Diary: Dispatches From My Ancient Dog’s Exploding Asshole

Dearest penpals,

My loves! How are you?

It feels like it’s been a long while since I wrote an ole fashioned blog post. And I’ve got other bigger, more official ones to write and share… but I feel like I can’t do it until I empty out my backpack here.

So. I’m back from two months of holiday.

Holidays: blissful, joyous, easy.

Re-entry after holidays: OOF.

Dot points incoming!

• Kids are back in school after the longest school holidays in history. School start was delayed by 2 weeks because of the Omicron wave, so we had the kids at home for 9 weeks all up. I LOVED having the kids at home and going away with them, and it’s been rufffffff getting back into the school routine again. You mean… we can’t just sleep in until 8am everyday?
• There’s been a lot of changes happening at my kids’ school which initially caused a lot of stress and concern, but it seems to be panning out now. Phew.
• My big kid starts high school next year, and we need to decide if she’ll stay where she is currently or if she needs a bigger school with larger subject offerings. Making decisions is fucking HARD. Especially when they are decisions that affect your kids! We’ve been having lotttttts of talks.
• Last week we thought we had reached End of Days with our beloved doggy, Angel. Remember 3 years ago when she had a large tumour removed via emergency surgery and it was close to being End of Days then too? Back then I remember thinking: We’re not ready. I just want more time with her still. And she’s now a stately 17 year old (!!!!) and last week she was pooping blood, and all of us were sobbing on the way to the vets. Turns out, we’re still not ready. I don’t know if we’ll ever be ready. Luckily, we don’t have to be. It’s not Her End of Days just yet.
  Instead, she explosive diarrhoead in the vet’s face, I was dry retching from the smell, Chris turned white and was ready to pass out because he thought she’d shat out an organ… and the vet chirpily announced that Angel just had an irritated bowel. She was easily fixed with medication, and the vet said she’s amazingly healthy and still has a lot of time left with us yet. Fuck, it was an ordeal. One that ended well, but I don’t know if I’ve emotionally recovered from it yet. Nor have I recovered from the smells or the visuals. HAHAHAHAHAHA OH GOD BARFFFFFFF.
• Yesterday I cried silently at Coffee Club for an hour because I was feeling overwhelmed and frozen. Then that night, quite chirpy after some chocolate, I realised my periods were incoming. Usually PMT doesn’t hit me but HOT DAMN DID IT EVER YESTERDAY! That, or I was just overwhelmed and frozen.
• My Witch Aunty says full moon this week is Storm or Snow Moon which can mean big feelings.
• I’ve been feeling all topsy turvy, trying to work out what the next steps are in our life. At the moment, I can’t see the future, just a stone step or two in front of us. Take one at a time, I remind myself. The rest will reveal itself in time. It’s hard not to grasp for certainty. Isn’t it always?
• We decided to stop long-term leasing our investment property for a wee while for various reasons. It was hard to make the decision – especially since the rental market is so tough right now and we really feel for tenants. That same housing market is why we had to do it – there’s a few reasons we might need another property and we don’t think it’s a good idea to buy again at current prices. We aren’t sure yet if our ageing parents will need it soon because of changing life circumstances with them, and we aren’t sure if we will need it ourselves to relocate closer to a high school for our big kid. We may also try AirBNBing it for the short term while we work this all out – we offered a longer lease for our previous tenant but she didn’t wish to take it. It’s all a bit up in the air, and we needed some time up our sleeves to work it out. My heartfelt apologies if this triggers anyone. I can understand why it would, and it was something we really had to think through to try and find the right answer. In the end, it was the right-est answer for right now, and that will probably change again in the future. Thank you for listening from Overthinking It HQ!
• I’ve already booked holiday accomodation for the next 2 school holiday blocks. I’m like one of those basic bitches posting photos of the beach with the caption TAKE ME BAAAAAAAACK.
• Photo above from this afternoon. Back to my Wednesday afternoon routine of tea & cake at River Read. This time, working on my goal workbooks for the year. Even after 12 years of doing these, I still make them for myself first and foremost because they help SO SO much. The ritual is so important to me.
• I just watched Encanto for the second time, and have been listening to the soundtrack nonstop for 3 weeks. HO HO HO.

I’m either waiting on a miracle… or waiting to know what miracle to create next!

Big love,

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