I'm a worrier.

I worry I won't get the house cleaned before guests arrive. I worry I won't get the interview I need to complete a story by deadline. I worry I won't find the right box for guests to slip their envelopes in at the reception. I worry I'll never find time to update my blog. I worry Bentley will get hurt again.

And so I worried again last night, when I saw my handsome Cavalier peering at me through the spokes of our staircase, with a mischievious look in his eyes. And then I worried some more when I heard him chewing. And when I ran up the stairs to see he had my underwear between his two front paws. And when I held them up, realizing he'd eaten about six inches of the nylon/spandex blend -- basically everything but the waist band.

I remember my childhood dog, Taco, eating my grandmom's nylon knee high and passing it within a couple of days. My parents dodged the bullet of an expensive surgery that would have fixed whatever damange the stocking might have done to his tiny insides.

At first I thought, Bentley has a strong stomach. He's sustained a lot. He's eaten mounds of grass and leaves, pieces of wood, lightening bugs, strands of carpet, half of a blue Wubba, and it's all come out the other end, sometimes in full.

But I also thought how I've heard horror stories about dogs and underwear, or dogs and socks. So when the 24-7 emergency vet hospital recommended that we bring him in so they could get him to throw it all up, I stopped worrying and just did.

The waiting was the worst of it. Sure, I worried how he felt about being forced to throw up (I learned later that he actually wagged his tail through the whole thing) or that he wouldn't throw it up and then we'd have to discuss "other options," as the surgeon had said. But waiting meant I had to sit there and remember the last time I'd been in that waiting room late at night into early morning -- when Bentley was attacked.

As BK and I sat there after midnight, half asleep and half laughing at our silly dog's underwear fetish, I kept staring at the spot I was sitting in this past December, when I had a really good reason to worry. I could see myself sitting there, in that terrible situation, and I had to choke back tears. I hated that feeling.

Then my puppy came running toward us, his left eye bloodshot from the apomorphine used to induce vomiting and his head soaked from the water they then used to flush it out, and I thought to myself, 'You worry, and then things are fine. It's always OK.'

Lately I've been "on edge," as my mom put it, about wedding plans. I worry things will get done. I do one thing and give myself half a second to just barely breathe a sigh of relief before I worry about the next few things we need to tackle.

At times it seems neverending, and I know I'm not alone, because three of us stood in the hallway at work the other day and commiserated over what it's like for the bride in the months leading up to the wedding.

But when you think about the big things, the stuff that warrants a bit of worrying, it seems silly to worry about things like how the favors will go over with guests.

And to think, I needed my dog to eat my underwear in order to bring me back to my least favorite place in the world so I could recognize that.