The Unexpectedness of Blown Schedules

Claire the Corgi is due just after Darla the French bulldog is. Two litters of puppies at one time is so much fun you can barely fathom. (Seriously. Puppies! In the plural!) Claire and her guy-friend, Ralph, live outside. Corgis shed like crazy, and their dander is all up in arms at any given hour. Half our family is allergic to dogs, and that dander being in a tizzy all the time is just too much for those poor family members. I hate that the corgis live outside, but there it is. So we brought Claire in last week so that she could acclimate to the temps and routine of the house for a few weeks before she brings a family into our chaos. (She was born and raised here, so it's not all that new to her. But we do rather live in a circus. When one steps away from it, it's best to ease back in slowly.)

But turns out I was completely off on her due date for the first time in 13 years of raising dogs. As in 2 weeks off. (This is comparable to your doctor being 2 months off a pregnancy due date. Yeh, I completely blew this one. THANK GOODNESS she was inside.) As I was fighting a 2-day old headache and wishing I was asleep 8 hours ago last evening, Sam yelled upstairs, "you have puppies!" So I dosed up on non-drowsy allergy meds, rolled a comfy chair up to the corgi's crate, and settled in for the night.

Claire blessed our home with 6 absolutely darling little corgi babies. I went to bed 15 minutes before Micah needed to get up for the bus this morning (yeah for Sam working the mid shift!) and got a 2 hour nap before getting on with my day.

Part of my day (and the reason why I couldn't nap this afternoon) was waiting for a phone call from Children's Hospital to tell us when we need to show up for Micah's ear tube surgery in the morning. The call telling me that our arrival time was 10:30 made me far less than happy. In fact, I actually contemplated cancelling and rescheduling. Micah eats about 3 breakfasts. He tapers off on eating as the day wears on, but he's an up-front eater. Skipping breakfast is so very hard for him. We request that he get the earliest possible time there is, because we can't reason with him or explain it to him. It's just a miserable day for all of us. And for those of you who are fortunate enough to know nothing about this kind of shindig, a 10:30 arrival time means more like a 12:00 noon surgery appointment. It will be the most unfun morning we'll encounter in a long time. I'm dreading it immensely.

I'm also a bit antsy about leaving my newborn babies at home while I'm at the hospital with my small son for 2 days. (They're doing an exploratory scope to see why he struggles with sleep apnea. They want to keep him overnight for observation because of that. I dont' know. It wasn't explained further to me. But if they think he should stay, I'll have him stay, because I'd rather complications happen at a hospital than at home.) My kids will be home, of course, and they're completely responsible in matters of house and pet sitting. Except I don't really trust anyone with my newborn babies. Neither the kids nor the husband are exactly sure what an "off" puppy looks like, nor what complications setting in for mama would be. Puppies go from healthy to dead so fast sometimes that it's mind boggling. I had scheduled Micah's surgery on purpose to happen before puppies, so my mistake of miscalculation is costing me.

I know worry doesn't help anything, but it's what women do. We somehow think it's our job to rule the entire world. Silly us.


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