JANUARY 10
If stress was a color it would be a deep and indelible black smear that spreads and soaks and seeps into every fiber. But, you can't see it for the rotten black cloud that it is. Instead it shows up in behavior and turns an average person like me into something colossal and ugly, I'll admit it. I suddenly filled the room like we had the whole team stuffed in the elevator. Suddenly, the walls and ceiling rush toward me.
I had one of those moments that causes bystanders to stare, to stop with coffee half raised to their parted, frozen lips, to hang there with a hand on the door mid-swing, to shut up on their cell phone conversations when, for once, they find something immediately more interesting than their own conversation.
Thank God I had no witnesses other than Jerry. Curse me for cracking up only on Jerry.
Why do I always get the worst? He asked me later.
Add a little stress and I am a real science experiment. If this wasn't happening to me it would be funny.
There I am struggling to get Lily's array of pills into her stomach. I've got yummy delicious and never-before-rejected cheese folded over in my fingers. Come here Lily. It goes in and something warns her to avoid it. A few chomps. Refusal. The teeth slam shut like a barrier and cheese bits and shards of multi-colored pills spill everywhere.
Jerry walks in as I pick up the pieces, pushing other dogs away. I stand and open my hand to view the chunks of half chewed cheese, dog spit, and crumbled pill bits in my palm. One prominent green trail clings to my pinkie where the green pill sticks like a wad of gum.
What's that on your hand? Jerry asks.
PILLS!
No, what's that?
Pills, her pills she needs to take them and suddenly she won't and now it's all over and Ozzy is eating it off the FLOOR.
What is that? It's not pills, he said.
I just said it's PILLS.
No. What is on your HAND? I look at where he points and see a piece of cheese.
Oh.

JANUARY 11
Up early and out into the woods with Lily. It's my only chance today to let her run and get her some exercise. I get the feeling she wasn't a cooped-up-in-the-house-all-day-for-hours kind of dog. Later I wonder if she's feeling confined and unhappy. Sort of like me when I want to jump through the office window and drift off on a current.
Out in the woods our footprints look like shadows and trees are dark spears rising from the uneven and snowy forest floor. Lily lopes along with me and a stick until she smells something better. She hurries away and I realize she is completely untethered unless she decides to come when I call. I scramble over stones and fallen trees to reach the hill. Up. I look for a shadow in the distance resembling a dog, when something with perked ears turns to me.
Lily? From about 50 yards away she trots closer. Relief. back home.
Diarrhea is all over the floor. Nothing has changed. At work I call my veterinarian and ask when I should start to worry. Not yet.
A friend at work warns that sometimes... she shakes her head. I guess I should conclude that sometimes there is no solution.
By the time I go home I get ready for the close watch I keep on the dogs. No fights. More messes in the basement.
I realize that I have meetings Tuesday and Wenesday nights after work, and go to a second night job on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which I tell Jerry after saying, you're not going to like me much. This leaves the dogs, hassle, responsibility, and aggrivation all on Jerry's hands. I think I need to either bring Lily with me somehow, or call for help. Help.