sniffle

12-23-99

Worked for freaking ever today. Seemed like that, anyway. The vet and his wife took off after lunch, leaving just me and the high school girl to check in all the new boarders for Christmas.

It meant that Jennifer and I spent a good amount of time just sitting around. Around 5, a zillion people showed up and we went crazy. Officially. I'd just begun to let out the dogs for their afternoon pee break when new dogs started pouring in faster than Jennifer could print their records and put them in cages. What a mess.

5:10 two women came in, some friends of the doctor,s I believe. They come in every now and then and talk forever. Today they came to drop off their two cats, and to talk forever. I stood and politely made kitty chit-chat, all the time thinking, I could have let out five dogs by now.... They finally left when it was almost 5:30, the time Jennifer and I should have been locking the doors and making sure all the dogs had their medicine and full water dishes. Instead we rushed the dogs out; she taking them out the front on leashes while I dragged others through the back door. A little before six we got out, leaving the lights on by accident, but we're the ones who have to come in tomorrow morning, anyway.

One of the chatty women asked me what my name was, and when I told her she said, "You're kidding! My daughter's name is Betsy! How old are you?" I told her "24," and she explained that her daughter is 34, was born on September 6th, 1965 in Puerto Rico, during Hurricane Betsy. Then she told me some long but very cool story about dozens of Puerto Rican babies born in 1965/66 who are named Betsy, and all about leaving Puerto Rico in line with a bunch of Betsy-mothers who were being forced to change their daughters' names to something in Spanish. So her daughter's name is, technically, Caridad Betsy. Obviously, she goes by Betsy.

So how cool was that? Would have been ever-so-much cooler were I not thinking, "My feet hurt, and I could have let out eight dogs by now...."

It started as an ache, attributable (is that a real word?) to my wisdom teeth. I pushed it to the back of my mind. This morning, the sore throat woke me at 5 and prevented me from sleeping until my alarm went off at 7. Then I had no trouble sleeping, between the first alarm and the second...third...seventh.... Finally, Adam Sandler's Chanukah song woke me around 10 to eight. (Isn't Chanukah over already??) It's a ten minute drive to work, and I was not dressed. No matter.

I grabbed a carton of grapefruit juice and a handful of vitamins on the way out the door. The initial grapefruit sip caught me off guard, as I'd forgotten that I'd chosen grapefruit instead of orange at my last trip to the store. But hey, I was suddenly very awake.

Throughout the day, I sipped my grapefruit juice, and finished it on my way home at 6:00. That's 64 ounces of grapefruit juice, in ten hours. Pretty crazy, huh?

The household received a surprise package today! Those of us who speak fluent English argued for about five minutes about whether we should open it, would there be wrapped things inside, or things we shouldn't see; would there be things to enjoy pre-Christmas or things to be seen on Christmas.... I won, and we opened it immediately. Good damn thing, too. Someone took pity on us for owning few tree ornaments and sent us a few more: a little Pooh bear and two shiny euphoniums. There were secret things for Fleck and Julie which went straight into their stockings. Thanks, hon.

Much as I'd like to stay and blather some more, I have some pierogi fillings to kill myself over this evening. I'm such a bad Ukrainian, waiting till the last minute.