Two Hour Tuesdays

It doesn’t seem like that long, unless of course you’re listening to a newborn baby cry and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. But today I got something new, I got two whole hours to myself!

That’s right, no crying baby, no four year old asking “Mommy can I have milk? Mommy I’m hungry. Mommy color with me. Mommy help me wipe!”

Two whole hours, and it was amazing! I woke up with a smile on my face; I’ve been waiting for this day for so long. I fed the kids, got them dressed and got to school early. Dropped Madi off at preschool and took Lilly across the hallway to the baby room. As I exited the baby room I had a huge smile, a spring in my step and I practically ran out of the school! This sounds horrible, but all you moms out there know exactly what I’m talking about- I was free. This doesn’t mean that I don’t love my girls; it means that I’m a better mom if I get to spend even a fraction of time by myself, with no obligations. No one peeking in the shower while I’m shaving my legs, no one opening the door while I’m going to the bathroom…

As soon as I got into my car I called the tanning salon, the woman on the other end was not in the mood for my chipperness, which usually I would take offense to, but today, there was no stopping me. I found the salon, bounced in and was met with the annoyed face from the other end of the phone. As I filled out my form, almost crying at the fact that I didn’t have anyone grabbing my pen, my leg, or my boob, the tanned woman asked,

“Oh lord, are you always this chipper in the morning?”

I laughed and beamed, “NO!!!! I’m usually miserable!!!! But this is the first two hours I’ve had to myself in ages!”

Suddenly she understood, and her mood shifted, she too has children, she too has experienced going to the bathroom with an audience. It was as if I’d just given her a super secret handshake for entrance into an underground society- it was all clear to her now, and I could see she felt joy for me. She gladly took me to my tanning room and said “you enjoy your time,” As she closed the door behind her.

I undressed, looked at myself in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time thought, hmm not that bad! I lay in the tanning bed and soaked up every single ounce of warmth for a wonderful eight minutes, when the timer went off I felt a new energy. I exited my room, the tanned woman welcomed me back in the lobby and said “we’ll get you started slowly; this will be so much fun!” Again, a tear came to my eye.

After tanning I called my Kinsy, and had an uninterrupted conversation for about forty minutes…this new uncharted territory felt foreign and odd, but wow - so awesome. I could focus, I could reply, I didn’t have an anxiety attack! I say “my Kinsy,” because she’s such a dear, dear friend, she understands, she’s in the same boat I am and I could feel her excitement for me. For those forty minutes, she was all mine.

This week has been a tough one for Dave and I, we lost his grandmother last week, and I realized today as I was driving to pick the girls up that I hadn’t had a chance to mourn. I have had to be strong for my girls, so on the way to pick them up I turned on a sad song, and sang and cried at the top of my lungs. It felt so good. I didn’t have to explain to anyone, or justify my behavior; I didn’t have to worry that my healing would scare them. I haven’t had that in so long; I haven’t had a private moment to take care of me.

But today I did and it was wonderful, it’s amazing to me how two hours can heal months of exhaustion, and brings a new enthusiasm to my soul. I can make it another week; I can be strong for my girls, take care of the house, the kids… my husband. I can do it joyfully now, because now I have “Two hour Tuesdays,” that’s 120 minutes of pure Shauna time, and I’m not wasting one of them!

How 'bout some sugar.....

Have you ever just needed something so bad that you can’t get it off your mind? A craving where you will go crazy until you get what you need, a feeling of rage in your chest as you search for what you desire most?

Hopefully you have on some level experienced this (or you’ll think I’m totally insane and somehow feel as though you’re better than me, hey if that’s what you need to get through your day, then great! Yep you’re better than me, oh it doesn’t feel as good when I acknowledge it does it?), whether it be a drink, a smoke, a crush, or in my case sweet treats made from what I’m sure is pure poison. Yes I’m an addict, My name is Shauna and I’m a what…sugar holic? Well anyway I want sugar, I crave sugar, I know sugar is bad for me and well right now it feels OH SO GOOD! Isn’t that how all addictions work though, the things that are soooooo baaaadd feel sooooooo good!

I’ve struggled with this all my life, during my childhood food and sweets were on what my mom called a “get while the getting’s good” basis, which meant, you filled your plate when we had food and you gorged yourself, because there wasn’t a guarantee that we’d have it again anytime soon. So my sisters and I all gorged. We chowed down stuff that I hate to say now I wouldn’t even consider edible and wouldn’t let my daughters even touch let alone eat…yeah they remember sitting in the barn, eating expired Ho Ho’s, wow that sentence sounds so terribly wrong! Oh well it is what it is...the making’s of Shauna.

So we gorged, but to make it a full circle horrible situation we had other influences in our lives that told us that woman were only attractive if they were bone skinny. Sure my mom didn’t mean to make us feel like fatties, but imagine being a little girl, looking at your mother in the mirror, all 120 lbs of her and hearing her tell you how incredibly fat she is. Talk about confusion!

So we not only got the “Get while the Getting’s good” but “after you get you’re a fat cow who is good for nothing!” (My mom didn’t say that to us, just to herself….message received).

Enter eating disorders, anxiety, and horrible self esteem oh and just in time, puberty...yes thanks for that!

So yeah, yucky childhood when it comes to self restraint, you don’t need to read more about how screwed up I am, but what I am interested in is this: Why when sugar makes me feel so bad do I continue to indulge in it? I had a great run, quite a few months of absolutely no sugar, and felt just lovely; Positive, fit, emotionally stable, then Christmas comes and all those darn treats, just eyeballing me, calling my name, jumping into my hands, opening the lids…wow this is a horrible addiction.

I understand the physiological side, and the psychological side, yep I get all the “psy” words, and have a degree to prove that I understand, but that just makes it worse, I mean I do understand! I know my body gets a chemical rush from sugar, I understand that I crash and feel like crap, and yet still I WANT it, and that is driving me crazy!

So maybe it isn’t really about the sugar. I mean I do get it, I do understand, maybe for me and probably for most addicts it’s about something entirely different…

Control.

I’ve noticed that when I really go crazy with sugar my life seems out of control. My kids won’t sleep, I don’t have time to shower, I suddenly start having dreams that I’m in high school and can’t remember the combination to my locker, right as I’m going to be late for class, but oh my gosh I’m not wearing a bra!!! And the bra is in the locker and that boy is walking up to me and I forgot to put on deodorant...ok, you get the picture.

So I guess I just need to let some things go, to understand that I really don’t have control over anything, and to allow myself to have a little sugar every now and then, maybe I won’t binge if I loosen up, then again that’s like telling an alcoholic that there’s a one drink maximum.

Or maybe I just let it go. Who cares if I have this addiction, admitting it is half the battle. Is it really so bad that I binge on this stuff? If I keep myself at a healthy weight and in the jeans my husband likes does it matter?

Probably not, but the fact that I’ve spent 802 words so far going over this in my head tells me it does, and the fact that my daughter just told me she’s had too much sugar today tells me that I’m a little too vocal about my control issues. She’s 4, I’m glad she understands her bodies signals that she’s had enough, but I’m sad that I’ve brought this into her circle of understanding.

So yes I have a problem, I want to be perfect, I want my BMI to be a solid 22, I want my sugar intake under 20 grams per day, I want to be confident in a bikini again, I want to be confident walking around naked in front of my husband again, I want to sleep, I want to know if I’m moving in the next year, I want my boobs to be perky again (sans surgery), I want my cupboards organized, my car cleaned, the settling cracks in my house to go away, I want to know that there’s nothing wrong with my daughter even though her head is strangely shaped, I want it to stop raining, I want control damn it!

Well now that were clear on that…thanks for listening, I bet you wish you had a degree in psychology so you would have just made $150.00 listening to me rant.

Finding Forrester

No, this posting isn’t about the movie; it’s about my day in Portland on a trip to IKEA.

My friend Desi and I took the kids on a shopping trip to IKEA; I know what were we thinking huh? Crazy, but I had a hankering to get a laptop charging station that has been on my wish list for over a year and so Desi embarked on this journey with me. I followed her through traffic, a nightmare really, oh I hate freeways, I can’t stand aggressive motorists who merge without blinking (their eyes or their turn signals) I guess I’m just not confident enough for city life, indeed that’s why in the 9 months I lived in Salt Lake City I barely made it to the mall across the street from our apartment complex, let alone onto the one of what felt like millions of freeways there.

But this was different I was following Desi and I suppose that in my quest for freedom from the unending rain on the coast I needed to get out and do some retail therapy.

However on the way there I was almost sideswiped, I luckily slammed on my brakes and allowed the car to merge into the lane ahead of me, just in time to see her car rear-end Desi’s vehicle. I assumed after Desi got out and talked to the woman that we were going to pull off the road and discuss the event, exchange info and have a merry old time at IKEA, where indeed we would be sideswiped and rear-ended with fancy I kea shopping carts. I was wrong though, the woman in the Blue Subaru Forrester yelled at Desi and then drove off, calling out “so sue me!” as she drove off.

I was dumbfounded, as was Desi. The damage to Desi’s car wasn’t severe, however there was a concern that her backup sensor might not work properly and after all it’s the law to stop and at least exchange info, even if you don’t plan on the courtesy of an apology. And so Desi called her husband, an insurance agent, who told her to file a police report. We talked with the police, gave them her license plate number and a description including the ironic fact that her license plate stated “Share the road” on it.

So here’s the interesting part of this story, and hopefully we can all learn a little lesson from this. This woman in the Forrester will most likely be charged with a Hit and Run, and since she yelled at Desi who was not at fault and refused to give information she could also get Road Rage charges, all for a simple rear end accident that quite frankly Desi probably wouldn’t have been all that concerned about after making sure her sensor was intact. But since this woman was so rude and refused to cooperate we had to call the police and now the ball is rolling on something that seriously wasn’t that big of a deal.

So the moral, always be quick to apologize, always follow the rules of the road and give the other driver in an accident your information, indeed the lapse of judgment the Forrester had will prove to be a nightmare for her unforeseeable future. The other moral, is never, never yell “So sue me!” because frankly you never know who’ll take you up on that offer, especially if you just rear ended the car that is carrying their most valuable possessions in the world…mama bear will always get her revenge!

So Forrester, you may think you got away free and clear, indeed you had no way of knowing that I was part of Desi’s caravan and I had a clear view of not only the accident but of your license plate, so in the future, practice what you preach and “Share the Road.”

On a lighter note, we were only sideswiped once in IKEA, and I was rear ended only twice by someone’s shopping cart, but I was quick to forgive because each time I received a very apologetic “I’m so sorry” from the perpetrator. Oh I also got out of IKEA and only spent $165.00, got a ton of cool stuff, and am proud to say that my house is beginning to get more organized, one brilliant IKEA system at a time.

Adorable Terrorsits

I’m exhausted. Plain and simple, exhausted. I’m so tired I feel as though I could sleep for a week and still wake up feeling totally burnt out, cranky and on the verge of tears. The sad part is that I have no huge claim to this exhaustion; I haven’t just run a marathon, I haven’t just traveled the globe, I’m just a mom and a housewife. My days are spent doing everything for everyone else, even showering feels like work right now.

I know this sounds horrible, I know I sound totally pessimistic and well, like a whiny little bitch. I know that I need to just put on my big girl panties, deal with it and keep on trucking, but I wonder…do all new moms feel this way? Am I so totally chemically imbalanced? Is my post partum depression so bad that this isn’t normal? Or is it normal? Does every mom feel this way at one time or another?

Does anyone else not want to fall asleep because they know that within a few short hours they will be awoken by a crying child? Does anyone else get angry when they are awoken by a crying baby? I’m seriously asking… because I feel like the worst mom in the world.

I try to fill my daughters’ days with learning, reading, playing; I want to create an environment where exploration is celebrated. But as my 7 month old crawls around and forces me to get up once again to pull her away from trouble I get so very frustrated.

Yes motherhood is a lot of work, most days I wish I did have a job to go to, just to get a break, just to miss them, to escape the dishes, the laundry, the diapers for a few hours. I know a lot of my readers are probably thinking…HA! You think you have it bad! Or Stop complaining, at least you have a family and children. Don’t get me wrong I do feel blessed for my family, I do love them, I’m just spent. I just want to sleep, to take a bath by myself, to actually have time to shave my legs in the shower, to lie in my bed without one of three different people requiring something from me.

I guess I’m just selfish, somewhere between laundry and bedtime stories, I’ve lost myself.

I remember a time when I could look in the mirror and had time to pluck a stray eyebrow. I remember a time when the thought of going shopping wasn’t something that sent anxiety through my entire being. I remember a time when the phone rang I actually felt excited about answering it and having a wonderful uninterrupted conversation with a friend, but times have changed.

Now I don’t even look in the mirror, and when I do it’s followed by a feeling of loss as I evaluate my stretch marks and scars. I look at my tattoo that once represented my freedom and now can only be described as a bug that has been smeared on a windshield. (For anyone out there who hasn’t yet had children, even if your DR tells you that you can’t have kids, NEVER get a tattoo on your stomach!)

Most of all I remember a time when I smiled regularly, when I woke up excited about my day and the activities that I had planned, I remember going on vacation and not worrying about the one’s I left behind for the week. Now I wish I could go on vacation, but the thought of all the work that would have to be done in order to arrange childcare, dog care, house care, etc etc…well it’s not even worth it.

So what do I do, besides whine to my computer screen, praying someone will validate these feelings…begging “does ANYONE understand?”

I guess I do what I always do…I breathe, I force a smile, I pray….and I repeat, over and over and over, because sometimes that’s all I can do.

Now I would love to finish this but my baby has filled her diaper once again, I’m laughing at myself now because I’m actually excited about this, only a mom who has experienced a constipated baby will understand my joy at this moment in time.

DUCKS VS BEAVERS

Ducks vs. Beavers

On a day like today I thought it only appropriate to write about the pending civil war game between the University of Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers.

It is amazing to me how as fans we are so excited and so proud of our teams, on the way to dropping my daughter off at preschool, I was surrounded by cars with flags, stickers, even license plates showing allegiance to one team or another and it got me thinking…

There is nothing in this world that people brag or support as much as sports teams. They indeed unite us but they also divide us. I suppose this is a wonderful thing, bringing people together, supporting our economy and giving people plenty to talk about and of course argue about.

As I saw the multitudes of black and orange and yellow and green I also thought…how sad. How sad that this is what we choose to honor, this is what we vote with our dollars as the most important aspect of our day, week, month, year and for some people - their lives.

Imagine if the people in this nation supported other causes the way we support our sports teams. Imagine if we all decided to support feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless or even our elementary school children and their education and future success the way we support our sports teams. What an amazing culture we would live in. I just wonder what it would be like to see 15,000 cars on the road with stickers that shouted out “Stop hunger.” Or “support our troops”, even if we are totally against the real war going on in this world. All of the dollars going to supporting causes that really matter, that change lives, that give life… it’s almost unfathomable to think of the change that could occur.

I of course am not saying we should give up our allegiances, I’m saying, let’s put it into perspective. I’m saying maybe just maybe we should support something that will matter 50-100-1,000 years down the road.

So do we have backward morals? Are we so obsessed that we seriously spend millions a year on watching a simple game? What would happen if we as Americans and fans decided to support something more important? Would we lose out on the bonding and camaraderie that sports give us? Would we gain something so much more valuable, that could affect so many more lives in a positive way?

I know, I know, why am I worried and actually spending time writing this? It’s just a game, it’s important to support our teams… I’m probably over thinking it… why can’t I just have fun and let loose and root for my team?

I guess it’s because to me, it is just a game. I know that the money spent per ticket to this event could feed a family for at least a week. I know that a soldier overseas could use a gift from home; I know that hundreds of thousands of people in this nation don’t have homes, let alone TVs to watch this simple game on. I know that if we used all the money from ticket sales, advertising, stadiums, even beer purchases we could build literally thousands of orphanages around the world.

Sounds a bit dramatic to some, I’m sure, and maybe the benign nature of sports is something good to keep us enthusiastic about life, but maybe if we were using our resources to support causes that make a difference we wouldn’t need sports to fill that void.

It’s just a thought; don’t let it offend you if you are a die-hard fan. Just maybe when you’re watching the game tonight think about all those people in the stands and all the people around the state who are united by a simple game… and ask yourself, “why can’t we get this excited about supporting causes that create change? Why are we choosing to ignore all the horrible things that we could change in just one day if we were dedicated to doing so?”

I know it’s easier to drink our beer, wave our foam fingers and paint our faces, I know it’s fulfilling to watch our team make it to the end zone…and I also know that something has to be missing, deep down, that allows us to choose supporting our sports teams more than we support other human beings around the world.

What Happened To Yogi?

After posting my last blog about our dog Indiana, I received quite a few questions as to the whereabouts of our dog Yogi.

I should start at the beginning so I make more sense, this is quite an emotional topic for me, filled with both laughter and so many tears, but ultimately it is a story worth sharing.

We adopted Yogi when I was 19; I had just had the majority of my right ovary removed, due to a large cyst. Due to all the scar tissue my doctor wasn’t confident in my ability to have children. Hearing this news was devastating for me, I had always dreamed of having children, and thus went into a deep depression. Part of my healing was adopting a pet, to fill the void left from the potential of not being able to have my own children.

Yogi was a German Sheppard- Chow Mix; he looked just like a dingo. In his kennel at the shelter he was the only dog who wasn’t barking, he was huddled in the back of the kennel, leaning against the cement wall, and looked as though he had lost all hope. He had tufts of hair missing, from a bad case of mange. His paws were blistered and hairless, due to being left in his own feces for far too long, indeed any amount of time in one’s faces is too long! His nose was scabbed over, and scars dotted his golden face. This dog had been through the wringer; even with his thick coat we could see his ribs. I instantly fell in love with this abused and beaten being.

We took him home, and quickly realized that he had major issues. For one he was terrified of all men, brooms, fishing poles, anything long and slender seemed to instantly create panic in him, clearly his past was filled with torture from some sort of stick or rod. When our first visitor came to meet him, we realized that he was a submissive wetter; as soon as someone would reach down to pet him he would wet everywhere. He couldn’t tell the difference between a loving hand and a hand being used to hurt. He was a biter, never an attacker but when he was afraid he would snap, when he did this you could tell he felt bad, but his fears were obviously overbearing and controlling his actions.

With all of these negatives one might think that we would hate him. It was a lot of work keeping him inline, and a lot of times he got out of line, but for David and me every time one of his flaws would shine through we would instead place that hatred to the owner who had abused him. Yogi deserved nothing but our love, his previous owner was the one we would curse beneath our breath.

Yogi eventually became part of the family, soon Indiana joined us and they were best friends, constantly wrestling and playing, we took them everywhere, they were our children. They were the perfect team also, I recall several occasions where one would stand watch and distract David and I while the other ate something off the counter. Yogi was a chewer too, everything from my friends mouth guard to my underwear (still don’t know what was up with that!)

Six years and a lot of surgeries later I became pregnant. We were both shocked, what a wonderful miracle. I know most people think, “Oh once kids arrive the dogs don’t matter.” That wasn’t true for us, we included the dogs in everything still and it was wonderful, until Madi started crawling. Yogi had nipped at her once and so I began separating them whenever she was on the floor, this worked well for a long time, until one day when she had first learned to walk, she chased him with the remote, in a panic he turned on her and grabbed a hold of her cheek, leaving a huge gash. Yogi immediately cowered, knowing he had messed up, just not realizing how badly.

At the doctor’s office we were informed that since he bit her on the face we would need to get rid of him. However this task was made more challenging by the fact that he was now “un-adoptable.” We quarantined him for the required two weeks and made arrangements to have him put to sleep. He was twelve years old, had a few health issues and the thought of him biting someone else’s child, or worse freaked us out. The entire time I still felt as though it was his abuser that deserved this death sentence. Due to him being a “fear biter” we were told by many trainers that we couldn’t train it out of him, nothing would stop him when he was terrified.

I made arrangements for him to be cremated; I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing his lifeless body. David took him and held his paw as the injection was done, he watched him drift off. I can’t even fathom the pain he still feels over that moment. My only reassurance was that he was in a better place now. A place where he couldn’t hurt anyone, a place where no one could hurt him.

We thought this was the worst part of the experience, we were wrong.

A few days after David took Yogi to the vet the vet’s office called me and asked when I was going to pick up Yogi’s body. I was confused and frustrated, because the mortuary was supposed to pick up his body to cremate him. The vet’s office had no record of this (even though the same person who was calling me was the person I had made the arrangements with several days earlier). She said she would call the mortuary and get it taken care of.

A half hour later I received another call from the vets office, this time the girl asks me “where is Yogi?”

“What? What do you mean? You have him; you just called me and told me that I hadn’t picked his body up!” I yelled and cried into the phone.

“Oh, well my check list says he hasn’t been picked up, but I went into the cooler and I can’t find his body.”

“WHAT?!” I growl. A string of curse words flew out of my mouth so quickly I couldn’t catch them between the tears.

“Let me check with the vet.” She hangs up on me.

Five minutes later she calls me back again.

“Shauna we figured out what happened, the vet thought Yogi was abandoned and decided since no one had picked him up that he would give him a proper burial. He has a small graveyard on his property and buried him there.”

“WHAT?! Why would the vet think he was abandoned if you have a checklist saying he was to be cremated? Why wouldn’t the vet call us, as you did this morning to tell us to come pick him up?” By this time I was so angry, so upset and emotionally exhausted from the loss of my dear friend and now the loss of his physical body that I was giving up. She calmed me down and finally I just accepted that he was buried in a wonderful small graveyard, somewhere on the vet’s property. I was feeling better, I called David and told him what had happened, to which he replied,

“That’s strange the mortuary just called me and wants their $100.00 for cremating him.”

David contacted the vet and told him to get his shovel; we wanted our dog’s body back! After some quick side stepping on their part he called the mortuary, after a royal lashing to both (and after the vet spoke with the mortuary) he was told that Yogi’s name tag must have fallen off his body in the cooler, that the mortuary did pick him up, he was cremated, and this was all just a confusing mix up. Whatever.

Trying to appease me, David came home with what we are told are Yogi’s ashes. It is strange that a 40 pound dog’s ashes would be triple the weight of my grandmother’s, but whatever, we were just wanting closure. I still have the box, haven’t had the heart to bury it yet, I’m half tempted to open it and see if it’s just burnt up newspapers, not that I could really tell.

I do know this though, as much as I feel guilty for not being able to keep Yogi, I’m confident in this: He had a lot of good years with us, never once was he beaten or whipped. He didn’t go hungry, his skin and scars were physically healed. We couldn’t heal him from his emotional scars, as much as we wanted to, that wasn’t our purpose, our purpose was to show him that humans could be loving, gentle and trusted. I know his rational side trusted us; it was his terrified side that felt the need to lash out.

I continue to pray to this day that he is in Heaven and that Jesus is healing those emotional scars, perhaps Yogi has forgiven us and his previous owners, I still don’t know which was worse, putting him through misery as they did or taking him out of it? This question will haunt me forever, but perhaps it's that haunting that provides my answer.

Indiana Bones Schober

Indiana is a German shorthaired pointer, a hunting dog. We’ve had the pleasure of his presence for ten years now. Our journey with Indi started when Dave and I bought our first house in Eugene. We couldn’t afford the breed so we put in a request at the local humane society, “If a GSP comes in, please hold him for us.” We weren’t hopeful at first, they are very expensive dogs, but one spring when we came back from a trip to Mexico there was a message on the answering machine telling us that our second “adopted son” was waiting for us at the humane society. We quickly loaded our dog Yogi into the car and headed to meet his new brother.

Indiana is a strange dog, and as I continue to get to know him I find more and more strange things about him. For starters he’s a talker, not a barker but a moaner, a growler and a whimperer. He cries the moment he is left alone, scratch the sweet spot on his neck and he growls with frightening delight. The first night at our house he jumped on the couch and cuddled to my feet, when I began petting him he growled so ferociously that Dave threw him off the couch, afraid he was going to attack me. It wasn’t until we saw this “talking” more and more that we realized that was his way of saying, “Oh I like that, give me more!”

The name Indiana was given to him by his previous owner, but his middle name Bones was given to him by our then 2 year old nephew, Ben. We took Indiana to introduce him to the family and Ben and Indi chased each other for hours, Ben calling out “Indiana Bones” as he ran behind him, we quickly fell in love with the name, especially since Ben had thought of it, and have eagerly embraced it since that day.

Indiana is a crazy dog, he’s old and cranky, but the moment he sees the reflection of a light or the shimmer of glitter he is suddenly 2 years old again. He can jump over 10 feet in the air when encouraged with a flashlight chase along the wall, and he can curl up into the tiniest, ball when snuggled against my feet, under the covers at night. He’s one of those personalities that you never get used to, that are always surprising you and making you laugh.

For example, since we moved Lilly into Madi’s room every night when Dave and I go to bed we walk in and check on the girls, Indi has taken it upon himself to do the same, he sniffs each one of them before coming in and climbing under our covers. The smallest noise from either of them and he is up in a jiff to check things out, and heaven forbid someone he doesn’t trust come between him and his girls; he will protect them to the death.

Last night we had a huge thunderstorm here, I always dread them and fireworks because of the panic it puts in Indi, but last night he was under the covers at our feet and a huge flash of lightning with thunder booming behind it, woke us all up. Indi freaks out, jumps up (still under the covers) and jumps off the bed, looking like a short fat ghost as he tried to figure out which way was which, covered and now tangled in our comforter. He knew he wanted to get to the girls, but couldn’t figure out how to. He wrestled and barked in that comforter for what seemed like ages as we tried to calm him (and shut him up so that the girls would go back to sleep). After finally freeing him he ran into the girls’ room, sniffed them both and planted himself in-between Madi’s bed and the crib. He was clearly terrified, but his natural instinct was to protect them. It amazed me. With every boom of thunder he shook and whined, but his rear end stayed planted in their room, ready to strike if he needed to.

This dog that sounds so ferocious lets Madi play doctor on him, standing still as she listens to his heart, and wraps the blood pressure cuff around his ankle. She dresses him in dress up clothes and forces him to sit at her small table and have tea parties. He is an amazing creature, so patient, calm and interested in her. Indiana is her best friend, it’s a wonderful thought, warms my heart, but as the new year approaches and I realize he will be turning 12 years old, my heart aches for the fear that soon his time with our family may be coming to an end. He’s getting old, his joints hurt, he sleeps most of the time now, he’s developing fatty growths all over which have to be removed annually now, and his face is quickly being consumed by grey hair.

I’m learning to embrace every day with Indiana, it is so apparent to me that his time is limited. It also makes me appreciate the fact that none of us are guaranteed anything, we don’t really know if we have another 24 hours on this earth. When I think of this I wonder why God only allows dogs to live 12-16 years. They are simply the best animal on the face of the planet, and maybe I guess that could be the reason, they have so much to teach us humans, and dealing with our ridiculousness must get exhausting as they see us do the same things, make the same mistakes over and over, only to forgive us over and over. They are so wonderful, and so as a tribute to Indiana, whom I pray has at least 5 more years with us….

Dear Lord, please help me be the person Indiana thinks I am, surely with enough practice I will deserve even a fraction of the love he has unconditionally given over the last decade. Amen.