NOTHING CAN BE THAT WRONG IF MY HAIR IS THIS CUTE

Things here are... Well... Yeah. I'm digging my new haircut. All aboard the positivity train!

I MUST CATCH THE POSITIVITY TRAIN

OR I WILL RIG THE TRACKS WITH EXPLOSIVES!

Is this the hair of someone about to lose it?

OF COURSE NOT!

IT IS ADORABLE!

A+B=unicorns that are decidedly NOT running from pirates.

I mean A+B=C.

*Uncomfortable coughing*

Of course. 1+2=3 and so forth.

Isn't that what I wrote?

Do you hear that?

*Od school phone dialing beeps*

That would be the sound of my husband hiding in the basement, dialing the local padded room establishment. There are going to be old timey sirens and neighing horses outside any minute, as the stage coach to take me away arrives.

...

The exterminator was just here. So that's one thing off the list. His last name is my maiden name, which I find that amusing every time he is here. I'm all, "We're cousins!"

We're not cousins.

I am easily amused. And, as you've probably guessed, slightly off of my game today.

Tomorrow the electrician is coming. Because the Nobel Prize winners who lived here before us wired the oven straight into the fuse box. So there is no outlet or plug for the oven. And they did NOT put it in the fuse box with an actual fuse that we can flip on and off. It's just wired straight into the box itself - because dealing with it without having to mess with the entire electrical current FOR THE WHOLE HOUSE, well, that, my friends, would be crazy!

We've had problems with it for a couple years, and when our temps hit over 100 last week, ka-pow. The oven is dead. Not "let's mess with it and make it work again" dead but real, "Ha ha ha I refuse to turn on or even say Power Failure on my little dial anymore" dead.

Who knew seeing "Power Failure" on your oven was actually a good thing? Oh, the good old days, when the oven got enough power to at least read "PF!"

We gave it 3 real good "come on, Oven!" tries and the oven never came back on (although the oven light did, so, yeah, awesome and helpful to be able to see that we can't actually turn the oven on and cook anything in there). Before we even started, the hubby and I had a "conversation" where I said maybe we should wait until after the heatwave to even try because what if none of the electric comes back on...

He said no to that and also said that he understood if the electric didn't come back on, OH HERE GO HELL COME. It's been mid to high 100s all week with no day in the 7 day forecast any lower. The hubby, he knew would never hear the end of it.

Ever. Ever. Ever.

Me, Mav, and all the cats get our own hotel rooms.

In Fiji.

We still have electric (and AIR CONDITIONING), so I call that a win. 

I was totally stressed about the guy coming. How much electrical work do we need? Am I going to need a new oven?

I checked out Consumer Reports and that was a bad idea. It made me all rage-y. You can test almost 100 ovens but seemingly none under a thousand dollars, Consumer Reports? REALLY? Really, Those-Who-Report-For-The-Consumer?

REALLY?

It seems like Consumer Reports maybe wants me to start videotaping and then youtubing myself freaking out over the information available at Consumer Reports. WHICH IS GOOD FOR NO ONE, CONSUMER REPORTS!

For the $2800 best buy from Consumer Reports, well, that damn oven better come with a chef. And groceries. And the thing better be made out of gold and diamonds. Blood diamonds.

I like my chicken roasted over rubies, thank you.

I don't know what kind of people are spending thousands of dollars on a stove, but there are other people out here, Consumer Reports. WE ARE NOT THOSE PEOPLE, CONSUMER REPORTS. Those people are too busy frying up some truffles and baby seals on their yacht for brunch to even read you, Consumer Reports! They're having brunch even though they had breakfast and are going to have lunch, Consumer Reports! 

*Falls on knees, raising hands balled in fists* 

CONSUMER REPORTS! WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO GIVE ME A STROKE? WHY, CONSUMER REPORTS? WHYYYYYYYYYYY? 

...

Needed a second there. Sorry.

I will buy a 20 dollar electric skillet, find the George Foreman grill in the top cupboard that my brother game us for Christmas 4 years ago, and park the car on the side of the street with dough covered cookie sheets on the dashboard.

I get that my powerless oven is not useful. Like that song, it is about as useful as a horse with no name...

Um... Why exactly is a nameless horse less useful? I mean, a dead horse, sure. A horse without a moniker? Still seems pretty useful.

Wait, it was just about a guy riding a horse with no name, right? It had nothing to do with being useful or not. Why did I think it had something to do with not being useful?

I'd Wikipedia this but I'm pretty sure I won't survive wiki-ing today.

Man. I am SO RAGE-Y right now.

So, my point is I need to clean at least the area of the house that the electrician is going to see. Last night, I attempted to move the oven.

Ooooooo. The do-it-yourselfers left just enough cord to make it so I cannot slide it out more than a foot from the wall.

I'll tell you, if I ever met them, I would want to do something myself.

BAHAHHAHAHHHHHAAAAAA!

Sorry. The rage-y got a little out of my control there for a moment.

I was able to remove the bottom storage drawer and clean that small area underneath.

It was the most disgusting thing I have ever cleaned. And that is saying something. I have cleaned some disgusting stuff. I went to nursing school. I worked in more than one nursing home. And now I live in a house with a bunch of animals. And a husband.

Hell, our address is:

1231 Disgusting Stuff Drive
At Least Nursing Made Me Pretty Immune To All Things Gross, Missouri
630-I Hope That's A Hairball-11

...

I found so many Zima bottlecaps under that oven, I can't even tell you.

And no, we've never drank Zima, thanks for asking.

Although I am not surprised the former owners did. They seem like Zima people to me.

Douchebags!

Who said that? Was that you, Consumer Reports? How rude! They're human beings! *Dart eyes around room looking for the source of such foul language*

I also found parts of the hubby's old desk, Christmas ornaments, where all our ants from when we moved in went to die, a couple tools, some milk bottle caps, 10 cents (score!), a lot of dog food, and a ton of tiny, multicolored plastic pieces to... things. I cleaned them and showed them to the husband and we went through the "What did this come off of?" game show where we lost every single round.

Also, this morning, still less gross than under the oven, I woke up to discover Mav had peed in her sleep.

Ask me where she was sleeping last night.

Go ahead.

Ask me.

Don't want to? Okay. I'll make it a fun game. We put a baby gate in the doorway so she is in the room with us all night. So the answer could be worse, I guess. She wasn't on the powerless oven or anything.

Yep, that would have been worse now that I think about it, if only for the fact that the guy would have to sort of be warned about it before he attempted to fix things.

Back to the question. She slept in all the following places last night, but where was she sleeping this morning when I woke up and found it? Winner gets a vial of my tears.

Was it:

A) on her dog bed
B) on the floor
C) on her loveseat at the foot of our bed
D) on my husband's old college twin bed next to the closet
E) on our bed
or
F) on our bed ON ME

Mmmmm-hmmmm. I don't even have to tell you the answer because you already know it in your hearts, don't you?

F-yeah, you do!

See what I did there? I am so impressed with myself! I AM A WORD WIZARD! A WORD GENIUS! A WORD PIMP! WORDS ARE MY HOES!

Poor Mav. I'm not mad or upset in the least. Thank you free-with-the-mattress waterproof mattress pad! I don't think she had any idea. I just feel awful for her.

I freaked out like why is she falling apart? Are her systems shutting down? Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!

My vet actually responded to this very calmly. Like you would for an elderly person, I guess. He did not jump to "obviously it's a never-before-seen mixture of the AIDS cancer and the plague" like I guess I did. He decided to approach it as something we can easily handle whether it's just her being spayed mixed with her advancing age or an infection.

I guess the only thing currently breaking in the Happy Wife house is my sanity and possibly my heart. Oh, and our pocketbook. I just spent more money than I am willing to admit buying very well reviewed waterproof mattress pads on Amazon. They are going under all the slipcovers on the furniture and dog beds in the house. Which I do not think is overkill.

Overkill would be replacing all the carpet and flooring with waterproof mattress pads.

Still a fraction of the cost of an oven, though. Perhaps I should give that more thought. Because that is what I should do more of today. Thinking.

*Silence in my ears, silence in my brain, ALL ABOARD THE POSITIVITY TRAIN!*

Toot, toot!

That was not farting. That was the train. For the record.


DID WE TALK ABOUT HOW CUTE MY HAIR IS YET?

ALSO I WORE NEW STEVE MADDEN WEDGES TO THE VET TODAY AND I THINK I LOOK ADORABLE IN MY SPARKLY TOP THAT I HAVEN'T WORN BEFORE BUT I WILL NOT TAKE A PHOTO BECAUSE IF THE PHOTO DOESN'T COME OUT WELL AND I DO IN FACT NOT LOOK A-DOR-A-BLE THEN I THINK THIS IS NOT THE DAY TO FACE THAT UNFLATTERING LIGHT BECAUSE I MIGHT LOSE MY SH*T.

I'm going to stare down at my sparkly top now and tell myself how pretty and sparkly I am out loud in a very-not-creepy way. Because that seems like how I should handle the situations that are happening right now and I'm just going to go with it.

Missing Those Termite Days

It's odd how you can look back on something that, at the time, felt crappy, but in retrospect, it wasn't anything.

I complained about May a lot this year. Turns out, I should have been appreciating May.

Termites? Yes, please. I'll take the termites. In swarms.

Because in May, Maverick did okay. She had her usual ups and downs, but it wasn't until Memorial Day that things starting going downhill fast.

It's been two steps forward, one step back since then. Almost a month ago. It's been a month since the hubby and I were able to leave the house together.

A month since I didn't have to hand feed her every meal.

A month since we were comfortable with her being in a room without us for a few moments.

A month since I could do things, even little things, without worrying about her not being in my sightline. Showering, grabbing something from downstairs, getting the mail... It's all become somewhat of a challenge.

I find ways to keep her close as I do things I used to not think twice about doing. Leave the bathroom door open so I can see her on her dog bed in the office from the shower. Talk to her and keep her at the top of the stairs as I put the laundry over in the basement. Leave the front door open as I get the mail, letting our a/c cool the subdivision as she watches me attentively.

She's been doing better. Able to eat. Able to keep her many pills down. Interested in her toys, in us, in being with us.

Yesterday was the best day yet. A cautious sigh of relief. A day of some normality.

Then came this morning.

She was a little lame. Not uncommon. I did not panic. She has severe arthritis in her hips. A daily pain pill. I thought maybe she just needed to just get going in the day. Stretch herself out. I called the vet and, since I was going in for more of her Special Food Extreme Edition (now she's eating dry only! I'll take success anywhere I can find it!), went ahead and made an appointment. The earliest  he had was mid-afternoon.

I figured he could take a look at her, ease my mind a bit. As he always does.

The day has gone on. And on. Her limp has become more pronounced and has centered itself not, as when I first thought, in her back legs and hip area. It's her front legs. As the minutes tick by until our appointment...

I find myself watching her continuing to bark and run as the UPS man comes to the door (with a jacket going straight back in the mail to be returned).

I watch her as she wags at me when I talk to her, anxious for her next meal.

As she comes up more and more lame with every movement until she can barely walk.

She has not cried. Not once. As she pulls up, lending zero weight to one leg, I can see the pain in her face. I think she doesn't cry solely for me. She's trying to keep me from losing it.

I push myself to forget about the bowling ball in my stomach. That pure, unadulterated panic. That helplessness from being unable to fix it. To make it better. To make it stop. To give her herself back.

I shove it all down. Try to find that part of me, that auto-pilot Happy Wife that takes a horrible situation and doesn't think about it at all. She just acts and reacts and takes over. Completely. Responsibly. Competently. She is a bulldozer. She can do this better than I can.

I have trouble finding her and holding onto her, this other me. I try not to think about physically getting to the vet. How a car ride will feel for Mav. For the first time, I plan on pulling up to the office and bringing her into one of the 2 techs to hold as I park the car. Because I can't chance her in the parking lot. I will limit her every step.

My husband is at work, where he should be. I called to tell him that when he can come home, he should. A reasonable hour, please. If it isn't necessary and deadlined, if the whole team isn't there with him, bring it to work on at home or do it tomorrow during work hours or later in the week. After I hang up, I force myself to stop thinking about what if she can't get in or out of the car without an extra set of hands.

I do not doubt my ability to lift the hundred pounds of her. This helps.

I feel like I am watching her fall apart in slow motion.

She's been just sick enough this month. Almost too sick but never quite there. Colitis. A parasite. Any dog can have these. Her new illnesses, causing concern but not meant to cause much more.

She has been the queen of treatable conditions. Thyroid pill twice a day for how many years now?

Things like epilepsy, more difficult for me to watch then for her to experience, so I've heard. Never frequent enough to warrant medication intervention.

Now these small breaks, these little cracks, all adding up to what?

Is this God preparing me to let her go? So very slowly?

Will I be punished until I reach a point where I beg for her comfort over my own?

Is this because we lost our other dog so suddenly, her death so much a surprise that it incapacitated me for months? Is this the flip side of that coin? I thought the flip side would be cancer, would be something inoperable, something big. Something specific, something clear.

Something unmistakable.

I don't know how so many people just walk around. How do you have a sick kid at home, with the flu? With something more? My mind doesn't reach around that at all. I have a dog. It's not apples and oranges. It's apples and helicopters.

How do we lose the people, places, familiars in our lives and just go on? Go to the grocery. Watch a movie. Sweep the floor. It's mind-boggling to me. Our capacities to handle what is given. To watch. To continue.

It seems to be that I need to suck more joy out of the joyous. So that I can stumble through the rest. Until my auto-pilot comes back on. I am eating fruit roll ups for lunch and scouring the internet for the least productive things possible. I am listening to one of the cat's purr as if it is the most important thing I have ever heard. I am folding my arms around myself until I feel so warm that it is too much.

I am watching Maverick breathe. In and out. In and out. In and out.