We pulled into my in-law’s driveway around 6:30 on Christmas Day. “We” being myself, my wife, our dog, and our two cats all crammed into our hatchback for the long drive from Chicago to St. Albans, West Virginia. The house was emptied of people, the wife having received a call from her family that they were leaving for the extended family Christmas dinner as we were driving through Kentucky some time back. The wife was less than pleased at this news.

But wait, let’s rewind the clock a bit further, as the events that preceded our arrival were even more calamitous than our arrival to a deserted house. In fact, let’s start one week previous to Christmas Day. A snowfall of considerable volume hit the midwest, burying Chicago in a solid half-foot or more. Then it got cold. Real damned cold. The thermometer read -4 degrees F on Sunday afternoon when I left for work, but the windchill dropped the temperature significantly below zero. How significant? I’ve heard that at one point it didn’t matter if you read the Celsius or Fahrenheit digits on your (windchill calculated) thermometer.

Our car was now sitting atop and aside a solid sheet of ice.

Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking “Well geez, dumbass, why were planning to drive in the first place? That’s no short distance, and you’ve two different airports reachable by public transportation. You know they do have places you can take your pets.” Well, I have a two-part answer to that question. One: our eldest cat is in kidney failure and requires a complex (and expensive) regimen of medications in order to stay living. While a reputable vet’s office could administer the medications in our stead, we just don’t have a relationship with any of them yet. Two: I did not know my work schedule for this week until December 12th. That’s not exactly typical and it let to many frustrated inquiries from my wife as the dates slipped by. So the plan was we would drive.

Except, the car wasn’t prepared to drive anywhere. Any attempt to move it resulted only in impotent spinning of the tires through the ice. Pushing provided no results, nor did cat litter around the wheel wells. I chipped and scraped and attacked the banks of frozen snow that surrounded the car over the first half of the week to little avail other than injuring my wrist (it still aches a bit when I twist it just so).

And then… it got warmer. Temperatures soared into the 30s and the mounds of snow began to soften. Just the same, the wife picked up a pickaxe on the way home from work one day. There was still quite a lot of ice under there. Coming straight home from work the night before Christmas Eve I threw myself into the digging and at around 1:30 in the morning I threw my fists in the air and shouted “Yatta!” like Hiro from the television show Heroes. I had moved the car.

I went to work the next afternoon—I had to work the night of Christmas Eve though I had requested it off—aching but triumphant. All that was left to do was load the car and drive off. And this is where the dog decided to throw a wrench in the works.

With only a few things left to stuff in the car the dog managed to squeeze through the gate and run at full speed throught the neighborhood. With little to no regard for safety she dashed across what are typically the busiest streets in the area. It was Christmas morning, no one was on the roads or sidewalks. The temperature had dropped over the past day and the sidewalks were now frozen again. In order to run after her I had to stay in the very middle of the street. Frost was forming on my beard and mustache. We chased after her for at least thirty minutes before she was distracted by a dog in a yard.

Dog caught, we were finally prepared to leave. Almost. The air pressure in the tires we saw to be rather low and set about to find a gas station with an air machine. I don’t know if it was the temperature or just shoddy maintenance but there was not a single working air device in a two mile radius. We found them with notes on them. We found them laying disconnected in a pile. We found them seemingly operational but not capable of delivering suitable pressure. And so we threw our hands in the air, wished our tire the best, and hit the road.

Not long after this one of the cats took a shit in his carrier. Then he vomited. Twice.

Yet despite all of these setbacks we arrived, safely, at our family’s house on Christmas night to a house filled with dogs and no people. We gingerly introduced our dog to theirs and were settling in for a lonely night when the in-laws reappeared suddenly. My mother-in-law had come down with a rather violent illness and had to retire.

This was to be grim foreshadowing.

We did all of the Christmas stuff a day later than Americans typically do all of their Christmas stuff and things were generally pleasant. No dramatic events. No drunken distant relations. We exchanged gifts. We attended a party. We played Cranium. You know, wholesome shit.

So the mother-in-law was in and out of the bathroom all weekend? And so the sister-in-law spent the better part of that Saturday doing the same? So what of it? We made it. We did the gift thing. We watched West Virginia win two different sporting events on the same day.

Soon enough it was Monday the 29th and time to leave. Now it was time for the father-in-law to succumb to the virus that had been spreading about the family. But we were still fine, right?

No, we were not still fine. Somewhere outside of Lexington, KY the dreaded stomach virus took the wife. Thinking quickly, we disposed of our leftover foods and she took to using the plastic container as a vomit receptacle. I drove.

By the time we made it into Indiana it was clear that this was not going to last. The cramps had hit me, and the wife was tired of throwing up in a plastic tub in the passenger seat. We stopped somewhere just inside the state and looked for pet-friendly motels. The first one asked how many pets we had. “Two,” I lied, “one cat and one dog.” They only accepted one. So the next place asked how many dogs I had and I correctly stated, “Just one dog!” We were in.

I threw up sometime that night. Just once, but violently. And we slept.

I was still scheduled to work on Tuesday and I thought, maybe, I might make it. I felt reasonably well. We weren’t too far away from Chicago. I didn’t have to work until 3:00 PM. I didn’t make it on time, but I did work that night. I’m told I’m just too responsible for my own good sometimes.

Not one of our best Christmases, all told. But I did make some wonderful things which I have posted here previously. For our friend Melissa, the Simon Belmont needlepoint. For my brother, the Blobert needlepoint. For my father-in-law, the Phillies cross stitch. For my friend Adam, the I don’t come down to where you work… cross stitch. For my friends Marc & Tara, the Wesley Willis cross stitch. And for my wife, the Computer says no cross stitch. So a belated “Merry fucking Christmas” to all, and to all a “Get the hell off my goddamn lawn.”

After two posts on the loss of my dog Leroy it would be unseemly to say something about the newest edition to our family. She’s estimated to be one year old and was surrendered to Chicago’s Anti-Cruelty Society. We picked her up last Friday.

After mulling it over for two and a half days Staci and I agreed on the name Maeby. Neither of us had named a female pet before. It proved more difficult than we had expected. Though, given the trouble we’d had with the last pet we acquired, it probably shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.

Maeby — then temporarily Chloe — stood out from her compatriots with her zen-like calmness. In the small-animal section of the dog ward she was placed next to a rat terrier and across from some kind of fluffy pooch who carried on yippy conversations. She said nothing, staring out of her door with those perpetually lined eyes.

This was all a carefully constructed ruse.

Upon reaching her new home she began to immediately lunge propel herself skywards, scamper about the apartment, and bark her fool head off. It would seem she was saving her energies until after the paperwork was signed. Smart dog.

She’s quite a jumper, this one. Her favorite game is to repeatedly hurdle the dog from upstairs — he was a good friend to our previous dog and has been seen staring expectantly at our front door waiting for a playmate who will never come out. This dog is easily twice her height and weight, but she vaults over him (while prone) with ease. She’s successfully scaled him standing at least twice.

She’s a good dog, a welcome addition to this apartment, and cute as a button. Meet Maeby.

It’s been almost two weeks since Leroy died. I’ve begun to feel better. Not about it, of course, but just better. It’s easier for me than Staci, but I didn’t know him as long as she did. Still, it’s certainly not as complete a change as some might have expected.

I haven’t had the heart to post anything since then. It just felt wrong. One day Leroy has died and the next I’m talking about video games. I need to do this a bit more gradually.

The other day I had a sort of a vision. It was like a dream, but I was wide awake and not particularly distracted so it was a bit different than most of my daydreams. In it, I was telling Leroy how we donated his medicine to the hospital so a King Charles¹. He was pleased.

The times I miss Leroy the most, the times it hits me the strongest, are when I spill something on the floor. With very few exceptions anything that ended up on the floor would be swept up by the powerful tongue of Leroy. Even things he didn’t really want. If he didn’t gulp it down he’d chew on it earnestly until naught but a sodden pulp remained.

Now, when I spill I have to clean it up myself.

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¹ King Charles Cavalier Spaniel. They’re notoriously prone to heart defects. One of many downsides to dog breeding. Nice dogs, though.

Some time after two o’clock this morning Leroy returned to his ICU bed from taking a pee outdoors, laid down, and stopped breathing. The last night he spent at home was his birthday on Monday. I hadn’t even taken the time to write anything about his trip to the emergency room and the hospital and the resultant anxiety. Now… well…

The night doctor called us right away. Called my wife, rather. She awoke, picked up the phone, and let out a wail of agony like I’d never heard before. It was beautiful and terrifying. My reaction was more visceral, literally. I took the news straight to the gut. I thought I’d vomit. Stumbling to the bathroom I could feel that greasy eye socket sweat that seems to accompany a really good sick.

We drove through the night to view him. I had a difficult time looking at him with his eyes slack and tongue agog. I needed to keep a bit of distance. I just didn’t like seeing him that way.

His ashes will arrive in a few days. I only glanced at the paperwork from the crematorium, but got the impression that they will arrive with a selection of materials that aim for heartfelt, but land somewhere near crass and aggravating.

Last night — it must have been around four AM — the dog — Leroy — attempted to rise for reasons known only to him, stumbled, fell off the bed, and landed on his side immediately in front of the dresser. Immediately upon hitting the floor he vacated both his bowels and his bladder. This might have been amusing if he weren’t dying.

Rigorous maintenance of his digestive necessities is a point of great pride for Leroy. In his soon-to-be ten years of life the number of his indoor accidents could be counted on both hands, likely with a few fingers to spare. Losing control indoors fills him with a tremendous amount of shame. It took considerable coaxing, once he had regained awareness, to get him back in the bed¹ afterwards.

Leroy has a heart condition. The specialist says he has some serious mitral regurgitation and minor tricuspid regurgitation. Fluid builds up in the spaces surrounding his lungs and he has trouble breathing. It’s most pronounced at night. If we listen closely to his breathing there’s an audible click with each intake of air.

This on top of his other problems. He has bilateral hip dysplasia. The space in which his femur articulates with his pelvis doesn’t have the cushioning he’d like and it hurts him something awful. He has very scanty muscle mass over his hips. The individual bones can felt. This can be alleviated through surgery, and indeed he was going to have it, but his heart condition renders him ineligible for anaesthesia. On top of that, he has the worst garbage breath I have ever smelled. Seriously. It doesn’t matter from which end it’s coming — it smells just as bad either way.

He wasn’t supposed to have these sorts of issues. He’s a mutt of indeterminate origin. Somehow, he managed to inherit the health problems of each of his ancestors.

He’s definitely Staci’s dog. She rescued him from an animal shelter in Morgantown when he was just a pup back in 1998. He’s been with her longer than just about anyone, longer than I by a fair margin. I believe that were she forced into a position in which she could save only one of us from some grizzly disaster it would not be an easy decision. I have no problem with that. The love between a woman and her dog is wholly separate from any inter-human relationship.

The inevitable is going to absolutely devastate her. I know she’s aware of the grim reality. I know she’s responsible enough to prevent him from suffering unduly. I do not look forward to that day one goddamned bit.

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¹ The bed really isn’t large enough for the three of us, but given his health, my working hours, and what the cat had done to his previous bed we just don’t have the heart to tell him no.

So here we are a day after I energetically insisted that I intended to keep this web-log-thingy maintained faithfully and I just haven’t come up with anything in particular to comment on. I was going to talk about some games I’m playing. That’s something I never really got into here on the site. I don’t know why I never did. I spend so much time thinking about them and reading about them and annoying my girlfriend by talking about them. I really ought to get some of that out of my system here on the Interwebs. I was going to do that, but I forgot what precisely I was going to say about them right now.

Uhh. . .

Got a cheese cake in the oven right now. I needed a special little bit of dessert on account of tomorrow being Valentine’s Day and all. I think it’ll be a pretty darned good. I have a bit of a meal planned. I don’t particularly care for going out on Valentine’s.

Currently watching the Westminster Dog Show on USA. Staci loves the dog shows. We’ve already watched two of these. She says this is the bestest of them all. I sure do think show haircuts sure are retarded looking. Lots of commercials for Pedigree tonight. They’re damned adorable. The one about the shelter dogs is just too about much to bear.

Indeed.