New Year’s Resolutions – The Silent Killer

This is a cautionary tale about why you should never, ever make a New Year’s resolution … Not unless you want to end up in the emergency room without your lost dog.

This story begins when GAR and I got back from our Christmas trip to Michigan to see my brand-stinkin’-new Niece who is, in a word (or two), freakin’ adorable! We returned late on a Sunday night, and I had to work the next morning (New Year’s Eve), leaving GAR alone to prepare our house for the New Year’s Eve party we were having Monday evening. Thankfully there wasn’t much for him to do – just tidy up a bit, do a quick sweep of the floors, make sure the guest bedroom was suitable for overnight visitors, and put a giant, gaping, bloody hole in his leg.

Except that last item wasn’t really on his “honey do” list. It was more of a surprise bonus add-on that he threw in there just for fun.

Actually his puncture wound was caused by the New Year’s resolution I made several years prior (but just started on a few weeks ago … okay, so I was a little behind) to finally get the house organized. Just before Christmas GAR ripped the old unstable shelving out of our guest bedroom closet and installed new, more useful shelves, which I promptly filled with organized and sorted items as I promised I would oh so many years ago when I first resolved to do so. It all looked so nice! But, in doing so, GAR simply left the old shelving sitting on the back pool deck … where it stayed for weeks … until I finally told him to move it to the garage “lest someone hurt themselves on it.”

Turns out the person who hurt himself on the shelves was my own beloved GAR (oh the irony!) when he ran into the side of it with his bare leg. The plastic coasted wire shelving went into his leg and then came cleanly back out it again, leaving a gaping hole and lots of gushing blood. (See people – New Year’s resolutions are dangerous!)

He promptly admitted himself into the emergency room and I left work to meet him there. Apparently he looked bad off enough to skip ahead of lots of other waiting injured people and we got in pretty quick (by hospital standards anyway). He got a nice tetanus shot but apparently you can’t stitch up puncture wounds due to infection risks. Instead they cleaned the bloody hole by taking oversized q-tips dipped in alcohol and shoving them into his open sore (*barf*). But, okay, a few bandages and some prescription drugs to go and we were back on track to New Year’s party time!

I made it home just in time to clean up the path of blood that GAR had left throughout the house and *ding dong* our friends The Painters (names have been changed to protect everyone involved) arrived from Tampa. They were spending the night at our house that evening with their daughters and 2 poodles. We laughed, ate, showed off battle scars and enjoyed festive merriment with The Painters and our other friends who gradually popped up for the get-together and a good time was had by all. And we didn’t make resolutions because they’re dangerous and totally cliché (and, well, also because we still haven’t finished getting the house organized from my prior resolution from years ago).

The next morning GAR and I dragged our tired butts out of our now-2013 bed and spent some quality time with The Painters before they headed back home. When it came time for The Painters to leave I realized that it had been awhile since I had seen our own dog, Mustache. He never lets anyone leave the house without barking his discontent at their departure and, yet, he was nowhere to be found. GAR and I looked for him under every bed and behind every door but he was simply missing. And that’s when we realized that he must have sauntered out the front door while The Painters were loading up their car to head home.

So I did what anyone would do – I ran into the street in my PJs screaming Mustache’s name frantically.

I dragged my other dog, Munchkin, behind me on his leash as I ran through my neighborhood screaming Mustache’s name at the top of my lungs. GAR hopped in his truck and went on his own search mission. Mustache had been “missing” for less than half an hour and I was already suffering a serious panic attack thinking I’d never see him again … imagining terrible fates where he got hit by a car … found another family who fed him nothing but the finest pupperoni and, therefore, he loved them much more than us… or, worse yet, ran off and joined the circus and became a travelling performer known as The Great Mustache-aldo. But, thankfully, it was much less dramatic than I imagined – Mustache heard me calling his name and simply followed my voice back to me (and then he looked at me with this innocent “What’s your problem lady, I’m right here” stare). Whew. Crisis adverted. I called off the search parties and brought that furball back home.

But it could have been much worse. And, once again, I blame New Year’s resolutions for the nearly devastating loss of dear Mustache. Why, you ask? Because many years ago – long before my ’09 resolution to get my life organized (which I know, I still haven’t completed) – back in the early 2000s, I made the only other New Year’s resolution I can ever remember making … and that was to get a dog door for my other pup, Munchkin, so that he would be able to roam freely, thereby allowing me more time to socialize without having to rush home to let him out. And it is because of this dog door that Mustache has learned to go in and out of the house as he pleases (into the safely fenced back yard) without fear of being locked out … even when the door he exits out of is the front door. So see – it’s all the resolution’s fault!!

And now the gym is all crowded with “resolutioners” who won’t be there come April – hogging all the machines. And poor GAR still has a week left on his winter break from being a professor (seriously, the amount of free time he has just kills me) and I’m sure he’s just going to use that gimp leg of his as an excuse not to finish the organizational work on the other closets. Geesh, why did I even make a resolution in the first place?

So next year, can we all just resolve to never make any more resolutions? Or, if you insist on trying to better yourself, please decide to do it at some other time in the year … like the summer maybe. It’s probably just safer that way.