Clean Carpet, Clean Slate

Even as I wrote the words I could hear my mother admonishing me: don't give it a kenahora. Literally translated (and correctly spelled, if there is such a thing in Yiddish), it's something about keeping the evil eye away.

Sometimes mom would anglicize it for me, her way of dumbing it down: don't give it a canary. No matter how you say it, the lesson has stuck with me. If you boast a good thing, assert it as an absolute truth, you will jinx it. Rarely have I dared to test the correlation; the last thing I need is a gratuitous wink from an evil eye. Alas, if I could only turn back time and press the delete button, unsay what I said about my dog never getting lost or hit by a car when he squeezes himself through an escape hatch in the fence. True, he is not lost and he did not get hit by a car, but the evil eye does not pay all that much attention to tiny details. The evil eye winked, and whatever unkosher snack had lured Manny's head through the small gap was being expelled, once every hour, in a hideous trail through the floors of my house.

So while the guests at my impromptu "say sayonara to my son before he heads back to Japan" gathering enjoyed pizza and watched a not-so-enjoyable football game, I kept a watchful (and if I do say so myself, benevolent) eye on Manny as each new hour approached, hoping to confine his projectile vomiting to small and easy to clean spaces. I was impressive at first. I folded up the edge of a brand new rug seconds before he puked where the rug would have been; I got him off the couch and over to the wood floor just in time for episode number four. As the hour got later, though, my reflexes slowed. By then, to make matters worse, it was just insidious yellow bile, which is particularly insidious when it comes out in random spurts on beige carpet.

At eleven twenty, exactly twenty minutes after the offices of our new vet five minutes away closed, I decided to check the Internet for some insight into what might be ailing Manny. (I had not yet made the connection between the burrowing under the fence and possible food poisoning, so I was going with the flu.) A quick Google search led me to a headline about a deadly dog flu virus that had already killed six dogs in Michigan. Michigan is only a centimeter away from Highland Park, Illinois on the map. I panicked.

The good news about driving to the vet at midnight was I wouldn't have to struggle to get up at two thirty to drive my son to the airport. I cancelled the alarm I had set. After a bit of physical exertion (I had to carry Manny downstairs while my daughter managed to get the queen size mattress off the top of the car, but that's a story for another time), Manny and I were on the road. As nice as they are at the veterinary hospital, I have not been there since I put down my other dog two and a half years ago, unless you count the brief visit to pick up his ashes. As if that weren't enough to stir up all sorts of bad feelings, for the entire time I spent waiting in a cubicle for them to examine Manny I had to listen to two different dog owners moan and cry non-stop while they went through the heart wrenching process of losing their best friend. I clapped my hands over my ears but drywall is thin, even in a fancy pet hospital.

Nobody seemed to take me seriously about the Michigan dog flu (do they not teach geography in veterinary school?) but everybody agreed that Manny was definitely not feeling so great. I think that portion of the visit cost about three hundred dollars. Tempting as it was, I passed on their offer to keep Manny there so they could monitor him and hook him up to an IV, choosing the far cheaper option of taking him home and hoping the anti-nausea meds would take effect.

We arrived home in plenty of time for me to lift Manny out of the car and drop him -- rather unceremoniously -- on the couch so I could get ready to drive my son to the airport. The good news is I was so exhausted I forgot how miserable I was that my son was leaving and he didn't have to deal with my sniffling. The bad news is I have gotten no sleep and there is now a large mattress taking up a lot of space in my little garage and there are vomit stains all over my carpet. But the other good news is I met a really nice eighty-nine year old man at the Home Depot (my new Bloomingdale's) who seemed to know a lot about stain removal and introduced me to a miracle product that will not only erase circles of vomit from my carpet but also clean grease off pots and get rid of brown marks in coffee cups and completely dissolve permanent marker stains. He even demonstrated the marker thing, right there in Aisle 2. I am not being glib. His advice and his kindness made my day, and I am betting he felt pretty good about being able to help. Win win.

Manny is still very lethargic but I am too exhausted to worry, yet. I have constructed a makeshift blockade with patio chairs in the yard to keep him away from whatever enticing little carcass still lies on the other side of the fence, and I have vowed to never again give myself a kenahora. No more canaries; this evil eye crap is definitely for the birds.

At least I can enter this little adventure in the 2013 column, and move into 2014 tomorrow night with an unstained slate.

A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR TO ALL!