Chapter 23: The Miracle of Life

So last night/this morning, I helped my sister to deliver 8 puppies into the world. What a crazy experience. Last night I was at my sister’s house and I knew that her dog was getting ready to give birth so I asked her if she wanted me to spend the night. I’m not sure if you realize this, and actually when I think that Sweet Pea is the only one who reads this she probably does know this about me, but I say things on impulse and don’t ever actually expect it to happen. I volunteered to spend the night, first, not expecting her to say ‘yes’, and after she said ‘yes’ I didn’t expect that her dog would actually have the puppies while I was there! Around 11:30 pm her dog started to have contractions and by 4am she had delivered 8 puppies. I faired better then I expected to, and all the blood and secretions didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Oh and the puppies were much cuter then the freaky little aliens I had imagined they would come out looking like. At 4am when the 8th puppy was born I retired to the couch because, to be honest, I was tired. I also had a 9 o’clock appointment at one of my training stores to observe a recent trainee. While I was out cold a 9th puppy came out! It was unexpected and my sister said that it just came out! She changed the sheets and she had the puppies set up so that they could nurse and she looked over and realized there was another one.
It was pretty cool and I took tons of pictures of the puppies (not the whole birthing process…I’d prefer to forget that part).
I woke up and went to my appointment and then I went to the corporate office to teach a class. As it turned out though there wasn’t a class at 12 so I went home, finally showered and went back to my sister’s house to hang out with family and the puppies. I ended up falling asleep for half an hour and then went to teach the 5 o’clock class…tired, groggy, and feeling sick and weak. I got over it though, but not after sitting at the front of the class for a good 15 minutes yawning and zoning out while staring at the carpet. Luckily it was 15 minutes before class started and not during.
TDH was supposed to teach the 5pm class but my manager chose that I should get more practice so he didn’t have to come until 6. At the break I pulled out my camera and asked TDH if he wanted to see what I did last night until 4 in the morning. So I was flipping through the pictures to find a good one of all the pups and he is just sitting there wondering what kept me up until 4 am. Once he saw the pictures he thought it was pretty cool, I almost went into detail about stuff my sister had to do but I decided not to, I was still woozy at this point.
Speaking of the class, my manger is trying to help me to become a better presenter/trainer. I’m a work in progress. Part of that is writing up why I ultimately decided to pass on people who had low test scores. Her and TDH were trying to help me write something about someone’s test and TDH chose the word “sporadic” and me being on 4 hours of sleep and a horribly taken nap, said, “Don’t give me a word you can’t spell.” But he knew it was all in good humor. Then later my manager was telling me how the good part about teaching these classes is that we have a chance to sit down afterwards and make fun of people…she’s not a horrible person, just an honest one. I said, “Oh goody, my two favorite things, sitting and making fun of people.” Who cares that I wasn’t even lying.
Afterwards my manager was giving me feedback on how I did. I wasn’t too excited for it because I know that I still get through the class a little too fast, I asked her if we could make a “bad” sandwich, good stuff to start off and good stuff to finish with so that I could leave feeling good about myself. She said that she had good stuff to say and she wouldn’t have left the class to go work on other things if she didn’t think I could handle it (I personally think it’s because TDH had arrived). She did however say that she’s observed me twice and has seen an improvement and she’s very pleased with how well I am doing and she says that she can tell I’m getting more comfortable, also she said that I have a great rapport with the trainee’s, i.e. I’m friendly and help them to feel comfortable. It’s about the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I like the idea that I seem comfortable up in front of these classes. Three months ago I wasn’t getting up in front of groups and talking and now I’m doing it on a weekly basis, who would have thought it?