Frozen evenings and nostalgia

Well classes started back today. Ought to be an interesting semester. Maybe I'll even have some interesting stories for you all later in the semester. We'll certainly find out.


Today however I've found myself in rare form.


I consider myself a very strong person. I put up with a lot of shit. Really, most poeple would not stand for some of the things I've learned how to handle and work through with my friends. But again, this is a strength many people don't have. I'm aware of it, and my friends are aware of it. They've become better about recognizing and appriciating this quality more in recent weeks.


Today however I found myself in a very strange mood. I didn't sleep well sunday night so after I got home from classes I cleaned the kitchen up from cooking food for 30+ ppl on saturday and then tried to nap/relax. Well I didn't really relax....at all. My nap was more of a nightmare. I woke up sobbing because of the dream I had while I was napping.


Before I explain the dream, let first explain to everyone who may not know about my right eye. I'm for lack of a better explaination blind in that eye. I still have vision in it to a point but it's clairity is very limited and only on the left side of my vision in that eye. The rest is a big blurry mess that elminates parts of ppls faces and distorts pictures and other things I might be looking at with that eye. When both eyes are open my left eye is strong enough to cancell this anomaly out, but if for some reason I can only look with my right eye I'm basically blind. I've seen 9 different doctors, 10 including my regular optomitrist, and no one is sure why my eye is like this. It started as a hole in my Macula, and then progressed all the way to scheduling an MRI to make sure I didn't have occular cancer. Thankfully I'm cancer free but we still don't know what is wrong.


Anyway, I worry about this daily. I'm supposed to see my doctor in Feb for a follow up to see if anything has changed since my MRI. I'm petrified that they're going to find something new this time and it'll be something that can't be fixed with laser surgery or the like.


Today, I had a dream that I was in Charleston a few days after my upcoming doctors appt. Apparently, in the dream at least, I had several tests done that day and my doctor told us he'd call after he went over the results to let us know what he thought. The few days later happened to fall on my birthday in this dream. The phone call I got in the dream was that they'd found a mass on my optic nerve that extended to my brain. Well of course in the nightmare this equally epic cancer and when I woke up I was crying my eyes out.


This put me in a terribly funk for the rest of the day. I've been restless, nervous, tired, tense, and unwilling to socialize. At 10:30 I had a desperate need to walk. Beautiful timing for late night Charleston when all the crazies would be out. So arming myself with layers upon layers of warm clothing and my mace open and ready in case the worst should happen I decided to walk despite the hour. I was gone for about an hour, froze my ass off and still didn't feel any better.


Well what do I do to fix evenings such as these? Easy. First of all you have to understand I hate crying. I find it to be the ultimate sign of weakness. If I'm going to cry and get everything out I'm going to do it alone in the privacy of my own room so no one else has to see my weakness. Anyway, I digress. To fix evenings where I can pinpoint why the water works won't shut down I watch some sort of movie that is promised to make me cry, lock myself in my room, and then sob my face off. I show weakness only to myself. That is the only time it's acceptable. For me at least.


So tonight I watched a movie I purchased this summer and then never sat down to watch because I realized watching it would make me cry for hours. Marley & Me. A movie that is terribly adorably and quite hilarious. It is also one of the sadest movies I've ever watched in my life. Let's put into perspective how much that movie got to me...I just started tearing up remembering why I find it so sad.


If you know me well, you know I'm a passionate dog lover. My heart melts even for the ugliest dogs.


When I was about 6 or 7 we got our first dog. Callie. She was one of the smartest, most caring, most compassionate dogs I've ever known in my life. She knew before you were even through the door what kind of mood you were walking in with. You'd always get the same welcome home reaction, but she knew how to act towards you based off your mood after that. She was protective enough without being a frightening dog. She was priss too. Oh how she hated when it rained. Again though, going back to the point of why she was so damn smart because her water bowl would hardly be touched days it was raining. Callie didn't believe in wet paws.



The non-blurry one is Callie. This was Senior Year Farmers day right before the Dorman vs Spartan High Game



When I was in 8th grade, whatever age that equates to, we got our second dog Ginger. The idea behind this was Callie was getting older and we didn't want her to lose her spark. It certainly wasn't love at first site between the pair of them. Callie was not excited to be gated in the kitchen all day with a wild puppy who wasn't house broken yet. I wish I had pictures with me of the pair of them when Ginger was a puppy including Ginger sitting on Callie's head (incidentially she still fights by backing into things with her butt); the pair of them laying the same way on the floor (on their sides, legs straight out) one above the other; or the picture where Callie looks like she's protecting Ginger from me taking another picture. However, this puppy, who was picked after mom had the owner move the desk she was hiding under to see her (her favorite place to sleep is under the bed now), turned out to be a great little shadow for the stubborn old dog.



This is Ginger during Christmas 09. Thats an empty can of corned beef she protected and carried around for a good hour. She's adorable.


So, back to the two together. Callie demanded certain things as a sign of respect from Ginger. First, Ginger never got treats first. Ever. If for some reason we gave Ginger a treat first, Ginger wouldn't start eating hers untill Callie did. Going outside, Callie went first. Ginger didn't drink from the water bowl they shared while Callie was drinking. But that was about it. Other than that they were equals. They'd curl up next to each other in this gigantic ball of fluff. At night Callie slept in her dog bed and Ginger curled up under my parents bed. This was just the way things worked.


Time goes by however. Callie did eventually get old. She had achey joints, hard time eating, took longer going up and down the stairs, etc. (This is the point in the movie where I started sobbing uncontrolably because that was the worst thing to watch in real life and the movie). At one point her pain got so bad she couldn't make it up or down any flight of steps. We thought we were going to have to put her down when this happened. The vet however bought us some more time. He gave her two shots into her hips to ease her pain and she was put on a wet food diet so she could chew more easily and we could slip pain pills into her bowl. This was great for several weeks. We tried to get her to sleep downstairs, but she was a stubborn dog and refused to sleep anywhere that wasn't near mom. So she continued to hobble up and down the stairs despite our best efforts.


The hardest and sweetest part about this time was watching Ginger react to all of this. She knew something was wrong. How do you explain to a dog that her best friend is dying before her eyes? You can't. You can only stand by and watch as she does what in her mind is a way of helping. Little nudges, whimpers of encouragement, and the like. It was heartwrenching to watch.

Callie passed away about 3 years ago now. It's true what they say about dogs going somewhere outside to die if they can help it. She went in the back yard. When I got home that day I was told she'd passed not 15 minutes after I left for work that morning. I can't imagine if I'd been there. Mom and Brent heard her when it happened and where with her when she passed. Even my dad who is by nature a huge cat person cried some. It was terrible.


I still miss her. She really was like a big furry sister to me. Words can't describe how much I'll cry when it's Ginger's turn. I saw the first major signs that my baby was getting old at Christmas when my parents had raised their bed so Ginger could crawl under it more easily. That's going to be a terrible day when she dies.


But it's why I totally believe this video I'm going to use instead of my usual quote at the end. God made the Dog as an earth bound form of himself to have tangible undeniable love.


Also, excuse my blubbering. This again, is me in rare form.