The above photo was taken on 02.14.06 with my Lensbaby 2.0 and Lensbaby Macro Kit.

Yesterday was just a bad, bad day. It started off with the husband being late leaving for work and pretty much just snowballed from there. You know those dumb blonde jokes about realizing your tampon is behind your ear and you can't find your pencil? Well, that was me. Sort of, anyway.

Rewind to Tuesday afternoon and the departure of the boys' Grandma... While waiting for her airport shuttle to arrive, our lawn crew just happened to show up. Things were quite hectic at the time to say the least and I didn't even notice they had left the side-gate half open. Then fast-forward to Wednesday morning, a very exhausted mom, dad and l'il chillins after five days of non-stop go-go-go'ing — a morning routine off-schedule and in total chaos — and daddy's last-minute, "Oh - I forgot to let the dog out!" on his way out the door.

In the time it took me to clean up a dumped sippy full of milk and do diaper duty, somehow Claire managed to get out and run off. I couldn't find her anywhere. We've searched the neighborhood behind us, our own neighborhood repeatedly, I've called animal control, and put out word with the UPS driver who knows what she looks like. So far nothing. I think we're going to do fliers, too, but she's just nowhere to be found no matter what others have suggested and I've tried. It's like she vanished into thin air without leaving a trace behind.

Then when Todd came home from work last night, I couldn't find the cordless phone either. He walked up to the base to push the finder-beep button I didn't even know it had, and I'd somehow managed to slip the phone in the diaper bag. (At least I didn't try to store it in the dishwasher?) He put it back on the base and walked up to me for what I thought was a quick game of grab-, but it turned out he was just checking out the OU logo on my butt. The logo that should have been located on my thigh. I'd been wearing my pajama bottoms backwards half the day and hadn't even noticed. It was at this point I half-joked that we needed to create one of those "accident free since..." flip-calendars for the house. I also had to promise not to lose any more family members. Well at least this week.

Todd has taken all of this really well — much better than I expected to be honest — but we're both just heartbroken. She was "our" baby. We got her for his birthday when we were newlyweds, after I had survived a very difficult heart-test in the hospital. She turns 10 years old this June, just two weeks after our 10th anniversary. For all of those (painful) years we remained childless, she was the closest thing to a child we thought we'd ever have.

All of this has made me realize what a horrible person I am at the core. If Todd had "lost" her on his watch, I would have huffed and puffed and blown the whole house down. But he has been worried about me. How this has effected me. How hard it was on me to look for her all day yesterday. He's sorry that I'm going through this right now in addition to other things I've got going on, all weighing on me equally heavily. I would have thrown a tantrum big enough for our 2-year old to whip out his handy dandy notebook and jot down tips for future use. But not Todd. He's been supportive and comforting in the midst of his own anguish over her disappearance.

Not only did the man give me two beautiful sons. He also gives me peace, love and understanding. How did I ever get so lucky?

And how do I convince my missing cocker spaniel that just because "Lady and the Tramp" was re-released on DVD this week, it doesn't mean she has to personally reenact the movie just to get some attention all up in here?

Somebody hold me.