vacation day FAIL.

So today. My plan was to take today off as a vacation day and go to the beach. The forecast was gorgeous, and today was the last day of the calm before the storm at work.

What I didn't expect was for my self-proclaimed holiday to kick off at 1:30 a.m. with a trip to the emergency room. See, Greg has had a weird virus thingy all week - he's been in a ton of pain (muscles) and had a fever for a few days at the beginning of the week. He went to the doctor who diagnosed it as an upper respiratory infection and gave him an antibiotic. Even at the time, it seemed odd - Greg had no signs of any respiratory anything. On Wednesday he was still in a lot of pain, so he called his doctor again, who prescribed industrial strength Motrin, which did seem to help. But last night, he woke up in the middle of the night unable to move anything, and felt very lightheaded. So I woke Jane up, put her in the car, and off we went to the ER.

(a side note: check out this total mom thing I did. When I got Jane up, I made sure to change her shirt, put shoes on her and COMB HER HAIR. There was a large part of my brain that seriously was wondering whether Greg was having a heart attack or something, and in the meantime, I'm PRIMPING MY KID.)

I was completely freaked out. It's very unlike Greg to take middle-of-the-night trips to the hospital. I also had no idea what to do with Jane. Bring her in and pray she falls asleep in the stroller? But I didn't want to expose her to all of the germs. Plus I knew she'd never fall asleep. So I dropped Greg off and went home (we live very close to this hospital) to wait.

I can't tell you how much it sucked. I was so worried and I hated not being there. I was calling him every half hour to see what was going on, and I was so frustrated that they didn't even talk to him until 4 a.m. I wanted to be there to throw dirty looks at people, at least. When they finally saw him, they decided he was probably dehydrated (something I suspected earlier in the week), put him on fluids, did a chest x-ray and blood tests, and proceeded to ignore him for the next four hours.

I stayed awake the entire time, got Jane ready for daycare when she woke up, dropped her off and went off to the hospital. A doctor FINALLY came by to basically say "too bad, so sad, there's nothing we can do for you, go home and drink fluids and rest" - and in the meantime, Greg could barely stumble out of the hospital without falling down. So we came home, I forced him to drink a lot (of water, not alcohol, which would have made the situation a lot more entertaining than it actually was), and walk around to loosen up his muscles. He definitely got better throughout the day, but now he's back in bed. I'm hoping he doesn't have another night like last night. I can't have another night like last night. It was scary.

But wait! There's more! When I got Greg settled at home this morning, I let the dogs out. We have some guys clearing the lot in our backyard, and unbeknownst to us, the invisible fence line in our backyard was...clipped? broken? I'm not sure what the right word is, but it WASN'T WORKING.

I was heading out to do some chores when I realized young Jimmy hadn't come back in. I called him from the front. No Jimmy. I walked around the back and asked the guys working if they'd seen him. Sure enough, he had headed way out past the range of the invisible fence, about 15 minutes prior.

Well. I turned into a lunatic. I was screaming his name, shaking a box of treats, all the while having absolutely no idea if I was even close to heading in the right direction. The guys working in our yard were calling for him, the Connecticut Light and Power guys that were working in the area were looking for him...and THANK GOD I found his sorry ass down the road, frolicking (yes, frolicking) with another dog and two of my super-elderly neighbors. As soon as I saw him, I totally started crying. I mean, a girl can handle only so much drama on a couple of hours of sleep.

So there you have it. My fabulous, over-the-top, high drama vacation day FAIL.