Happy Four-Twenty To You

Before I begin, I respectfully request my friends who still think highly of me take their leave. Anyone who loves animals, please also see yourselves out. I’ll wait.

Are they gone?

Phew.

Starting in December of last year, possession and consumption of weed in Massachusetts is now legal. That said, it’s still illegal to buy without a prescription. Which I don’t have.

When I was a teen I never tried weed because even then I knew that as a parent I'd be the only one of my peers that could tell my kids that I hadn’t. Imagine my surprise, then, when the time finally came, and they asked, and then they didn’t believe me. I was pretty peeved.

Since then I’ve just been curious.

The purchase and sale rules not yet worked out by the state, I knew couldn’t buy it. One day it just so happened that I gave a certain son not named 98 some cash. And in a completely unrelated occurrence some days later I found myself in possession of a plastic bag of a substance I can only describe as smelling like a cross between freshcut grass and vinegar. That maybe someone had left to rot for compost. It was awful.

Weed. I got some weed. Now what to do?

Not that I'd given it a whole lot of thought (I had) but I wanted an edible, so I decided on that old classic, brownies. After a bunch of lectures from people far more experienced in the consumption of cannabis about how  "It stays in your system much longer if you eat than if you smoke, and are you really sure you don’t want to just smoke it, Mom  stranger?" I found a recipe for cannabutter, which involves a crockpot, butter, some water (to keep the butter from burning and the THC from vaporizing) and about 8 hours, according to the Internet, but I could only stand the smell for about 3.

So I simmer in the crockpot per the instructions and then strain the mixture through cheesecloth, just like they said. Anticipating the yummy brownies I'd make with the butter, the cheapskate in me got the better of me, I saw the leftover  steeped leaves and thought to myself, "I bet that’s still good for something,” and set the bundle aside on the counter until I’d had a chance to look it up. In the meantime, I chilled the butter mixture and called it a night. This was on a Sunday and I figured I'd make brownies on Monday.

Maggie, if you’re still here you should leave now.

The next morning Zoet had a case of the Mondays. She wouldn’t get up to go outside, but who could blame her? It was January and still cold and dark and she was asleep. So I picked her up and brought her out, and she did her thing per usual. We went back inside and I gave her the requisite treat, but she turned her nose up at Milk Bones, holding out for Greenies which any dog knows are way better. So I tossed the Milk Bone onto the floor next to her (probably muttering about how if I wanted a bellyacher I’d stick with teenagers but I don’t really remember because, well, I'm getting to that. The rest of the morning is a bit of a blur.)

A little while later I was back in the kitchen; the treat was still unconsumed and Zoet was still lying on the floor, but now in a puddle of pee. I panicked, and quickly called the vet to let them know I was bringing her in, and off we raced.

They noted her unusual demeanor: clumsy, jittery, and peeing all the heck over the place. They reassured me, took her for the day, and sent me on my way. They’d be in touch after they ran some tests and knew what was going on.

Back home, head spinning, I sat down to breathe. My eyes fell on a sock Zoet had been chewing. I’m the first to admit that normally when I see something chewed up on the floor I’ll just leave it there, with the rationale that if I pick it up Zoet will just find another sock/t-shirt/towel to chew on, so I’m being frugal. Since she was gone I picked it up to toss it, and only then realized … it’s the cheesecloth from last night. The weed cheesecloth. The cheesecloth that had all that leftover weed in it. HAD.

Instantly, an angel appeared on one shoulder and a little tiny devil on the other. Do I call the vet and admit what I’ve found? Or do I pay for all those tests and keep my mouth shut? Prioritize the dog’s needs? Or humiliate myself? Will it be the dog? Or me?

Is Maggie still gone?

If I live to be 120 I shall never overcome the shame I feel admitting this: Pride won. I’ll just pay for the tests. I can’t tell them! What would they think?

At that very second the phone rang. It was the vet. The situation’s urgent, Linda, and we’re taking her to the emergency vet. I knew this was God’s way of telling me to come clean, so I spilled. The weed, the butter, the cheesecloth. I told them everything.

They had never had this situation come up before (that they knew of, at least no one had admitted it) and after some vet-to-vet consultations and some more observations, it was determined that there really wasn’t any treatment and that she’d be fine, but we’d just have to wait and let her sleep it off.

And oh my goodness, did she sleep it off. I made my butter on a Sunday, brought her to the vet Monday morning, and that poor little thing pretty much slept until Thursday. She was able to walk about as usual by Tuesday morning, and by Wednesday she had mastered the stairs but it wasn’t until Thursday that we got our first bark at someone out front then run to the couch to bark at them on the off chance the walk into the woods out back. Because that’s how we roll.

After the fact that I realized that the cats were all a little more lazy than usual. I surmise now that Ruby, who I fed on the counter to keep the other cats’ food safe, consumed a bit of the butter, and knocked the cheesecloth to the floor, where the other cats had a chance with it, before Zoet swooped in, in that Zoet way, and scarfed down whatever was left to be scarfed. They were all back to normal before I even realized they might need attention, too, so I left the vet out of that loop.

In case you've never seen one, this is what it looks like when a doggie is ... resting comfortably. Very comfortably indeed.