The _______ Life of Brent and Erika

I guess my goal for daily posts was a little too ambitious, but here's a Chloe update. Other than desperately needing a bath, Chloe seems to be getting better every day. She's started putting more weight on her back legs when we get her out of the kennel, and she's back to eating her normal food (which she does willingly, almost with as much gusto as pre-injured Chloe). We're back to waiting for poop, which isn't a great feeling. She's had some pretty toxic gas, so that's something. She also keeps urinating in her kennel, which means that by day four of being home she's in desperate need of a bath. We've gone through roughly 40 puppy potty pads since Friday, and we're almost out of laundry soap. She's acting enough like her self again that she's starting to get really bored in her kennel. As our self-appointed guard dog, she's used to barking obnoxiously at every car door slammed outside, every child laughing in the driveway, and ...

First, though it doesn't describe anything in detail, this post contains mention of poop. If you don't like reading the word "poop" (sorry, mom!), this update's not for you. For the first two years that we had her, one of my favorite things about Chloe was that she showed no in pooping on walks. We always prepared just in case, but she'd ever-so-politely wait until we got home to do her business. At some point this preference changed, and all of a sudden pooping in new places was fun and exciting! She'd flit from grass patch to grass patch, sniffing for who knows what in order to find the perfect place to poop. I dreaded this part of the walk, especially if my goal had actually been to run, because nothing kills my desire to run like a bag of smelly poop flopping around in my hand. So, if you'd told me a few weeks ago that I'd spend a day waiting anxiously for Chloe to poop, though I might have believed you, I'd be very sad for what that wo...

Because it's hard to know how things will play out, I've decided I want to document this process more thoroughly than I usually document my life. Chloe is in bad shape. Though she seems relieved to be home instead of at the vet's, she's still showing little to no interest in food or companionship. To get her to eat, we have to mix water with wet food until it's thin enough to suck up a syringe, and then we have to force feed her. She doesn't try to spit it out, but it's a battle that we don't want to fight too hard because we're worried that her attempts to avoid us will further injure her back. Tried getting her to swallow a dry pill this morning; bad idea. She started shaking her head violently and working up a foamy lather just to try to get any pill residue out. Since she's not showing interest in any normal food, my typical trick of wrapping a pill in a bit of bread, cheese, or lunch meat isn't working at all. We've resorted to g...

Social science says that there are five stages of grief; the stages of my own grief go something like this: 1.  Crying 2. Research 3. Dark humor 4. Writing 5. Acceptance The timeline differs, but the patterns remain the same. When confronted with something terrible, I cry, then research, then joke, then write, and then move on. Here's step four: "On such small hinges turn the gates of our lives" (Gordon B Hinckley) Small things matter. Last July, something small snapped inside the engine of our car, and that snap combined with a lifetime of a slow but steady oil leak to turn our reliable family car into a fiery deathtrap . Last August, there was an abnormality with a cell that caused an embryo to abandon its cause, leaving my body to grow an empty sac for 10 weeks before my body shed that shell and my hope for a child with it. Eight years ago, Brent made a choice to wear a ninja turtles shirt and green pants to do laundry, and that small detail stuck in my m...