The last two days have been quite the experience for us out here in sunny Tucson. It's gotten to the point where if something goes wrong, I'm more likely to just start laughing than get upset. It all started yesterday afternoon. I had just finished attending our weekly teaching day at the hospital, and I was on my way to my afternoon clinic across town. I thought I'd run home really quickly to check on the dogs on my way there.
To set this up, let me explain a little bit about our recent adventures will Albert. He just turned a year old on Cinco de Mayo. Since around that time, he's been figuring out how to get out of his crate. At first we thought it was just a mistake closing him up by one of us. But then it happened when Emily left home last, and we all know Emily doesn't make mistakes. Anyway, we tried tying the crate shut with a shoelace, which worked for a day or two, but then he started chewing through the shoelace. Even if he didn't escape, there was quite a bit of damage. The crate would be found moved across the room with hole in the opposite wall. If he got out, he'd destroy the house. On his tally are two feather pillows, an avocado, countless wine corks, and sandals. The rugs in the kitchen often end up in different rooms as well. Well, yesterday we decided to trial Albert outside of the box from the start. We had the house cleaned up, and we locked him out of the two bedrooms. We figured, if he peed in the house, at least it would likely be on tile.
It sounded like a bad idea already, but we were running out of options. He hadn't peed in a few days, so we thought we'd give it a try. Well, we missed something on our cleanup of the house. He had retrieved a tomato-shaped pincushion from one of our coffee tables. When I got home, I found sawdust, pieces of pincushion, and pins/needles all over the front of the house. I initially wasn't concerned, but after thinking about it for awhile, there was a small chance he had swallowed a pin. If you've seen Emily's Facebook posts lately, you know the answer to that question. Albert had a pin inside his stomach and required an emergency endoscopy last night to remove it.
Wait, we're skipping ahead a little bit. On my way up to the emergency pet clinic, I stopped by to pick up Emily from work. Walking back out to the car, I pushed the unlock button, and my passenger window decided to fall into the door. It was unable to be raised, and I knew it was broken, as the same thing had happened to the opposite window several years earlier. Gotta love Chevy quality! We finally made it up to the clinic, and Albert had the pin removed without incident. However, it took him several hours to recover from the sedation, so a quick 15 minute procedure turned into an entire evening of sitting in the waiting room. Albert's back to his old self again, and just as crazy as ever. We just have to figure out how to keep him contained.
Today found me dealing with the other mishap. I took my car in this morning, and our mechanic has a complementary drop-off and pick-up service. They took me across town to the clinic without incident. Unfortunately, the clinic finished about 4 hours earlier than I had planned. While this is usually a great thing, I had no ride home, so it was an issue. I called the mechanic, and he said the van would be sent as soon as it was available. I stopped to eat lunch, waited a little bit while playing Scrabble with Kiran and Curt, and then I got the most brilliant idea of my life. I decided to start walking toward downtown. It would only take an hour and a half to walk to Emily's workplace, so I figured I'd make my way there in case the van wasn't ready in time.
It's now time to remind your brilliant narrator where he lives. Is it in a cold climate? Is it a cooler time of year? The answer to both of these questions would be a deafening NO! I think my frustration of waiting all night for Albert to recover got the better of me, and my brain was a little more cloudy than normal. I walked about 2.5 miles, dressed for work, in the blazing heat before the van finally picked me up. UGGH!
I suppose things could be alot worse. Our condo could have been damaged in the Nashville floods, and Albert could have required open surgery. However, after spending a full paycheck on emergencies in just over a 24hr period, I'm really hoping our luck starts turning for the better. We better stay away from stir fry for awhile.
