By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist, novelist, and mom of 3
Only three days after clocks sprang forward, I watched snow fall outside our living room window. It was March 15th. Four days before the official beginning of spring.
The unexpected blast of winter surprised our neighborhood plants and shrubs, which had been lured into bloom by weeks of warm weather. It dumbfounded the dogwoods, flabbergasted the forsythia, and rattled the redbuds. Wind chills dipped to nine degrees after the snow, but temps will hit nearly 90 by the weekend. Nine to ninety in less than a week.
Unusual? Yes. But by the time the snow blew in, it didn’t even surprise me. Because three days earlier, I’d had the weirdest, wildest Wednesday I’ve ever experienced — proof it’s not just weather that can turn on a dime.
Before the sun came up that Wednesday, we got a call from our daughter Kate, who sounded worried and exhausted. Her service dog, a 90-pound Goldendoodle named Mac, had been up for hours, pacing around their college apartment, licking the carpet, and occasionally trying to puke. Kate was due to take a midterm exam later that day and was desperate for help and sleep.
Because we live only a half-hour away, we raced over to pick up the dog. Miraculously, our veterinarian worked him into her busy schedule only two hours later. Tom and I tag-teamed the dog crisis because I was already booked to drive my 81-year-old mom to a medical procedure that same morning. So while the pukey pup got X-rays and blood tests, I left Tom at the vet, insisting he call me with news.
Meanwhile, I picked up Mom and began a 20-minute drive to the medical clinic. While en route, Tom called to say that the dog’s X-rays showed an obstruction in his stomach that appeared to be a ball of metal wire. They’d have to induce vomiting to see if they could get it up and avoid surgery. Suddenly, I felt nauseous, too.
But by then, we’d arrived at the medical clinic and were put into a procedure room. The doctor injected numbing medication into Mom’s scalp so they could remove a troublesome cyst. Someone accidentally bumped into a tray of medical instruments, and one pair of scissors fell to the floor. The doctor said she’d be back in a moment with a fresh pair.
But when she returned, she stood there empty-handed and bewildered. She said it had never happened before, but there were zero pairs of sterile scissors in this large, multi-level clinic. They were all in an off-site autoclave, which is a fancy name for a large pressure cooker designed to sterilize medical equipment.
The only sterile pair had just fallen to the floor, and apparently, the 3-second rule does not apply in medical settings. It would take 24 hours to receive sterilized scissors, so we’d have to reschedule. It was like sitting down at a pizza joint and finding out they were out of dough.
During our drive home, I got a call from Tom, who said the dog had successfully puked up the ball of wire. The vet said the wire looked like the kind used in the leaves of a fake plant. He’d need a few days for his inflamed stomach to heal, but, thankfully, we’d dodged a risky surgery. We thought our morning was calming down.
Minutes later, half a mile from our exit off the interstate, Mom and I spotted something high in the air a few car lengths in front of us. At first glance, I mistook it for a piece of a black plastic bag. But in the next second, that unidentified object crashed into our windshield at 70 miles per hour directly in front of Mom’s face. It struck us with the force of a brick and shattered the glass, sending spiderweb cracks streaking across the windshield. I took the next exit as we tried to form coherent words. When we saw a large dump truck pull onto the shoulder of our exit ramp, we knew whatever hit us had probably flown out of that truck’s bed.
After a dog crisis, a medical mishap, and then a close-call on the interstate — all before 11am — we decided the universe was telling us to go home and stay there. So that’s what we did. We nursed a dog back to health and thanked God our weird, wild Wednesday had a safe ending.
Life can be bizarre, my friends. Expect delays, buckle up, and don’t eat metal. The end.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.
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