Do you know how warm it was here yesterday? LOW SEVENTIES. The type of day where you go outside and sit in the sun and will come in with a little pink on your white-as-a-fish’s-butt arms. Moving to the South might have been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Marrying Matt coming in second, of course.
The downside to the heat is that our house is full of original rope and pulley windows that we are attempting to restore, but only half of which actually open. The other half are stuck shut. Which means we could turn on the AC in the house, but c’mon! I’m not only a cheap Yankee, but I’m a cheap Yankee who thinks it would be ridiculous to turn on the AC when the thermostat is registering 73. Unfortunately I’m also a pregnant woman in her third trimester who frequently has hot flashes and is constantly accompanied by a pitcher full of ice water wherever she goes. So a compromise had to be made.
I was awfully warm at bedtime and decided the fleece pj pants were a bit much, but there ain’t a heck of a lot of other things I can fit into these days. So I stripped down to that which I could feel morally upright with wearing to bed while carrying my daughter in my belly, and turned on the overhead fan for a nice breeze to sleep under.
And that’s when Berlin’s world came to a screeching halt.
Because didn’t you know that overhead fans ARE THE DEVIL!?! That they are the scariest machine man has ever made? And that they were created to kill and torture dogs with anxiety? Specifically HER?
She was petrified of her normally safe den, our bedroom. She wouldn’t walk in, and even when she was forced into the bedroom, she sat slumped over on her dog bed looking at the corner. She wouldn’t jump on the bed, she couldn’t fathom looking at the ceiling, and there was no way in heck she was going to eat her dinner in that setting. After all, that overhead fan was there to kill her.
This is where I take a little rabbit trail and tell you how hard I laugh when people ask us if we’re ready to be parents. They chuckle and say things like, “Oh just you wait! Wait til YOU have to try potty training! Wait til YOU’RE fighting picky eaters at the dinner table! Wait til YOU just want to give in and let them win!”
They’re probably not aware that by day my husband potty trains 200 pound 17 year old boys with multiple developmental disabilities and tendencies towards self-injurious behavior. That seeing a child throw a large table across a room DOES NOT PHASE HIM. And that when he comes home at the end of the day, he patiently works masterful therapy on a schizophrenic dog who is afraid of ROTATING CEILING FANS, finally coaxing her onto the bed to wrestle and wag her tail.
Then we lay in bed after all of this and laugh about how funny it all is – our dog who requires daily sessions with the shrink. We roll our eyes and discuss how as miserable as she is with the ceiling fan on, and as hard as it is to watch her be so scared, we’ll keep it on all night because we’re going to win this battle. That it’s just not appropriate for her to be afraid of ceiling fans. Remember how she used to be afraid of the TV? And the back porch? And riding in the car?
Maybe I sound a little bitter, and I apologize for that. It must be because cleaning vomit off the carpet in the middle of the night, calming a frightened creature at the vet’s office, and leaving the party early to get back to someone’s bladder control schedule has not adequately prepared me for parenthood. Excuse me while I get up to leave, in the middle of my hour of internet peace, to run to the store and get cat food. Because we’re all out, and while I have a million things I need to do to pack up and go to Chicago for the weekend, his needs come before mine.
Oh boy, are we in for a surprise!
April 1st, 2010 at 8:35 pm
We don’t have pets at all but having watched people with puppies I do think there’s a lot of similarities between pets and small children: the constant care needed, the random phobias, the messes at inconvenient times . . .
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:50 am
This is hilarious! Maggie is afraid of umbrellas like Berlin is of ceiling fans, which makes taking her for a walk in the rain a challenge. You will do very well with children, having gone the distance with both dog and cat. Before I had children, though, I had no real tolerance for pets. Being a mommy made me a better pet parent.
April 13th, 2010 at 8:04 am
You really make your difficulties so funny…battle between window, ac and temperature is so cool! chill out., you’ll soon reap all reward as you give birth to your child and everything is just worth it!