Won’t Get Fooled Again

So Adam had this Foot Thing, and it started out as a relatively familiar and minor Foot Thing involving pain and some kind of leg-crossing nerve thing he does when he codes (which I guess, as a VP-type, isn’t something you do all the time anymore, I don’t know), and he’s been coding a lot, and suddenly BADOW!, the guy can’t even WALK, and he gets up around 10 p.m. Friday night and his leg looked like it was about to EXPLODE and I … I kind of flipped my lid. I was all stormy and crazy and texting Megan that my husband was going to DIE OF A BLOOD CLOT if I didn’t get him to the hospital STAT and then I stormed into the bedroom and announced that he had TWO CHOICES, mister. I could CALL AN AMBULANCE or I could wake the baby and DRIVE HIM TO THE ER RIGHT NOW.

(I was a little crazy. I tend to get worked up about his health, and I don’t know WHY. I am solely responsible for sending him to the hospital at least three times. If we really want to dig deep, I think it’s because my (step) mom’s first husband died, leaving her a widow to a small kid, and … well, she’s made it through more than you can imagine (more than THAT, even) and she’s kind of amazing, but it still gets me, knowing it happened to her and really, the person you should pity is Adam, for he reaps the consequences.)

We talked it out, he talked me off the ledge and we went Saturday morning and it turns out, no one was dying, it was only a pinched nerve. But I’l tell you, the three hours we all spent in the ER were AWESOME.

AHEM.

So, ah, you know how people say that first children are a little like pancakes, in that you screw the first one up so badly that by the time the second one comes around, you end up with a much fluffier version that is probably easier to digest? Or spend time with? Or something? (This metaphor really isn’t working, is it?)

Our first child is our dog. And yes, I realize — FULLY REALIZE — how absurd that sounds, but let me tell you, we fucked this one up GOOD. If Sunny is a pancake, then she is a burnt disc of inedible, but lovable, proportions. Odd-shaped and unevenly cooked, and much more of a pain in the ass than it seems like she’s worth, and yet we soldier on, day after day, because we love her to pieces, and that’s just what you DO when you screw up so bad. You just live with your burnt, inedible consequences, I guess, and go hungry.

(Can you believe I’m totally sober writing this? Because I kind of can’t. This is like the rambling manifesto of the Krusteaz founder, after he’s knocked back a few Bud Lights.)

Sunny has never slept in our bed. Yes, this may seem cruel to some, but it’s not for lack of trying. She cannot — CANNOT — make it through the night in our bed. She gets too excited, and no one sleeps, least of all her, and while she can spend the entirety of the next day snoring on the couch (her usual pastime), the rest of us must soldier on with our days, despite having not slept a wink the night before, thanks to a panting wet snout snuffling around our eyeballs at 2, 3, 4 and 5 a.m. The digging usually happens on the half-hour, so the pattern is wet snuffling, digging, wet snuffling, digging, with some aimless wandering on our bodies mixed in there from time to time. There is no actual sleeping done by the dog OR the people in the bed. It is worse than having a newborn, and people, I know of bad newborns.

Besides, she LOVES her crate, which we must gingerly place her in each night after a bedtime ritual that is almost as complex as our not-yet-two-year-old DAUGHTER. (It involves her resting her head on our shoulder and demanding kisses and rubs in a very specific order, followed by the words, “Night, night, Sunny.” Otherwise, she WILL NOT GO TO BED.) (I CANNOT BELIEVE I JUST ADMITTED THAT TO THE INTERNET.)

You see how we messed this up, yes? YOU SEE?

(Side note: Sam can’t sleep in our bed either for the same reasons. Ever since she became attached to her crib, she thinks of our bed as PARTY TIME! and even when we WANT her to sleep with us, she cannot, although the consequences are far more irritating than a wet snout in the ear, let me tell you.)

Until we actually shut the lights, however, Sunny snuggles in our bed, either chewing a bone or catching up on her rest (a girl’s gotta get her nineteen hours in!), and though she’s been going to bed quite happily around 10:30 or 11 (after her proper night-nights), around 1 a.m., she’s been WAILING and CRYING and then, when I panic and take her out to see if she had to go to the bathroom, realizing that HO HO, no — she was demanding to come into bed with us, where she pulls the wet snout/dig pattern ALL NIGHT LONG and OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS, WE ARE SO VERY TIRED.

All this is how I ended up putting her in her crate and soothing her every five, ten and then fifteen minutes, until finally, extinction.

And though I joked about it earlier, I didn’t realize until I actually did it that I had to, oh my God, FERBERIZE MY DOG. WHAT THE EFF. Like, I used a combination of CIO methods from him AND Weissbluth. HAHAHA. AM PATHETIC.

It worked. She sleeps through the night now. I’m totally calling Dr. Ferber to see if he’ll add a canine chapter in there.

Thus endeth the lamest post ever, but look, it’s Thanksgiving week, I spent the weekend in the ER with a man who could hardly WALK and I’m just LUCKY WE ARE ALL ALIVE.

Happy Tuesday!

PS, did you know that I’m everywhere but here on Mondays? Every other Monday, I’m at Draft Day Suit, and every SINGLE Monday, I am at Food Lush and Style Lush, where I am an editor also. I am the worst at adding buttons and/or an about page because I keep telling myself that I’m going to redesign the site, but OH LOOK. WE ARE STILL HERE IN THE SAME DESIGN I HAD IN 2005. TWO THOUSAND FIVE. THAT IS THE LAST TIME I REDESIGNED THIS THING.

*The Who

19 comments November 22nd, 2010