Sunday, October 7, 2007

Not So Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my wife's birthday.

Over the years we've been together, there have been quite a few of them when she was working a lot of long hours. In lots of businesses, the fiscal calendars begin in October, so year-end closing usually occurs that first week of October to close out the end of the previous year. So, there have been birthdays where we've had to shift the celebration to a few days later.

In 1989, the first of her birthday's we had together was while we were dating, we visited her parents (the second time I had met them actually). That birthday was memorable in that she spent the first hour at their house with her right hand sort of hidden behind pillows on the couch as we talked with her folks. See, we had just gotten engaged the week prior and she was waiting to tell them the news. When we had a free moment, I whispered in her ear that she was just being a chicken and needed to do it. Once she told them, the tension was gone. We had a dual celebration that weekend - her birthday and our engagement.

In 1995, my wife was over nine months pregnant. Our son was past his due date and we had induction scheduled the week after her birthday. Still, we had been spending a lot of time doing things to try to make it happen naturally. She ate a whole can of cling peaches to try to induce labor, on my sister-in-law's suggestion; the only thing that accomplished was to turn my wife off to canned peaches for years. We did lots of walking in the mall. As a last ditch effort, on her birthday, I took her to the Angus Barn - one of Raleigh NC's well-known eating establishments. We both ate until we were about to bust. Sadly, no contractions that night.

Yesterday falls into one of those memorable birthdays, but not in a good way. We took our dogs to the vet in the morning only to learn the bad news about our boykin spaniel Cocoa (who is about eighteen months old). She is pretty much blind in her right eye due to cataracs and her vision is going in her left eye too. Now, we're dog lovers - have been for all our married years. We've lost a number of our babies due to various health problems, but this is the first time we've had one so young have problems. So, we're going to have to take her to a canine eye doctor to see what can be done and how much it will cost. Then we'll have to decide what we're going to do.

So, we're going to try and have a do-over today for my wife's birthday. Hopefully it'll be a little more happier.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry about the poor dog. Who breed this poor sick dog and who were the sire and dame??

Bill

Martin Maenza said...

Bill, that's the sad part - she was supposed to be a pure-bred. This isn't the first problem we've had with Cocoa - she also has alergic reactions to her vaccinations. We alerted the breeder and told her about the problems. We suggested that perhaps they avoid breeding Cocoa's sister - the only other pup from the litter. That suggestion seems to have fallen on deaf ears. We don't ever plan to go back to them again.