I Will Laugh About this Day, Later

I woke up from worries at 4AM then a nightmare at 6AM where I am running from the enemy. In waking life my husband comes to tell me the plumbing is clogged three places: the shower, the toilet and the upstairs toilet. He is trying to pack his breakfast and lunch but today he is late for a 7AM meeting at school, 50 miles away. It's 6:20AM. Where's the coffee?
I open a basement cupboard and see water coming through a huge pipe with a crack. I look with my flashlight and it seems to be an old problem we've known about.

I go into the yard and start shoveling as huge white flakes come down. Lily runs like crazy happily doing loops through the narrow path as I am shoveling between the accumulated mountains of snow. I lower the shovel to keep her from crashing into it.

Then I see bright red dots in the snow. She must've clipped her paw nail on a piece of ice or on the heavy metal shovel. I let her walk in the yard and figure the clean snow is good for her for the moment. I try not to freak out. She is sturdy lab, I tell myself. She is not limping. She is in love with snow. The red dots give me the willies and they stay bright red preserved by the cold. I shovel them away. I think of fairy tale snow white and the three drops of blood. She leaves a drop every two feet.

I take her inside and I dab her paw with a wet paper towel which turns pink. I close off the carpeted rooms and follow her around wiping red smudges off the turquoise linoleum. I look at her paw with a laser flashlight. She lets me. Nothing hurts, luckily. She'll be okay. She did the similar thing in December at a friend's skateboard shop on main street. She banged into a metal snowman. It will be a few days of the cut opening when it gets wet in the snow but then it will heal. She'll be fine.

I look up and the ceiling is dripping a line of wet in a new place. I put out three plastic buckets.

Do I get up on the roof to shovel again?

Not in these slippy-slidy shoes.

I will laugh about this day. Later.