This week so far...(ignorance is bliss)

I'm doing the pet-sitting thing again this week. This involves getting up at the ungodly hour of 7am, rolling out of bed, brewing some wicked strong coffee and driving 15 minutes down the road to hold the little dog over the toilet and squeeze the pee out of her. She's paralyzed so that's just what you've got to do. Most people appear as if their stomachs revolt a little when I detail the 'expressing' part. But to be honest, from the first time I had to do it, it hardly phased me. I am totally cut out for this pet-sitting thing!

Next I herd the bigger one out the back door, and lately I've just been picking him up and setting him out there as his eyesight is getting even worse (this is the blind one). He never makes it to the grass, so I go and fill up the watering can to wash away the urine, and while I'm at it I water the plants. This week I have been lucky because I have had no poop to clean up in the house, or puke (like in three different spots last week). It was never so had as when I actually stepped in the poop and didn't notice until I was on my way out the door to leave. Unfortunately, I had tracked it pretty much everywhere by then.

All in all though, it's a pretty good job. One of the ways I rationalize the long ass drive out and back three times a day is that I listen to books on tape. This week it is Harry Potter (the last book). I don't usually get to listen to it when Jacob is around because it's too scary for him. Hell, it's too scary for me. It was pretty scary last night when I was lying in bed - our new bed, by the way, it came yesterday - listening to CD #s 11 & 12. I laid awake for hours with an awful feeling from it. The awful feeling has been building though. Each week since we've been back in town, back in reality, something tragic has happened, which was deemed newsworthy enough to post on the home page of my e-mail. I don't watch the news. I don't let people tell me about the news. I don't like scary movies, or for people to even tell me about them. I am afraid of everything. And I was never like this before. I don't remember when this started, but I know it got infinitely and exponentially larger, this fear of mine, when Jacob was born. I also remember it taking hold of me during the time September 11th was playing out.

So I don't watch the news, but I do have an internet addiction and I just can't avoid that one big headline each day. It's always something awful and somehow it's always something that hits home. The first week we were back 200 people got stuck in the Gateway Arch (ok, this is not so terrible, but it was incredibly ironic that we had just been there 2 days prior). The next week was either the Bridge in Minnesota or the subway in NYC(?). I can't remember the order, I only remember the impact they have on my week and the rest of my life. I hate bridges. I have really bad anxiety about driving over them. It's only worsened now. I backed out of going to NYC with a friend in the spring because I realized I would be paralyzed with fear on the subway and simply couldn't deal with even thinking about going on a subway, let alone actually going on one. So then last week a subway floods or something. That is the extent of my knowledge about that, and please don't further inform me.

Two days ago my mom and Jamie asked me if I wanted to send Jacob along to a local fair with them the following day (which would have been yesterday). I thought about it for a minute and lied that our mattress was being delivered and Jacob would really want to be around to see that. They saw right through it. Jamie assured me that they would never let anything happen to him. "It's not you guys I don't trust, it's Jacob." I lied again. Although it is partially true that I believe Jacob might at any random time run in the middle of the road or choose to play a hiding game in the middle of a large crowd, what I was mostly thinking of was: What if there is a major world catastrophe? I want to be there with him, not away from him. The next morning, the day of the fair, I woke up and signed on my e-mail. Yup, two people died falling from an overturned ferris wheel car. I think that mothers have a sixth sense about their own children, about a being who was grown in their body; that they can protect their children better than anyone else in the world - and it's not a matter of wanting to protect them, or being careful enough.

In other news: Ginger got her stitches out today. Jacob hasn't peed the new bed yet, which is to say, one successful night. We've got a $70 waterproof cover on there now though. We're doing pretty good with our 'schedule'. Jacob fell asleep in the car last night, and it was the first time since last week when we visited the doctor about the Sleep that 30 minutes of screaming, crying and freaking out (by both me and Jacob) was not a part of our bedtime routine.