On Sacrifices

I've been wondering if anyone else has ever been required to commit animal sacrifice while pregnant in this day and age.

I was almost exactly three months pregnant with my daughter when my cat of a lifetime's kidneys shut down. After watching him for a couple of hours I was duty bound to have him put down. My husband was out of town on business, and he was probably on a plane coming home when the needle was inserted. I got home, drank a few shots of Irish Whiskey, and smoked about a thousand cigarettes. Yes. While pregnant.

That cat had been my soul mate.

The next day I came down with the flu. I would assume that my debauchery of grief lowered my immune system and my white cells went on strike.

When I was six months pregnant with my son my very first dog that I had owned alone fell apart at the seams. Fairly elderly, and never very nice, she decided that my daughter was a threat even when she was walking three feet away, and she started snapping at her. Her eyes were shot, she was having trouble walking, and she had dropped a ton of weight for her size.

On this occasion we were so poor that I couldn't even afford to get her remains after she was cremated. I had to have her "group" cremated and trust the oddly sunny brochure that informed me that her ashes would be scattered on a farm in the area along with those of every other pet that couldn't come home.

This time I did not get hammered. And I didn't smoke either.

I seem to have sacrificed some friendships to parenthood as well. One I recovered. The others I think are gone for good. I miss a couple of those people, but the others couldn't make me care less. The new friends I've made don't seem to stick either. At least the ones in real life don't. Some folks I've met on the internet have become like family. 2009 is a strange world.

There's nothing that can be done about the sacrifice of sleep and money. It is what it is. Circumstances might change at some point, but for now we just scrape by as well as we can, and I consider victory feeding three of us on $197 for a month and getting three hours of sleep in a row.

I'm a little too prone to believing in portents. It might not be the blue bird of happiness, but at the very least the bluejay of chaos has arrived in the neighborhood these past 3 days.

I haven't seen a jay in at least ten years.