Mailman cliche comes to life...

This week and next I'm working every day to cover annual leave for both city mail carriers.  I was kinda excited about this, since that means overtime and a VERY nice couple of paychecks :)  Unfortunately, yesterday when I was delivering mail on a walking loop, I got bitten by a dog.  A German Shepherd, owned by parents of a high school friend.  :(  I couldn't see anything coming up to the mailbox because of their hedges, and as soon as I closed their mailbox I heard the dog barking and running up behind me.  The owner was there, and apparently the dog had come from inside the house to come after me, but he wasn't fast enough and the dog bit me twice before the owner could get there.  It was only about 4 seconds total, I didn't have a chance to get to my dog spray and my satchel was on the other hip.  Can't protect both.  The owner locked the dog up and took me inside, where we cleaned it up a little bit and bandaged it.  It took me 40 minutes to get ahold of my boss because she was on a conference call, so I finished that section of the route between call attempts and waited at the church for her to get there.

It was an ordeal.  The carrier that's on vacation had to come in and finish the route because we had to go to the ER and there was still half of the route to finish.  My boss called the police to the house and Animal Control went there and came to the ER to get a statement from me about what happened.  This picture was taken in the ER, before it got flushed out and before the bruises started really coming out.  It doesn't hurt too much, but the other bite on my butt does.  Mostly because of the placement I think; it hurts to sit and walk.  I had to get a tetanus shot (not rabies, thankfully) and the dog was put down this morning.  I feel bad for them, but what else was there to do?  If it happened to me, it could easily happen to anyone else just taking a walk and it could've been far more serious.  That wasn't the first run-in with that dog either, the regular carrier had to run from it twice before.  Sigh.  At least I don't have to worry about the bill because it's worker's comp.  I went back to work today, but had to get a lot of help to get done in time.  Tomorrow will be similar, until I quit hurting enough to get my speed back up. 

Amy had a really good day at Grandma's yesterday, but when I got home she started crying. :(  Only reason I can think of is that she knew I wasn't feeling good and that made her upset.  Her stomach was badly upset for the rest of the night too... not sure what was going on there.  Hopefully we're past it now and we can all get some sleep tonight without the projectile vomiting.  Poor girl :(

The bruises really started filling out last night.  We didn't get pictures of it, but I did take some tonight and they're starting to look better.  Yes, this is better than last night... The tetanus shot hurts worse, which is odd but true.  The bites themselves hurt when they happened, but since then the one on my side doesn't bother me much, despite how ugly it is.  I'm taking antibiotics for 5 days because dog bites get infected so easily and of course in combination with the tetanus shot they're making me a bit woozy.  I can't focus on things as well as I need to for work, but I started to feel better once I was out on the route and I hit a decent stride that was similar to when I was just learning the route.  I needed a lot of help to get back in time, which of course makes me feel bad, but I'd do the same if it was one of the other carriers that was hurt so it'll all work out.  I just hope tomorrow goes better so I don't have to depend so much on everyone else who already has their own job to do.

I don't really know what to do now.  I suppose I'll just let it heal and see how it goes, keep track of the progress and watch for changes, hope it doesn't get infected, and get back to work.  I'm getting a lot of pressure to sue their homeowner's insurance... not sure what I want to do.  On the one hand, it's pretty awful and we could definitely use the money to take care of some bills.  On the other, they're wonderful people and I don't want to hurt them, even if it's just a rate bump on their insurance.  I hate that this happened.  There's nothing good or funny about it, even though the dog-mailman bit has been a joke for years.  

B's job has been almost nonexistent basically since I started working so I really need to keep plugging away at my job.  Hopefully things will get better there, but if they don't soon... VERY soon, we're at a breaking point... he'll have to find a different job.  Guess I sound like I'm feeling pretty crappy tonight.  Well, I am.  However, it's time to wind down for the night and try to get some rest.  Updates tomorrow after my follow-up at my regular clinic.

10 months, adventures in sleep training

My big girl weighs 25lbs now!  She's now very good at crawling and pulling herself up on things.  She's not quite cruising yet but we'll be there shortly, probably this week.  She's wearing 18mo clothes mostly, some stuff 24mo so she won't grow out of it so fast.  She has 3 teeth now, one on the bottom and 2 on top, with 2 more lumps.  Getting those 2 teeth in was really rough and the other 2 have been going up and down, so none of us were getting any sleep because she was so miserable.  It seems to have calmed down a little bit, but she got very used to waking up almost hourly for cuddles and a drink so we were all up all night, every night.  I decided it was time to do some sleep training.  If we were all sleep deprived, including Amy, the days were getting worse and worse with everyone running on fumes.  I had read The Sleep Lady's Good Night Sleep Tight book, but wasn't sure where to start until I got to the chapter on cosleeping. It was nice to have her right there when we were still nursing at night, but my milk is pretty much dried up and she's old enough to not need to eat much (if anything) at night anymore.  It's hard to do most of the techniques since her crib is still by the bed.  It may be time to get her moved into her own room (aka the office).  Not sure why I'm hesitant... except that it kinda requires rearranging a lot of stuff to get it done.  Maybe I can work on that a piece at a time this week or something.  I think she'll sleep better if she can't see us at night.  She always wakes up shortly after I come to bed for whatever reason, even if I make hardly any noise, and sometimes it takes a good 30 minutes so I'm just falling asleep, so I wonder if she smells me or something... it's strange.

This is what the aftermath of a 3 hour nap looks like.

We ended up having to kinda make up our own sleep training plan, since she's not in her own room.  B was gone Thursday night so I started then so I wouldn't feel guilty about keeping him awake.  Earlier in the week I had replaced all but one of her typical bottles with just water instead of formula.  At first, it worked just as well to get her back to sleep, so I weaned her down to 1 feeding that way and maybe if she's still doing well in a copule days I'll wean her down from that too.  We don't need to be rotting out her brand new little teeth with bottles.  The night B was gone I didn't take her to my bed at all, just laid there and talked to her if she was fussing, picked her up to cuddle once when she got really upset, and mostly she did pretty well at getting herself back down.  I did figure out that the more I mess with her the more worked up she gets.  Laying her down always results in sobbing for whatever reason, even at diaper changes (even tho she's fine for the actual change, just not the laying down part), so I need to stop trying.  It's totally counterproductive.  I was tired at work the next day from talking to her all night, but it wasn't too bad.  Then Friday night was awful... truly terrible.  She cried all night with very little rest in between.  She hasn't been interested in pacifiers lately and the water bottles just pissed her off, but I held off on feeding her until 3:30am, which has been her typical time to get hungry.  We were all exhausted and frazzled by morning and I had to go to work, but B got to stay home that day so they took it easy.  Then last night was fantastic!  She went down at about 8, woke up a little when we got to bed around 11 but put herself right back down, then didn't make a peep until 4.  I gave her her bottle, then she got up at 5:45, which is about when the alarm usually starts going off for B so it's about right.  Sleeping in would've been kinda nice but I won't argue with that since it sticks with our regular schedule anyway.  I thought it would take longer to make that kind of progress, and I'm sure we'll backslide a little bit occasionally but hopefully tonight is like last night.

Naps have been better too, since she figured out how to put herself back to sleep.  I think it was more about her being able to get herself comfortable than her needing to be soothed.  She has zero interest in blankies, lovies, pacifiers, any of that.  She just gets stuck in this gator roll/pushup/chinup thing when she's trying to get comfortable and forcing her to figure it out on her own has done wonders for her ability to take big naps without needing someone else to lay down with her.  She's working on 3 hours right now, without a peep.  I keep checking on her, but she's just snoozing away with her butt up in the air.  It's really cute.

So, what else?  I'm doing much better at work.  Yesterday I got to take lunch, and still did the whole route on my own and got back to the office in time for the outgoing mail truck.  I was pretty proud of myself for that.  Today we moved my parents' old grill up to our deck and grilled burgers and tin foil veggies for us and Mom.  Next week we might do it again for Mother's Day, if Dad's home so we can all do it together.  Next Monday B and I have tickets to see Sevendust, In This Moment, Pop Evil, and Monster Truck!  We're so excited!  I'm nervous about leaving her at Mom's that late since it's right on top of bedtime and I will have already been gone at work all day, so I'm not sure how it will all work out.  Maybe B needs to stay home that day or something.

Well she's awake now, and that was plenty of quiet time, so I must away :)