We moved the straps up and went on our way. It wasn't until later that
I realized that Val may actually be too tall for the slot height she now
needs. Not all slots are reinforced for rear-facing. On this seat, she
needs the slots that are only made to forward-face.

Translation: we finally have no choice but to flip her seat around. But
only in Susan's car. In our car, she has different seats that don't
have this particular problem.

Nonetheless, I feel ill at the thought of turning her around when she
weighs 6 lbs below the weight limit.

I understand that part of my concern over car safety stems in part from
losing my dear friend Jos 20 years ago next week. She's not alive today
because she did not wear her seatbelt. It was an awful lesson to learn
when I was so young but it's stayed with me, kept me and my passengers
safe over the years. Now that I have such a precious little passenger,
well, I do everything I can to keep her safe.

Even if that means she rides forward facing in her Auntie's car. Sigh.

To celebrate the Big Day, I shelled out for some new duds. Val went
with me and I have to say she did really well with the whole thing. She
played in the mirrors and kept saying things about 'Mary.' Took me a
while to figure out that she meant 'married.'

I don't know how I'd imagine picking out my wedding duds, but it
probably didn't involve taking real stock of my my post-partum figure or
giving time-outs in the dressing room. I suppose I could shell out for
a fancy dress (and yes, hell yes, I would get the whitest of white
dresses no matter who snickered at the notion of me presenting myself as
a virgin) but I'm just too cheap.

My mom's wedding dress was on sale and though she's saved it all these
years, she waves it off and says oh, it's nothing much. I got it on
sale. If that's how it would be, if it would just hang, hermetically
sealed until I die and Val is stuck cleaning out my house. No doubt
she'd give it away then so it made more sense to get a number of
nice-looking pieces that I can keep using afterwards.

I guess you could re-use a white wedding dress too but it might look a
little silly.

We're not registered, what would be the point? We haven't planned a
party. We're just eloping in our own town. Again, I don't know what
I'd imagined but it was probably more than this. The minute I figured I
was into the ladies, any wedding dreams went away, tucked into a little
corner of my heart that's so far away I can't find it right now.

About halfway to the vet's I had this fleeting thought, a stupid
whimsical thought, 'let's get a puppy!'

Then it was gone. The truth is, we're just better with older dogs, the
grey haired ones who have a little grey around the muzzle, who are
already housebroken and who want nothing more than a quiet place to
sleep and 2 square meals a day.

I'd be leaving something out if I didn't tell you that the bassets are
really not that well behaved. I blame this on our apparent inability to
train puppies. Even thought they're almost 8 now they still get into
shit and still counter surf every damn day. You can't say we didn't
try, but seriously, we are totally Old Dog People.

Someday, a day far far in the future, we'll go to the pound and find
ourselves another sweet old dog to love. But for now, I'm sort of
enjoying having what some would call a normal number of dogs.

I don't yet think about Zeus as healthy, right now I remember him as he
was just last week - too sick to get up, too tired to eat. I carried
him outside to pee, the day before he died he couldn't even stand up to
do it. He peed all over my leg that day. I guess that's when I knew
his borrowed time was just about up.

I look forward to the day where I remember mostly his hippity hopping
and that one bark of his. For now, we're waiting to pick up his ashed
and put them on top of Gus' where they belong.

Rest in peace sweet boy. You're definitely missed around here.

But I had work to do (go figure, I ran into a clearcase issue I'd never
faced before, one that even had the cc support guy going 'oh, I'll need
to call you back) so I drove steadily past the preschool and went home
to finish up my work.

Speaking of work, the hell that was the end of last year and the
beginning of this year manifested itself in a really crappy first half
review. Sigh. Even though things are going better, the hell carried
over as half of my review so I'm now both newly motivated to kick ass at
work (this, of course, is a good thing) and stressed as hell about never
fucking up, not even a little.

It's not a great place to be. I'm doing my best to get past this place
but, sigh.

Anyhoo, enough about That Which Concerns Me The Most right now and back
to the day in preschool. I took a break from work around 4 and went to
get Val. I figured she could play at home while I finished up my work.

When I got there, the kids had all just had their snacks and were lining
up to play a game on carpet mats. Preschool apparently gets many many
miles out of a stack of carpet squares. Today's game was that they
played music while the kids marched on the mats. When the music
stopped, they were to sit back down. They were all set to start, Val
was sitting on her mat when she saw me.

Her face lit up, she waved and started to come over but I realized that
she wanted to play the game. So I stood at the edge of the room and
watched her march around, so proud of herself, showing me her school.
Yes, I'm tearing up as I write this, so proud of my big girl and her
very own life at school.

I stayed about a half hour, watching the mat game, then watching Val do
more than her share of mat cleanup. They danced (to a God CD, of
course) after that, again with Val following directions from the
teachers, beaming at me all the while. When it was time to go outside,
she decided it was time to go home at last.

She's had a great week, bonding with the other kids more and coming home
happy every day. And today, watching my confident little girl march
around on the carpet mats, I was just so proud.

During the meeting I realize I have a project to do sooner than I'd
thought so I start working on that, helping Andrea get Val off to school
while I'm at it. I figure I'll work from home till lunchtime, then go
in.

Until 10:45, when I get a reminder about another, really important to me
meeting that's at 11. Fuck, fuck fuck.

I leapt into the shower and made into work only 5 minutes late for the
meeting. Not bad but I think my heart is still racing from all the
excitement.

But then again, he hadn't really hippity hopped in a long time.

Yesterday he ate a cheeseburger from McD's but this morning, he
refused. Tonight brought the same story, the refusal. I looked at him
and said Z, you couldn't tell me any louder that you were ready.

Val and I went up with him. On the way up I explained to Val what was
going to happen, how Z wouldn't be coming home with us, how we couldn't
help him any more except for this one way.

When we walked in, I carried him while she walked beside me. A nice
woman in the waiting room heard me tell the receptionists that I had
Zeus here, she said oh, Zeus isn't looking too good. Right, I thought
but what I said was 'we're here to euthanize him.'

I waited only a minute then they led us back through the ICU where Z was
saved a few years ago into a quiet room where I guess, this sort of
thing goes on. There were pamphlets for the pet cemetary and even cards
from a psychotherapist. And kleenex, boxes and boxes of it.

The doctor came in shortly after I'd answered Val's 8000 questions about
what we were doing there. She was the one who'd saved him from the
granola, she'd become his doc after that. One look at him and she told
me there's no way she'd try to talk me out of it, that it's our duty
when we take these animals into our lives to help them go when there's
nothing left to do.

She explained to Val that they'd done all they could to try and make him
feel better but that sometimes this is the last thing you can do. When
they injected the drug, it was over before all the medicine was in. He
was gone.

I couldn't stay afterwards. With Ellie, with Al, with Gus, we lingered
but with Z, I just couldn't. I think I'd said all my goodbyes over the
last month. The vet helped me cover him and Val and I left through the
side door.

Of course Val had to go potty while we were having a cuddle in the
parking lot so we had to come back in, go past the people we'd seen on
the way in, only this time we had no dog with us. Finally, we headed
home, Zeus' collar in my hand.

It's on top of Gus' ashes now. We'll put Zeus' up there too when we
pick them up.

Farewell sweet boy. Thanks for almost 8 years of your one bark, but 100
snores, of your silly half-mast tail, your resistance to all things,
your place in this family. That place is empty now but there will
always be a place for you in our hearts.

I can only hope that you're at peace now, trotting around with Gus while
Alice refuses to acknowledge the lot of you.