living in loss and gratitude

If fecal matter, aka crap, shit, poo, number 2, is offensive to you, or reading about it rather, then I strongly suggest you skip this post.  Because in this one, shit is definitely hitting the fan, making this an extremely dirty, nasty post!

My last week in San Jose was so exhausting.  First the drive up on Sunday, then the arrival where I served as luggage porter to our third floor room, Siberian Husky wrangler, cook, maid, and chauffeur.  And when it came to Thursday, the day I was to fly home for the weekend, the morning set the stage for what I call, “Rivka and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”  So much so, I couldn’t bring myself to write about the chaos and feel badly that I even shared it with a neighbor couple.  Let’s just say, it began with our hotel room toilet overflowing, middled with Piper, the dog, peeing on MY bed and my flight canceling, and ended with me stuck on an overfilled plane between two passengers who both needed one and a half seats.  It honestly took me two full days (Good Friday and even better Saturday) to recover from the exhaustion of it all–especially as I am sparing you several of the outrageous details.  In fact, at one point on that Thursday I had an “out of body experience”.  No, not the new-age type of ‘I-have-faced-myself-dead’ experiences; but the kind where I was literally in the mix of continuous, progressively building, chaotic events and wondering to myself how to abort the circumstance.  It was almost as if I was watching this fiasco, like it was a television sitcom, and desperately trying to figure out how to change the channel.

But wait, it continues to get better.  Since Piper sent me off with a yellow present, I guess she figured I needed a brown one upon my return…

At three thirty in the morning, Monday–the day of my scheduled return flight to San Jose–I heard our house phone ringing.  Mind you, I am still living on high alert, so a telephone ring at that hour, usually incites fear of impending news of death.  However, it was not the case.  It was my son, Cole, calling from the hotel room in San Jose.  Apparently Piper had a bout of diarrhea–all over the hotel room floor.  But since I was, all of 500 miles away and his Uncle was in the next room over, I suggested he wake his Uncle to help with the tragic situation.  …which he in fact did.  “Thank you a thousand times Uncle Timmy!”  But of course the paranoia of it all kept me awake just the same.

So I made it back to northern Cal and made sure to gift the laundry man and the maid something super special.  And even though our dear Tim assured us the Piper cub was probably finished with her “expelling”, Cole and I decided to have her sleep outside on our tiny, third story balcony with a half-hearted prayer she wouldn’t jump.  And if she did, Cole and I were resigned to mourning! 😉

Now last night, we figured she was for sure “finished, kaput, done” with her loose stools, thus the girl was again allowed to sleep inside.  But at 3a.m (what is it with that number?!), she was awake and pacing!  We quickly put her bed outside and I wrangled her back to the patio–a place she is not fond of!  And this morning what did I receive?  Yep, a patch-work quilt of poo.  Piles of loose, mucus filled stool.  Some areas bigger than others, with many small dots–the girl pretty much covered the area of the patio that did not house her bed!  Guess what I did this morning?  I had the high honor and privilege of collecting diarrhea via scooping with a plastic knife into a paper bowl.  And since I had taken an hour or so at breakfast to formulate my cleansing plan I was able to assess the patio and how, once the feces was collected, I would proceed with cleaning the area.  My deduction was as follows:

In the center of the patio is a drain hole, which I deduced would funnel the dirty water down a pipe and out to the ground floor.  So there I was, with a plastic bag over my hand, a brought-from-home rag (I didn’t want to again have to impose on the hotel staff!  I was afraid I’d have to also find us a new place to stay if they were brought into the our sitcom routine once more), an ice bucket filled with soapy warm water and all the scrubbing power I could muster.  Scrub, scrub, scrub and then WHOOSH…I poured the bucket of water over the area to rinse it down the drain.  Only as I was rinsing, I was hearing the sound of water dumping from below.  I looked over the balcony only to learn the drain hole empties directly onto the balcony of our second floor neighbors.  And as if that wasn’t the worst epiphany ever, the maintenance man (yes the one who had to unplug our toilet and who had to shampoo the carpet) was right outside in the parking lot to witness the occasion.  Needless to say I ducked down and hoped he would mistake the bubbles for rain!

I swear, sometimes I think our G-d in Heaven is a big television producer and he is making one heck of a killing off of my weekly episode.  Quick, somebody find the remote and change the channel!

And Cole?  He is progressing.  Though the progress is slow, there is a forward motion of improvement (otherwise we would pack up our things, end our humiliation, and head home).  We, of course, are praying for a miraculous return of his facial muscles (controlled by cranial nerve 7), but the tumor was strong on that area of the brain-stem, thus the damage it inflicted is difficult to ignore.  But we are not giving up…sorry San Jose, we will stay a while more!

Tags: Acupuncture, blunder, family, fiasco, shenanigans, Siberian Husky