Road Rash...

Don't let this smiling face deceive you.

I think Buster is trying to kill me.  Just kidding...kind of.  Buster has had a lot of energy lately, and Finchy hasn't wanted to play with him (we are pretty sure that Finchy has intestinal cancer, but Ryan and I don't want to do the ultrasound to confirm it and he isn't in any pain that we can tell right now).  So, I have attempted to rollerblade with him. 

Chili Dawg and I rollerbladed together a lot, before his cancer struck.  He knew how to pace himself and once we got going, he just knew how to do it.  It was like he was "born" to skate with me.  Finchy and I NEVER skated together- Ryan has to skate with Finchy.  Finchy has no idea how to pace himself and as soon as Ryan gets the leash on his harness, Finchy takes off like some sort of demon is chasing him.  And Finchy is fast.  Super fast.  Even now, at 10 years old, he is still a ridiculously fast dog.  For half of the trip, Ryan would be pulled at break neck speeds around our subdivision, and then Finchy would "wilt" and Ryan would practically have to walk back home.

But back to my Buster story.  The first time we tried, Buster freaked out at the end of the driveway and just stopped.  I fell and rolled.  I reached for Buster, to pet him and let him know that it was okay, and he cowered like he was afraid I was going to beat him (confirming our suspicion that he was abused).  I decided to go slowly with him and we found our rhythym.  The second time, we were going fast.  He remembered what we were doing, and there was no freaking out at all by him.  I was thinking to myself, "Wow, this is just like when I skated with Chili Dawg..." until all of a sudden, Buster stopped in the middle of the road and I flipped over him and went down (it was on Thanksgiving, so there was no traffic on the road or anyone outside).  I look down and my hand is all bloody, my elbow is bleeding through my shirt and I hurt a lot.  Of course we were far from home and I didn't bring a phone with me.  So, I sort of hobbled/skated home, with Buster trotting next to me nuzzling my hand with his head.  When we got home, I showed Ryan my wounds and looked down and saw a bloody footprint on the tile.  We realized that Buster was also bleeding, but he had never yelped or limped to show me that he was also hurt.  We think that the reason he stopped in the street was because he stepped on something sharp, cutting his pad.  When a dog cuts their pad, it takes a while for it to stop bleeding.  Our dog styptic didn't work, so we took turns sitting on the floor with him, keeping pressure on his pad.  Then, I cleaned myself up.  I don't know if we will try skating together again.  I know this time wasn't Buster's fault, but I was sore for several days after this fall, not to mentioned bruised and scabby (yeah, that means covered in scabs).

Danny...

Friday night, I logged into facebook, and again saw the words that I have come to loathe since becoming a teacher: "RIP Danny".  I have had several Danny's, but there is one in particular who was extremely special to me.  My heart sank as I made my way to his facebook page and saw post after post from his friends about him being gone.  I composed myself and then left, because I had a thing to go to and unfortunately had to break the news to my co-teacher later in the evening.  She was just as heartbroken as I was.

Let me tell you a little bit about this kid.  I had Danny as a sophomore in Chemistry.  The first day of school he had that shaggy hair style that has been popular, bright blue eyes, a smile that lit up the room, and he had this attitude where he didn't care what other kids thought about him.  My first thought was, "here's a kid that I'm going to have to win over", but to be honest, it wasn't hard at all.  While other teachers had trouble with Danny, I had no problems with him.  He was polite and respectful to me.  When other students were disrespectful towards me, he quickly stood up in my defense. 

Danny didn't always make the right choices.  The day I had to write him up in class was one of the hardest things I had to do, but he and another boy almost came to blows and I can't have that happening in my classroom.  Another area Danny struggled with, was drugs.  His junior year (when he met my co-teacher, Lisa, and she grew to have the same bond with him that I did), he would share with us his struggle to stay away from drugs, but how they always called him back.

Danny's senior year, he came to visit us as soon as he got out of rehab.  Instead of taking the hour long lunch privilege he received as a senior, he chose to come to our classroom and sit and work on his homework.  He would tell us about how much he loved his family and his plans to one day become a police officer.  He really wanted to get clean and stay clean.  He spoke to us about how he could hear heroin calling to him and how it was a struggle to resist answering the call, but he was resisting it.  Right before Christmas, he came to see us and told us he had screwed up and failed his mandatory drug test.  After Christmas he would be returning to rehab.  I gave him a hug and told him I knew he could do it.  He got out of rehab, and I started looking for him in the hallways, because he ALWAYS visited us.  I ended up messaging him on facebook and found out that he wouldn't be coming back to South, BUT he would be there for graduation.  On the seniors' last day, we had an all-school assembly.  I was stationed on the second row and I searched and searched the crowd of seniors until I found him.  We made eye contact and I waved and smiled at him.  He mouthed "I'm coming to see you after" to me, but they wouldn't let any seniors into the building after graduation practice.  That was the last time I saw Danny.

I prayed for Danny every day of his senior year of high school.  I prayed for him that he would beat his drug demons and get his life straightened out.  I know Danny was getting his life straightened out.  I have a few regrets.  1) I stopped praying for Danny after he graduated-I feel so guilty about that.  What if I had kept praying?  Would things have turned out differently?  2)  I told him his sophomore year how special he was, but I never told him again.  3) I wish we had had one last conversation before he was gone, even if it had just been on facebook.

Tomorrow is Danny's wake, & I am dreading it.  Teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but Danny was definitely one of mine. Lisa and I will go say goodbye to him together and make sure his family knows how special he was to two teachers at South.  Today, Danny's girlfriend came into our classroom to make sure we knew when Danny's wake was and to ask us to go to it because we were his favorite teachers.  At that moment, I lost it in front of my third period class.  Why did I stop praying for him?

Here are 2 pictures of Danny that I got off of his facebook account.  One is from graduation, and the other one shows his smile; it is how I remember him the best.

Rest In Peace, Danny.  You will be missed.

Brain Injury...

On this day, 10 years ago, I had my traumatic brain injury.  I can't tell you how or what happened, but I can tell you that it changed me.  I had to learn how to adapt, interact, get along in this world all over again.  I'm not over-exaggerating.  I am being completely serious.  For the longest time after my head injury, I couldn't go into big stores, like Meijers, because I would become so sensory overloaded I would literally freak out, kind of like the Hulk.  No joke.  Ask Ryan.  For a good 6 months, I had to learn to contain the rage monster that lurked right below the surface.  Anything could set me off, it was scary.  Ryan bought me a punching bag and mounted it in the basement.  I had lots of bruised and bloody knuckles for a while.  I went through a good 6 months of depression, and there wasn't a magical pill that could pull me out of it.  I had all sorts of tests done when it happened, and those just made me angrier and angrier, because they made me feel stupid.  The end result was that I had lost my short term memory.  That was a huge blow to me, because one of the things I used to pride myself on was my memory, and now part of that was gone.  A few days before my brain injury, I was in one of my close friends' wedding.  I have no recollection of that day.  I see myself in pictures of that day, but I don't remember it at all.  I honestly don't remember much about my injury until about 3 weeks after it. 

Looking back, I have to say, I have come a long way.  I used to have write my lessons out word for word, so that I wouldn't forget what I was going to say.  Now, I only have to do that if it is a brand new topic.  To help me Ryan bought me this really cool pen that records what I write so I can download my notes to the computer and print them out.  I still have trouble when I go into big stores- malls really agitate me, and you won't catch me near one even close to the holidays.  I don't like large group gatherings, so when I actually sign up and go to them, I always try to arrive late so I can slide into the back and go unnoticed.  I can't look at a map and read it anymore, I now have to do what Joey on "Friends" did and "climb into it", which irritates me.  I still say that dogs are the best therapy, because it was the Chili Dawg who snapped me out of my depression and rage cycle.  The rage issues pop up from time to time, but I have a good handle on it now.  I don't really have a filter anymore, so learning not to say everything that popped into my head was a hard lesson, but I learned it.

I used to be angry about having a brain injury.  I have moved past that.  I am not saying that I am thankful for it, but it has definitely helped shape who I am today.

Old...

Well, today I came to the realization that I am getting old.  How did I come to that realization, you might ask?  It's a short story, and may not be that interesting.  One of my friends at school recently moved up to the open Dean position (it had been vacated right at the beginning of the school year).  This left his science classes without a science teacher three weeks into the school year.  And so, the search began to find a suitable replacement.  My friend Sandy and I suggested a young man who had student taught in the district last year, and had subbed for me last year. 

Today, Sandy and I met with this young man after school to fill him in on what he would be teaching next week in Anatomy when he took over.  How does this relate to making me feel old?  Because, this young man, was my student my second year of teaching!  I am getting old!  I am very proud of him for pursuing a career as a science teacher, but still, I'm getting old!  It is hard to wrap my mind around the fact that kids I taught way back in the day are now grown ups.  A funny thing though, he's not sure what to call me now that we are co-workers, ha ha.  I told him that I rarely am called by my first name by anyone in the building (it's always been that way & I don't really remember why), so he can just refer to me as "Mahlberg" just like all the other teachers do.

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs...

In our house, we are all about animal rescue.  We have never paid a breeder for one of our dogs.  You may be asking, "how is it that you have a Boxer and a Golden Retriever?"  We got the Chili Dawg, our first Golden (and my heart dog), for free.  One of Ryan's co-workers had a friend who was getting a divorce, and their 2 year old was biting their Golden and they didn't want the dog anymore.  They gave us a dog that they paid almost one thousand dollars (they gave us his papers) for free.  We got Finchy, our Boxer, the same way, only it was a co-worker of mine who had a friend who didn't want their $800 dog anymore and gave him to us for free.

After being owned by both a Golden and a Boxer (notice I didn't say it the other way around), I have to say that there are no other dog breeds that I would rather be owned by.  Yes, I know that mutts are great too (I grew up with an awesome shepherd mix, and my parents and sister have great mixed breed dogs).  However, I will gladly go to a Boxer rescue or a Golden Retriever rescue to get our family another dog when the time arises again.

This year we rescued Buster, a 5 year old overweight Golden Retriever.  I am proud to say that he has lost 15 pounds (of course he isn't happy to be dieting, but really, who likes to diet?).  He has proven to be a good companion for Finchy, who has aged quite a bit since Chili Dawg's cancer (he will be 10 on Halloween).  Buster is a special Golden.  We have had him since March, and he still has not figured out the screen door to the patio.  Every single day he runs into it (seriously- doors are hard for him).  If he could talk, I think he would sound like Doug from the movie Up.  Here's a clip, in case you haven't seen the movie- it is Buster to a "T". 

What he lacks in brains, he makes up for with his heart.  He has the heart of a Golden for sure.  He can sense when I have had a bad day, and he climbs into bed with me and lets me pet him until I fall asleep.  Chili Dawg was able to do that too.

There are people out there that think I'm a "crazy dog person" and I'm okay with that.  I think that dogs are one of the nicest creatures that God created, and I have been blessed to have Him teach me a few lessons through them.  Have you thanked God for your dog today?

One Year Ago...

One year ago, today, I cradled your head in my lap.

Tears rolled down my face.

I let my nose breathe in your scent one final time.

I looked at Ryan.

Tears rolled down his face too.

I looked at the vet.

"I can give you some more time," she said.

"We just want his pain to be over," I cried.

She pushed the plunger.

His breathing slowed.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered over and over into his ear, as I buried my face into his fur.

His breathing stopped. 

He was gone.

I laid next to his body until it grew cold.

Then I slipped off his collar, and held it so tightly.

Ryan helped me off the floor, and together we exited the office, without my special friend.

God, I thank you for giving me Chili Dawg.

 

 

My Chili Dawg video.

 

 

Right Through The Heart...

Being a working mom sucks.  Being a teacher and a working mom has its perks.  Off in the summers, spring break, Christmas break, and now that I am about to have a Kindergartner & a Preschooler (starting tomorrow- sob!) days off when my kids have off.  I know, Juli did preschool in May, and yes, it was traumatic for me.  She took the bus like a big girl and she cried the first day, which broke my heart, especially since I couldn't be there to put her on the bus.  I still watch the video and tear up.  After that day, Juli told everyone, "I rode bus! No kai no more!" Which if you don't understand Juli means, "I rode the bus, I don't cry anymore."

Last night, I was in Noah's room putting him to bed.  "Momma, I don't ever want to be a grown up.  I don't ever want to be apart from you."  Well, who wouldn't melt right there?  I gave him a hug and told him it was going to be a long time before he was a grown up.  "Momma, can you please take me to Kindergarten for my first day?"  We had been preparing Noah for a week that Ryan would be the one taking him to Kindergarten, because since I teach in the same district, it is also my first day of school and I can't miss it (I so wish he started Kindergarten during my plan period or my lunch period).  "No sweetie.  Momma is teaching when it's time for you to go to school, but Daddy is going to work from home and is taking you to school.  But I will be there to pick you up."  "But I don't want Daddy.  I want you."  And then he began to cry.  I pulled him into my lap and walked to the couch.  I held my little boy who used to fit in my lap, but is now all arms and legs (when did that happen?), and I also began to cry.

Being a working mom sucks.

We cried together for a good 10 minutes, and then Ryan and I got him calmed down.  I laid with him in his bed until he was mostly asleep and then left the room.  I don't know how many more of those times I will get before he doesn't want me to snuggle him.  It went so fast.  He was just a baby yesterday and and tomorrow he starts Kindergarten!  She is still a baby to me, and tomorrow she is getting back on the bus!  Time needs to slow down.