Friday, December 18, 2009

Last Friday: or in which i prove once again that someone should follow me with a video camera

How was your Friday?

Oh, was someone asking me that?

Because last Friday pretty much sucked. I mean it could have be worse. I've definitely had worse. But, let's just say it could be better.

That's Minnesotan for, "RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!!!"

It started Thursday.

I work from home on Thursdays. This is supposed to ensure that I get all that pesky paper work done. Uh huh. It does usually mean the web site gets updated and email gets answered. But I also have yoga on Thursdays, so I left the house (this was the mistake), went to yoga, went to the store, ordered some stuff, and went back home. I was gone for, oh, about 3.5 hours. Not much time, right?

When I opened the door, fresh with plans to eat my burrito, get started on some long postponed stuff and meet with the guy about our roof, only to be confronted with a smell that could kill small children.

Amazingly enough, it was not poo. It was puke. Really pungeunt puke. Zach had vomitted all over his kennel, and worn a bare patch on his nose in a futile attempt to bury the extremely odifereous stuff in his blanket. Poor guy.

He then proceeded to vomit about every ten minutes.

I would like you to know that I still managed to eat my burrito. In between cleaning the most awful puke I've ever encountered and calling the vet. The little guy was getting dehydrated.

In the mean time, helicopters were circling overhead. When the roof guy showed up he said streets were closed everywhere. I wondered about that for a minute, looked at the roof with the roof guy, threw Zach in the car and ran off to the vet.

IV fluids and a shot later we were back home and he was doing better. And the puking had miraculously stopped.

So, the rest of the evening was spent keeping a close eye on Puke Boy, and withholding food from both him and Piper. The vet's best guess was that we were dealing with doggie stomach flu. Bella had been sick earlier in the week, so it made sense to me that Piper was next.

It was around then, that I heard that a blizzard was expected. For Saturday. You know, the biggest retail shopping day of the year? Yep. That day. I grumbled and stomped and fed myself some wine. And went to bed.

Piper woke up puking in the middle of the night. But, she had nothing to throw up. Put one in the win column for the Jones/Z household! Good catch.

We were up early, cooking rice, baking chicken, walking dogs, tidying the house and retrieving the snow shovel from the garage. When I got an idea in my head. This should have been accompanied with blinking lights and sirens.

In our back yard we have a sweet little fountain. S and I had been meaning to dump it out and wrestle it into the garage, but she's been working out of town and we just hadn't gotten to it on one of her weekends home. She was coming home, but she had contracted the creeping crud and was coughing up small children and I knew she was going to think she needed to tackle the fountain before the blizzard. I decided to cut this off at the pass. I would take care of it before she got home!

So there I was in the back yard, wearing flannel sock monkey pajamas, red shiny shoes, a black parka and one of those fleece Raven's hats that always kind of look elvin and pointy no matter what. With a pick ax. There was some ice in the damn thing and I needed to get it out before I flipped the base over.

I pick axed out the ice, everything was going well, removed the main part of the fountain, and crouched down to lift and dump. The base of the fountain is heavy as shit. I'm reasonably strong, but it was extra heavy because of the ice. I got it mostly dumped. Then I decided to go for the flip. Just a little bit more umph would do it. And I'd be the best partner EVER. So I pushed with my legs.

And my red shiny shoes slipped on the frost. I dropped the fountain and landed in it. On my face, my nose making direct, hard contact with the pokey end of the fountain pump.

Then I was sitting in a lump of sock monkey pajamas sobbing with blood running out my nose. And all I was thinking was, "God damnit, my nose was already big enough!" Followed by a lot of feeling sorry for myself. And stupid. So I hiccupped and shuffled my way into the house, where Zach stared at me with that special, slightly bug eyed pit bull stare as I put the leftover frozen corn on my face and tried to arrange the corn so that I could watch the soothing patter of a West Wing re-run.

A bit later after I had showered, and reassured myself that my nose had not acquired a new direction, I took off to work, with both Piper and Zach in the car (see aforementioned puke fest). I shortly discovered that Zach was not ready to work in the store yet. Too much happening that scared him, so, after spending enough puke free time in the car that i was reasonably certain he wasn't going to repeat the previous day's kennel experience, back home he went.

By then I was a bit tired.

And overwhelmed.

And sore.

But we had some really lovely customers. And sold a lot of stuff.

I ended the day with a 9:15 pm trip to the grocery store for blizzard provisions.

And settled in with S for a long winter's night.

The black eyes were very, very minor by the way. More a suggestion of black eyes. S decided it was fun to call me Rickey.

She was right. That was fun. But I don't think I'm going to miss them.

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