Forgive Me Dear Sadie

I've officially earned myself a place in the "Top 10 Worst Mother" of all time list!

It all started on a lovely Monday morning when I decided to try to secure a spot on the "Top 10 Best Wives" of all time list by cleaning out the garage for my over-worked, never-present husband who has been trying to do it for the last 2 months so he can park in the garage and not have dew on his car in the morning.

All was going well. I had nicely organized piles - attic, goodwill, and trash. Sadie and I were making serious progress. The nice neighbor lady saw me outside and wanted to chat. So, we stood in the blazing hot sun for 20 minutes talking about kids, Russia, and our desires to move. I started feeling a little dizzy and so tried (for 5 minutes) to politely end the conversation. At last I finally successfully did so, and as I started walking back to the house I realized I was really not feeling good. My weird blinking problem started happening which is what I do right before I (1) throw up and/or (2) pass out.

Side note: I have a strange problem where I pass out randomly. It doesn't happen for common reasons like dehydration or overheating (which were the problems this time). Instead it tends to (but not always) happens in the middle of the night and usually involves me hitting my head really hard and scaring Ben half to death and him cleaning up my throw up - poor, poor Ben. However, my family (who have been pestering me to get it checked out) will be relieved to know that Uncle Jim suffers from the exact same thing! He says it's Vasovagal Syndrome and they can't do anything for it but it's not life threatening just extremely uncomfortable and scary. End of side note.

So, as I was getting into the garage I realized I had about 5 to 10 seconds before I would pass out. I could go back and scoop up Sadie and carry her to the house, but it would result in me passing out for sure and her taking a tumble in my arms.

Instead I turned around to see Sadie was following me into the house, and called her name as I headed straight inside dumped water over my head, took two gulps of water, and layed down. Sure enough, I went to la-la land for a few moments, but continued to call her name before and after I passed out.

Silly Sadie, though, must have wanted to see if the neighbor girl was still outside because as I was miserably laying on the tile calling her name I began to hear her crying. I crawled out to the garage to see her coming towards me - crying. She ran to me and continued to cried. I thought she must have fallen or was offended I had left for a minute (it doesn't take much to make her cry). Her crying turned to screeching so I looked down to see if she had a scraped knee and what did I see....fire ants!! All over her feet! Dozens of them!!!

I smacked the heck out of them!

Then I put her in the bathtub and tried every antidote for fire ant bites that I could find on the internet. All while feeling very light headed still, I might add!

The poor baby wanted to be held the rest of the day and cried any time she put weight on her feet.

Broke. My. Heart!

(Sadie's sad, pathetic ant bitten foot shown above.
Ben and I counted 75 bites on her left foot and around 30 on her right.)

(Above: Sadie's foot plastered with Calamine lotion.)

(Her smile still works great though!)

Happy note: After only one day Sadie was back to her normal, happy self.