Love That Dog

Hunter's had a rough week.

My family's had a rough week too.  

First of all, I would like to thank all of my Twitter followers who prayed for my family and for Hunter this week.  

In the simplest of terms, Hunter had a mess in his G.I. Tract.  Anyone who's taken an intro Biology class knows what the G.I. Tract is responsible for, so I won't go into the detail of his symptoms.  My parents noticed that something was wrong with Hunter last week.  My mother, a veterinarian, had an idea of what might be wrong and began treatment for it.  However, the treatment didn't work and Hunter's condition weakened.  My parent's began to suspect something worse was afoot.  I was busy with school and theater while this was going on, but on Monday, my dad called me, explained the situation, and suggested that I go home to see Hunter while I still could.  At the time, Hunter was still comfortable and content, but his condition was deteriorating.  He was weak and fatigued, his appetite was practically zero, and the spark was gone from his eye.  I spent the entire afternoon lying on the kitchen floor next to Hunter while he slept.  I just wanted to be with him when I still could.  When I left that afternoon, I said, "Goodbye," like it would be the last one.  

Misty napped next to Hunter a litte on Monday afternoon.  These two have a special bond and she knew something was wrong.

We had two options.  One was to keep him as comfortable as possible and let nature run its course.  The moment we thought he was in any pain or discomfort, we would put him to sleep.  Hunter has been too wonderful of a dog and we love him too dearly to keep him in pain just for our sake.  The other option was to open him up and see what was in his abdomen.  Hunter is a very old dog and whatever was in there left him weak and anemic, so surgery was risky.  If my mom found something so catastrophic that it had spread and couldn't be removed or if she found cancer, she would put him to sleep right on the operating table.  Once again, we love him too much to make him endure that pain for our sake.  My father and I ultimately left the choice up to my mom, who was by far the most knowledgeable.  When it comes to my animals, I have complete faith in my mom and I would never doubt her actions or opinions.

We decided to try the surgery.  So, on Tuesday afternoon and through the night, Hunter received a blood transfusion to prepare him.  We are so incredibly grateful for a co-worker of my mothers who offered to donate blood from her dog, who is a universal donor, to Hunter.  I came home again on Tuesday night to spend more time with Hunter.  

Yes, that's part of Hunter's blood transfusion.  The bag was still too cool to give it to him, so I warmed it up on my stomach. :)

At one point, I just lied next to Hunter and listened to his snore.  It broke my heart to think that could be the last time I heard it.

We weren't hopeful about the surgery, so once again, when I left that night, I said my "goodbyes" like they would be our last.

I don't think I stopped praying for a single second on Wednesday.  I can't even tell you specifically what I prayed for.  On one hand, I just wanted him to survive the surgery.  On the other, I just didn't want him to hurt. I think I just prayed for his protection and for God to watch over my mom and the vet that would be assisting her with the surgery.  I was attached to my phone all day waiting to hear word. 

At 3:22 pm, my prayers were answered.  Hunter survived the surgery.  When I got to see Hunter on Wednesday night, I was just so grateful.  I had said final goodbyes to Hunter 2 nights in a row, but he was still with us.  This dog doesn't give up! And I'm so glad we didn't either.  

We're still not out of the woods, though.  While we hope we found the problem, it's possible that there could be something else lurking in Hunter's abdomen that's causing trouble.  We're kind of in the "Hurry up and wait" phase now.  Hopefully, we'll see improvement in Hunter's condition and demeanor over the next several days.  If we don't...well....I guess we'll worry about that if we get there. But for the time being, I'm remembering not to take anyone for granted.  Not my friends, not my family, and especially not Hunter.  Your pets are part of your family and I almost lost an important member of my family this week.  I may still lose him in the coming days.  But I don't want to think about that right now.  All I want to think about is making the most out of the time I have left with him, no matter how much time that may be.  

Hunter is the dog of hope!

If you have a pet, be it a dog, cat, fish, turtle, snack, raccoon, or rock, give them some love today.  I think we sometimes forget just how special they are until we almost lose them.

How I Found My Christmas Spirit

This Christmas season was really tough on me.  That's no secret.  No matter how hard I tried, I just could not make myself care about Christmas.  I was a Scrooge, a grinch, a Debbie downer.  I was no fun whatsoever.  In short, I was miserable.  And I was frustrated.  Yes, I was hurting, but my goodness! Don't I deserve to be happy about something?!

Luckily, I was not a completely hopeless case.  My Christmas Spirit finally showed up.  It was very late, but it was there.

On Christmas Eve every year, my family goes to the 11:00 pm service at church.  We go to our home church, St. Paul Lutheran Church, the years that we're at home.  But this year we spent Christmas with my grandmother, so we went to St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Charlotte, NC for their late service.  Normally, I love the Christmas Eve service (we had been to this church once before for Christmas Eve).  But this year, I was tired and not feeling very well.  This combined with my apathy toward Christmas made me pretty grumpy.  But once the pastor started her sermon, I started to loosen up a bit.  I love sermons in the Lutheran church because they are less about teaching the Bible and more about teaching how to use what is said in the Bible to live a more fulfilling life.  The Bible is used as a guide, not as something to be taken literally (because, let's face it: a lot has changed since Jesus was walking around doing his thing).  Her sermon was insightful and downright funny at times (she used anecdotes.  I love anecdotes).  I wish I could find the e-mail that she read to us so that I could share it with you.  After the sermon, I felt myself opening up to the songs and prayers and letting my guard down.  Then, as the they were preparing for communion at the altar, the church bells started ringing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."  This happens to be one of my favorite Christmas songs, probably because my high school choir used it to open our big Christmas concert every year.  Hearing it brings back the excitement and adrenaline rush that I always felt at the beginning of that concert.  As soon as it started ringing, I looked down at my watch and realized that it was 12:00 am—officially Christmas!  "Away in a Manger" followed shortly after.  I loved that the church rang in Christmas like this (no pun intended)!

After communion, ushers walked down the center aisle and lit candles.  Everyone passed their flame down the pew as the lights dimmed and the organist played the intro to "Silent Night."  We do this at my home church as well and I always love it, but there was something extra special about this experience in this church.  It was extra magical.  Then on the last verse, the pastor lifted up her candle and everyone else followed suit.  That, my friends, is when my Christmas spirit made its entrance.  I felt warm inside and even kind of relieved.  It was like we were taking whatever was hurting or stressing or saddening us and lifting it up, letting it all go.  It was that moment that I remembered that Christmas is not about me.  It is not about Christmas movies or Christmas cookies or even that warm and tingly feeling you get when you put a present under the tree.  It's about hope.  It's about the fact that however many years ago,  all was not right on Earth and God sent someone down to make things better.  God sent his son down as a physical manifestation of the hope he provides.  For me, Christmas this year was about realizing that no matter how much pain I am in, no matter how sad I am, no matter how many tears I shed,  somehow, someway, at some point, something will get better.  It won't happen all at once and it is going to take time, but there will eventually be some improvement.  Until then, I need to use this time for me.  I need to learn patience and really think about what it means to love someone.  I have absolutely no doubt that I love my ex-boyfriend, but it was never an emotion I was able to quite put into words (which I know a lot of, if not most people can't).  I'm kind of figuring out what that word means to me; what loving someone means to me.  Does that make any sense? Haha.  And I need to learn how to take care of myself–how to make myself take care of myself.  It is going to take a lot of time before I am able to open myself up to someone the way I did to my ex-boyfriend.  I still can't imagine loving someone in the way that I love him.  And that's ok.  I probably never will love anyone else in the way that I love him because I believe that we cannot love two people in the same way.  Every person is different, every relationship is different, and every love is different.  Like snowflakes.  When my heart is ready, I will begin to take the steps toward being able to open up again.  But to pretend all is well before I am healed would be unfair to me and unfair to any man that tried to pursue a relationship with me.   It is ok that I can't move on from this yet.  It is difficult and painful. But it is ok.
 "Give me pain if that's what's real.  It's the price we pay to feel." (Brownie points if you can name that musical!)

Right now, I am just thankful that I was lucky enough to get to spend Christmas with family that gives me their love and support unconditionally—no questions asked.

Just a friendly sword fight between siblings..

See all those nutcrackers on the mantle?  My cousin Kevin is obsessed with the ballet The Nutcracker and has amassed quite the collection.  Here, we're trying to show him the 5 ballet positions of the feet, but he's more interested in reenacting the battle between the nutcracker and the mouse king. And he has just stabbed me.  A dramatic death followed shortly after this picture was taken (cause it's not ballet if it's not dramatic!).

The Adams and Wright kids.  Cool cousins.

I think we were trying to do some sort of Abbey Road thing here.  As you can see, we were wildly successful.

The Wright family.

See the woman sitting on the walker?  That's my great-grandmother, Nana, who celebrated her 99th Christmas this year.  How amazing is that?  She seen Christmas through the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties, two World Wars, Pearl Harbor, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Men on the Moon, The Gulf War, 9/11, The War on Terror and 17 presidents.  The Christmases she enjoyed as a child seem almost from a completely different world than the Christmases she has now.  That just completely blows my mind!

The entire Wright/Adams bunch.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my readers!

I hope you've all had a perfectly lovely Christmas morning.  I know I have :)

I found my Christmas spirit late last night.  Better late than never!  It's still going strong.

 Here are a few scenes from my Christmas Morning:

Last night, my brother and I were at the grocery store and decided we wanted to get something nice for breakfast for our parents and grandmother on Christmas morning, so we started a new tradition: Bagels and lox on Christmas morning!

Ribbon Mustache :) 

Good haul :)

New Christmas pajamas :) And my new North Face headband that I'm kind of obsessed with.  No more cold ears while waiting for the bus in the morning! 

I think my theater-going and movie-going readers would love this!  It's like a photo album with pockets for ticket stubs and a spot to write about the show next to each slot.  I can't wait to start filling this up!

I can't wait to start reading this book my brother gave me!

Every single episode of Sex and the City.  I have officially earned my Girl Card.

It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Can't wait to get started on this in the new year!

I hope that Santa treated you well and that you get to spend the day with with friends and family who love you as much as mine love me.  And don't forget to watch A Christmas Story on TBS today! 

Once again, Merry Christmas!  Don't shoot your eye out!
And enjoy some of my brother's Christmas music!

  

Day 28: Daily Routine

I hate mornings.  Hate. Hate. HATE!

So it's a good thing that today's photo fell on a day that I got to sleep in until 11 :)

So, mornings.  Daily routine.

Wake up.  Snooze.  Curse the sun. Crawl out of bed.

Brush Teeth.  Weigh myself. Shower (sorry, you don't get to see a picture of that).  Isn't this riveting?

Then I turn on Disney Pandora and make myself pretty. (Please excuse my dirty mirror in these pictures.  I accidentally washed it with OxyClean instead of Windex.)

 I can't operate a camer and a hairdryer at the same time.  

 If I'm lucky, I end up looking somewhat like this:

Then I'm off the sell jewelry at my wonderful job!

My goodness, that has to be the most boring blog post I've ever written.  Sorry, guys! 

Here's something really not boring!  My brother is a fantastic musician and made this awesome Christmas album!  I'm so proud of him and I love how it turned out!  You can listen to and download it here!  

It's Cold.

I'm in the office I work in. Jeans, boots, long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt. I'm freezing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the cold weather is here, but shouldn't we keep it outside?! I think hot chocolate is in order. Hot chocolate with marshmallows and a super heavy, but soft blanket on a huge, comfy bed and a fireplace with a dog sleeping in front of it and a Christmas movie and someone to watch it with and.......

Please excuse me, I just zoned out a bit thinking about how wonderful that sounds.

Speaking of Christmas movies, I broke down and watched one this weekend. The Santa Clause 2. Not a particularly good Christmas movie, but Elizabeth Mitchell (who played Juliet on LOST, may she and it rest in peace) is in it, which for me is reason enough to watch it. I'm going to *try* to save the good ones until the real Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving.

Gah! I'm ready for Thanksgiving/Christmas now! No school, warm houses, cookies, decorations, Christmas trees, fuzzy socks, mashed potatoes, and..............

I'm sorry, I believe I just zoned out again.

Before I make myself too depressed thinking about how long I have to wait for all of these wonderful things, I think I'll close out this post with my top 5 favorite Christmas movies (or at least my top five today, November 8, 2010 at 9:14 AM).


Emily's top Five Favorite Christmas Movies:

5) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)



FIrst of all, how can you not love Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Fuzzy green curmudgeon feels left out and calls it hate for Christmas; tries to ruin Christmas and in turn finds its true meaning; heart grows three sizes; the end. And (though I know some people who will probably think less of me for admitting this) I am a Jim Carey fan. And the colors are just so gosh darned pretty!

4) The Santa Clause (1994)



This is the first Christmas movie I remember. I own it on VHS. My mom and I watch it in the kitchen while making Christmas cookies. And as is true with almost all sequels, the first movie is the best.

3) The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)



I shouldn't even have to explain why this is on my list.

2) A Christmas Story



It's a classic. This movie is so perfect that TNT dedicates a solid twenty-four hours to it on Christmas Day. And it's so quotable. "Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra!" "C-Plus?!" "You'll shoot your eye out!" My brother and I caught the blue ball joke for the first time last year. Haven't caught it yet? It's there, you'll find it. But you can only watch this movie on TNT on Christmas Day. To watch it on any other day is sacrilege.

And my number one favorite Christmas movie of all time is........!

1) The Polar Express (2004)



My. Absolute. Favorite. And I'll tell you why.

When I was younger, my family had a Christmas Eve tradition. I would leave out the cookies and milk for Santa and my mother would read me two stories. The first story was an old pop-up book of "Twas the Night Before Christmas." The second story was "The Polar Express" by Chris Van Allsburg. "The Polar Express" is the reason I asked Santa for a bell from Prancers sleigh every year. I saw the movie "The Polar Express around 2006 (I think) when it was ABC Family's Christmas movie one weekend. I watched it every time it aired that weekend.
This movie captures the book perfectly. It makes me laugh. It makes me cry. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It makes me feel Christmas.

Have a Merry Monday! 17 days until Thanksgiving! 47 days until Christmas!

I Took The Plunge.

I friended my Dad on Facebook. (BTW...Hey Dad, I'm sure you'll read this.)

There's not really much to say other than that. But I thought this was a big enough event to warrant a blog post.

I think I can trust my dad to not end up like a facebook parent that needs a filter like Jane Lynch:

Secret Sundays

This week, one secret really hit home for me.



I lost my grandmother two years ago tomorrow. She had severe dementia my entire life. I can't even remember the last time she remembered my name.

But I know that a lot of who I am is because of her and it kills me that I never got the chance to know her, even though she was there for 16 years of my life. Her body was there, but she was not.

Something Blue

This wedding cake makes me smile. If you've seen Disney/Pixar's movie "Wall-E," it will make you smile too.



I found this picture on the Disney Wedding's Facebook page. It's so perfectly adorable.

On a side note, I'm watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition. It always mamages to make me cry within the first 3 minutes. This episode especially becuase it focuses on a pair of siblings raising their 6 other adopted siblings with Downs Syndrome after their adoptive parents passed away. It hits close to home because I have a young cousin living with Downs. He's the happiest little kid I know and is one of the reasons I am studying communications disorders. But despite how happy he is, it's just not fair that he will never live the kind of life he deserves to.

But he is happy and he is loved. What I would give to be as happy as he is...