What a week it has been! We spent the first full week of August in Ocean City, MD with Billy's family. He has been really looking forward to it for months because his family used to vacation there every summer when he was young. He hasn't been back during the summer since high school, so I was really excited to go with him and experience all the things I've heard about both from him and my students. The condo his family rented was right on the beach, so we went right down to the beach each day after eating a big breakfast. The first four days were beautifully warm and sunny, and the ocean was also warm enough to enjoy. Our last two beach days weren't quite as picture perfect, but we were still able to spend some time down on the beach. We also went out to dinner a few times and went to the "White Marlin Open," a contest to catch big game fish out in the atlantic. We got to see them weigh in a whole bunch of different fish, and a big 500 lb blue marlin was laying on the sidewalk from before we arrived. It made me think of "The Old Man and the Sea" and I am looking forward to sharing the program with my students this year to help them get a visual of what the different fish look like. We were there for my birthday, as well, and Billy's family got me cake and ice cream along with cards to celebrate. When I got home I also got to pick up all the cards I received from friends and family around the country, which was exciting. Birthdays don't seem quite as exciting now that I'm older, but my favorite part is definitely getting all the cards in the mail and knowing that people remembered and were thinking about me.
All in all, the week was the perfect way to close out my summer vacation. I was glad to get to spend time at the beach with Billy and find out that going to the beach (albeit on different coasts) is a favorite memory of childhood for both of us. All week I kept noticing how the beach there was similar or different as compared to the beaches in Santa Barbara... for example, there's no kelp there but there are jellyfish, and the sandcrabs look the exact same but the ones we found here were much bigger. I missed Oscar during the week, so the only slightly exciting thing about leaving Ocean City and returning home this past Saturday was getting to pick him up at the kennel.
He made it an interesting weekend for us, however. When we picked him up at the kennel, they said he had been great all week, but we could tell immediately that something was wrong. He was very melancholy and when we got home, he didn't want to eat, which is normally his favorite part of the day. He seemed to have trouble getting comfortable and we got really worried that something was seriously wrong with him. We took him to the vet, who determined that he was very constipated, which is why he wouldn't eat and didn't feel well. He gave us some special food to feed him, helped him with the constipation a bit, and sent us home for Oscar to get better. However, he got much worse. He started throwing up repeatedly anytime he drank water, he still wouldn't eat and couldn't get comfortable, and his energy just got lower and lower until we were really worried about him. The vet isn't open on Sunday, so we had to wait until Monday morning to take him in. Oscar was dehydrated by that point, so he had to spend the day at the vet getting fluids and other procedures to try to fix his extreme constipation. He still hadn't pooped by the time we brought him home, so the vet suggested that if we couldn't get him to poop at home overnight, he would need to do an x-ray to determine if surgery was necessary. He didn't poop last night and still seemed pretty low so we were really worried that he was going to have to have surgery, which besides being dangerous would also have been very expensive. Luckily, this morning right before we were due to leave for the vet, he started taking bites of food again and then passed the obstruction in his colon. Almost immediately he started acting more like himself and continues to improve throughout the day.
So... tomorrow I go back to work. We have these 3 days for "pre-school staff meetings" and prep time in our rooms, then Monday I have freshman orientation, and Tuesday classes start for real. I am looking forward to becoming a productive member of society again and it will be interesting to see how things go with this 'freshman academy' I'm involved in this year. I will keep everyone posted and given the nature of freshmen, I'm sure I'll have plenty of funny stories to tell of their naivete. The only thing I am NOT looking forward to is again waking up to an alarm. I have prepared myself for tomorrow's commute by purchasing the new Christina Aguilera CD (which came out today) and refusing to listen to it until I'm on my way in the morning. : )
