between the both of us, camden and i pretty much spent the entire holiday weekend on the couch. camden spent the first part halfway through a terrible cold and just when he started to find his health for the second part of the weekend, his old cold found me. i made it out saturday night to see the great gatsby with my mom and two sisters while camden had to work and then camden and i decided to drag our sorry selves out on sunday to see it, what for me would become the second time. we also went with kramer on a couple of walks to parts of the neighborhood we had never been before and a few times in our sick daze laughed harder than either of us had in a very long time. our noses used plenty of tissues, and our mouths ate plenty of junk food, all the while an electric fan blew the warming air around our apartment in a attempt to cool our feverish heads … and that folks is just about all. the end.

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thursday my phone suddenly started to ring … a few hours prior, camden and i had both started our days at work and it was what seemed to be just another thursday. nothing unusual was supposed to take place, just the usual work things and the usual work schedules.  but on this thursday, as my phone received this call from a not so usual number, i answered to find a not so familiar middle aged man on the other side whose first words were “we found your dog”. i was bewildered. camden and i had, just like any other workday, left kramer at our home, safe and sound, behind locked doors. my first reaction was “our dog?” “um … well what does he look like?”. i seriously thought this was some bizarre prank phone call and i’m pretty sure this man seriously thought i was a complete idiot. “do you have a dog?” he said. “yes, i have a dog” i replied dumbfounded. ok, if this gentleman didn’t think i was crazy before he definitely did now. “we found her running across a very busy street and she appeared to be very frightened” “she is lucky she didn’t get hit!”  – on a bit of a side note here, “everyone” always refers to kramer as a her even after we repeatedly tell “everyone” he is a him whose very him name is kramer. –  still confused i asked “a white fluffy dog?” “you found a white fluffy dog?” “yes” he confirms, now sounding slightly annoyed. “we found a white fluffy dog running across the very busy street” “his collar says kramer and underneath is listed your number for this white fluffy dog!”. now with the confirmation of kramer’s identity taken care of, i began to explain to him why all the earlier confusion of the “do you really have my dog?” stuff. explanations aside and the location of our safe dog in hand, i began to now worry how kramer did escape in the first place and really started to panic that maybe someone had broken into our home and let him out in the process. i called camden and filled him in on the current situation and while doing so suddenly remembered an email i had received from our landlord the night before. in this email our landlord stated that sometime in the coming week, maintenance would be coming around to install our window air-conditioner. i quickly replied reminding him that we had a dog so if he could please let us know what day exactly they would be coming so i could make arrangements for him not to be home. i suddenly started to realize that this was probably the answer to all the strange circumstances now taking place. after my prediction was confirmed and kramer was safely taken home, angry questions began to flood my mind. ‘why hadn’t anyone tried to get kramer back inside?’ ‘what if kramer had died and we had no idea where he was or why he wasn’t at home?’ ‘why hadn’t our landlord made better arrangements with us so none of this had to happen in the first place!?!?’ and then i caught myself. just as quickly as the anger had come, the anger was gone and replaced with this overwhelming feeling of gratitude. grateful that kramer somehow wasn’t hit running across the streets. grateful that someone was watching out and was willing to take the time to rescue kramer from the fast passing cars. grateful that those man’s first words weren’t something like “we found your dog smashed in the middle of the street …” suddenly none of the angry questions seemed to matter. all that mattered was that our family was safe and how grateful for that i was.