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January 12, 2004-8:14 p.m. It�s been a hell of a couple of weeks here at Casa de Sa. It started January 2. My dad and I were going to replace the underpinning on the house. That is the trim that goes around the bottom to hide the piers and pipes. I was taking the old stuff off when I discovered that the piping going to the hot water heater was leaking. Larry was supposed to come over that day to show me pictures from his New Year�s Eve in Times Square. I put him off because we had this leak to fix and I wasn�t in the best humor as a result. We made plans for him to come over on the following day. I figured that since we were going to have the underpinning off, it might be a good time to go under the house and spray that expanding foam around the pipes where they intersect with the house. Somehow in doing this, I managed to get the stuff in my hair. I got a lot of it in my hair. While it�s wet, you can get it off (they say) with acetone. I got some acetone out of the barn and went over to my Mom�s and she tried to get it out without much success. At one point she decided to pour acetone on my head and, of course, it ran right down my face. It was at about this time that Larry arrived. When he saw me, he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up. He immediately reached for his cell phone and called Beth. He was hysterical with laughter. By this time the stuff had set and no amount of chemicals was going to remove it from my tresses with ease. I decided to douse my head with baby oil and see if that might loosen it up some. I finally just started ripping it out of my hair with a comb. Or more accurately, ripping my hair out with a comb. I ended up creating quite a bald spot.
Luckily, I have a lot of hair (baby fine but lots of it) so that I can camouflage the damage for the most part. See. If I hadn�t told you, you never would have guessed.
That was Saturday. Monday, I went to work as normal. I came home and fed Diego and as I was walking past the washer and dryer to go to the restroom, I noticed a box of rat poison on the floor. I had forgotten that I had it. It was in one of the baskets above the dryer with all of the cleaning supplies and such. I felt like such a bad mommy.
I picked the box up and he had chewed on it and gotten it open and there were two teeth marks in the block of poison. I completely freaked out. I called my sister in law who baby-sits for a girl that works at our vet�s office. I called the vet�s beeper and waited a few minutes for her to call back. Sheila called and said her friend said to call the emergency animal clinic and they may be able to tell me what to do. I called them and they basically just told me that if I wanted to bring him in it would be $75 for the exam alone. I put the poison in a plastic bag and put Diego in his carrier and my mom and I headed 30 miles away to the emergency animal clinic. They gave Diego (whom the vet called Dye-go) something that made him vomit. They didn�t find any of the rat poison in his stomach, but because the poison causes the blood not to clot properly they did a clotting test on him and that came back as normal. When they released him, the vet told me that he didn�t think that Diego had gotten enough of the poison to hurt him but that I should check with my regular vet in two days and have her draw blood and perform another test on his clotting. Wednesday, they didn�t have any appointments open so my Mom took Diego up to the vet�s so they could work him in when they had time. They shaved my poor baby�s neck and took the blood from there. When Mom and Daddy picked him up the vet told them that Diego was really mad and they might not want to put their hands in the carrier but just open the door and stand back!
He sort of looks like a mad cat in this picture but you�d probably be mad if they did that to you, too. The vet didn�t think that the test would come back with abnormal results so we just waited to see what happened. She called Thursday evening and his clotting levels had been affected so he got some of the poison. I did feel a bit vindicated by this as Daddy had been treating me like I was some sort of alarmist spend-thrift throwing money away on unnecessary vet visits. I have to give Diego Vitamin K for two weeks and then we will test him again. This is the fourth day and he�s getting a little testy about having the pill forced upon him. It took me three tries tonight and he put a claw in me. You know they say that people look like their pets. This week it�s really true for us!
**Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
