If you could only watch the instant replay...

There are times in my life that I wish I could just see what I looked like in a moment and record it . I am sure that I would have won the grand prize on some video show by now.

For example, recently I stopped for dinner on my way home from vacation. Let me set the scene here. I have all three furry "children" in the vehicle with me. It is over 90 degrees out. I do not want to go into the restaurant and leave them to bake in the truck. The truck is my husband's baby. It has over sized mud tires on it, and a lift kit. Our 75 pound boxer "baby" with the bad back legs cannot jump into the truck without some heavy lifting on my part. It has recently rained. I decide that I am tired of being on the road and want this trip over with as soon as possible, so I thought I'll take the dog for a walk before we get back on the road and continue our trip. That will eliminate one of the many potty breaks we will have to take later. Also sharing a parking lot picnic is a mother and a young boy sitting on the tailgate of their SUV.

Now the scene is set. The back "lawn" of this particular restaurant is very steep, probably a 60 to 75 degree angle. I am trying to be careful, and watch my step not going to fast as we try to find the dog's preferred sweet spot. Suddenly, and this is the moment in time that I would like to have had on film, my feet shoot out from underneath me. I don't remember yelling. I am guessing that I did because the dog tried to get away from me so fast that he messed up his hip. I just know, I was suddenly on my back with a leg turned at an angle that God didn't intend, trying to breathe through the pain in my knee. I had let go of the dog's leash and he was headed up the hill as fast has his three working legs could take him.

Now as soon as I realized that the dog was on his way to immediate danger, I tried to follow him up the hill. This was no easy feat because I was only on one working leg at that moment. I make it to the top of the hill, and start hollering at the dog to stop, stay, come, whatever command would keep him out of the drive through lane, and get him closer to me. I am barely able to put weight on my newly discovered "bad" knee, so I am hobbling across the parking lot looking like a Quasimodo wanna be. The dog is obviously scared and in pain.

The whole time this little drama is playing out, the aforementioned lady and her son are sitting on their tailgate watching, and doing nothing. I wonder now what they were thinking. "Gee, look there's a dinner show!" or "This will be something to tell people about." I don't think that "we should probably offer to help her" crossed their minds.

I wonder what was going through the dog's mind. "What the ?" "Did I do something wrong" "What demon possessed her" "RUN!" maybe a combination of all of that.

In the end, since the dog was also "crippled" in the incident, I was able to catch him before anything more catastrophic happened. I rubbed the cramp out of his back leg. I even managed to lift him into the truck again once one of us was back on all "pins". Fortunately I had noticed a drug store right off the exit ramp, and was able to get an ace bandage and some ice packs to help me get home.

I remember praying before I left to head home. I asked God to get us all back home in one piece. I should have been more specific and said "in the same condition that we left in".