Lippy Stuff

I caught Matt experimenting with accessories. I'm not sure if polka dots are really him, though.

It's hard to believe it's only been three weeks since we said goodbye to Abi. It feels exponentially longer than that. It's impossible to put into words how her loss has impacted me. Believe me, I've tried. There's just this nagging, lonely emptiness; an emptiness I didn't see coming, that hit me like a freight train barreling down the tracks. I'm not sure what I expected this to feel like. I honestly didn't really allow myself to think about it. I couldn't. If I had there would have been no way I could have made such an impossible decision, one that needed to be made for her.

These three weeks without her have shown me a lot about myself. She made me a better person. Maybe to some that seems silly, but loving her and taking care of her opened my heart. In many ways I'd say she saved me from myself, forced me to keep my heart open in times when I could have easily sealed it off. She got me out of bed in those time when I felt like I couldn't go on. I'm so thankful I had her in my life.

Now it's time to move on. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have this ache in my heart for her for a long time. That's just how it goes when you open your heart to love. But Matt and I are ready to experience that happy puppy love again, and we can't stand the emptiness in our house when we come home from work every day. No, no dog will ever replace Abi; it would be impossible to do that and we would never try. However, we're ready to hear the pitter-patter of puppy claws in our house again, so we hope to be sharing pictures of our new family member sometime in the near future. Stay tuned.

After everything we'd been through last week Matt and I needed to escape the emptiness of our house, so we packed up and headed to a nearby state park for a spontaneous camping trip Friday night. We arrived at the park after dark and took the first, most secluded spot we could find. Little did we know that our "secluded" spot was two spots over from Loud and Stupid.

Matt had recently acquired a 2-person camping hammock, a hammock made from parachute material and designed to sleep 2. We decided that the cool evening would be the perfect time to try it out. After setting that and its special mosquito net up, we settled into our hammock to relax. We chatted for a while and must have drifted off (in spite of Loud and Stupid over there), because the next thing I knew Matt sat straight up, which is quite a feat in a hammock, and screamed "What the hell!" I instantly bolted awake, trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly I felt something moving underneath the hammock, and heard growling just to the left of my head. I freaked out. Which made Matt freak out even more.

What happened next is both funny and terrifying. Imagine the two of us, taco-ed up in a hammock, Matt whipping his windmill arms trying to hit whatever it was that was "attacking" us while I screamed at the top of my lungs, swinging my arms with equal furry. We're both blind and unable to reach our glasses or a flashlight. All the while something is growling at us from the dark and moving around under our hammock. Additionally, I'm thinking in my head, "Hey, I'm screaming like I'm being murdered and NOBODY is coming to see if we're OK. We are screwed." At just about that point Loud calls out to his dog to "get over here". Jack-ass left his dog off leash in the middle of the night and he'd wandered over to our site, presumably to sniff out the armadillo we'd seen earlier. I'm sure this incident lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I have never felt such an intense fear in my entire life.

It took us both a good hour to fall back asleep, what with all the adrenaline coursing through our veins. That and the fact that every sound we heard now felt like a threat to our humanity. I still feel a bit traumatized from the whole experience even though I know we were never in any real danger. Fear that intense tends to leave a mark on you. I'm a bit nervous about our next camping experience, and I can promise you there will be no scary stories around the campfire.