the hard stuff

A friend who is battling cancer did such a good Facebook post this week.
Couched in a wry, humourous story about her kids, she subtly updated her broader friends as to where she's at in her treatment.
For those who hadn't known she created a light space in which to reach out with their love and concern, for those that did, some light relief from the heartache of watching a good friend go through this.
There was no pity party, no drama, no big announcement - just a gentle 'this is my life now and it's hard but still full of love and laughs and we carry on'.

It's hard to tell other people when you're having a shit time. You feel self-conscious about ruining their day or happy mood, you feel like you're trying to illicit sympathy, but it's more about needing people to know - this is what's up with me, it's not that great.
Be gentle.

What's up with me is that my doggie is dying.
Lego has lymphoma and the prognosis, 4 weeks ago, was 6 - 8 weeks.
She will be 9 this year. She hates going to the vet. Her liver is affected, her lungs and possibly her heart. For these reasons, and others, we're not going to attempt chemo.
We're going to keep her comfortable for as long as we can and then one day, soon I fear, we're going to phone our lovely vet and ask him to come here and put her to sleep in her bed, in our arms.

She knows. She's slowing down for sure, still eating and being herself, but slowing down. Yesterday she didn't come outside when I was throwing bits of wood for Orca, usually a game she'd get involved in, just watched from the door with a waggy tail and a sad eye. She's always been good at the sad eye my Lego, there's a reason we sometimes call her Eeyore.

She sticks close, wandering in with her 'don't mind about me' demeanour, to plonk herself down with a grunt and a nudge, and sleep at my feet. In the evenings she comes to tell me it's couch time - time for TV and a cuddle. In the night she wakes me with an apologetic nose, to let her out or fill the water bowl which is no longer lasting 'til morning.

She knows and she's saying goodbye.
I know and every chance I get I'm saying, in the ways in which she understands, 'I love you Lego'.
This is what's up with me, it's not that great.

easter happened

I was woken Easter Sunday morning by a small child shaking me.

'Pinkie-swear Mummy, pinkie-swear you're not the Easter Bunny.'

Hungover AF (we were in Hermanus, with friends, we'd celebrated a 50th the night before, there'd been a very excellent Taiwanese whiskey), I groped through my remaining brain cells.

'Pinkie-swear Mummy!' 

Little finger crooked in my face, big earnest eyes - this was serious.

I examined my conscious, and made a hasty decision. Actually yes, I could pinkie-swear I wasn't the Easter Bunny.

Was I fluffy? No. Did I zoom around the world planting chocolate eggs? No. Was I a fictional being? No. Although the whole experience did feel a little out of body tbh.

I wrapped my little finger around hers and shook it. 

'Pinkie-swear', I croaked.

The situation was nearly as awkward as a bell jar crammed with bunnies.

None-the-less, back home Easter happened in a far more adult and tasteful fashion.

ex-spike

For nearly 3 weeks I had a dead hamster in my freezer.

Spike, the innocuous grey and white dwarf hamster Frieda got for her 8th birthday, succumbed a few months short of the 2 years we were warned hamsters usually last.
I ... didn't really get the hamster thing. He was kinda cute, very soft, but more likely to bite one on the sensitive web of skin between your thumb and forefinger and leave a string of turds down the front of your shirt than anything else.
His cage ponged and his wheel squeaked all night.
We had to keep the girls bedroom door closed all the time for bull terrier and cat risk.
Except for the couple of times we didn't.

Spike's most noteworthy achievement, in his small life, was to not once but TWICE ward off attack by voracious bully. Orca just couldn't resist that little guy.

#hamsterwatch

Very possibly the stress contributed to his shortened life span. Spike got steadily more crabby and less lovable. His fur lost its lustre and that wheel didn't squeak as energetically at night. One morning I realised he was really not happy. I called the vet to warn him I'd be bringing in a hamster for euthanasia, I prepared the girls (home for the holidays and remarkably - worryingly? - unfazed), I kinda berated myself for not being butch enough to just hold a ball of socks over the little guy's face until it was over, but call me 21st century soft if you will, I just couldn't do it.

And by the time I got upstairs to fetch him it was basically all over. He was lying in the sawdust, in a coma I think, occasionally a limb twitched but he seemed peaceful and that to move him would be more traumatic than to just close the door, tip toe away and come back later.

No more caged pets please.

Husband felt we needed a proper burial and so, in a box and a bag, into the freezer went Spike.
And then we forgot to bury him.
And the next night we all got home too late.
And the next day is was raining, or something.
And then it was rubbish day and I informed the family I was going to send Spike off in that great wheelie-bin to the sky.
And then I forgot.
And then the next rubbish day was Easter Monday and we were away.
And then finally, today, after that box had been opened a couple of times by morbidly fascinated children, after I'd shuddered more than once getting ice for a drink or scratching around for supper makings, after we'd had a very naughty but delightfully squirmy imagining about a ... hamster smoothie ... I managed to get him out, in time for rubbish collection.

RIP Spike.
No more caged pets.