I know that being overly emotional is a part of being pregnant but I would like to think I have been rather "normal" during this pregnancy. Normal meaning no worse than what I was before pregnancy, so sorry that I am unable to control my emotions during "Extreme Home Makeover" people (a.k.a. Daniel), when that darn Ty Pennington starts to cry I just can't control myself anymore!
I felt the firestorm of emotional fury start last night. I have absolutely no idea what brought it on but I swear one second I was fine and the next I felt like a train waiting to derail. I first noticed it while making dinner, for the life of me I could not get the Frisco Melts that I was making for Daniel to turn out right, instead of just giving up and retreating to my bedroom at 6:00 in the evening like I did last Thursday night, I stayed strong and kept on trucking only to be relieved when my wonderful husband ate two and then praised me on Facebook for making them. It's amazing what a little praise will do to a woman's spirit when she is down. We made it through the rest of dinner, Daniel was kind enough to put everything away for me, and I thought all was better. I still couldn't figure out why I was filling all funky to begin with though.
Daniel was the first to wave the white flag last night, he was in bed at 8:30. Someone had a busy day of hanging gutters on Sunday and then another draining day at work on Monday so he was tired. I jumped on the computer; my husband says I am addicted so it's only fair I keep up my addiction for his sake and that's when I noticed it...I couldn't breath. I was breathing as if I was a sixty year old chain smoker who needed to be hooked up to her portable oxygen tank, it was horrible and actually somewhat scary when you can't get a good breath in. Of course this brought on the thoughts of being eight months pregnant with an oxygen tank strapped to my back while walking around Babies R Us which did not help in the least.
I somehow managed to stay up until about 10:30 or so which is highly unusual for this chick since becoming pregnant and woke this morning in my usual groggy mood. I mean come on...who actually enjoys getting up by the sound of an alarm screaming in your ear only to have to force yourself to get dressed so that you can go to work?? Just me!! Well it's not because of the pregnancy because this was my typical morning before the start of my baby.
Anyway, skip ahead a few hours and I get home at lunch to let the dogs out and to be fed. I go to put my key in the door when I hear a noise, it almost sounded like a dish breaking but not quite and I couldn't figure out what it was so I cautiously opened the door hoping that it was just my imagination when to my horror I discover what the sound was. Lennon, our dear sweet Lennon; the same dog that has cost almost $5,000 in surgeries since March...of this YEAR, who ate my entire bottle of Tums Halloween weekend, who torments the absolute hell out of poor Bandit, who wakes us up at all hours of the morning when he wants on the couch but nobody else will get off, who has made it so that Animal Planet cannot be watched in peace at our home, who enjoys eating the rinds from pineapples straight out of the garbage, who slurps peanut oil out of his Dads turkey fryer, likes kicking back with a good magazine only to destroy it later, who must sit in your lap at all times, who tries to get in the tub while you are showering so that he can get a drink of water, and who finds it entertaining to lay in the middle of the kitchen floor so quietly that Mom doesn't realize he is there until she and everything in her hand go flying in the air after turning around and tripping over him. Yes my friends, that sweet and innocent Great Dane who is the apple of his Fathers eye, the one currently in discussion.
That sweet little boy was the cause for the noise I heard while unlocking the front door, the noise that sent me over the edge...that caused my train to derail! There laying before me was the following; a bag of cotton balls, used primarily to clean Bandits ears was torn to shreds with cotton balls layering the floor of the entire living room, it looked like it had rained golf ball sized hail in that room. A piece of wood that I had already taken from him once, splintered into a hundred pieces of smaller wood, something that was black and now resembles a chunk missing from a ladies wig...I still don't know what it started this life out as. A bag of Halls lozenges...I hope for his sake his throat feels better! A tube of neosporin with puncture holes all over it, sort of reminded me of the tube of baby butt cream my Mom always kept on hand for my little sister when she was a baby, our Great Danes then always somehow managed to get a hold of the tubes and would always leave puncture marks and cream oozing out of the bottom, ah memories! The bag of candy cane ornaments that my MIL purchased for me to hang on our Christmas tree this year (those are what made the noise I heard, dogs shuffling them across the floor while they worked their way to the front door.) And then...to my absolute horror I saw it...a picture, not just any picture, a picture of one of my Mom's horses. For a quick second I scanned my brain to figure out where it came from, where I had stored it to keep safe from harms way and then it hit me. It had come from the hard back leather covered photo album I bought last year that I painstakingly added picture after picture to, all in the appropriate date order. He had torn it to shreds, SHREDS people, piece after piece of leather scattered all over the living room. Page after page of photos torn from it's binding, some intact others ripped in half.
It was then that I felt it, the first tear drop, the first sense of range and utter disbelief, the first crack in the dam that I had built up during this pregnancy. I refused to be an emotional roller coaster during this journey and for almost seven months I had succeeded only to be broken by a one year old Great Dane who had destroyed what is most precious to me...my photos.
Ask anyone that knows me, my camera goes everywhere with me, I take picture after picture for safe keeping, to allow my past to be brought with me to my future and this retarded dog had destroyed it and destroyed my dam of emotional strength. I cried...I cried hard, I cried long, I cried loudly, I cried to the point of nausea, to the point of snot bubbles and a damp shirt, to the point of questioning whether I even wanted to feed them. I cried while I swept up the mess, pulling each and every salvageable picture from the wreckage, I cried while I posted on Facebook that I hated my dogs, I cried when getting their food bowls, I cried when I took said food bowl and hit Lennon in the ass with it, I cried when I realized I couldn't afford another album and new pictures because I had to buy Christmas presents instead, and I cried when I left to come back to work after seeing Lennon curled up in a ball on the couch sound asleep with no idea of what he had just done to me.
I ask you; is this a face of an innocent, a face of complete guilt, and the reason for his Mothers emotional and hormonal breakdown at lunch?
Damn it...it's the eyes I tell you and that stupid pink nose, curse the nose and those floppy ears to go with it. How can I go from rage with this dog one second to one of love and understanding the next? To hit his tush with his food bowl and then feel complete guilt afterwards knowing that it didn't even hurt him and then to question why I didn't make it hurt and then feel bad for thinking that.
And then I look at this picture, the one saved right next to the above one on my computer,
and I realize, I am going to have to smack this tush to and then feel complete and utter guilt about it when she comes to me with tears down her little chubby cheeks wanting to be consoled. I will have to remind myself I had to do it and to not let her sense my defeat and guilt for her demise. I have to teach her right from wrong and help ensure that she grows up to be a responsible adult and as much as it pains me, that is going to require a pop on the fanny a time or two.
Lord help me, this parenting craps going to be tough sometimes!
On a good note though, I am hoping today's emotional breakdown equals no more for at least another seven months but lets hope and pray Daniel doesn't come home and ask what happened or why I am not in a talkative mood. I can't guarantee that I will be able to hold back the waterworks for a second time and lord knows he can't handle tears so then I will have to control my hormonal rage for a second time and not tell him to fix his own blessed dinner! Maybe I should text him ahead of time with a warning, what do you think?
Potato Skins...but twice baked
