Master of All He Surveys...from the Countertop

Mills the Ginger Cat

Anyone need my eye teeth?

I ask because I would have given them, proverbially of course, to have gone to the Doctor Who Prom today at the Royal Albert Hall in London. From now until next Sunday, if you go to BBC's iPlayer here you can hear the Prom recording. Gorgeous music. Doomsday made me weep all over again, just like the first time I heard it in the episode of the same name.

Yeah, I'm a Doctor Who/Torchwood/Sarah Jane Adventures fan. What of it?

Very Pissy Lettuce

That really is a gross title for a post, but it pretty much sums up where I am right now. In case anyone is still reading, here are the things causing this week's trauma...

1. I have no outlets in my "office" that are three prong. I can't plug anything in that is remotely even thinking about being connected to my desktop without a three prong outlet.

2. Driving for two hours makes you look unprofessional when you arrive. Wire hangers? No, today it's NO MORE LINEN TROUSERS.

3. I'm staring down an appointment at 3:30pm that is approximately 2.5-3hrs away on Tuesday.

4. I have grown to loathe the letters ETA when they appear on my pager prior to the time that I'm supposed to be at an appointment. They make me even more angry when they are followed by either ? or PING!

5. It has now been four months since I've seen Simon, and it will probably be at least 2 more before I do. I'm not really sure why some of those in my close circle don't get why that makes me (at best) a little twitchy.


Soon it will be August and I will be five months away from leaving most of that pissy behind me and moving to my new life. And on days like today, I CAN'T WAIT.

Hello from Barkery Bistro!!

Hello from Barkery Bistro!!
Originally uploaded by Nancy Allen

This past weekend was anything but relaxing.

Hunky is back home now, and none of us are exactly sure what was wrong with him. Saturday morning the vet from the emergency clinic called to say that Hunky was not going to be admitted to the regular animal hospital and was not going to have the ultrasound. Seems they took more film and the second x ray didn't look anything like the first, so they decided to keep him under observation (and on IV fluids and pain medication, remember that, it will be important later) on Saturday because of some apparent cognitive impairment and mobility issues.

Remember what I told you to remember? IV pain meds + Hunky = STUPOR. When he came into the exam room for me to collect him and take him home, he didn't know who I was. Seriously. He looked through me. He was stumbling and his hind end was wet with urine. Color me an angry dog-mama at that point. He didn't go IN to the clinic that way. All I knew about what meds he'd had and his care over the last 24 hours went out the window. I wanted to get my Hunky Man HOME.

Saturday night was rough. I have not been that afraid in a long time. Hunky didn't seem to know me or the girls or Mills. He didn't know where he was. He wasn't putting weight on one of his back legs. He was soaking the dog beds rather than telling me he had to go out. Simon and I honestly wondered if the clinic had sent my Handsome Fella home to die.

I had a long phone conversation with a member of my adoption group who happens to also be a vet. With her blessing, I decided to NOT give him the pain medication that night that he'd been given at the clinic and see what happened. I slept on the sofa...if you can call two hours of tossing and turning actual SLEEP...that night, not knowing if I'd have a Hunky Man when I woke up. (Ah, THAT'S why the insomnia!)

Sunday morning he was showing flickers of his normal self. By Sunday evening, sans pain medication, he had eaten half a bowl of food. Monday morning he was dancing around, albeit slowly and carefully, for his breakfast. Monday night he hopped up and down with his front feet, back feet carefully planted, wanting a chicken thigh.

Outcome? Result? I think my boy had a bad case of gas. But God BLESS my vet at Electric City Animal Clinic for agreeing to send him for an ultrasound rather than cutting him open on the spot to see what was causing his tummy troubles.

Hunky's home, and our furry family is whole.

Pillars of Sand

Puppy Luv
Originally uploaded by Nancy Allen

My Hunky Man is in the vet hospital this morning. We had a long night last night, leaving home at 4:30pm to run down to our regular vet in the hopes that they would send me home with doggie tummy meds and tell me I was worrying for nothing over his refusal of food and nausea. We left our regular vet around 6:30, xrays in hand and headed for Upstate Veterinary Specialists to admit H to their hospital so that he could have an ultrasound this morning.

"There is something weird on the X ray." Still ringing in my ears, the words from the vet as I sat in the exam room alone, listening to them talking on the other side of the door. I'm waiting for a call now that they've done the ultrasound and will know if he needs full blown surgery or if they can "scope it out" as the poor tired on call vet told me last night.

It's so weird in the house this morning without him here. Not that I'm expecting H to die, far from it, he's a healthy 12 years young (as of this past Wednesday) but when Profile died it felt like half of my world had just been ripped open. Profile was such a presence in the house and in our lives that it was dumbfounding not to have him there.

Not so with my H man. He's the foundation of our home and our lives. He's always there, his nose is always nudging my elbow gently, always on the dog bed across the room asleep. The girls and Mills and I are floating, sort of, this morning, waiting for our anchor to come back and pull us all back together into our furry little family.

Oh, how I love that dog.

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt, and pillars of sand
-Viva la Vida, Coldplay

Because I wasn't already positive that I'm an old lady...

Click on the link in the title. It will take you to Free Mosquito Ringtones. I was appropriately horrified this morning to discover that I actually can't hear the "30 and under" ringtones and can only JUST make out the "39 and under" selection. How low can YOU go?

simple.

Daisy in Orange
Originally uploaded by Nancy Allen

I love this dog. That's pretty much the long and short of it. Daisy came into my life almost four years ago, virtually, when she was born as many of us "watched" via a message board. I put my name in to adopt her two months later, and I've fallen more head over heals in love ever since.

She came home and filled a huge hole in my house and my heart caused by the death of my Profile, and I will never stop believing that he gave up his seat, so to speak, for her because somehow he knew that I needed her.

I only wish that I could live my life with one tenth of the joy that she has in that wiggly body at any given time. I love my Daisy Baby, my Puppy Girl (or Psycho Puppy Girl/PPG to her closest friends), my Sweet Pea. Loving a soul like hers and being loved in return by her is just simple. Perfect, and simple.

Is it Wrong...?

...to wonder why I sometimes smell dead things in and around my house, but can't find the source?

...to wish that the people that worked at the dry cleaner's next door would stop talking so loudly in the parking lot that I can hear them inside my house with the doors shut?

...to ponder letting the dogs out because I know they'd run to the fence and said dry cleaner employees would run screaming back into their building?

...to wait until the 16th to buy a new vacuum, making it a month and a half since my house has been vacuumed?

...to hope that I don't go overdrawn in my checking account before the 16th?

...to be anxious that today is exactly six months till my wedding! (thank you, Simon...)

...just another brick in the Wall...?

Now, apologies to the Almighty Pink Floyd...

Just a short observation I wanted to share since I ONCE AGAIN CAN'T SLEEP...I was interpreting in a group setting today and made an interesting discovery at the end of the session. While I can tell you in minute detail who the the deaf clients were (well, I could, but I won't, confidentiality and ethics and all...), I have no real memory of any of the other faces in the room. I have a sort of photographic memory, but when I call up my memory of that room I can't make out any of the faces. I can tell you who was African American, who was male, who was female...but if I were to pass any of those people on the street I can guarantee that they would recognize me far before I recognized them. And I suppose that's as it should be. I just wonder why. Their faces, in my memory, look like the melted/distorted faces of the school children in the "Another Brick in the Wall/We Don't Need No Education" part of Pink Floyd's "The Wall." No definition, nothing, just blank. For you Doctor Who fans, it was like the moment in the episode "The Idiot's Lantern" when the Doctor finds the caged up people with no faces...the room, in my memory, is filled with people with no faces.

On the one hand, that's good because it preserves confidentiality for the group members. But in a way, it almost trivializes them, at least in my memory, because there is nothing individual about any of them. But that's good as well, I suppose, because I'm remembering them as a group of people focused on a common healing goal rather than as this man or that young woman or the like. I have to admit that even though I certainly do not wish to share the illness that brought those people to that group, I always leave those situations feeling a bit like an outsider. I know that's what I am, really, but when you've spent an hour being someone else, speaking their words, signing their thoughts...when it's over and everyone separates into groups and you're left standing there it's just an odd feeling, like breaking through the surface of the water to find that everyone has already headed for the beach.

Profundity. A CLEAR sign that I need sleep. Cross your fingers it comes soon...

Liz, you might as well just look away...

...and Susan and Dave, for that matter, though I know for a fact that Susan has boogied to some country tunes in her day...

This song is speaking to me today, and I swear it has nothing to do with how NICE Keith Urban looks or the fact that I'm an absolute sucker for a New Zealand/Australian accent...



Maybe it's because I'm just up to my eyeballs and beyond with work and stress and this just seems like a good idea...

Gone, Daddy, Gone, the house is Gone

My apologies to both the Femmes and Gnarls Barkley...

It occurred to me this past weekend that The Other House is now the property of the Guy From Out Of Town that couldn't wait till December to move in and caused me to have to move down the street for six months. I hope that he is enjoying the slightly drafty windows and the mice as much as I'm enjoying my new place...complete with a staircase that would make the machines at the gym shrink back in awe and a backyard that my dogs can actually RUN in, rather than just spin in circles while trying to avoid the concrete and the oddly placed Sandy Spot.

We're doing well so far, living one block down the road. The dry cleaner next door is an absolute pill, but other than that it's not so bad. Seriously, who needs their clothes drycleaned at 11pm on a weeknight, and if it's just what they do as a business why is it only on certain nights? Do they have my house bugged so that they will know when I am having yet another fit of insomnia which causes even the slightest noise to bring me back WIDE AWAKE? I ask because the noise coming out of their building isn't slight. Seriously, who needs LOUD machinery in a METAL building in this day and age? My favorite part, though, of living next to them has got to be the fellows that blow all of the garbage and leaves out of their parking lot INTO MY YARD at 8am every Monday morning. Seriously. The smell of the gasoline from the blowers is intoxicating.

Mills has adjusted to the new house...he now runs the Feline 500 up and down the stairs rather than by running from the office to the kitchen and ending up clinging to the side of my bed like a tiny furry mountain climber. I just wish he wouldn't do it at 4am because it makes me think Hunky has taken the fast track to the downstairs. And I wonder why I can't sleep?