Tonight we had to say goodbye and let Chelsey’s “baby” go. During
the day he took a turn for the worse. Chelsey called the vet to
see what we might be able to do, but in the end she realized that it
was better to let “baby” go. We said goodbye, made him as
comfortable as we could, and sometime this evening he left us.
Losing a pet is a hard thing for a child, and seeing your child in pain
is a hard thing for a parent. It raises once again the question,
“why?”
Still nursing the hamster. We have to apply this medicated ointment
directly onto it’s eyes. Eewwww!
Cindy was really sensitive about eyes. I think it went back to a
childhood accident where she was hit in the eye by a rubber band or
something. She was very paranoid of having anything touch her eyes.
I’m guessing she wouldn’t have been able to stand the thought of
applying medicine to the hamster’s eyeballs.
He still looks really freaky. The nursing area is on my bathroom
counter. He seemed to rest comfortably during the night, that is he
didn’t wake me up to often. Just often enough though.
Just got back from a run to the vet. Chelsey’s hamster has suddenly
gone bug eyed. And I mean really, really bug eyed. His eye balls are
literally popping out of his head. I can barely look at him. This
started two nights ago, around 3:00 am actually when Chelsey woke me up
to tell me something was wrong with him.
We called the pet store the next day and they guessed it was irritation
from the bedding material we were using. They told us to change that
out for plain paper napkins or newspaper, and to get some saline eye
drops. We tried that yesterday. Last night, or this morning depending
on how you want to look at it, Chelsey came in to let me know that he
was making sad noises and she couldn’t sleep. It can be really hard not
to get upset at being awakened in the middle of the night. I have to
stop and imagine myself as a 13 year old girl and try to do what will
comfort her the most, and quickest as I do need to get back to sleep so
I can get to work in the morning. We decided to move the cage to the
laundry room so she wouldn’t hear him making his pitiful squeaking
noises and when we got up early this morning we gave him more of the eye
drops.
Chelsey called late this morning to tell me she was trying to do some
stuff in her room but couldn’t stop worrying about “baby”. We moved him
out of her room again so she might be able to distract herself but
further calls ensued. She reminded me of what I would feel like if it
was Chesley at home sick and I was at work. Wouldn’t I be constantly be
thinking about her and worrying that she would be okay? I agreed and
finally realized I had to leave work to run home and take my little girl
and her “baby” to the vet. If nothing else we would find out how long
he had to live and if it was real bad perhaps they could help ease his pain.
At this point calling one vet and then going to a different vet isn’t
too surprising for someone who hasn’t had much sleep in the past few
days. Eventually we ended up in the right waiting room I just couldn’t
look at poor “baby”. His eyes looked to me like they were going to pop
out of his head at any minute. It was really scaring looking. I was
trying to prepare myself for the potentiality that we would be getting
some really bad news. Finally the vet was able to see us and took a
look at “baby”. He looked and poked and squeezed and petted and
declared that it didn’t look like anything worse than some sort of
infection or inflammation. He recommended putting an antibiotic
ointment on his eyes a couple times a day and hopefully he will start
getting back to normal in 4 or 5 days. You can’t imagine a pair of more
relieved people when Chelsey and I heard that.
So it’s now $70 later, our $3 hamster is on the mend, and I back to
work. I can’t thank my employer enough for letting me make these little
mommy runs during the day to take care of those little emergencies at
home.
This full time dad and part time mom can really wear you out sometimes.
Luckily they both like plain old water so that seems to be the beverage
of choice most of the time.
Which reminds me, the water line for the ice maker and water dispenser
broke on the refrigerator the other day and I really need to get it
fixed.
I had a wonderful Father’s Day.
It started with breakfast in bed, followed by some wonderful
presents. Then it was time to get the yard work done. I
really like the fact that the grass is growing green and luscious, but
not so happy about having to cut it all the time.
After I was done with the yard work we headed over to our friends for a
Father’s Day dinner cookout. Steak, shrimo and Vidalia onions all
cooked out on the grill, along with homemade bread, salad and a few
fine beverages. It was a wonderful day.
Saturday Lindsey had a competition in Ellenton.
She skated much better than the last competition she had. This
time it was a smaller group and she finished in 3nd place. Woo
Hoo! I was really proud. She landed both of her axels and
one of her doubles. She may have landed some others but I was
behinf the viewfinder of the camcorder and wasn’t exactly sure of all
the elements.
Afterwards we spent some quality time at the outlet mall.
Lindsey’s school improved it’s score on the wonderful increased
Accountability testing program that is the intregal part of No Child
Left Behind.
I wonder if this helped.
“Got the final scores today for CHS
Lindsey:
Unweighted: 4.0
Weighted: 4.7222
WOW! (Highest in the class for females-tied with one male student)”
And then Halley talks about Happy
Divorced Father’s Day or in my case maybe it’s Happy
Widowered Father’s Day, which makes me recall the way the
girls and I have to celebrate Happy Dead Mother’s Day 🙁
This morning Halley talked about Being Someone’s Wife.
As I have recently met some divorced women I have wondered why Cindy
and I got along better than these women who for some reason or another
didn’t. Halley talks about being a wife, I agree with the things
she says about wifedom. In our relationship Cindy was a smart,
intelligent, a scholar as well as beautiful, funny and loving
person. She spent many years studying to be a dietitian, and then
went on to study more and get a graduate degree in Health
Education. She also studied and learned and earned credentials
that allowed her to be a Diabetes Educator.
I have a 2 year AS degree from a Junior College that took me almost 4 years to finish going to school at night.
The part I find most interesting is that I ended up with salaries that
were two or three times more than the amounts Cindy was able to make in
the health care field. But she always worked hard to maintain her
credentials and move forward in her career. I think we both had
the feeling that there would come a day when all that hard work and
study would pay off for her.
In Cindy’s case much of this was done while she was fulfilling her role
as a mother to our daughters. And that role wasn’t just getting
the girls off to school and spending the rest of the day relaxing with
friends eating bonbons. She volunteered at the girls school,
worked many part time jobs in her field, all the while studying and
earning continuing education credits to maintain her credentials, and
on top of that she did all the usual chores of keeping a house running
smoothly. Grocery shopping, bill paying, house cleaning, laundry,
car pools, brownie troop leader, etc, etc. In other words she was
just like many moms in this world. She was a woman, mother,
health professional, and a wife.
So here I was the working Dad that for many years worked long hours
developing and installing computer systems. Fresh out of Jr.
College with an AS degree you feel like you should take what you can
get and make the best of it. I did that for several years working
long hours and traveling. When we were ready to have children,
both emotionally and economically, I was still working those long hours
and traveling. And then I got the call from Cindy in the middle
of the night. I was in a motel in Connecticut while on a business
trip. She had called to tell me that her water broke. It was a
month before her due date and I needed to get there as soon as
possible. I called the airline and got tickets for the first
flight out which wasn’t going to leave until the next morning. I
didn’t sleep that night. I remember pacing around that motel room
all night stopping every few minutes to watch some bizarre old movie
that was on TV. It was one of the longest nights of my
life. During the night Cindy started into labor and by morning I
was calling the nurses station at each stop to see how Cindy was
doing. Lindsey was footling breech
and they were preparing for a delivery by C-Section. The medical staff
said they would wait as long as they could to try and give me an
opportunity to get there in time. In the end I only missed
Lindsey’s birth by a few hours.
I changed jobs when Cindy became pregnant with our second daughter to
make sure that I wouldn’t have to experience my next daughter’s birth
over the phone to the nurses station. Cindy’s second pregnancy was even
more exciting than the first one with Chelsey trying to come way too
early at 27 weeks and Cindy spent much of that pregnancy bed ridden laying on her left side.
Chelsey ended up being born with a relatively normal delivery and proud
dad was in attendance in person rather than by phone.
What does all this have to do with relationships and why Cindy and I
had a relationship that was able to survive all those years? I’m
not sure, but I think it had more to do with Cindy than it did
me. She made me the Father that I am today, and she made my
daughters the amazing young women they are. The ones who got up
early this morning to make me breakfast in bed, and give me gifts that
are more valuable than any present that I could buy for them to give
me. 🙂
“But why did she have to die?”
Peter Llewelyn Davies
Finding Neverland
