There’s something about becoming a stay-at-home mom that makes everyone around you believe you have nothing but free time. Of course, in their defense, I volunteer more often than I normally would, and therefore find myself in almost constant demand.
The weekend before last I did facepainting at a friend of mine’s birthday party for her children. It went well, but with just me and about 25 little rugrats, I learned that an extra pair of hands would be helpful.
So I volunteered someone else for the next event: a yard sale at my church that offered free food and free t-shirts, and compliments of me, free facepainting. For once my brain seemed to kick in, and I called the high school to snag one of their service-learning-needing students to help out. Her name was Catherine, and she was amazing.
Amazing enough to take over when I completely left her there on her own for an hour after the phone call I got from home:
Mom: Petey is sick. (Petey is my Uncle’s dog. A dachshund to be exact.)
Me: -Sigh- Let me call the vet…
Now, I’m not some terrible person who just wanted to be lazy and not take the dog to the vet. No, that’s not the case. It’s simply that my Uncle has two of these dogs. He also has dementia. They used to say he had early onset Alzheimer’s, but I think we’re past that point now. We’re full steam ahead into this disease and so needless to say, his care of the dogs leaves much to be desired.
By the end of this conversation with my mother, and then with the vet, I found myself asking, “And how much is it going to cost if we have to put him down?”
I’m not normally such a negative person.
I swear.
But it was EARLY, and I’d only managed to swig back one cup of coffee before I was out there in the cold, watching everything on my table blow all over the place and listening to children say, “I want ________.” or “Make me look like __________.” or “Can you do _________?” All this, with a smile on my face, forced though it may be, as I told poor Catherine I had to run and I’d be back.
On my way home, my breaks start to grind. I mean, screaming souls from the pit of hell kind-of noise.
So I park it, while my Uncle waits by the door with Petey wrapping in a blanket. His (the dogs) squeals of pain only add to the cacophony of sounds emerging from my car and I think it may be possible that Dante missed a circle in his travels…
I take the keys from the Man for the thunderbird and grab the dog and I’m gone…
in a 1988, diarrhea brown, windows are held in place by chunks of wood, superglue, duct tape, and a dream, V8 roaring, radio broken, amazing piece of machinery.
It still runs better than my car, which is simply pathetic.
We get to the vet and let me give you the run down:
One muzzle
One fingerfull of lube
One finger up poor Petey’s backend (I did mention he was a dachshund right? I mean, this vet had hands like a lumberjack -Shudder-)
Three shots
Two bottles of meds
And $206 dollars later
and I’m telling my Uncle something I never expected I’d say to him:
In all honesty, I didn’t even know that was physically possible. I am now far more concerned about teasing and tormenting my husband, and I’m afraid what my search would pull up if I tried to find out if this phenomenon was possible in humans.
I did make it back to the facepainting, and it was well worth it. I found a neat little book from the 1950s, called, How to Get a Husband.
It was written by a man.
Need I say more? It certainly filled my day with laughter.
Laura A. Lord 