Someone had a bad week...

Friday afternoon I received a text from Kate. She had given Samantha a bloody nose. She had come down to the landing, and dropped a pencil box into Samantha’s hands. Before Sammy could close her hands around the box, it bounced, crashing into her nose and unleashing a torrent of blood. This was the capper for a rough week for Sammy-Lou-Who.

Monday afternoon Kate took our calico, Marilyn to the vet. She had been extremely lethargic, and would not let anyone touch her. The feline had crawled up under an end table, and stayed there for over fifteen hours. After a battery of tests it was determined that Marilyn had feline leukemia, and would have to be put down. We had not been prepared for this, and I found myself breaking the news to my kids at the dinner table: Marilyn would not be coming home. I expected Whitney to be emotional about the news, and she was. But I didn’t expect Samantha to take it as hard as she did. She was inconsolable.

We have since found that Marilyn’s brother, Joe also tested positive, and will have to be put down. Because of the circumstances of their birth (in a window well, to a stray) they were probably born with it, and their vaccinations could not prevent the inevitable.

On Wednesday, Kate took Samantha to see a dermatologist to address an outbreak of warts on the child’s hands, feet and lip. Kate had to have the pleasure of wrapping her arms and legs around Sam, to hold her still while the doctor froze the warts. We have since had to keep her lubed up with a cream that stings, but we have found that she is much more amenable to putting on the cream when we explain that failure to do so might mean another trip to the dermatologist. Though, that might happen anyway…

All of this on top of the fact that Samantha’s school science experiment has not gone according to plan. Several weeks ago we went to Home Depot and bought five stalks of the same common house plant. She has been ‘feeding’ them each something different: water, orange juice, milk, root beer and diet coke. Her hypothesis was that the one being fed orange juice would do the best, and the rest would die. Orange juice has vitamins, after all. We had to replicate the experiment three times, which means that Kate had to make another trip to the Depot for ten more plants. Now, several weeks later, we have 15 plants in our kitchen, and none of the damn things will die! The orange juice drinkers have mold growing at the bases, and the milk eaters stink to high heaven.

I tried to explain to Samantha that this was not a bad thing: What’s not important is that you are proven right, but that you learn from the experiment. All that we learned from this trial is that the little bastards are resilient.

I told Samantha not to worry, and to keep her glass half full. The upside from having a bad week is being able to look forward to how much better next week can be…