Y’all, I’ve decided to take a break from the blog for the next week-and-a-half. I’m not going away completely. You’ll still see me on my Facebook page, and I’ll probably show up on Instagram as well. But I need a break. I can’t remember the last time I felt this exhausted, but I’m completely drained. Physically, mentally, emotionally drained.
I made this decision last night. By Monday afternoon, I had most parts of my closet chandelier finished and ready to go. Over the weekend, I cut all of the “stems” to the correct lengths. I also had to cut the bottom metal piece on the actual chandelier shorter so that the two pieces would fit together properly. And then I got the actual chandelier, the stems attachment, and all of the smaller pieces (chain, ceiling rings, etc.) primed and painted. So those were ready to go.
I had all of the pieces in place to make this light installation quick and easy.
I had also pre-fit the two pieces together, testing out exactly how and where the arms of the chandelier needed to go inside the stems attachment so that the stems and flowers wouldn’t interfere with the lights on the chandelier. I got those marked so that putting it together once the chandelier was hung would be pretty simple.
And by yesterday afternoon, my flowers were dry. I had already drilled the holes for the stems (because the holes shrunk as the flowers dried, so they needed to be re-drilled), and some of them had been primed. I had planned to spend a couple of hours with some friends in the afternoon and then come home and get everything finished. I just needed to get the chandelier hung, do a little bit of sanding on about half of the flowers, finish priming the flowers, give them a couple of coats of spray paint, and I figured that by 8:00 last night, I’d be putting the flowers on and be done with the chandelier.
After my time with my friends, I was back home and sanding the flowers, prepping them for primer and paint, and that’s when it hit me. I had a sneaking suspicion that I hadn’t made enough flowers.
I had three rows of 16 stems on my chandelier, and I had made 38 flowers plus one extra in case one broke. Yes, that’s right. My stupid math-challenged brain sabotaged me once again. I tried to do math in my head, and I forgot to carry the one. I didn’t need 38 flowers. I needed FORTY-EIGHT flowers. I was ten flowers short.
Honestly, I would have cried, but I didn’t even have enough energy for that. These last two-and-a-half weeks have absolutely drained me. I feel like I can’t get anything done. I can’t concentrate on anything. I have no focus. And I’m being pulled in every direction. Let me explain.
I’ve already told y’all that on July 4th, I had to take Cooper to the emergency vet clinic because he was regurgitating his food. I arrived at 5:00pm and didn’t leave the clinic until 11:00pm. He left there in such a sad state after being anesthetized so that they could get scans, which showed that he has a tumor in his chest that has caused megaesophagus. The megaesophagus is what is causing him to regurgitate his food. So that led to me spending hours online trying to figure out how to feed and care for a dog with megaesophagus.
By that next Monday, July 7th, he was doing much better. I was still trying to figure out the food/feeding issue, and he was still regurgitating some (but not all) of his food. But he was experiencing regurgitation mostly during the night, so I was getting very poor sleep. I only get 5.5 to 6 hours of sleep each night as it is, so having that sleep interrupted with worry and caring for a dog and making sure that he doesn’t aspirate on whatever it is that he’s regurgitating was causing me to be exhausted and drained during the day, leading to some very unproductive days.
But we were making it. And as the week progressed, he seemed to be doing much better. Until Thursday. That’s when I was trying to get my closet island finished, and he was hanging out in the bedroom with me as I was trying to get the island drawers and doors installed after I had resanded and repainted them. That morning, he had been his normal self — energetic, playful, and following me around like my shadow. But as the day went on, he seemed to become more lethargic. And as I was in the bedroom working with the drawers, he turned his back to me and that’s when I noticed that he had a huge knot on the back of his back right leg. It hadn’t been there that morning, so this was something that developed over the course of a day.
And when I say “knot”, I mean that the thing was the size of a large sweet potato. It was so big that it was displacing his tail, pushing it way over to the side. It was already after normal office hours, and I just didn’t have it in me to go back to the emergency clinic and be there for hours on end, so I decided that I’d take him the next day. I got up the next morning, took pictures of my finished island so that I could write my blog post, and the whole time, Cooper was following me like he usually does. But by that time, the thing on the back of his leg had started bleeding. So he was leaving a trail of blood drops everywhere he went. If you look back at the pictures of that post about the finished island, you can see his blood drops all over the floor.
So at 7:30am, as soon as the vet office opened, I called and made an emergency appointment and they got me in that afternoon. Thank goodness the regular vet allows for emergency visits because their normal schedule didn’t have an opening for three weeks. So early afternoon, I loaded him back up and we went to the vet. She assured me that this didn’t have anything to do with the thing in his chest, and after shaving the area and taking a close look at it, she said he had three large puncture wounds in the back of his leg.
Puncture wounds? What the heck would have caused puncture wounds? Still, to this day, I have no idea what could have caused puncture wounds, and certainly not THREE large puncture wounds. I’ve searched his yard, the house, everywhere he goes. I can’t find anything. Anyway, they got it cleaned up as best they could and prescribed him antibiotics and a topical wash that I’m supposed to use daily. So I brought him back home, and he continued to drop blood trails all over the house for the next two days.
By Monday, he was feeling much better again, almost back to his normal self. I was still trying to figure out the megaesophagus food and feeding schedule, but at that point, I was also afraid to let him out into his yard during the day unsupervised. So at that point, I having to go from feeding him one big meal a day (unsupervised, with no time constraints on me), to feeding him four times a day, which has to be supervised because he has to be upright for 20 minutes after each meal (which is very challenging for an energetic dog), but I was also now having to take him out, supervised and on a leash) about five times a day.
And all of this on top of the fact that Matt can’t feed himself. He hasn’t been able to feed himself ever since he was released from his last hospital stay in February 2024. Plus, there’s all of the other things I have to do for Matt throughout the day.
I honestly don’t mean this to sound like I’m complaining. I’m just exhausted. I feel like my days are spent caring for Matt, and now caring for Cooper, with little to no time left for getting things done that need to be done. I don’t know how to do this, and I’m certainly not doing it well. I’m not sleeping well at night because I’m worried about Cooper regurgitating and getting aspiration pneumonia, which is the leading cause of death for dogs with megaesophagus. I’m dragging throughout the day with a fuzzy mind that can’t even do simple math problems. And I feel like I’m barely able to keep my head above water.
So I need a break. I need time to figure this out, and to figure out a schedule that we can all live with. And I need sleep and rest. So I’m going to take a few days away from the blog and focus on those things for a while. My plan is to take a week-and-a-half and be back on August 4th.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.