Say It Ain't So

It’s been nine months since I’ve posted here?? How is that possible? I’d take the time to talk about how fast time is just flying by, but apparently I don’t have time.

Spring must be unthawing my frozen bits, because I updated some links and posted last Fall’s Lake Tahoe/San Francisco trip pictures, and, well, I’m also writing this sentence on this little patch of my online real estate.

The last year or so of loss apparently stalled me. Too many friendships ended, too many friends passed, my 17-year-old dog died, and my son left this side of the Mississippi and is no longer a dependent. I’m nobody’s head of household. I’m just me with not much left to deduct.

This all means I’m currently seeing myself as pretty screwed. But hey, on the bright side, I’ll turn 50 in a few months. Wait. Let me restate that in a play pretend way before I hurl. I’ll turn 50 in a few months!! WooT WooT!! So exciting, says Oprah.

I do have the perfect gift to myself in mind, though. You may remember something about my post-single mom plans. If not, just know there were plans. Anyway, by my July birthday, I will have its book in not so shitty draft form.

That’s my gift to me. Closure. Clearance to advance to the other side. Just in time for the night sweats and hot flashes. And then the Social Security and hip replacements. And then hospice sponge baths and death.

It’s also my gift back to the Universe for gifting me with motherhood and some love and support through its slow, painful demise. So, I hope you’ll hang in there with me, readers, friends, stoppers by, because I do have other stories to tell. Between 50 and death. If there’s time.

(April 2^nd: Pages 93 – 60% too shitty to be considered shitty)

On Cape, Like a Native

Be warned, this post could be over the top with positivity and as such, extremely annoying. Plus, there are pictures. Vacation pictures. Everybody loves those, right? Aunt Flo’s slides of the road trip to Phoenix? Come on!

I left Indy Friday morning and drove to Binghamton, New York. I dreaded this drive so, because I had planned to take I-70 through Pennsylvania, it being the shortest route between Point A and B. I hate highways. The trucks, the mini-vans, the people in the left lane who should be in a parking lot or an institution – highways are where idiots go to collaborate and travel in impassable packs. And this highway, this I-70 in particular, is from the devil. If the Universe wants to punish me, he or she could just sentence me to an afterlife driving an endless loop of I-70. But luckily, a conversation about I-86, the Southern tier expressway across New York state, was had at the last minute Thursday at work and given the stamp of perfect solution. A few more miles but a road less traveled, reminiscent of Highway 36 out to Colorado last year.

This trek is the extent of my experience with the actual state part of New York, but I highly recommend it. Just beautiful. Low clouds hang on the mountains and valleys of lush farmland (though I never could tell what exactly was being farmed). I can’t find any information online about what this area is called, but I sure hope it’s called something. It deserves to be official!

Saturday, I got up early to head to my next stop of Providence, Rhode Island, because I wanted to see the Athenaeum and it closed at 1pm for the weekend. It was most definitely worth the 6am alarm. I could have spent weeks in there, but after some tours and walking Benefit Street and downtown, I checked into the 1920s-era renovated Marriott Renaissance Hotel. Ridiculous! The longest hall from door to bed in my hotel history made for a peaceful sleep. And red satin striped wallpaper in the bathroom? Shut the front door. (I found out later that this hotel has some bad publicity online about housekeeper relations, but I can’t be bothered, right? I’m just a guest.) Went for clam cakes/doughboys (dear lord, these things could kill a person) at Aunt Carrie’s in Narragansett, then to Waterfire, a downtown display. I think the entire population of Providence attended. Slow night? I have no idea why this thing was so fascinating, but it seemed good for the town, so I’m all for that. And Providence is a beautiful city at night.

Sunday. Newport, Rhode Island. Good. God. Almighty. If I could wait tables without looking for ways to poison customers, I’d send for my things. The view driving over the Jamestown Bridge, then the Newport Bridge. Then, the shops, the homes, the harbors. Oh, my! The Cliff Walk! The beaches, though, not so much. I don’t understand the joy in packing into a little stretch of land like sardines, but it’s not my place to understand anyway. They all seemed happy, and that’s all that counts. (See? Positivity!)

Late that afternoon, I made a stop at Shaw’s Supermarket for supplies and headed to Wellfleet, my Cape Cod destination for the week. Lovely drive. I was at the cottage for about an hour before the older couple next door packed up and left. I think they were the owners doing a little pre-season weekend work. The other cottages around me are vacant, too! There’s no need for air-conditioning or heat, so all I hear are the birds, the hum of the refrigerator sometimes, and the occasional car drive by.

I have been here 24 hours and I’ve found THE beach for me in Maguire Landing 2.3 miles from the cottage. I’ve shopped in P-town, I’ve eaten a lobster roll, crab cake, and a kiddie chocolate ice cream cone, I’ve walked around Wellfleet Center and Harbor and walked the Salt Pond Trail recommended in my Cape Cod Day Hikes book, and I even took a shower outside, if you can believe that. Don’t Google map street view the area anytime soon if you don’t want your eyes to bleed.

Tomorrow, I'll have breakfast at The Wicked Oyster, head to Maguire Landing Beach to read and listen for a bit, then to Chatham Harbor and maybe Hyannis. I vow not to eat as much as I did today. I need to leave some food for the natives. I’m going to smile at maybe three or four Massachusetts strangers. Hell, I may strike up a conversation. They LOVE that, let me tell you!! I don’t know that I’ll venture on the ship from Hyannis to Nantucket, though I want to. I worry about seasickness. I’m not prepared mentally or physically for that.

Wednesday, rain is predicted, so I’m planning to write about PSM all day. This post is a step in that direction, as it’s the first thing I’ve written unrelated to an IT audit control in months.

And now, set a spell with Aunt Karen and watch her vacation slides (Remember it’s just the first day! You’ll want to stop back by for more, I’m sure!). Click on the picture to the left to start the show. Did I mention there’s no television at the cottage???

I may reserve this week at this cottage for the rest of my days. No kids, no crowds, no beach permits, no lines, no bugs, 70-degree days, 60-degree nights. It's been a very nice day, for which I am so grateful.

Fred Solo

You know how God or the Universe or whatever you may call it puts things in your path repeatedly, most likely for no other purpose than his or her own amusement? I'm convinced God gifts me with putterers and finds it hilarious. Yes, I know, it could be a whole lot worse. And it's hard to believe, but I'm not really complaining either, because this one is pretty darn entertaining. I've named him Fred Solo, because he looks a lot like a younger Fred Sanford of '70s sitcom fame, and he is never without a red solo cup in his hand.

Fred is at least in his mid-fifties and lives across the street in his mother's house. He was born and will die in that house. He doesn't work but is very busy. He makes a slew of trips to places nearby all day long. Never gone for more than a few minutes at a time, I never worry, because if his truck isn't in the driveway, it soon will be.  He does have a boat, but if he leaves with it in the morning, he's always home by 5pm. He works tirelessly in his yard, on the boat, and on his truck, and everything looks shiny and new all the time. 

But Fred is a horrible time manager. Let's say he needs Windex and a paper towel to clean a truck window. Fred makes one trip in the house for the Windex, another for the paper towel (I might be exaggerating but it feels like one trip for each square), and because washing a truck window is thirsty work, a few trips are required for solo cup fill-ups. All in all, this one job could very well eat up the better part of an hour and make Fred a tad slower and wonkier than when he started.

You're right, I can close my curtains and my door any time, I am well aware. But like it was for Gladys Kravitz, things are a little slow right now, and, for some odd and probably new reason, I'm not only not bothered by him, I'm apparently a little mesmerized by him. I mean, of course I want to make him a list and find him a job and see what's in the cup, but I also wouldn't mind an explanation for him. 

One thing that does cause me some concern, though, is my dying in this house. See, a few weeks back, an ambulance and fire truck were called to a house about three doors down. I did what anyone would do - watched from my kitchen window to see what was going on. Solo? He, cup in hand, walked down there and stood at the ambulance's back door. At the BACK door. He was going to strike up a conversation with the EMTs as they hoisted the victim inside. The thought of this gives me heart palpitations. If my last breath is taken from a gurney looking up into ol' Solo's bloodshot eyes, breathing in his solo cup breath, listening to him quiz an inevitably adorable EMT about what's wrong with me.......dear Lord, just take me now.

Okay, there IS just one other thing that concerns me. When I moved in six months ago, he, his mother, a woman, and three kids lived there. My landlord and I tried to figure the family situation out, but I'm not sure how accurate we were. The woman, we were thinking, was his girlfriend and the kids belonged to her? But she moved out in the dead of night about a month later (I'm not on watch 24/7, but, luckily, Sabrina woke me up to go outside), and the kids stayed. I thought then that the kids belonged to a Solo sibling who lived elsewhere but wanted the kids to live with Grandma for whatever reason. Now, though, a different woman lives there with Solo and there is no sign of Grandma or the kids. It's all so confusing. Oh, but back to what concerns me.....

One day last month, I turned the corner and saw Grandma sitting in my driveway in her seen-better-days red truck. I honked and startled her into action and she backed out. We rolled down our windows to talk, and she said that she had started her truck in her driveway, ran back into the house for something, and came out to it rolling slowly towards my house. She, well into her 70s or 80s, was somehow able to stop it, but it left her flustered, to say the least. We were both just glad it didn't hurt her or hit the house! The truck must have been taken to the home or the cemetery, because it's not there anymore. But what worried me is that Grandma seemed to have gone with it. Then, on Friday, I saw her leaving her house on foot and with her purse! She had been dropped off by two ladies in a maroon car just a few minutes earlier. Both Solo and his woman were home as usual, yet there went Grandma, hobbling down the street in orthopedic shoes, carrying her purse. With all the places Solo has to go, couldn't he have given her a ride? What the heck is going on over there? Could it be that Solo and this new gal forced her out of her own house and now she has no car and is staying somewhere within walking distance? Please, God, don't tell me she was walking to the bus stop - that's a mile away!

I don't know how I find the time, but I was perusing a magazine this week and learned a couple of things westward where it seems wide open spaces still exist. Carrizizo, New Mexico, is having a huge sale on land and Wyoming has the lowest tax burden in the country. Knowing God like I do though, I'd probably just end up within eyeshot of a 4-legged dysfunctional putterer.

A Big Event and A Little Conversation

Well, it seems that nothing much is going on lately. While I think this is probably a good thing for my personal growth, it doesn't give me much material to work with. And I do so love material.

So, I'll post this little exchange here to show just how uninteresting my life is right now. My 21-year-old son recently moved to Lake Tahoe for a year-long project and had to shop for the basics to equip his new apartment. (I have to tell you that just the other day I was driving along the highway, looking around, and spotted a Red Roof Inn that I would think of as being in the middle of nowhere if I didn't know what was just beyond the exit ramps and thought about how this kid road-tripped across the country alone with a GPS and no hotel reservations. He was stressed the week before he left, and I could tell he was nervous when he got to town before he found his apartment. But he did it. He saw the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, FLagstaff, Las Vegas on a Saturday night, Death Valley, Hoover Dam, and some others I know I'm forgetting. (I was texted all of two pictures along the way.) He did it a lot excited but a little afraid. What a lesson he taught me. At 21, I couldn't have written a check. So as much as I diss on the Spawn - and will continue to do so because it's a lot of how we express love - I couldn't be more happy about him. My life's joy, I tell ya, my life's joy. But you probably knew that.)

Anyway, back to the exchange. Boyz. Ugh.

“I bought all kinds of stuff for the bathroom. Shower curtain....”

“Ooo, what color?”

“Shower curtain color.”

“Seriously?”

“I think it’s a tan color.”

“K, what else?”

“A trash can.”

“Ooo, what color?”

“Trash can color.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s white.”

“K, what else?”

“A bath mat.”

“Ooo, what color?”

“I don’t really remember.”

“Does it match the shower curtain? Complement it?”

“Uhhh.”

“How could you not remember what color it is? You just bought it 4 hours ago.”

“Uhhh.”

“Well, what’s your theme in there?”

“My theme is BATHROOM."

“Fine, I guess we should change the subject now?”

“Good idea.”

“What about the kitchen?”

“I’ll just save us some time here. The theme in there is KITCHEN.”

A Post-Single Mom Trifecta

If you know me at all, you know I have organized a little community around Post-Single Motherhood. I defined it in 2009 and had some wonderful support creating and publishing it. Both watching it grow and connecting with women going through the same struggles and triumphs have been invaluable for my (any day now) recovery. The website is here. The Facebook page is here. The local chapter is here. I blog on that site as well, but this week's post is a crossover into the heartstrings of my personal life, so I'm posting it here as well. Ridin' redundant this month.

I've always said that PSMing is a grieving process, and while I absolutely do not mean to minimize the actual unbearable loss of a child, I stand by my belief that being a post-single mom can, at times, be a distant second.

I had picked a really good theme for January: intuition. We'll get to it, because it is so important. We single moms transition from factual, methodical, list-making machines to thinking of ourselves as unproductive and useless. We slowly begin to think from our hearts, not from our heads, and learn how to listen to this new place, this intuition. Ah, change. Is there no end? But, I need to put that aside for a minute because I've been blindsided with a PSM trifecta and feel the need to expose myself a little related to the depths of pain we PSMers can experience. This has been one helluva quarter.

In November, a friendship of 11 years ended with a long series of nasty, name-calling, and, I need to say because I never responded in kind, incoming texts. So, my ruminating began (and has yet to end). Is the quality of my friendships so low that they can end so quickly and with such meanness and no second thought? Am I that unworthy? Am I that bad at being and recognizing a true friend? I admit I didn't have a lot of experience at any kind of adult relationship while raising my son. I was so driven, so financially focused. And, after all, and I know other single moms and post-single moms understand this: I had a best friend. My Spawn. (Poor kid.)

In December, I lost a dear friend and fellow PSMer to alcoholism. 2012 was her 5th year of recovery from Stage 3 breast cancer. She had a 17-year-old daughter who was just looking into colleges and a 20-year-old son who had recently transferred to a school 90 minutes away. She was alone over the Christmas holidays, as was I, but we didn't check in with each other in time. We were supposed to go to the movies the Thursday night before Christmas, but she couldn't go because she said the kids were coming over. Patricia was the coolest gal pal I ever had. Just cool. And inspiring and positive and supportive and so fun and funny. We clicked. I knew she was fighting a battle but really thought it was something we could overcome once she got through that initial blast of aloneness. I was wrong. I value the fact that we met through the local PSM group here in Indianapolis and that I think we were a huge help to each other her last two years here. We got tattoos together in October and had such a fun time that day. She taught me so much about empathy and patience and kindness and openness and peace and acceptance. I loved her and told her so and for that I am truly grateful. And so sad.

This brings us to January. In less than two weeks, Spawn, recently college graduated (a year early if you're thinking you lost time somewhere), is road tripping to Nevada for a year-long job as a botanist for the Bureau of Land Management in Lake Tahoe. Yes, I know, the lucky bastard. LOL. I'm ecstatic for him. And proud. Yes. Yes, I am. Yes. Definitely. But it's damn near the west coast. I'm in the midwest. I'm from the south. This is no place I've ever been before, so I feel even more distant not knowing anything about what he's going to experience. What if he gets lost? What if a cowboy wants to fight him? (He's not a fast draw.) What if he runs out of Burger King coupons? What if he gets nibbled on by a bear? For the first time, I can't get to him in a day. Of course, I can by plane. Of course. But it still feels a world away.  Mostly, though, he's just gone....again. When does all this leaving stop?

I usually like to pinpoint a Stage so I can identify it, get to know it, and work through it, but I can't even pick one. Though, I know I'm not irritated or anxious, because I haven't resorted to watching Brady Bunch episodes yet. Jane Austen movies, yes, but not the Brady Bunch. I suppose that's healing and hopeful. Rehab. And talking to you has helped. :)

Christmas 1970. Again and again.

It's officially a tradition. My holiday-themed repost from 2004. It's probably my most favorite memory of my father.  

=================

I was seven years old and at the age when, way back then in simpler and slower times, most children just begin to seriously contemplate the logistics of Santa Claus’ annual visit. I had asked a million questions that Christmas season, but no explanation made sense.

I announced at the dinner table that Christmas Eve that I would be staying awake all night. I intended to prove once and for all that there was no Santa. After all, I was too grown up for this nonsense. With whom did they think they were dealing - a 5-year-old?

My parents agreed to the plan, but insisted that I still go to bed on time, explaining, for yet another year, that Santa only visited sleeping children and thinking, of course, that I wouldn’t last too long anyway once my head hit the pillow.

I reluctantly participated in their charade but I was confident that I would prove how silly this whole concept was. I knew there would be no signs of Santa that night.

I lay in my bed with the drapes open, staring out my window. I watched. I listened. And I waited. And waited. I refused to give in. I would not fall asleep! I was sure hours had gone by.

All of a sudden, I saw a tiny red light moving slowly across the sky. I jumped out of the bed and ran to the window for a closer look. Then I heard the bells. I saw the red light travel to the top of our neighbor’s roof and stop. The jingling stopped too. It was dark and I couldn’t see much, but there was no mistaking that light.

After a bit, the light took off again for the sky and the sound of jingling bells got louder. I couldn’t tell where Rudolph was going next, but I was positive that he was headed for my roof. I ran back under the covers and pretended to be fast asleep. I sure did hope that Santa didn’t see me watching him from my window!

Needless to say, I was a firm believer in Santa Claus for two more years.

_______

My father told me when I was a teenager that he and his best friend who lived next door had done all this from his friend’s deck. We were positioned on a corner lot and the back of our house faced the side of theirs. I had a perfect view of their roof and deck from my room. They had actually lain down on the deck so I couldn’t see them and shone a flashlight with red bulbs across the sky and onto the roof. My mother always insisted on a ridiculous amount of Christmas decorations, so they had no problem finding loud bells to jingle.

Today, I am the same age that my father was in 1970. As a parent, I can appreciate the desire to preserve our children’s innocence. And, as a middle-aged adult, I understand the power of Crown Royal on a winter night and the intense need for something fun, silly, and different to do.

Ma'am, I am Tonight.

Memphis makes me cry. I try my damndest not to let it, but it always gets me. Grabs me by the nostalgic heartstrings and doesn't let go until I cave. I always drive the same route - I start at the river and work my way east. The river reminds me of its endless history and struggle. The rest reminds me of my childhood before it all went so horribly wrong.

See, my mother was happy until 1968. I mean, how could you not be happy? Get a load of those curtains! But 1968 was the year our little family moved to Atlanta for my father's new job.

It wasn't that she didn't like Atlanta, she just didn’t want to. No city could compare to her Memphis, where she had spent her entire and fairly charmed life, and to which she would always feel an unwavering loyalty. (Apparently, that whole racial upheaval going on in the 1960s didn't affect her outlook. But it must have my father's, because he thought it was time to go. And she would never quite forgive him for it.)

She was homecoming queen of her high school and a sorority queen in college. She was president of this club and that and knew just everybody there was to be known. She was, more often than not, the belle of the ball. In Atlanta, there would be no ball. Just us kids growing older. But before I turned five years old in 1968, I was the happiest daughter in the history of daughters, because I had the happiest mother in the history of the whole Universe.

Sterling Drive - Our First HouseThe summer before we moved, I was four and my brother was eight. He was out of school, and every day was like a birthday party. My mother and I would wet sponge-stick S&H green stamps into these books that plumped and ruffled as they dried, and we’d shop in the catalogs for all the things we would buy. Sometimes, we would sit on the porch and paint our toenails and brush and fix each other's hair with a million different multi-colored thick yarn bows and shiny ribbons and plastic ball ponytail holders, while my brother played with his friends in the yard. On particularly good days, we would dress up and pretend to be in beauty pageants. As I grew up, I came to hate all these things (which put another crack in her already broken heart), but back then, all I knew was that my mother was smiling.

Every so often, we would go places. We would have lunch with people, we would take her mother, who didn't drive, to appointments, or, on really special days, we would go shopping at Sears. The Sears on Poplar Avenue was something to behold (the picture doesn't do it justice). It was gigantic (I swear!) and white and all brick and had a huge, long walkway leading up to it like it was a castle. The walkway was covered to protect shoppers coming and going from the parking lot. It was lined with little Bradford Pear trees and ran the whole length of the parking lot, which, back then, felt like miles.

On our way in to the store and before getting in our car to go home, my mother would sit on a bench and watch us run up and down that walkway over and over and over and over. She'd apologize to the poor passersby trying to use the path for its intended purpose. But she would smile and smile. And laugh. When my mother laughed, everything else in the world disappeared. She was always ashamed and would cover her mouth, but she was never more beautiful than when she laughed.

As if the walkway weren’t enough, right inside the store’s front door was a candy counter. Someone would inevitably open the door for my mother, and we'd follow her inside hoping for the best. The smells of nuts and candies and chocolates and gums were so strong that you could taste the air. The whole area was decorated in red and white checks and there were a million glass displays of all kinds of goodies. My mother would always pretend that we were in a hurry and didn’t have time to stop. And we’d beg and plead and pull on her arms and her purse and her dress and anything we could grab a hold of until she let us pick out one thing each. She loved watching us try to choose. We'd press our noses to the display cases and run our dirty little kid hands up and down each and every one. We'd pick one thing and change our minds and start all over again. And she'd laugh some more. Then, the man with the paper triangle candy-man hat would scoop and weigh and pour our gold into little paper bags and hand them to us to take home. Outside, we’d thank her profusely, and she would hold our little bags while we took one last spin around the walkway.

But 1968 clipped her wings and she was never the same. I grew older and she grew more lost and lonely every year. She tried so hard in the next twelve years before her death, but she was never happy like that again. And neither was I. 

Holmes Circle - My Grandmother's HouseI took pictures this time, but I'm not sure I should have. My memories are better, bigger, newer, and sunnier. Although, this house on the corner of Central and Greer has always been my favorite. Central and GreerAnd it's where I turn to go to my grandmother's house (which was red brick when they lived there), where we spent every summer until I was twelve and she came to live with us in Atlanta (her husband died in 1970, just two years after our fatal move). I didn't understand their overwhelming sadness about that day at the time, but now I think I do. Neither of them had a home anymore. I'm not familiar with this sense of belonging, but apparently, it's something I long for and that I feel nowhere else.  So, Memphis, I'll see you in a couple of years, and I'll take my little drive, have my little cry, and think about the time I felt part of something really good.

Not Quite a Homicide, Yet

A week after I returned from my summer vacation in July, my dog's breath, already at a tangible 15-year-old level, suddenly got worse. Every six weeks, she gets bathed, combed, clipped, and has as many teeth brushed as she'll allow. Two years ago, the Vet and I discussed knocking her out for a deluxe cleaning, but we opted not to, because of her age. No problem. We’ll work it out.

So, as I was saying, you could smell her breath when you opened the door. It permeated the entire house (all 900 square feet of it), like death. I imagine. So, I grabbed my little plastic finger and the breath spray she likes and attempted to get near her to rub her teeth and gums a bit. She hates it, but likes it, but hates it, but likes it, so I can usually get a few swipes in there before we both get cranky. But not this time. There was a big pink blob of something jutting out from the front of her mouth. I knew I had to investigate, even though I was foaming at the mouth from the stench. She wouldn’t let me near her mouth long enough to know exactly what was going on in there, but from the outside, it looked like the beginnings of one of those tumors on the TLC people who have to be cut out of their homes. We hightailed it to the vet where they ordered emergency-ish (this was Friday and surgery could wait until blood work and Monday rolled around) dental surgery to remove it and do a professional cleaning.

She did fine. She lost 16 teeth in the process (I know, I know, this is where you have my permission to beat me up for being a bad dog owner, but I refer you to the above mention of a prior discussion about surgery in which I was told not to do it) and now gums canned food, but all is ($900 worth of) well.

Well, until last week. (This post is not really about her teeth – it’s all just PETA court evidence that I do at least try to take care of the dog on most days.) It’s no secret that Sabrina and I have issues. Think two old ladies sharing a semi-private room at the home. When things get ugly, they really get ugly. And the middle of the night is when we tussle the most. Sunday night, she started this fake throwing up business. (You know the kind where they swallow incessantly and do a little dry heaving.) This dog is not out chasing vermin or digging up worms anymore. She’s on a 30-foot tie out that gives her access to the same little patch of condo land that she’s on every.other.freeking.day.of.her.life. In other words, what she could get into was beyond me and frankly just ticking me off.

She went under the bed to do her swallowing/gagging routine, and I couldn’t take it. I decided toot sweet to put her in the bathroom for the night. I sat down on the floor beside the bed and went for her collar and, as usual, she tried to bite me. So, I grabbed my slipper, conveniently sitting on the floor next to me. In theory, I would hurl it at her ass like a simultaneous spank and shove towards me so I could grab her. In actuality, the old gal turned her head to bite it and she got hit in the left eyeball. Yes, the edge of the rubber sole smack in the eyeball. She yelped once, but that was it. She did move toward me, so I grabbed her collar and put her in the bathroom to dry heave all she wanted. And I went to sleep.

The next morning, she looked like death warmed over. I don't think she slept all night. And her eye? It was either going to sink into her head and come out the other end the next day or shrivel up and pop out and land on the floor for me to slip on later. It looked horrible. Thing is, though, that she wasn't rubbing it or shaking her head or crying or anything. And she was eating fine (that runs in the family). My son, who was there that afternoon, said that he'd give it another day. By that night, though, it was red and hazy and altogether not right, and I swore she had internal injuries. As one who goes to the dark side, I started googling doggie head trauma.

At bedtime, I held her and petted her and cried like a baby and prayed to The Baby Jesus. For me, really, more than for the poor dog. "Dear Baby Jesus. Please don't let me have killed this dog with a slipper. How can I possibly explain that? I'm a good person. Please don't let her die from my killing her. And, really? I just spent $900 at the vet. Oh, and that stupid $50 memory foam bed for her hip. Oh, and the new little treats that she can gum. I spent like $10 on those. Seriously. Please, please, please don't let her die."

Sabrina looked up at me all pitifully, yet somehow smugly like she was enjoying the show, and kissed my hand. Then, we went to sleep and the next morning, I was prepared to take her to the doctor first thing. But, she was a whole new dog, none the worse for wear and wanting to play. So, thank goodness and The Baby Jesus, now I can tell the slipper story from the comfort of home and as a near-death close call instead of from an undisclosed location and as a homicide. I’m not cut out to be on the lam, really.