mother of the year?

i am sitting here eating a banana split and thin mints, trying to recover from a very traumatic afternoon.  i just about killed my childrens' "best friend" (as kaylee so lovingly refers to her).   for any of you who don't know who lydia is, she is our guinea pig.  for all of you who do know who lydia is, you also know how much i desperately hate her.  and the fact that everyone feels the need to remind me that i just had to have her, makes me hate her that much more.  well, back to my traumatic afternoon:   this morning, we took her out to the back deck so that i could clean out her cage.  i am very easily distracted so i never actually got around to cleaning the cage out.  i played in the yard with the kids and then i remembered that i had promised to bring mike lunch out at the farm.  so we spent several hours playing at the farm in the nice warm weather.  i decided that i would let the kids play at the farm while i went home to clean (such a blessing in disguise).  as soon as i walked in the front door, i remembered that i had left lydia outside.  i wasn't too worried until i saw her laying outside of her little igloo in the scorching sun - uh-oh.  when i brought her inside,  she was completely lifeless and breathing really hard. now, i cannot tell you have many times i have wished that she would die but i sure as heck did not want to be the one who killed her!!  i knew i was definitely in danger of losing my "mother of the year" title.  i was immediately trying to decide what my story would be because no one was ever going to know that i was the one who killed her.  i was completely freaked out.  i called the vet and they told me to wrap her in cold towels and put rubbing alcohol on her ears and paws.  so now i am not only completely freaked out, i am also completely grossed out.  i do not like dead things or even almost dead things and here i am sitting on my kitchen floor, trying to revive a half dead rat.  after doing everything the vet said, she was not getting any better.  so - i rushed her to the vet.  i never in my life dreamed that i would take a guinea pig to the vet.   i don't know if i was more motivated by the fact that i thought the vet could help her or that i just did not want a dead guinea pig on my kitchen floor.  either way, a few minutes later i am standing in the vet's office holding a half dead guinea pig (in a box of course) and crying.  yes, i was crying.  they took her straight back and started giving her fluids.  slowly, she started to revive.  while we were back there, i could hear people coming in and the receptionist was telling them "it will be a few minutes, there has been an emergency".  i thought that was really funny.  so after about 15 minute in the office, i was on my  way back home with a groggy but pretty alert guinea pig and a vial of antibiotics to administer twice a day.  so even though she's not completely out of the woods; the vet said her prognosis was "guarded", i think she's gonna pull through.  i am going to go polish my "mother of the year" trophy now.