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A Lesson In Not Overthinking It

This lesson in not overthinking it is compliments of a baby in a vet's office.

I spent most of yesterday morning sitting in the vet's waiting room. Maddy has been having more trouble with her leg lately, and it might be something worse than just arthritis or an injury. We were in there for a series of tests.

I'm hesitant to even mention that in a blog because if it's something bad, I don't think I'll want anyone asking me about it. I might want to keep it to myself. But I knew I couldn't tell you about the morning at the vet's office without you wondering what we were doing at the vet. Because you care about Maddy. And I love that you do. So there it is. 

This morning the waiting room was like waiting rooms always are. Sick and nervous.

Everyone asks everyone why they're there, half because we want to talk about our own problems, and half because we secretly hope that someone else's problem is worse than ours and so we are not the person most likely to have to go cry in the car after leaving the vet's office.

Rodney was a Pomeranian who wouldn't eat.

Lexie was a cat who wouldn't stop peeing on things.

Leo and Lola were matching 17-year-old Siamese cats in matching cat carriers with matching severe respiratory infections. When Leo and Lola's owner told us how old they were, I think everyone in the waiting room had the same thought - that this infection could be the The Thing That Does It. And then we felt guilty for thinking that.

Buster the puppy just needed his baby vaccinations. We all envied him.

Some of the other pets met and mingled but Maddy chose to wedge herself under my chair and press her face into the crook of my bent knee.

The waiting office is "decorated" with things like a plastic cross-section of a dog heart fatally infested with heartworm. And a laminated chart of the percentage chances your animal has of dying violently if you let it roam outdoors unsupervised. And the creepiest thing is the blow-up parasites hanging from the ceiling, oversized to make them seem more like monsters. A flea with big red eyes, a fat tick,  and a tapeworm with a face hanging over us all like a nightmare mobile.

Then a dog made a horrible shrieking noise from a back room... so loud that the receptionist felt compelled to tell us all that the dog was just a very noisy kind of dog and he was only in for a teeth-cleaning.

I could feel Maddy's eyes blinking fast against the back of my knee.

The door chimed and into the waiting room walked man leading a very old terrier and carrying a 10-month-old-ish baby.  The baby waved hello to each of our pets individually, even Maddy under my chair.

The man was standing up, holding the baby, telling us about the why his terrier was at the vet's office this morning (a persistent skin condition) and he didn't notice how close he was standing to the blow-up tapeworm...  until the baby punched it. I mean, he made a little baby fist and really punched it. Right in its tapeworm face.

Everyone in the waiting room loved it. We loved it a little too much, for it just being something cute a baby did.

It felt really good to see someone punch the tapeworm.

Things were scary enough without having to have a huge tapeworm with a face looking down on us all.

The receptionist said the baby could take home the inflatable tapeworm if he wanted to. And he did.

-Brigitte