"About the third step down, my foot slipped..."

Sun., December 2, 1990

     The past few days have been kind of rough.  Chief kept waking us up in the middle of the night.  Guy was getting really mad at him & so was I.  Thu. night was especially bad.  I couldn't get back to sleep after Guy let Chief out so I got up & ate breakfast with Guy & went back to bed when he left.  Chief kept whining & yapping so I finally hollered down the stairs at him.  I was about back to sleep & he started again.  I tried to ignore it then hollered down at him & he didn't stop so I came down & spanked him.  It wasn't long before he started in again though.  This time I'd decided to start reading so instead of turning the stair light on I left the BR door open to see by my light.  About the third step down my foot slipped and I landed on my rear end & hit one step before stopping on another one.  It scared me so bad.  I was relieved that I didn't fall all the way to the bottom but just thinking of what could've happened made me burst into tears.  Chief had hushed when he heard me coming but then started again.  I came on down & spanked him & screamed at him.  I sat on the stepdown & just cried for a little bit.  Chief just looked at me & whined.  I threatened to spank him again & told him I didn't want to hear any more out of him and went back upstairs.  I felt ok, just shaky.  I didn't know what I should do.  It was 6:00 so Guy wouldn't be in the shop yet.  I didn't know if I should call the dr.  I decided to try & get some sleep & call the dr. when I got up.  I read for a little while & got back to sleep around 6:30.  I didn't hear Chief any more & didn't wake up til 9:00.  I did my medicine & came downstairs & called the dr's. office.  They said he & the nurse were with a patient & she'd have to leave a message.  I hope if it was an emergency they'd get back to me sooner than they did - 2 hrs.  It was the nurse.  She asked how many steps and what I landed on and said to watch for any bleeding or cramping & that if I didn't have those, things were probably ok.  I was kind of anxious but since I felt ok I was trying not to worry.  Guy was very upset about Chief when I told him at lunch.  The only problem I noticed was having a catch in my hip every once in awhile but I've had that before a long time ago.  I've only noticed it maybe 5 times since then and the last time was last night.
     Anyway, Guy said he wasn't going to play with Chief this weekend and he hasn't except for a few minutes this morning.  We went ahead with our plans to go to a movie when he got home.  We had our last passes that we got for filling out surveys a couple of months ago.  They were expiring Friday & we were afraid we wouldn't get to use them.  We wanted to last weekend but everything we hadn't seen & wanted to was a special engagement & the passes couldn't be used for those.  Guy got a paper on the way home & we checked the times and decided on seeing Home Alone at Lynnhaven.  We left pretty soon so we could eat first at Schlotsky's!  The movie was neat and we got home about 9:00 after stopping for gas.  Guy was more relaxed when we got home but he was still upset with Chief.  We went ahead with our plans to leave him loose downstairs overnight.  He didn't wake us up but I woke up hot & clogged & coughing.