wind chills are below zero.
You will be missed, my puppy!

Update 1/11/22

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Sorry if it seems I dropped off the side of the planet the last couple of days. I think COVID finally caught me. Or maybe I caught it? Besides having a fever for a day and severe body aches, my symptoms have been relatively minor. No sore throat, a slight cough, mild congestion, no problems breathing. It started out like the flu and is ending like a mild cold.

Practically everyone I know is sick or has been sick in the last couple of weeks with the exception of my husband. It’s crazy, but my husband in the last 26 years I’ve known him has only been sick once that I can remember with strep. I hope he stays healthy.

We decided to cancel our trip to Puerto Rico next week. They are at a COVID level 3 right now. Basically non-essential travel is not recommended. The government would track us while we were there. We had some friends who got stuck there an extra week because their flight got cancelled. For the money we were spending it sounded a lot more stressful than fun. I booked the trip on Expedia. The hotel is giving us a total refund, the airlines are giving us a credit for around half the cost of the flight. The real kicker is that I bought travel insurance and they said a COVID outbreak is not a valid reason to cancel the trip so we will not be getting a full refund. I am so pissed. What a waste of money that was.

Instead, we decided we are going to go to Las Vegas next week for half the cost of a trip to Puerto Rico. I am hopeful we will be able to go.

I am hoping to do my gratitude list within the next couple of days for the week. I just haven’t been up to much. Not only that, but we are in the process of having to make a difficult decision about our dog. He is 14 years old and is on 5 different medications just to keep him alive. His quality of life has been poor over the last several months and is declining. The last couple of days he has been having accidents in the house.

Today we called a couple of vets that do at home euthanasia. My husband had one call on speaker and I pretty much sobbed the whole time. Why do I feel a tremendous amount of guilt at the thought of putting him down when his quality of life is so poor?? Saying good-bye is always the hardest part of having a pet. I think it’s time, but it’s so hard to let go.

That being said, I’m not sure how much I will be blogging in the next couple of weeks. I will try to do the gratitude for this week and last. Other than that, we’ll see how things go. I just wanted to let everyone know I might be posting erratically.

Sad, angry, and less than perfect

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I’m not going to lie, the last couple of days have been rough. It’s been hard to muster up the Christmas spirit.

Yesterday I was feeling triggered by so many different things it was hard to figure out what was bothering me. I think what has been the most upsetting is that our dog is dying. He has been getting worse since our vet visit last week. Besides arthritis and now congestive heart failure, the vet thinks the mass near his stomach could be cancerous as his appetite has not been the best. It’s hard to watch him decline and I’m afraid we might be faced with some tough decisions soon.

I remember when my husband brought our dog home to surprise our children with an early Christmas gift the December of 2007. He quickly became a member of our family. Every morning he would walk the children out to the school bus and wait for their return. He would run with Paul and I. Everyone he met just loved him. This will be his last Christmas if he holds on that long. Thinking about this makes me cry.

I feel a great amount of loss. My children are not children anymore. Angel will be moving into her own house next month. Arabella already left and she doesn’t want a close relationship with me. I feel abandoned by my extended family. At this point, I don’t even want to invite them to my daughter’s wedding.

I am pretty certain we are going to be leaving our church. I will miss some of the people we got to know. What also hurts is we spent a lot of time getting to know the pastor’s parents and they moved away without telling us they were leaving. We didn’t get a chance to say good-bye.

I miss my life pre-COVID before everything happened with my dad and before my daughter started showing signs of being seriously mentally ill. I miss when my grandma was alive and threw us the best Christmases to help us forget for one day of the year that our childhood sucked. My grandparents, Aunt Grace, and Uncle Harold all have been gone over a decade now. I miss them and the sense of family I had with them. Nothing would stop me from spending time with them if they were still alive. My family is gone but they gave me a great example of how to be that family for my own children and grandchildren someday.

Recently I posted something on Facebook saying we shouldn’t let fear stop us from getting together with family for the holidays because who knows how long any of us has left. Just something simple like that sparked a debate which caused me to be unfriended by a pastor we had a few years back. As if I am some sort of satanist or something for wanting family to be together. My bad!

He is the same pastor we invited over for Thanksgiving when he didn’t have any family in the area. His family of 5 stood us up. I cooked all this extra food and they didn’t show. Apparently someone gave him tickets to the Packer game. I never cared for the pastor after that. Good riddance!

I admit I was feeling angry and vindictive. I rarely want to cut a bitch, but man when I do. So last night I spent the evening having a couple of drinks, listening to my angry music, and doing some jagged crying. I did some slobbery sobbing that no one cares about me to the few people who actually do. They were worried about my sanity. (Long gone, people, long gone)… My best friend gave a check in call on the way home from work. I do know I have some really awesome people who care about me, even if some people who I thought cared don’t.

One of the best things COVID did do is weed the people out of my life who don’t care. I don’t have to waste my time on them. On Christmas Eve, Paul and I are spending the evening with my best friend and her family. I can do what I want without caring what others think of me. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not. That is so freeing. I don’t have to try hard to please people who don’t give a shit about me. I can be myself around my friends.

One thing I can tell you is that I had a hell of a lot more fun with Tom and Lisa than I probably would’ve at the extended family Christmas party. Remember if your family sucks, friends are the family you choose. My best friends know my kids better than most of my family ever will.

Being triggered by all the loss, I really had to ask myself what was bothering me to get me so bent out of shape. What is upsetting me the most right now is that my dog is dying and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. Maybe I should grant myself the freedom to be sad, angry, and less than perfect.

Maybe it was the fried eggs

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Maybe it was the fried eggs.

It’s been a rough couple of days since we got back home. There is so much to catch up on it makes me wonder if it was worth it to get away.

This morning our dog stopped eating. I think it might be time for him to cross the rainbow bridge. Angel said that he didn’t eat much on one of the days we were gone. Maybe he got into something or someone else fed him I thought. When we got home everything seemed to be fine. Yesterday I took him for a walk. Then he got sick later that night. He pretty much stopped eating and is shivering a lot. I called the vet and got him an appointment for Friday afternoon. I got the number for the emergency vet just in case.

I feel sad that his end may be near. He’s been a part of our family for the last 13 years. If I think about it too much I want to cry.

Maybe it was just the fried eggs. That is what my son said.

Yesterday there was a big fight, or maybe it was the day before. It wasn’t over something that big. Each of the kids had chores to do while we were gone. I told them, however, that they were in charge of cooking and cleaning the mess for themselves. Angel is pretty anal. She cooked and cleaned up right away. Alex not so much. He tends to procrastinate and that is where the trouble started. Angel got on his case about cleaning up his mess and he didn’t respond all that well to being told what to do by his older sister.

I thought it was relatively minor and everything would blow over once we got home. Boy was I wrong. Angel and Alex got into a huge fight. I felt like I was their referee. Although I sided more with Angel, I could understand why Alex did not want to be told what to do by his sister. The fight devolved into name calling and ended when Alex threw a fried egg at his sister.

I took each kid aside and had a conversation with them about the fight. I listened to their point of view, validated it, and encouraged them to work it out. There are things that both of them did wrong and it pains me to see them wreck their relationship over a petty little fight. Neither one would hear of it though. Angel said she was moving out and staying at her boyfriend’s house with him and his parents for awhile. Apparently they never have conflict at their house like I do at mine.

When I finished talking to Alex I told him he needed to clean up the mess he made with the eggs. But by the time we finished our talk he lucked out because the dog gobbled it up.

Fast forward to today. My son thought maybe the dog was sick because he ate the eggs. I googled if eggs were bad for dogs. I found out that eggs are good for dogs especially ones with upset stomachs. It’s not the eggs. If only the answers were that easy to find.

I wish I could tell you by the end of this post that everything is fine but it’s clearly not. Instead of talking things out with her brother, my daughter avoided it by leaving. It’s probably something that I would do. Oftentimes I also avoid talking about problems with people I am upset with. My son didn’t seek out his sister and apologize either. They were getting along so well before we left, better than they ever did before. Then everything fell apart. It’s very upsetting to me to have such conflict and strife between them.

I don’t know what is wrong with our dog either but I don’t think it was the fried eggs.

Sick as a dog

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Right before everything shut down I foresaw the last window of opportunity to get things done. Paul and I had one last lunch date at the Chinese restaurant before it closed its doors maybe for good. I returned some Amazon items at the mall. I knew that once the school closed the mall would shortly follow. I got fingerprinted for my census job as soon as I could then found out later that I did it on the last day they kept fingerprinting open. It took 3 weeks later to get my background check back. Because of this I would be surprised if I start my census job much before summer ends.

One of the first things I did after everything was shut down was to buy some heartworm pills for my dog. Would it be bad to say that I took a risk for my dog? I have geriatric pets. My dog is almost 13 and my cat somewhere around 14. I try not to keep a large supply of expensive pet products because, well…

So I wandered out that day to buy heartworm pills. I saw a dog with heartworm once. It looked pretty miserable and I didn’t want the same fate for my dog. I even saw a dog with rabies once but that was so long ago.

The dog with rabies was sitting by the burning barrel. Did you have a burning barrel as a kid living out in the country? This really brings back childhood memories. We would take our garbage out to the burning barrel. This was years before recycling was even a thing. This was in the days I had trouble lighting a match. I was always afraid to light the fire.

When the burning barrel was lit we would put a grate over it so fiery pieces wouldn’t fly out and create other fires. As kids, this allowed us ample opportunity to play with fire. My mom gave us her old pots and pans. I created rock soup with dirt. It didn’t taste as good as I was expecting. Neither did grass. Sometimes we would take rotten vegetables from the garden like zucchini and cook them on the fire in a frying pan. I guess I was a child once but I don’t think children would be given the task of starting a burning barrel fire today.

That is where we found the dog with rabies. My mom drove in the driveway with all of us kids in the car. We saw the dog crouched next to the burning barrel snarling and foaming at the mouth. We were scared. I remember the fear. It was hot sitting in the car waiting for my mom to decide what to do. Something was wrong with the dog. It wasn’t our dog. We never saw it before. My mom thought we could make a run for the house to call for help.

By the time the man arrived with a gun, the dog moved a little further from the house. Mom told us to stay inside and I was big enough to peek out the bathroom window. I saw what happened to that dog.

I have seen a dog with fleas, heartworm, and even rabies in my lifetime. Yet I don’t know anyone who tested positive for coronavirus. It’s interesting to see how our experiences shape us. I had to make sure that didn’t happen to my dog, but at the same time I wasn’t too worried that something would happen to me.

Best friends fur ever 

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 I have known many dog owners that sigh in relief after the 4th of July firework festivities are over. My brother Luke’s Boston Terrier is so terrified of fireworks that they have to medicate her to calm her down. Maybe she should be called a Boston Terrified. It probably didn’t help that their kids were afraid too when they were little. 

I have had a couple of pet emergencies over the 4th but they had nothing to do with fireworks. In fact, my dog loves fireworks. He gets excited and barks while we cheer. I can tell he likes it because he wags his tail and smiles.  

 
My cat and dog are best friends. I catch them snuggling together, grooming each other, and being playful even now in their old age. Heck, they get along better than my kids!

Our first problem on the 4th happened after we went up north for a couple of weekends. We took the dog with us and left our cat at home alone. How can I put this delicately?? Our cat started urinating blood one 4th. I took him into the animal ER. We ended up finding out that he had separation anxiety. He couldn’t handle being home alone, especially when we took his best friend with us. He would cry pitifully after we returned home, sometimes in the middle of the night. Now we try to find a pet sitter so they can be together when we are gone. Or if the dog comes with, I turn the radio on.

 

Look how sad and pitiful they look when we leave!

A few years after the first ER trip on the 4th of July, we had another problem. The extended family was up north with us at the cabin for fireworks. Our dog ended up getting into ant poison. He tore up an ant house like he hadn’t eaten in years. I was so angry. Normally in stressful situations I shut down, but this time I totally freaked out. I screamed, hollered, and cried. I accused my parents of trying to kill my dog by leaving poison out that he could get into.

I didn’t know what to do. We were several hours away from the animal ER. Not to mention that it was in the middle of the night on a holiday. This was back in the day before I could get on my phone and Google answers. I just didn’t know if it would be harmful or not. But my dog lived without even a symptom. Maybe it was because the ant traps expired in1982. Or maybe I should just disregard warning labels. It certainly didn’t do much for the ant problem either. 

One thing I know for sure. My pets sure seem to love their life with us. They love each other. I didn’t know if it would be like that. When we first got our dog as a puppy, we had another cat that was 15 years old. She could not stand our dog. The age separation was too great. Then one day my neighbor called. She asked if we had a white cat because if so she found it floating in her swimming pool. We were very sad. There were rumors being spread that it was self inflicted.

After almost a year past, we decided to take our chances and get another cat. This cat was a year older than our dog. After a short period of dislike, they became best friends. Now they are inseparable. 

Best friends fur ever!