As promised, here's today's update. I'm just warning you, I cried while writing it. You may not. But this is why it's taken me so long to get up the nerve to write it. Ok. Here goes...
Thursday, July 16, 2008
EPCOT, day 2
The phone rang at 2 AM. From what Sleepy and Grumpy told me, I was the one who picked up and talked to my brother back home for a few minutes before handing it off to them. I have absolutely no recollection of this at all.
My brother, who’d been staying with us while waiting to move into his new house and was taking care of our dogs, told Sleepy and Grumpy of the troubles happening at home.
One of our dogs, the oldest, the one I’ve had since I was just a year old, had been in serious pain for the last few years. Arthritis, cancer spots, etc… One spot on her underbelly had been filling with liquid, looking as if it was going to burst for quite a while. And, apparently, on this night, it decided to do just that.
When I woke up later that morning, I had no idea what was going on. I got ready to enjoy another day, as usual. But my parents sat me down just before we left to talk about what they’d heard on the phone earlier.
“Missy,” (our dog) “isn’t doing so well,” they said. “Her spot burst and they had to take her to the emergency vet last night. Your brother called us on his way there. She was unresponsive. We don’t know what’s going on right now.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. My dog, my baby puppy whom I grew up with, could be gone. And I was 2,000 miles away. I played it off like it wasn’t really a big thing, but I cried on the car ride to EPCOT. We parked relatively close today and made it in with minimal challenge.
Another normal day at Walt Disney World.
Sleepy and I grabbed a picture as we entered the park.
Then we headed down to MouseGear to try and exchange a shirt I’d bought at Magic Kingdom the previous night. It didn’t fit right so I wanted to get a new one. We’d been told that MouseGear sold the same shirt by another shop worker. We went in and questioned three different employees. Their responses really set me over the edge. Time and time again, they simply said, “Go to Downtown Disney”. May sound easy for people with more than 2 days left and who stayed on property, but, unfortunately, neither was us.
I was getting overly worked up, between their grudging replies and the ordeal going on at home that I simply had returned it for cash back and got rid of my favorite souvenir. Gah! It was still relatively early at EPCOT and very few people were really in there, so we decided to head over to Test Track because we figured there would hardly be a line.
We were right and we were whizzing off within minutes. Once we got off, we tried calling my brother, but he didn’t pick up, so Sleepy headed off to the restroom. While she was gone, my brother called Grumpy and we found out that my dog had indeed left forever.
I lost it crying and ran into the back entrance of MouseGear, leaving Grumpy and a newly arrived Sleepy behind outside. I called one of my best friends and cried over the phone to her. I was probably in there for about 15 or 20 minutes, talking, crying, laughing, crying, and looking at the various ways to impulse buy.
I walked back outside at last. Sleepy was there, but now Grumpy had gone to the restroom. We waited for him and cried some more, and more when he came back. But…life goes on and we were bound and determined to not let this entirely ruin our vacation at the Happiest Place on Earth.
Here’s a picture of her taken a couple years ago.
We headed into Spaceship Earth and had some fun on that ride. I love that ride. One of my favorites, I’d say. Sleepy and Grumpy ride together and I rode by myself.
Some pictures…
I got a video of the ending of the ride, but I can’t seem to get it to upload online so I guess I’ll just have to add that in later.
When we finished watching our future on the great spaceship called Earth, we went over to the Land pavilion. We grabbed some FASTPASSES for Soarin’ (they weren’t that far off) then rode Living with the Land. Good ride, good ride. We had to drag Grumpy away from The Circle of Life then headed out of the pavilion and to Journey Into Imagination with Figment.
I’m sure Sleepy and Grumpy would not have ridden it if I hadn’t begged them with my still tear filled eyes. We made some jokes while in line. When they were separating us into lines to enter the little red cars, Sleepy told one of the CM’s that she was allergic to the color red. The poor guy just stared at her, unsure for a minute. But when we couldn’t hold in our laughter anymore, he joined in and we were on our way.
I fought the urge to buy a Figment souvenir at the end and we headed back to the Land pavilion. We used our Soarin’ FASTPASSES then headed to grab some passes for Test Track. We were all getting down again at this point so we decided to head to the World Showcase to finish touring the second half of the world.
Up Next:
A boring excursion