Hunting 9/21/07

My husband is a hunter.

hat is what he told me when we were dating. What he didn’t tell me is that he likes hunting nekked. I discovered this last weekend in a very unusual way…

Friday night – sometime in the middle of the night: Missy Booness has to go peepees and decides to wake me out of a dead sleep to let her out. Okay, okay. So I get up, walk her to the back of the house, open the door to the garage and the door leading outside, and let her out. Then I prop all doors open and return to bed. Just as get to the bed I hear Booboo barking and then some type of fighting (growling, barking, grring, thashing, thumping).

Great – just great. I bet the pit bull from next door got out again.

I run to the garage and flip on the light. What I see in the garage is not a pit bull chewing on my Booboo, but a raccoon!

Screaming, “Gary” at the top of my lungs, I figured the coon would run out… light, noise, human. But no, that big, fat, overgrown rat is still fighting by sweet baby. Scanning the garage (which is full of junk), my eyes alight on something that might work as a weapon - A full sprayer (gallon variety) of bug poison. I grab it, raise it high over my head, and bring it down hard onto the coon.

I guess that gave Booboo the out that she needed because before I knew it, she was behind me and I was between her and the crazy coon. Just as I prepared to swing the sprayer again, Gary grabbed the back of my nightie and pulled me out of the way. He got in between me and the crazy coon (which by the way was the biggest varmint that I’ve seen. It was about half the size of Booboo --- easily 25-30 lbs).

And Gary screamed at the coon, stomped his feet, and shook the paint brush extender (pole) that he had managed to grab. I guess it was just too much for the crazy coon – first getting smashed by a bug poison sprayer, then yelled at by a nekked hunter.

The coon ran.

Then nekked hunter chased it outside and into the back yard.

Still nekked…

That’s my hubby – protector of all that is dear to him. Chasing a coon outside in the middle of the night – nekked.

Heh… he is kinda cute at that!

The Witching Hour 9/4/07

My witching hour occurs somewhere between 1:30 am and 4:00 am - smack dab in the middle of REM sleep. I guess it isn't really a witching hour -- it is the time of the day when all lies and denials are rendered helpless and the truth won't let me sleep.

Yesterday, one of my best friends called to let me know the results of her biopsy. The results weren't good - end-stage cirrhosis of the liver. Funny thing - she hardly drinks and has never had hepatitis B or C. They don't know why her liver is failing - but it is. And she is failing. A liver transplant is one of her few options (the other option is that they figure out what is doing this to her liver and stop it).

I hardly batted an eye when she told me.

Because I decided that denial would be my course of action. Yup - even thought all of the test results were dismal, I would just pretend that it wasn't going to really happen - at least not for 10 or 15 years.

Unfortunately, I forgot to program myself all the way through the night... and somewhere around 1:30 am, I woke crying. It finally hit. And I couldn't pull the wool back over my eyes - at least not quickly enough to glimpse a world without Shay. And I didn't like that world very much.

So I began with the what ifs... what if they won't approve a live donor transplant? What if Kaiser screws this up too? What if we can't find a tissue match? What if she isn't a good candidate for a transplant? What if the Mayo Clinic doesn't accept her? What if, what if, what if...

What if this is really it... and there are no alternatives?

I don't like that option. I am so used to always looking for solutions that I don't know how not to. And what if the solution is that she is not going to recover from this?

This isn't about me. But here I am, feeling very scared an vulnerable. I'm 43 years old and I feel as scared as a child. I can't do anything to help. I can keep up the facade during the day - but the witching hour comes and at least during that time, I can't pretend.