changes. closure?

even in the last five minutes i've noticed more 'stella' things. so for my own sanity's sake, i'm going to list all of the things that she's known for in the house...things that can "go back to normal", but they don't feel anything close to normal.

- ice cubes flying out of the spastic fridge (i lied in the last post - THESE were her favourite treat)...they've gotta just go in the sink before they melt and damage the floor (or someone walking by)
- fern's food dish...it can go on the floor now
- dinner time...fern doesn't have anyone to compete with for table treats...and forget accidentally dropping a veggie...she'll only eat meat.
- night time walking...we don't have to strain in the dark to make sure we don't step on her.
- general sleep quality...eventually, dad and mom won't hear her barking every couple of hours for attention or a trip outside. i never did hear her, but now they'll have the chance to get a full night's sleep
- the bathroom garbage can...used to be hidden behind the toilet paper basket so she couldn't get into it to munch on gross things
- the toilet seat...with bleach in the reservoir, we had to keep the lid shut, since she was always trying to drink out of it (hey, it's a colder water source than her bowl)...i left it open this time.
- things that i should clean and put/give away today: food and water dish, tennis balls, the entire recycling bin of her toys, the bin of food we just bought, the food measuring cup that dad never paid attention to, her lead on the back porch...we haven't had a proper 3/4 measuring cup for years, come to think of it

dad and mike left about 15 minutes ago. i just wanted to beg mike to stay with me. he needed me to be strong and stay with him last night...well today i need him. but i couldn't bring myself to ask him to stay when he just wanted to try to get back to normal life. i sat in the doorway and sobbed, finally letting it completely out for the first time...

i almost want to just go into work to try to distract myself...just to not be alone...but i'll be a total mess and i can't do that to everyone at the church.

if there's one thing i can be sure of right now...it's that i will look back on 2008 as a year of many ups and downs. there have been so many great things, but a couple major crappy ones and i'd like to say it's balanced out right now...but i hate the ambivalence in my heart right now.

i want to be happy and relaxed and feeling like we made the right decision...but i hate that i was there to convince mom that signing those death papers was the best choice for her. i hate that i feel like i tricked her into ignorance with treats while her life was being taken away. i hate that she was having such a good day when we decided she should just go quietly. i feel better that she walked into that room on her own than having to be carried, but it makes me doubt that we did the right thing, despite the doctor's reassurance.

why do i feel singlehandedly responsible for my family's misery today?

i can't take this.

peace at last...

12 years ago, my family decided that we were going to start looking for a family dog. mom was really set on a border collie, since they were known to be well-behaved, easy to train and good with kids. but like most couples with a mortgage, two kids and bills to pay, spending a buttload of money looking for a specific breed wasn't really in the cards.

but one day mom was out front doing some gardening or visiting or taking part in some other 'wisteria lane' type of activities when she mentioned to a neighbour that our family was looking for a border collie. the neighbour said that she had a mother-in-law who had just passed away, and her border collie mix was going to be put down if they couldn't find a home for her. she wasn't a purebred, but it's not like we were going for that anyways.

so one day, as a surprise, dad opened up the truck doors and out came this year-old ball of energy with an attitude. since her previous owner was a little old italian lady, this dog came with the name stella. we all thought it was a stupid name, but we couldn't very well change it when it had been her name for a year or so.

stella would get so excited when someone came home from school or work that she'd "spring a leak" - especially when (specifically) uncle jamie, uncle chris or grandma would come over. she was very happy, but then sometimes extremely temperamental and jumpy. she wasn't the kind of dog you'd want kids to be around for very long. i, myself, have suffered several hand bites but she very well came from a fairly abusive environment, where she was never exposed to men so she was fairly uncomfortable with her surroundings sometimes and her reaction was to snap. it's not a good thing. we were always afraid that one day she'd snap at the wrong person and we'd have to put her down.

then there was thanksgiving sometime in my early high-school years. we were going away to grandpa's cottage for the weekend and decided to just put her in a kennel for the first time. she loved grandpa's but there were going to be so many kids and people that we couldn't trust her to not bite someone just because most people don't know her pet peeves. we were leaving super early so we dropped her off in cayuga the night before, but by morning we got a phonecall saying she'd escaped. and ran away. in the countryside of cayuga. it took weeks for a farmer to find her on his doorstep, looking for garbage or scraps, and when he tried to put her in his truck she bit him and peed on his seats. ha. that's stella for ya.

i was convinced, before i left for new zealand, that if she was still alive by the time i flew out...she'd be gone by the time i came back. but she was still kicking.

she's never been able to play nicely when a toy or ball is involved. we didn't know how to train her to not be possessive, so we could never play fetch with her...until the last couple of years when she started learning that if she brought us her tennis ball in the living room, we'd always toss it into the dining room. she loved this new game, but couldn't play it outside or for too long because she was just getting too old and arthritic to be able to run and jump for long periods of time.

this past week, we noticed that she was falling down the stairs a lot. she has a few times before but we've decided the slippery hardwood flooring was to blame. but it's been happening on almost a daily basis. her back legs were failing completely and it would take her a long time to stand up...once she was up she could take a few steps but then her back end would drop to the floor again. finally, a few nights ago, dad woke up to her wimpering and crying, which is something she NEVER does. i've only heard her wimper whenever she was scratching her neck and got a toenail caught in her fur or collar. but she was apparently just crying all night and since her back legs can't reach her own body to scratch anymore, we knew that it was something bad.

so yesterday, mom made a phonecall. she knew that it was going to be a day of hard decisions. she knew the possibility of euthanasia and didn't know if she should tell mike before or after. she would have to decide to take stella herself, once dad admitted that he couldn't emotionally handle bringing her in. she knew that she would be the one signing the papers to end stella's life if there were no other options.

i went with mom. she was going to go alone and buck it up for her family, but i couldn't let her be alone...and mike and dad would, in no way, be able to handle keeping her company. dad's been the one to take care of the cats in the past when they've been too old or sick to go on, but he just couldn't make this vet trip. i've faced the life-or-death decision of an animal recently (life was possible in that case) - but i've also had to carry the body of my cat back from the highway to my garage. i've also watched enough vet shows and seen enough animals put down on tv that i felt i could best detach from the situation and try to be strong for mom.

the vet suspects that she had a spinal cord disease or injury that was causing her back end to gradually lose control and feeling - hence the constant bladder leak and laboured movement. her reflexes were awful and she actually allowed him to let her stand with her feet turned the wrong way without really noticing or fixing it for a long time. he also noticed after about 15 minutes that a couple of maggots had fallen off of her...turns out that because she couldn't control her bladder, the urine was burning her skin...and she couldn't brush, scratch or clean away any flies that recently starting using her hindquarters as a nest. she was in so much more pain than we thought, and we felt so guilty for not noticing because of her long fur that just never seemed to stay clean anyway. he said that sealed the deal, in his opinion...because he wasn't sure if she could even feel them on her body very well. and if she could, then she was being tortured.

she was having a good day yesterday. she was walking well and getting excited about having mike home. it made the decision really hard because we felt like it wasn't fair to decide to put her down when she could still walk into the vet. but the doctor reassured us that it was what he would do - and what he had to do a month ago because his own dog suffered a spinal cord condition that left him with similar symptoms.

she was very well behaved the whole day. she didn't snap at me once, even when i was having to pick up her back end to help her in and out of the car. she was good with the vet and didn't even get snarly when he was giving her the IV...she walked back into the examination room with a bit of anxiety, knowing something was up but still pleasant. i was feeding her snacks and realizing she hadn't eaten dinner when the doctor started injecting her. she kept eating and eating, happy and clueless when her head dropped into my hands, taking one last nap.

last night was hard. i dropped an ice cube on the floor when pouring drinks for dinner and had to actually pick it up and put it in the sink. i dropped a fry at the table, and almost called her name to come get it. afterwards, mike and i knew we couldn't just go to bed trying to sleep...we had to stay awake distracting ourselves with tv until we literally passed out. at 2 we both went to bed and i watched an episode of will and grace just to be sure i was ready to sleep. on the way up the stairs, i instinctively tread carefully half expecting to almost step on an invisible dog - black in the dark. i fed the cat with her feeding dish on the window ledge, like always, because she would always end up getting bullied out of her own bowl (catfood was stella's favourite treat). i tripped over an orange tennis ball in the living room.

but i dropped and slept all night - until mom came into my room to kiss my forehead goodbye for the day. she doesn't do it often but we've been really trying to be there for eachother the past day...unfortunately it woke me up enough to see stella's face, cradled in my hands and i woke up crying. i haven't stopped since.

she could finally be at peace and free of pain, and for that i'm grateful. but life just isn't going to be the same. she was a crabby old hag, but i'm really going to miss her.

Possibilities...

Oh goodness, I'm looking back on the most recent posts that I've written...and I'm such a slacker! SO much has happened in the past few months and with the way I blog just about ONE thing, it's gunna take a novel to cover it all!

So I'll try to be brief. Ha.

Overall summer - I spent most of my time housesitting. I think that is where my entire summer has gone because I can't remember the majority of it. Perhaps it was because I spent much of my time frustrated with dogs, reading books and watching Gilmore Girls and whatever movies I could scrape up in the house. I worked at 4 different branches of CIBC all summer, helping out where vacation and sick days needed filling.

July 19th - Breast Darn Pig Roast Ever. Rainy. A little frustrating and very stressful for some people. Not me, coz I refuse to get stressed at things like that anymore. The OMG played and it was SUPER fun. People were thoroughly impressed, even though we had a really weak encore (we didn't prepare one!). We made Ally Howatt "eat the Twinkie". Heh.

August 2nd - Mom and dad's surprise 25th anniversary party. Me, Mike, myself and I were planning it for months and ended up getting about a 30 person turn-out, and a 42" flatpanel tv from everyone. The greatest part was that they were ACTUALLY surprised - they hadn't caught wind of it at all.

August 9-16 - I house sat as a last minute favour for the family of two girls that I mentor. I decided that after almost 2 months of watching people's movies and reading their books, it was time to spend my time doing something creative instead. So I decided to paint a wall in one of the girls' room. White with different coloured gerber daisies hand-painted all over it. It was a HARD and very time consuming task for me, but it gave me something to do that wasn't just sitting around watching tv (I watched a total of 10 mins of tv that week).

August 21? - Youth @ Wonderland. Fun. Tiring. Behemoth. Exhausting. A little frustrating. In the words of Jen Thompson..."Never again." Hehe.

August 24th - Country 95.3 "BROAD"cast was aired from 12-6 in an attempt to raise 20,000 for the "Rack Pack", benefitting the Princess Margaret Hospital. As a result, Leanne Cater shaved her head live on air the next morning, along with Donna Phillips and even Mookie joined in on the fun.

August 27th - I was invited as an honourary "Rack Pack" member for the Country 95.3 "Chicks Night Out" at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto. Good food, great fun, and no ID...I ended up, at one point sitting cross-legged in front of the EXIT sign at the casino because they wouldn't let me in. Apparently I look under the age of 30. Who knew?

August 29th - I decided to become a REAL "Rack Pack" member, looking for $2000 in sponsorships in 48 hours in order to secure my walking place in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer in Toronto...the walk was to happen a week later and I wanted to make sure I got it, so I put out the incentive that if the money was raised within 2 days, I'd shave my head. I thought it was an impossible goal, but it happened.

September 4th - Jacquie gets sheared! My head isn't as mortifyingly devastating as I'd have thought. Now that it's growing in, though, it's a little annoying. I've still got to get the pink ribbon tattoo on my head that I promised.

September 5-7th - Weekend to End Breast Cancer. I managed to walk 45 out of 60 km's - 20 of which was on a very sore knee. The constant walking was hard on my body and on my emotions, but I got through it and came out of it with a new attitude about my limitations. I'm doing it again next year and have already started planning a training routine, as well as started a bit of training itself. I don't want to think so much about it right now coz I'm still recovering from the weekend, but I'm also really excited about it.

September 9th - Started my official internship at Gateway Church. I am a children's ministry intern, learning the in's and out's of photocopying and ladder carrying. :) But that's not all of course...I've already had a chance to do some designing and will be speaking at a ministry training day this weekend.

September 11th - For "random act of kindness" day, Leanne at Country 95.3 decided, because she saw the OMG performance and figured I must be a huge Blue Man Group fan, to put me live on air and give me a pair of free 2nd row tickets to see them on the 19th. In return, I was to pay it forward somehow. I chose to try my best to give Nicki a break while visiting her for a few days in Niagara Falls. On the way there, my front tire almost came completely off...it was held on by a single lug nut and all the rest of them - and the studs - had broken off. Scary stuff.

This week:
Monday - Spent the morning with the 95.3 dj's, bringing them Tim Hortons while I picked up my BMG tickets. Drove to Niagara Falls to pick up the laptop I left there. Had a 3 hour visit with Helena, talking about the walk for next year and just life in general. First day training for next year's walk. An attempt to define a new and potential relationship where I wouldn't have to be too concerned about distance. Wonderful. Overwhelming.
Tuesday - First day back to guitar lessons. I'm not ready for the summer to be over yet...I'm not through being lazy. Sad.
Wednesday - Jen Hurrell slumber party and The Higgins concert in Lindsay. I may be returning a forgotten guitar strap on behalf of the radio station, but Mookie's not sure if he can trust me...or more like he's not sure if he wants to let it go because he's just as much of a fan as I am and wants to give them a reason to come back to the station. Silly.
Thursday - First official mentor date day with Emma. Finally.
Friday - Blue Man Group concert. Wicked.
Saturday - Ministry Training Day. Anxious.

Anyways, that's life up until now. I already decided this morning that it was going to be a good week. Now I'm dead tired and have a date with Karen Walker for 20 minutes before bed.

Ha! She'd have a dirty comeback for that one, if she were a real person.