Harley And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

     On Thursday, Harley gobbled down his breakfast after a potty break and proceeded to itch for a very, very, long time. When I called him over, I noticed huge welts all over his body, including one above his eye. The night before I had squeezed out one capsule of fish oil on his food because the vet had said it would help with the dry skin he was experiencing. Apparently he had a reaction to it because it was the only thing we had done differently for him in the previous 24 hours. I discovered a large pile of dog puke complete with a piece of silver garland. My logical husband reasoned that he probably swallowed that in lieu of grass. Later that morning, Harley began retching up his breakfast. This is not how I had envisioned spending my day. My mom and I had planned on meeting at 1:30 p.m. halfway between her house and mine, so I could bring our two oldest girls home after spending a few days with her. Their favorite science class at the library was that day from 4 to 5 p.m., and the drive home should have taken only an hour... leaving plenty of cushion time for them to unpack, get their library books to exchange, and even give them a little time reuniting with their cats on the bench outside. Then my midwife asked to move my Friday morning appointment to that afternoon at 2:30 pm, which should have still been fine given that I was planning on being back in town by that time anyhow. My appointments usually only take 15-30 minutes. We'd still have just enough time to unload and grab the library books from home after the appointment.
     While getting ready for the day, I noticed my favorite shirt had three small holes in it; but since they were tiny, I decided to wear it just one last time. I left my bathroom only to find a vile smelling pile of dog puke waiting in my bedroom. Some days I can really relate to Alexander in the story about his awful day... except for his desire to move to Australia. No offense, but I'd rather move to Ireland. When my hubby and I traveled there in the spring five years ago, I fell in love with the landscape and the charming accent... and all the green. In fact when we came back, I promptly painted the largest room in our house (as one disapproving decorator called it) "Kermit the Frog" green. I began to feel my day unravel like a cheap sweater, and my dreams of moving to Ireland began (or at the very least I dreamed of the crisp clean scent of some Irish Spring soap). Apparently when I let Harley out for a potty break, Oreo the cat (with parrot-like tendencies) has conspired with Harley. She perched on my shoulder and rubbed her head and side against my face, blinding me from the fact that Harley was searching the hillside for cat poop. (My vet has assured me that this is completely normal although I find it completely revolting.) Do you know how I knew he'd been snacking on cat poop? Well, guess what the vomit smelled like? I found this mess eight minutes before I needed to leave in order to pick the girls up on time. I had my little ones search the rest the house for any other stink bombs. They couldn't find one; so after cleaning up my bedroom, I packed food for a picnic lunch in the van. As I collected the rest of the movies due back to the library my darling daughter said, " Mommy, what's that?" In a room full of wooden flooring and tiles, Harley had chosen the cream and tan area rug to deposit another puke pile. After cleaning this up, I took Harley out ON A LEASH for a quick potty break... so there could be no more cat-related binging and purging. We ended up being five minutes late, but my mom was an additional ten minutes late...making me fifteen minutes late to my midwife appointment. We no longer had enough time to run home for books; so after whispering a prayer, we regrouped. I decided to just renew the girls' books and head to the library without their books. We ended up arriving at the science class five minutes early, and the rest of the night went much better. Harley puked again after sneaking a couple of branch tips off of our Christmas Tree, but his welts went down a lot (and his itching was much better).
      Jill Savage says," Motherhood is the ministry of availability.  You could also say it's the ministry of interruptions! " My whole day Thursday was not what I expected, and it was full of interruptions. I had not counted on playing nursemaid to a sick dog. As I pulled out of the driveway already late, I thought, "Are you going to let this ruin your day?" It was at that moment I chose to not get angry, anxious, or upset about whatever came next. One of my favorite lines from "No More Perfect Moms" is this: "We need perspective that the moment that we are in is just as important as the moment we planned on that didn't happen the way we thought it would." It's hard to keep that perspective while cleaning dog puke. It didn't feel important, just annoying. However, I am sure that even if I did move to Ireland, my "ministry" (a.k.a. the children and Harley) would follow me; so I might as well just stay here in the USA.