I’m ready for the quiet

Even though there’s still about a month of summer left—I guess I’m going by the school calendar, even though I don’t have kids—it already feels like summer is winding down. The back-to-school displays are up in every store, and fall clothes have taken over the clothing racks. It just feels a little quieter somehow, if that makes sense. I don’t mind the quiet. In fact, I kind of prefer it. I’ve had more than enough excitement this summer.

My house has reached that age where things are starting to show their wear. Right now, there’s something going on with the AC. It’s keeping up just fine with this exhausting Texas heat, but the drip pan keeps filling with water, and it takes much longer than it should to cool the house when the thermostat switches from the daytime setting to the nighttime one. I’ve already had the HVAC guy out once, but he’s going to have to come back for another look.

Then there was the water leak in my kitchen after one of those heavy spring rains. It turned out there was a soft spot on the roof where the wood had started to rot. Thankfully, we caught it early and got it repaired. According to the roofer, if we’d waited until the end of the summer, it likely would have gotten much worse, and there’s a good chance the sheetrock inside would have started to cave in.

So yes… I’ll happily take a quieter season for a while.

I also have an old Maytag refrigerator that we bought when I was either a senior in high school or in my early college years. It’s not pulling enough cold air into the refrigerator section anymore. The freezer still works perfectly, but the vent that circulates the cold air keeps frosting over. For now, my solution is surprisingly low-tech: every couple of weeks, I grab my trusty hair dryer and defrost the vent until things are back to normal. Once life settles down a bit, I’ll call a repairman.

I really don’t want to replace this old guy. It’s our second refrigerator, out in the laundry room, and they just don’t make appliances like this anymore. As long as it can be coaxed into keeping things cold with a little maintenance, I’m happy to keep it around.

As if all the adulting wasn’t enough, I was also dog-sitting my brother’s two dogs while he and his fiancée were overseas for two weeks. Honestly, having four dogs in the house wasn’t stressful. Unlike our two, my nephew and niece are calm, quiet, and ridiculously well-behaved. Every time we’re all together, I’m reminded of what a terrible dog parent I must be. Our dogs are spoiled, loud, and just a little unruly.

Of course, the excitement started almost immediately.

On the second day, my niece managed to squeeze her tiny little body underneath the backyard gate and headed off on her own adventure. She got out around noon and was almost immediately spotted by a neighbor, who posted about a loose dog on the neighborhood Facebook page. The problem was that she’s pretty skittish, so she wouldn’t let anyone get close enough to catch her. Every person who spotted her tried to help, but she’d just take off running again.

By at the end of the day, she’d crossed two major roads and wandered through two different neighborhoods. I know this because around 6:00 that evening, she was spotted nearly two miles from the house – not even close to where I thought she’d gone. I made what felt like a hundred posts on missing pet pages and neighborhood apps. What amazed me most was how many complete strangers stepped up to help. People I’d never met were driving around the areas where she’d last been seen, searching for her until well after midnight. It was a reminder that there are still a lot of really good people out there.

The hardest part of the whole ordeal was calling my brother and future sister-in-law to tell them their little girl was missing. They were, understandably, devastated. Being overseas, there was absolutely nothing they could do, so I had to make sure I stayed as calm and confident as possible. I didn’t want them worrying any more than they already were.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to catch her that first day despite additional sightings But at least we knew the general area where she’d been hanging around. Early the next morning, I went back to that same neighborhood and took her brother with me. I’d tried that the night before too, but she had been hiding from everyone.

This time, I don’t think we’d been there for even 30 minutes when she suddenly appeared out of nowhere and walked right up to her brother. I wasn’t about to waste that opportunity. I calmly—but very quickly—slipped her harness on, scooped her up, and headed straight home.

I’ve never been so relieved to buckle a dog into the car.

With our little runaway safely back home, my brother and future sister-in-law could finally relax and enjoy the rest of their vacation. She was missing for about 20 hours, which felt like an eternity at the time, but thankfully we found her safe and sound before anyone had to cut their vacation short or spend two weeks worrying from halfway around the world.

Looking back, it was a stressful 20 hours, but it also reminded me just how many kind people are willing to stop what they’re doing to help a complete stranger find a missing dog. I’ll always be grateful for everyone who kept an eye out, shared a post, drove around looking for her, or simply sent words of encouragement. They made all the difference.

– C