It’s the weekend!

That subject line is misleading…it looks cheerful. And I’m not feeling very cheerful right now. It IS like a weekend because I worked all this past weekend (with the exception of the 3-hour fall colors hike I took with my best friend) and the weekend before on my revision of Yes, I Know the Monkey Man (that title really is starting to grow on me). I didn’t even jog or bike. I turned the manuscript in on Sunday and have had “weekend-like” activities this whole week, but I’ve had a hard time enjoying them because…

…my dog is sick.

Really sick.

As in this could be the end. She goes back to the vet again in an hour. And I’m trying to distract myself by blogging since I haven’t blogged in a couple of weeks. There are a lot of fun and interesting things I could blog about…like the fact I turned in this revision…dinner with Beckie Weinheimer (author of Converting Kate) and local children’s book authors last week…the hike L. and I took this weekend…meeting David Patenaude yesterday…going over to West Branch with another friend this morning to see Caroline Kennedy’s dolls and the rest of the White House Families exhibit (which was a welcome distraction), but…

…my dog is sick.

I went to see my dad on Monday. He didn’t look too good, either. In fact, I’m not sure who looked worse, my dad or my dog. I leave home really early when I go visit my dad (because I drive up and back the same day). I decided I’d better put Molly (our dog) outside before I left just in case nobody else remembered to do it before they left. I found her outside my older son’s room lying on her side, one eye half open, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. She wouldn’t get up. She wouldn’t respond. I knew she was alive, but that was about it. She was really, really warm. I wanted to skip the visit to my dad, but I hadn’t been there in two months as it was. And he was expecting me. My mom is out of town, so it would’ve been really disappointing to him if I didn’t show up after I’d said I was coming (he’s in a nursing home). So my husband promised to take Molly to the vet and I took off for northern Iowa.

I had to actually sit on the floor to talk to my dad. He couldn’t pick his head up at all, so I couldn’t hear him unless I was on the floor. Not that he had much to say. I couldn’t even interest him in our memoir project. I know part of the problem was they got him up that morning (he’s been sleeping through breakfast sometimes) and then they had him in the shower and then they just kept him up the rest of the morning, so he was really tired when I got there at noon. I have hope that my dad will look better next time I see him, but I don’t know if my dog is going to get better. She was getting better. A little. The vet gave her a couple of shots on Monday and while she wasn’t herself yesterday, she was better than she is now.

She’s pretty old, so we know the end is coming…she’s got a thyroid condition, she’s got arthritis and she hasn’t been able to walk with me for a while (so I’ve actually been thinking about getting another dog…in fact, I’ve been thinking about getting a dog I could train for search and rescue…or maybe go through training to get certified to be a therapy dog. Okay, I’ve been doing more than “thinking about it”…I actually went to see a dog a couple weeks ago…and I’ve been haunting petfinder.com almost every day), but I thought Molly had a couple more years yet. And now I feel guilty that I’ve even been thinking about getting another dog. Is she giving up because she knows I’ve been looking at other dogs???