Thankfully, That's Almost Over!

I don't know that my dogs would say - if they suddenly had that ability - that they believe they've lived their best life over the last few days.  The Thanksgiving holiday is a working holiday of sorts for me.  I participated in some actual work for the job this morning, but that was almost relaxing because I got to sit down to do it.  For the rest of the time, and this likely has some of you nodding your heads in empathy, is a whirlwind of activity:

• Of course, Thursday is all about the big meal.  Cooking it, serving it and - the icky part - cleaning up after it.
• Then Friday was dawn past dusk putting up the Christmas decorations.  The hubby even helped more than he's been around and available to in years past and it still took not only all day Friday, but it spilled a little into Saturday.  
• Saturday was a marathon wrap and box session - because I have to travel for work in December, presents have to be ready to go earlier than usual, and everything we have to send back to Texas to friends and family has to be on its way before I start to pack for the trip.  There is a stack of boxes outside my bedroom door that I shudder to think what the total postage bill will be...there's always that moment when you think that instead of hunting all year long at craft fairs and local vendors you should have just direct shipped everything from your Amazon Prime account.  But then again, half the fun of holiday shopping is searching for those unique finds you hope people will treasure.  
• Today it's baking cookies.

I'm exhausted frankly.  And the dogs were bystanders in all of this - I have to confess that, while my dogs were hardly abused or neglected over the last few days, they didn't quite get the attention they are used to.  Ironic during a holiday that is about being thankful for family, the family members who I'm very thankful for were on the fringes.  And, well, let's face it, they acted out a little.  Which makes me think I've probably spoil them to a degree the rest of the time and set myself up for this, but let's take one soul searching at a time, shall we?

Geddy's bad behavior when he wants to behave like a toddler in the throes of the Terrible Twos is to get up on the counter and scrounge.  Which he did with every single opportunity he had.  Of course, there were so many tempting things to entice a good dog to do bad things! 

Sirius's behavior was easily a "look at me" ploy - he exhibited the Happy Dog With Zoomies approach to the day.

Rooney was, as always, just Rooney.  Rarely bad, just sort of in the fray.

So, bottom line, they were either outside or spent some serious time in the basement.  But they did get some great outdoor run time and at the end of the day, as we settled in to see if the Falcons could keep pace with the Saints (they couldn't), the dogs crashed and crashed hard.

 

But the real issue was the next day.  Sirius struggled with Decorating Day last year, but it was the up and down / back and forth to the basement that seemed to distress him so much, so we organized things differently this year and brought everything upstairs and unpacked from there.  That didn't seem to calm him, however; he just doesn't like the chaos that reorganizing the house entails for Christmas, I've decided.  It's confusing to a dog.  And it was muddy, so they were stuck in a lot of the day.  So as the day wore on, they got understandably antsy, and when the mother-in-law went out to smoke in the late afternoon, they all three rushed the door, almost knocking her down.

And the battle of the two women in the house commenced.  She tearfully confronted me with how bad the dogs were, and I reacted like any parent (and trust me, I've had real parenting experience with this) does and resented having my "children" criticized by someone else.  So I pouted, she cried and the husband was caught in between.

It was a rough day in other ways for the mother-in-law, I was aware, faced with the reality of not being in her own home with her own Christmas decorations for the first time since she was a very young adult, not being in control of where I placed the few that had made their way here, and feeling in general excluded.  So, trying to be sensitive to that, but as the day wore on and my exhaustion and back pain kicked in, I wasn't doing so hot with being a well-rounded, intelligent, sensitive human being.  It's easy to see when you're behaving badly as a human, but not always quite so easy to correct it.  Would that it were as easy to train a human as it is to train our pets!

Yesterday I just avoided the issue by staying upstairs and wrapping.  Where, again, the dogs were confused and not sure what the anxiety was when they would jump up on the bed laden with peoples' gifts.

The moral to the story of our up and down emotional weekend is that the holidays are supposed to be about celebrating with family.  But the reality is that there is an inherent amount of chaos and stress that the season brings.  I'm worried about money, time management, stressing over whether what I got people is good enough or not, and how now, quite frankly, I balance what I want as far as holiday traditions with honoring my mother-in-law's own thoughts and desires for the season.  Some of that might not match your own scenarios, but some of it might resonant with a lot of you.  And if we're pets owners, they're impacted by all of that.  They sense those emotions and turmoil.  And they will react accordingly.

How do you resolve all that?  Well, obviously, I have some work to do in that department myself, but I believe that recognizing a problem is the first step to solving it.

And I also think that we'll all be happy when things become more routine-like tomorrow.  In the meantime, I hope all of you had a Happy Thanksgiving and spent good time with your two- and four-legged family.  I think, at the end of the day, that's what really matters.