I took some awesome photographs at our house recently. Of small superheroes and garlic cloves and a cat sleeping next to a dog. But I can’t show them to you right now. I’m not home. I’m not home because I’m in a (dirt cheap, okay fine …kinda scary) motel tonight, thinking about something sad I have no control over…and about how America’s Got Talent.

As you may have surmised, I love to travel (except for when I’m sick of it), and one of the reasons I love it is that I get to meet so many interesting people. People…

…with talent.

I mean honestly, I’m 34 and I still can’t cross my eyes. I can, however, manage to get a spinal headache from the lumbar puncture I had last week. I have such very large amounts of sympathy for those of you who suffer from headaches. I can be, ahem, quite a dramatic person as you may have noticed, so take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt, but I thought I was going to die. That’s how bad my head would hurt if I sat up or, heaven forbid, coughed. I don’t know how people who deal with chronic headaches do it; I’d be a mess. I was a mess with this headache that came on a number of days ago. Diagnosed, if you want to call it that, as “probably a spinal headache,” I was given the option of letting it go and hoping it gets better soon or having the anesthesiologist do a blood patch. You don’t even want to know.

But back to America. (And yes, I’ll share the sad thing with you in a moment.) Flying high or swinging low, they’ve got talent.

I’m not all that talented. I never could do that whole “Look, I’m double jointed!” cool thing with my thumbs that other kids could do. I can’t whistle and only learned to snap (very poorly) a few years ago, using a different finger than I am told most other people use. I guess I could say that I’m talented with at picking out interior paint colors. Oh, and at procrastinating. For example: even though everyone has been talking about it for ages, I only just now started reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Man, why didn’t you guys tell me about it sooner!? Oh, what’s that? You did? My bad. I am, like, so totally listening to you next time.

But back to America Having Talent. Yeah. Actors in training, wannabe singers, prepubescent dancers, stars in diapers, miniature motorcycle riders; I see all sorts when I travel for photoshoots.

Tonight what I’m seeing is something different, though: a huge television with a darkened screen in a (did I mention…kind of scary!?) motel room. Do they even make these kind at the television factories anymore, with the big backs on them? I thought flat screens had taken over the world. Someday, our children won’t believe us when we tell them we used to have to set our tv in an entertainment center with at least an 18 inch depth. I remember at first not believing it when my dad told me there was a time when calculators hadn’t been invented and people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes. I used that knowledge, and my superior, persuasive big sister powers to try to convince my little sister years ago when we were young that talking hadn’t been invented yet when Mom and Dad were growing up.

I was so sneaky. No, really, I wasn’t that bad. But I did do a blindfolded taste test with her once and give her dog food as one of the things she was supposed to guess. She got it right away and, if my memory serves me, was not amused.

Roobii, our seven month old puppy, is not amused tonight, either. And her poor, puny self is what has our family sad tonight. She’s very, very sick. Roobii is at an overnight veterinary hospital far from our home tonight. They close early in the morning, so I’ll need to pick her back up bright and early and take her back home to our vet. (Hence staying in a motel here.) Driving her out to this overnight vet brought our grand total to three trips total today to the vet, and still they don’t know exactly what’s wrong with her. She has a temp of almost 106, even after starting antibiotics and other (pain and anti inflammatory) meds this morning. She won’t eat, drink, move and only gingerly opens her eyes every now and then. A large portion of her body (inside near her organs and outside) is bulging out, and she’s in a lot of pain. Every test for the typical things that could be wrong (infection, Lyme Disease, getting into rat poison, etc) have come back negative. Trying to pull fluid or whatever it is out of her swollen areas proved fruitless. So she’s on an iv tonight as she was dehydrated and needs to get her antibiotic (a just in case), some replacement fluids and pain medication on board. Poor thing was so sweet laying there when I said goodbye. The vet doesn’t think it’s anything really awful like cancer and, given her age, she might have just been acting really silly and gotten herself into trouble somehow or even been bitten by a snake. As long as they can get her fever and the swelling down (at which point Roobii will start to feel better), they’re confident she’ll bounce back just fine.

As I go to sleep tonight, I’ll be hoping that she has the talent to kick this doggie sickness to the curb.

Goodnight, guys.