not awesome

So my Sunday wasn't totally awesome. I had a bad Manila day. Justin and I allow ourselves a day here and there where everything about Manila and the Philippines and third world living gets on our nerves and makes me want to scream. Luckily, we have our bad days on separate days so we can support one another. I guess I'm just saying, I'm allowed to have a "I hate Manila" day now and then.

Some things that made me crazy:

The "traffic" guy tapping our car and directing us how to parallel park the Jeep. I wanted to scream at him. "This is our car you idiot. We know how to park the damn thing!"

The 57 dead cockroaches I had to dart on the walk from the elevator to the Jeep in our building's parking garage.

The three inch long cockroach that darted across the floor as we walked and Justin kicked as hard as he could.

The disgusting trash smell, everywhere.

The polluted gray sky.

The barely working air conditioners in our apartment

The mystery bug bites on Arabella's hands that I have to put steroid cream on. The nurse at the clinic thought they were from "blood suckers". Lovely.

Anytime anyone in the family has any stomach issues, we immediately pull out our lab sample cups in fear of more parasites.

When I enter any room in the house, I always turn on a light and look around first to make sure there isn't a bug (most likely a cockroach) on the floor somewhere.

People who touch my daughters' hair without asking.

There was monsoon like rain on Friday night and by Sunday morning the sidewalks are dotted with dog crap again.

Ultra pasteurized milk.

The icing on the proverbial crap cake for me was standing in church and feeling something on my foot and looking down to see a rat scurry across the floor. Addie and I freaked out since we were the only ones to see/feel it. It was a rat-on-your-foot kind of day.

Motherly instincts cross species lines. Lucy wasn't acting like her self on Friday. I am sad to admit that I noticed she wasn't feeling well because she wasn't annoyingly underfoot the entire day. She's always on top of us during bath and bedtime and when she chose to sit out in the hallway during all the family fun I knew something was up. When we threw the ball and she ran to it but just sat down I was worried.

Lucy was diagnosed with ehrlichiosis on Saturday and stayed in the veterinary hospital on Saturday night. I suggested that we bring her ball and one of Justin's slept-in t-shirts to the hospital so Lucy wouldn't feel so lonely all alone that night. Really, I was just making an excuse to go check on her.

When I brought her in she was severely anemic and hypoglycemic. She was vomiting and lethargic. After a few tests they confirmed a tick related disease. An undetected tick bite must have happened in the last few weeks giving her a nasty parasite causing ehrlichiosis. My Google searches had me freaking out but luckily we caught in the early acute stage which is treatable. She came home on Sunday night and was frisky as ever. The girls were so thrilled to see Lucy. It broke our hearts when Bella called out for Lucy when she wasn't there. Bath and bedtime on Saturday night were just too strange without our little mutt. She's on a month long regiment of doxycycline, blood cleanser, vitamins, and liverolin. We will have to get her blood tested periodically to make sure we got rid of the parasite but other than that she should be just fine.

Having crazy tropical tick bites on our dog is another sucky thing about Manila.