Sad, sad day. :-(

Song of the day: “Unwritten” by Natasha Beddingfield.
Still don’t know why but that one kept spinning through my head since I woke up.
There was an hour or so during with Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious” tried to sneak in but luckily, I managed to smother that one. Aaargh.

The day starts out well enough. The sun is shining, the temperatures are pleasantly warm, and when I get up, I can actually keep my eyes open while I go through the morning rituals such as making the bed, cleaning up and getting dressed.

Once I’ve gathered my things and chase the dogs out of the cabin, I head on down to the house, (nothing different, just as usual) where big brother’s pack is already making a racket.
We start on the edit right after breakfast, coffee poured, first morning cigarette burning cheerfully, and are one sentence into the book when the first error announces itself.

It’s nothing new, really, but kind of frustrating when you’re trying to make your way through the book at a snail’s pace.
I think that, on a total, there is perhaps twenty percent of the original script left unchanged. There are moments when that rather daunting percentage makes me wonder if I really wrote that badly, but then I remind myself that I’m actually doing the rewrite too, so who gives a crap?

Such a waste of time to feel sorry for the person I was all those years back when I slaving over writing the original story. I do hope that I won’t feel the same for my now-self in a couple of years too. Hah.

But anyways, we manage almost four pages today, still the fight scene, though it is rapidly drawing to an end with the arrival of a chopper that is supposed to carry them to safety…before the REAL mess starts. I can hardly wait. Action scenes, though tricky, are the most exiting one to do after all.
(Everything’s still fine at this point.)

We’re just about ready to put our computer away to head on out and start building when the bad news arrives.
Sita (13 year old black Cocker Spaniel) has been feeling poorly since yesterday, and seeing as it is the weekend, with Sunday just one day away, (always the weekends. It is one of the reason why I hate weekends, I’m guessing) little brother and I head on out to the vet for an emergency check up.

Poor blind Sita. Over the years, she has battled skin cancer that took several patches from her skin, glandular cancer that demanded a hysterectomy, cataract that cost her both her eyes and Leishmania, which ate at her kidneys…the cure as much as the disease. Today, it seems she’s had enough.

After a body check (she has a bad fever) and a sonogram, shows that her kidneys are enlarged and a bloated stomach hint at more cancer. After at least an hour of discussion about her chances, it is decided that for her age and all the health issues that already trouble her, any form of treatment really is no longer viable.
I leave the real decision to little brother, since he is most attached to the dog that we got our first year in Spain (3 months after Knight I the summer of 1997).

Though always somewhat stoic, tears are already running down his cheeks when he makes that dreaded choice, rather than opt for more tests on a dog that relies solely on smell to get around. She wouldn’t understand a long stay at a strange place. She cannot hear, cannot see, and many days…heck, even hours…would be pure hell for her. Besides, the end result would likely have been the same, or so the vet admitted.

I manage to hold back the tears right up until they bring out the overdose anesthetic needle, and the lethal injection that follows.
Then that awful feeling starts again: That sense of knowing that we’ve made a decision that is irreversible.
I hate that feeling, especially since in a way it is better than letting fate’s fickle hand make all the decisions, and then hits you in the face at random when you least expect it. She is old, sick and things could only have gotten worse…my head knows that. But still, it is a massive mountain to climb every time this happens with one of our pack members.

Lying in little brother’s arms, Sita passes on around six thirty in the afternoon. She goes peacefully with the anesthetic overdose (the lethal injection wasn’t even necessary, just standard procedure) and is carefully placed in a box so we can take her home for a proper burial.

It’s always horrible to see the remains of a beloved pet that you watched grow up from pup…or got at a later age, for that matter. The once so familiar little body, limp and lifeless. The image always sticks in my brain for the longest time, blocking out a lot of the good memories until the mourning process passes. It can take weeks or months, but at some point they do return, I’m glad to say.

On our way back, both little brother and I are battling tears, trying to think of a spot where we can bury her without needing to chop out a huge chunk of rock. This is no easy feat when you life on top of a mountain.

We arrive home to dreary faces and restless dogs, who always seem to sense when something like this has happened. We debate for a bit whether or not we’re going to build on the walls today…it’s already past seven when we finally arrive home. We really want to do SOMETHING, rather than just sitting in the house feeling miserable over loosing on of the first members of our pack.

In the end, we realize that for actual building it really is too late, so instead we pick up our shovels and pickaxes, and start shoveling dirt up the wall. There is still a lot of empty space to fill behind the piled rocks, so at least we’ll be able to set our minds to hard labor rather than unbalance emotions that want to wreak havoc.

Figuring that the wall will be a beautiful memorial for Sita, we decide to burry her in the small terrace that separates the two walls. The ground will be soft enough to dig into at the very least, and little brother sets to it with zeal, while we continue to throw more dirt upwards off to his left.

There is a moment of shared silence as we watch Sita go in, and with little brother sobbing quietly, and the rest of us joining in, she is returned to the earth (as they so beautifully describe it on occasion).

Using a beautiful tree trunk that we once found on the beach…later we realized that we actually found it on the day we found Sita…we cover up her grave along with heavy rocks. With tender care little brother creates a rather befitting decoration on the site.

Rather than wallow on the emotions that threatens to overcome, we attack the ground some more and finish the evening with half a ton of dirt lying one level higher than it used to. Soaking in perspiration and sore from the heavy task (and happy about it, since exhaustion numbs the mind beautifully) we head inside to have a sober dinner of yesterday’s leftovers.

First, I head to the shower, clean clothes in hand and wash away the grime. Next, I quickly deal with the laundry, actually disappointed that there isn’t more of it that will allow me to keep distracted just a bit longer.

Finally, I sit down to have dinner (it tastes remarkably bland, which is ridiculous considering it’s made with sambal) and try to follow an episode of “The Closer”. Now, just hours later, I can’t even remember what it was about.

Big brother and I manage another short edit, as is our habit in the evenings, but we give up on the endeavor after making today’s quota of exactly four pages.
I’m actually relieved when it’s time to head up to my cabin.

Tomorrow’s another day. Can’t get much worse than this one.