the girly who shall end all girls

on Thursday, i had ice cream for dinner.

***
i had a draft post about how well my routine has been working, that Leela super-loves daycare, that i miss C but everything is suprisingly okay.

this is all still true.

but.

Wednesday night buhrger and butterflydrming met Leela for the first time. and she would not calm the fuck down. she just stood under the table and made her siren noise: roorooroorooroo. i took turns with mimerki sitting on the floor with her. she does react to new people entering the house, but it has always subsided quickly. not this night. she stopped being noisy eventually, but it was easy to set her off again and i had no idea why (other than the basic "you people aren't C, get out and send C in").*

that night she woke me up repeatedly with these horrible gagging noises. and i'd swim up enough to think that i needed to get her to the emergency vet, and then she would curl up and fall fast asleep, breathing normally. so we stumbled along until the regular vet opened in the morning, and they did a phone consult and assured me that nothing life-threatening was going on and they could see her Friday. having slept for shit, i called off and kept her home, where she eventually started to hawk up phlegm. so yeah, the vet saw her and confirmed that she has kennel cough (basically a doggie cold) and she'll get over it on her own. but she's very contagious, so she really shouldn't interact with other dogs for 10 days.

no daycare. no playing with her neighborhood friends. oof.

since she's so skittish with people, i can't have a dog walker come in. i need to figure out this weekend how to plan my work schedule. the next couple weeks are also the viaduct closure (traffic doom in downtown Seattle) so traveling between home and the office will have additional challenges. i think i'll probably just do shorter office days and log on from home in the evenings.
***

D starts weekly radiation soon, on top of the chemo. i told C about the dog drama (because in his position i would have wanted to know) and the dumbass told his mom. therefore D, who is retired but will never stop being a cop, has figured out that not everything is okay here and is fretting about disrupting our lives and making noises about how C doesn't have to stay.

i want to yell at him for that.

but i understand. i want people in my life to understand that stuff is happening, but that i also need to be treated mostly like i am a normal person on a normal day and not some fragile glass thing. i got a haircut this week, and my stylist V who i love for NOT being an incessant small-talker and cutting my hair in a businesslike fashion while i sit quietly and enjoy having her hands on my head, asked how i was doing...and i told her. she then talked about cancer stuff the entire time. which was really very sweet. but what i want when i see people is to NOT talk about cancer or how living without C feels like a rehearsal for life after he dies.

it's like wearing a backpack. the weight is distributed pretty well and my conditioning gets better all the time. some days it feels heavier than other days. this week i had to rebalance the load. i'd say that eventually i will get to take it off, but the truth is that it's only the weight and how well it's fitted that changes. everyone is carrying their stuff all day every day.

it's a beautiful day. i'm going to go see the sounders probably lose. My hair is cute, Leela's coughing less and less, The Blue Sword came out as an ebook, and last night pirate A brought me Twizzlers. i am, in spite of everything else, reasonably happy.




*i wish it worked that way. if yelling at everyone who enters the apartment would magically produce C, i would do it too.

Ghlaghghee passed away in her sleep.

it always hits me when pets go. even pets i only knew on the internet.

***

Molly has been cuddly and energetic and very much herself this week. i hug her a lot, she tolerates it like the saint she is. she's been spending more time up on the bed, but she's also leaping up without an assist, so i feel good enough about the state of her that i can be charmed by how the spot where they shaved for her IV makes it look like she's wearing a little Ugg boot. (seriously, her leg is so wee without all the fluffy hair.)

i said to my mother today that i've reached a milestone: this is where my friends stop dying in accidents and start dying from natural causes. perhaps the next one is that it will stop being unexpected and too soon.

* * *

and here i am, with my hands coiled like claws over the keyboard, and my every attempt to compose brings more tears.

enough about me. read some markbourne today, and remember him.

his film blog
his fiction

markbourne is at home.

C and I had the dinner shift with e_bourne tonight. We came back to the house, where E got to play with Kai (and deposit checks and pay bills), and then took her to West 5 for comfort food. It was a good visit.

She asked me to write the update for her tonight.

Mark started having physical therapy today, where they come and do range of motion exercises with him. The therapist says that he will have extra work to do with his left leg, where there is scarring from pulling the vein for the emergency bypass.

He is really uncomfortable with having a tube down his throat. Basically, he's getting enough oxygen, but it feels so wrong that he periodically panics because it doesn't feel like he's breathing enough. He's on a drug to calm him so that he can get enough rest.

The plan for Monday is to give him a tracheotomy and a feeding tube directly into his stomach. Sounds scary, but what it does is get all that stuff out of his mouth and the top of his throat to let him do things like swallow naturally, sit up, and (with some coaching on technique) talk.

I saw him briefly yesterday and today; when he's not on the drugs he's lucid and able to transmit information with nods and his eyes. He's obviously desperate to communicate.

after a month of back and forth it's mostly final: i still have a job, but only half a job. that half includes all of my benefits and seniority, and i'm now working directly for my major client. many people at My Corporate Masters went above and beyond to make my continued employment happen.

but i'll still only be working 20 a week.

this morning is my first taste of horrible horrible freedom.

first i did research on the BBC 100 books meme that is popping up on Facebook, to point out that the list isn't from the BBC and no one there said the 6 books part and it's designed to make people feel righteous. but that kills the opener for talking about books with people which is mostly what it is. so i didn't post anything on FB about that, although the tabs of evidence are staring at me Right Now.

i also managed to stop myself from commenting on a Stranger article about confectioneries - the author made a passing comment disparaging beards! that will not stand! beards are awesome, hipster douchebags have just ruined them for the rest of us!

as in, i wrote something, then deleted it. i see how i could easily get entangled in drawn out flaming discussions about nothing of importance. (even though beards are awesome.)

is this the equivalent of a bored dog turning over the garbage? i need to get my business license done.