My son said that maybe taking care of the dog all night would be sweet for me — remind me of taking care of my kids when they were babies.

I said, “Yea. But I was not 48 then…”

To his credit he called after me, “You’re young!”

My daughter who was team sleep on the couch with mom and dog all night and help with medicine and waking up to take him out asked, “Is this what it’s like to have a newborn?”

I said, “Well… Having a newborn is harder.”

From my corner of the couch, a different couch from the one I slept on, I see Finn, snuggled up against me with his cone embarrassing him and pissing him off.

My couch is covered with blankets and pee pads, and I’ve been sitting here for maybe 100 years writing sub plans for tomorrow morning.

That’s the thing about teaching, isn’t it? I’m so tired from being up for a million hours, my cough is back, and I’m about to do it again tonight… so I need to take the morning time. But, doing that meant I had to spend hours not resting, but writing plans (In between following the schedule for all the pills and liquids and meals…)

From my corner of the couch I hear the soft music we are playing for this healing puppy. Google told us to make his environment as cave like as possible. We asked Google after a scary elevated respiratory rate situation. At first we put on cave sounds, but those were just weird. I don’t know if Finn appreciated the hollow dripping noises. I think whatever soft jazzy instrumental playlist someone put on now is, that’s the best bet. I hope.

From my corner of the couch I feel Finn’s breathing, and it seems regular now. We almost rushed him back to the vet, and I’m hoping we don’t have to do that. They said, “Follow your instincts. You know your dog best,” when I called earlier to say his breathing was much faster than what they said meant to call.

And yea, I do know him. But thankfully I’ve never known him after 5 days in the hospital. I’ve never known him on these medications I have to give him every 3 hours, every 8 hours, every 12 hours, every 24 hours, 1 hour before eating, 2 hours before eating, 2 hours after eating, 1 hour after eating. I’ve never known him after he ate almost 300 times the amount of medication he’s supposed to have.

And this is shocking, I know, but I’m not actually a trained vet. So, I guess what I’m saying is, this is a lot.

But at least I have muscle memory for sleep deprivation and taking care of babies. Now those babies are so old, that I actually have someone to help me with all the tasks!

From my corner of the couch, I’m tired. I’m grateful of course, for so many things – but also… I guess I just wanted to complain.