....last night probably rates as the most useless I have ever felt.
As I sat on the couch, in my pjs, knitting and watching a movie, there was a car accident outside our house. Just as I reached the bedroom to grab some clothes, Lucy (2yrs old) began to cry. The noise of the crash had woken her. Tim was at work, and I couldn't leave her alone and upset in the house. So I sat cuddling her on her bed, while who knows what was happening out on the street just metres away. I don't even know if the people involved were hurt, by the time Lucy was ok for me to leave her, the emergency services had been and gone, and just the towtruck remained.
Thinking over it today, I'm not at all convinced that I made the right decision. I mean, I've never heard of anyone dying because they were alone and scared in their bedroom for half an hour.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Week One Is Nearly Over......
and it's been quite a letdown! Yet at the same time I have discovered something rather odd about myself.....
Earlier in the week, Tim was driving home from work late at night, and as he pulled up at a red traffic light, he saw a dog standing on the sidewalk on the opposite corner of the intersection. It was late, and dark, and cold, and he was just a few minutes from home, but he drove through the intersection and pulled over, got out of the car and went to find the dog. The dog was gone, nowhere to be seen. A lady in another car had stopped too (which is a little weird in itself, because how often do you seen one let alone two vehicles stopped to search for a lost dog?), so the two of them searched a few more minutes for the dog, and unable to find it they got back into their cars.
And it got me thinking, how relieved I was that Tim got the lost dog scenario and not me. And it's not because I don't like dogs (we have two of our own), it's just that I can't stand the thought of watchng a dog run out into traffic and get run over. If there is a chance of that happening, then I would rather not be around. In fact, I can't cope with the thought of ANY animal lost/hurt/distressed/hungry, and I feel much more comfortable with the thought of coming across a lost/hurt/distressed/hungry person. How weird is that?
Yet history tells me this is in fact how I am.
~ I can't watch TV programmes involving animals. You know the programmes, the ones where the animal protection officers go out into the countryside to rescue starving horses, or someone helps a duck with fishing line tangled around it's feet, or a half-dead runover cat is rushed to the local vet. Even seeng the ads for those programmes has me nearly in tears.
~ I spent half a night walking around Invercargill many years ago, looking for my lost dog. I was sobbing so hard, at the thought of her lost and cold in the dark, that I couldn't even call her name. I nearly throttled her when I returned home hours later to find her waiting for me at the front door.
~ Earlier this year I was out walking, with Lucy and her friend in the pram, when I heard what sounded like a child being hit by a car. I ran to the road ahead where cars had stopped, but the instant I saw a cat lying dead on the road, I stopped and turned away. Yet I had been expecting much worse, to see a child lying in that very spot.
It's weird, very weird. And I know that now I have written this, it is nothing less than certain that at some point during our Interruptable Year, I'll come across a situation where I need to help an animal. I'm having palpitations about it already. Here's hoping it's something small and manageable, like finding a lost dog as I'm driving past the dog pound. Knowing my luck, it'll be the aftermath of a truck driving through a herd of escaped cows in the middle of the night. Argh.
Earlier in the week, Tim was driving home from work late at night, and as he pulled up at a red traffic light, he saw a dog standing on the sidewalk on the opposite corner of the intersection. It was late, and dark, and cold, and he was just a few minutes from home, but he drove through the intersection and pulled over, got out of the car and went to find the dog. The dog was gone, nowhere to be seen. A lady in another car had stopped too (which is a little weird in itself, because how often do you seen one let alone two vehicles stopped to search for a lost dog?), so the two of them searched a few more minutes for the dog, and unable to find it they got back into their cars.
And it got me thinking, how relieved I was that Tim got the lost dog scenario and not me. And it's not because I don't like dogs (we have two of our own), it's just that I can't stand the thought of watchng a dog run out into traffic and get run over. If there is a chance of that happening, then I would rather not be around. In fact, I can't cope with the thought of ANY animal lost/hurt/distressed/hungry, and I feel much more comfortable with the thought of coming across a lost/hurt/distressed/hungry person. How weird is that?
Yet history tells me this is in fact how I am.
~ I can't watch TV programmes involving animals. You know the programmes, the ones where the animal protection officers go out into the countryside to rescue starving horses, or someone helps a duck with fishing line tangled around it's feet, or a half-dead runover cat is rushed to the local vet. Even seeng the ads for those programmes has me nearly in tears.
~ I spent half a night walking around Invercargill many years ago, looking for my lost dog. I was sobbing so hard, at the thought of her lost and cold in the dark, that I couldn't even call her name. I nearly throttled her when I returned home hours later to find her waiting for me at the front door.
~ Earlier this year I was out walking, with Lucy and her friend in the pram, when I heard what sounded like a child being hit by a car. I ran to the road ahead where cars had stopped, but the instant I saw a cat lying dead on the road, I stopped and turned away. Yet I had been expecting much worse, to see a child lying in that very spot.
It's weird, very weird. And I know that now I have written this, it is nothing less than certain that at some point during our Interruptable Year, I'll come across a situation where I need to help an animal. I'm having palpitations about it already. Here's hoping it's something small and manageable, like finding a lost dog as I'm driving past the dog pound. Knowing my luck, it'll be the aftermath of a truck driving through a herd of escaped cows in the middle of the night. Argh.
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