"But what does it MEAN?"

If only I had had some tiny board game clue that the day before was only the beginning of a marathon that I didn’t recall signing up for. I awaken and squint my legally blind eyes to try to decipher the Buick-sized digital display on the clock. 7:08am. Thanks you idiot alarm clock. You have just one job to do and you’ve failed to do it. I check the alarm and it is indeed set for 6am. I guess it’s sleeping in today. I change out of my pajamas into clothes faster than Clark Kent turning into Superman. No shower needed as I took one just four hours ago. I grab Olive, run down the stairs, open the garage door and am confronted by torrential sheets of rain. It is worse than when Hurricane Irene came through. Olive looks at me. There is a giant question mark over her head. Simultaneously as this symbol symbolically appears, Olive takes a few steps backward. “ARE YOU INSANE? I’M NOT GOING OUT IN THIS.” she says. I look at her apologetically as I grab my pool blue umbrella and lead her outside. I watch the water pooling all over the front yard. The road in front of the house is already under four inches of water. So this is what they mean by “flash flooding,” I intuit. For once, Olive empties her biological waste tanks quickly as though someone whispered in her ear that there was a sale at Nordstrom’s she didn’t want to miss. I crate her, jump in my car and off I go accompanied by a persistent feeling of a fait accompli. “There’s no way I’m making this appointment today.” I think. “It’s only going to get worse as I travel East.” Sure enough, a short way ahead I see a line of cars trying to squeeze through the one lane tunnel that is choking on 6 inches of water. Eventually, I emerge from the tunnel only to be confronted by an endless unbroken line of angry red taillights. “SCREW THIS,” I pick up my iphone and call the Doctor’s office to re-schedule my appointment. I take the longer way home to avoid using my car as a hovercraft again. Within 10 minutes I’m back home. Olive is perplexed to see me return so quickly but she’s deliriously happy. All is well for about 11 and one half hours. At 8:30pm, we come back in after Olive’s mid-evening dump. I start to towel her off which is an event all in itself. She thinks it’s a game and starts tearing at the towel, making drying her off a fruitless exercise. As the orange and yellow striped towel whips around her head and face, I think I hear Olive start to barf. I quickly pull the towel back and…nothing. That was weird, I think. Until I lift the towel up and a mound of brown puke with mostly undigested food drops on my foot like shepherd’s pie with a distinct and memorable “SPLATZ.” As my brain begins to process this, Olive is still vomiting. I wait until she’s done and then I clean it all up and we go upstairs to watch TV from the couch. At 10pm, on the way to bed, Olive gives a command performance. There is now bitless brown vomit in the bedroom, my office and a small bile-like cluster in the hallway. All on the carpeting. As I give a command performance of my own, I thank God the carpeting has not been replaced yet. Could this be a reaction to the injections she received a day earlier? My guess is probably, but now I’m paranoid enough to sleep little throughout the night, eyeballing Olive next to me to make sure she’s ok. In the morning, I feed her breakfast and watch her closely. Sure enough, within two hours, up comes all her expensive organic dog food. “GUESS WHERE WE’RE GOING TODAY OLIVE? YUP. BACK TO THE VET.” As we wait in the vet’s office, I watch each owner and pet walk through the doors. Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat. “WTF,” I think, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IS TODAY CAT DAY?” Although Olive doesn’t feel herself, she’s still firing on most of her cylinders every time she sees a cat come through the door. After seeing the vet, we walk out one x-ray, one CBC test, four meds and about $400 less later. No bowel obstruction, thankfully. But wicked gas. Yes, gas. Apparently so much gas, the food couldn’t even squeeze past the foul vapors fermenting in her intestines. Olive is packing more methane gas than a cattle ranch. We go home and I’m so confused about the meds regimen that I feel like a Medicare patient. She gets one an hour before meals on an empty stomach. Another half tablet twice a day when the moon is full. And yet another full tablet once a day when a leprechaun knocks on the door. I actually draft a schedule otherwise I’d never get it right. It’s so detailed, it looks like a friggin’ bus schedule. And just for the record, I do screw up administering one of the pills on this day. “CHRIST OLIVE, YOU’VE GOT 4 MEDS TO TAKE. WHAT KIND OF ROTTING VERMIN DID YOU EAT TO CAUSE ALL THIS? I CAN’T IMAGINE IT WAS WORTH THE FEW SECONDS OF PLEASURE IT CREATED WHEN IT USED YOUR TONGUE AS A SLIDE.” I say this as I make a grand gesture toward Olive who cares only about the greasy little beefy pill pockets she’s about to inhale. Done. I think. I hope. Christ, I’m exhausted. And then the alarm clock goes off. At 7pm.