up so floating

it's a cold and foggy morning this morning. this might well be my last post of 2006.

the end of the year typically brings out in me feelings of nostalgia. the thing that initially strikes me this morning is the paul auster bookend of this year. in january 2006 kara and went to see him and his wife siri talk about this and that on a stage up in seattle. and currently i'm reading a not-so-new book of his, the music of chance. i'm only 30 to 40 pages into it now, as i'm also working my way through the current harper's, but thus far i'm liking it. i like his style. i didn't plan on ending the year so like the way i began it, literarily speaking, but i guess these things do happen.

of course 2006 will be remembered as the year we lost rumble to a sudden and unexpected death. that was just at the beginning of this month, and in some respects we're still reeling.

this has also been a year of the dog. max has slowly increased in his general decrepitude but sagan has had an interesting time, with plenty of cuteness, one attack, a discovery of a hip problem, more cuteness, and a finally a diagnosis of what turns out to be a knee problem, which we are still leaving untreated. she's a good dog, though, all in all.

i've been a transcriptionist all year long, which has been nice. i started working from home in august, and that has been a terrific change. kara, on a professional level, had a setback or two this year, but she is ending things in a better position then where she started the year, moving from file room clerk to legal clerk in the health information department of the hospital. her job is of course not without its frustrations, but it is a marked improvement.

and 2007 is nigh. what does this coming year hold in store for us? regular writing for me, an endeavor i failed in 2006. more medical transcription for me. i might even go for certification. and kara might take another stab at getting into school but, like me, she sometimes has trouble deciding just what she wants to be doing. at the moment her job is mostly enjoyable, so i think she's more or less satisfied.

we hope to get to star island in july, but we're still waiting on seeing if i get the vacation time.

we'll be getting a new front door early in january and that'll be a huge improvement for our house. other projects are in the works, and as they come into play i expect i'll be writing about them here.

as i take my leave of this post laden with links, i want to mention a cd kara got me for christmas last week. it's by singer named kris delmhorst, a woman i had never heard of. for this particular album, strange conversations, she put well-known poems to music and sang them. here's a snippet of what she did with a favorite e e cummings poem of mine. i like it a lot.

post-christmas post

christmas was 2 days ago. seems like longer. we had a super good time that day, though. it was relaxing. we sat by the fire and opened presents. the meatloaf was excellent. kara gave me a scanner and when i figure out how to use it i'll be posting all sort of wild images, to be sure. so far, though, i'm confused by that machine. still - watch this space!

we got good news yesterday. our front door is coming! it's going to be installed on january 9, or 2 weeks from yesterday. oh how i'm looking forward to that day! the current front door is so swollen we have to tug and tug and tug to get it open. it's beyond aggravating and i end up cursing violently when i finally am able to yank it open.

and someone is coming to perform a routine maintenance on our furnace in just under 3 weeks, on january 16. i think that's all the service calls we can expect for the time being. that's enough. the furnace is running fine, though the little control panel on the wall is advising us to change the filter. of course we don't know how to access the filter. the thing needs to be serviced anyway, as i say, as a matter of routine.

wait - no. kara also got us tivo as a christmas present (how exciting!), and i think someone's going to come to the house to hook that up. how hopeless am i? i bet kara could manage to do it but we'll probably pay a professional to pay us a visit. so that's 3 imminent visitations. our social life is burgeoning!

yellow misses rumble. it's pretty clear. he's a sad cat these days. and max woke us up at 2:30 this morning to tell us he wanted to go outside. kara got up and let him out and just as soon as he came back in he took a shit on the floor. clever dog, he. he is becoming increasingly demented. he is on tramadol for the pain.

so i work tomorrow, then have 2 days off. i work sunday and am off monday for new year's. i like these splintered workweeks. they go smoothly. these 40-hour workweeks leave me with little energy to do anything else. what a bad idea they are. next week, when the new year does start, i will be writing again. a short story per month in 2007 is the plan. plus i want kara and i to get cracking on the household projects we have in mind. we've been putting such things off for too long and i think it's past time we get off our butts.

pre-christmas post

tomorrow is christmas. i worked today, but my shift is over. lots of thrombocytopenia today in my reports. it's weird how things come in spurts. kara has another hour of her shift, and will be home soon.

the dining table is covered with parcels. boxes have come in the mail from our families. it's been grey and drizzly all day today. tomorrow we'll sleep in a bit. we'll make a fire and open presents. we'll listen to christmas songs sung by dwight yoakam and aimee mann. i'll whip up a meatloaf and kara will whip up some potatoes. that's really all we have planned for tomorrow.

we think it's likely that rumble is possessing yellow to a degree, given that he has recently taken to scratching at our mattress in the mornings as he never has before, and as rumble did all the time.

here's a link to a short errol morris film about movies. it's fun. happy christmas.

max and shoes

it took me a while to get to sleep last night, in part because of this guy here. old man max. he just couldn't get comfortable. he would walk to his bed in our closet and start turning circles to lie down. he moaned with pain as he made his preparations and his moans became growls. it takes him such effort to lie down (or it could be he was paying more attention than i thought when over the weekend i watched boogeyman on cable - and was just scared of his closet). several times he gave up lying down and made his crooked way out of our bedroom and into the living room. at least he wasn't barking, but all the same it was painful to behold. thinking maybe he had to go potty, kara got up and let him out a few times, but he always came back inside quickly. she fixed his bed a bit and helped him onto it. finally, after an hour and a half or so of this, he settled down and was quiet.

still, it was another while before i got to sleep, with thoughts buzzing around my head. did i get enough stuff for kara for christmas, and further, is the stuff i got her any good? i thought about writing my essay about electrocardiographic reports, a source of consternation for many a transcriptionist in our group (myself included), and began formulating that in my mind. i thought about our christmas meal, turkey meatloaf (why not?), and planned that grocery store trip. my friend and colleague kristi is asking me for book recommendations (she gets the credit for the ecg essay idea) and mentally i went through my shelves. iris murdoch, connie willis, carson mccullers, paul auster, nicholson baker, james morrow, penelope lively. margaret atwood? haruki murakami? don delillo? these thoughts and those dodged hither and yon, as well as, where is rumble now? what is left of max's mind?

on the lighter side, yesterday afternoon i had another good walk. i wore these shoes, which i bought over the weekend. reeboks, neighborhood of $50. oh, they're white. they're very, very, very white shoes. i'm not really generally a white-shoe sort of fellow, but exceptions were made. i'll have to muddy them up. truly, they were much more comfortable than the older shoes i was wearing last week. i did, however, experience what could well be shin splints on my walk yesterday. i get them sometimes, shooting pains up each shin each time my foot hits the ground. i'm not sure what they are, but i walked through them. i took the pain. the shoes themselves felt good, though. and the weather yesterday evening was gorgeous. it was 45 to 50 degrees fahrenheit (7 to 10 degrees celsius) and crisp. the sky was huge and thin clouds held still high overhead. i walked for about an hour and it felt good. i hope the weather maintains and i can have a similar experience after work this afternoon.

what i say when i have nothing to say

i haven't been feeling like blogging much lately. there's no good reason. i just haven't really had anything to say. i don't really have anything interesting to say today either. i gave up on the carol anshaw book i was reading because i was bored with it. sorry carol. i started a kazuo ishiguro book yesterday and i'm not sure i like it yet but i'm still reading it. soon i think i'll read the richard powers book i was going to read toward the end of october, but i wasn't in the mood for it yesterday. the night before last there was an astonishing windstorm. lots of western washingtonians have no power. lots of trees fell. lots of lines went down. we, in our home, have power. we seemed to have lost it for a moment during the night, because some of our clocks were blinking in the morning, but it was really no big deal. i guess we lucked out in a big way. i went to see my doctor yesterday, for followup of my ultrasound last week. i have a fatty liver. it could be a lot worse. i'm to watch my weight and exercise. i also got a tetanus shot, and today my arm doesn't hurt at all. i'll see my doctor again in 3 months. no meds yet. so that's good. it's saturday today. kara's taking a shower and when she's out we're going out, to look for shoes. i had a couple of good walks last week, about which i feel very good, but i don't have good shoes and one of my feet was really hurting. kara loves shopping for running shoes, so we're going to do that. i liked walking last week. i like walking outside better than walking on the treadmill, but i'll probably use the treadmill some, when the weather is bad. yesterday i also mailed off all the christmas presents i'm going to mail off. so that's done, and something of a relief. there's another thing or two i think i want to get for kara yet though, but i won't mention them here because occasionally she reads this blog. yesterday driving around was fun (sarcasm) because many traffic lights were out and too many people don't know what to do when the traffic lights are out. i was behind a good number of those people, it seemed. it's been 2 weeks since we lost rumble. one day last week when i was working i thought i heard her walking toward me and i turned, but it was eliot. not that there's anything wrong with eliot. i love eliot. yellow's been a lot more needy since rumble died. he's always gone through periods of neediness and periods of aloofness, but he's been pretty consistently needy these last 2 weeks. otherwise, other than all of that, things have been fine. work's been fine. no staggeringly interesting reports to report about, but nothing so terrible. this feels kind of lame, but at my annual review last may, my supervisor said she wanted me to "identify a medical topic" and research it and "document my findings." i'm having a heck of a time coming up with something to write about. i'm thinking a 2-page essay, something like that. i don't know. there are lots of interesting medical topics out there, and i'm probably making a bigger deal of this assignment than i need to, but i feel like i want to come up with something good and wow my supervisor. still, i could just write about the anatomy of the knee, for example, or about wolff-parkinson-white syndrome, or about ventriculoperitoneal shunts, or about the intracranial troubles of senator tim johnson and my friend christa, but even the most preliminary research somehow annuls my interest. so if anyone has any ideas about fascinating medical topics, show me the light, huh?

it'd have to be a real big woman

the title of this post is from the movie arthur, in which dudley moore plays a lovable billionaire drunk, and it comes when the woman his father wants him to marry says, "a real woman could stop you from drinking." i always liked his response to that line. apparently dudley moore died in 2002. i don't know if i knew that. anyway. i probably just wasn't paying attention.

the ultrasound tech asked me the other day if i was a heavy drinker and a couple of weeks ago ginsberg asked me the same thing. i didn't know how to answer the question. maybe it's a matter of, if i'm hesitant about the answer, it means i drink too much?

i've cut down on my drinking considerably since i learned my lab results were wonky. during the period immediately before my initial ginsberg visit i was drinking maybe two or three beers in an evening. that was more than usual; usual was one or two in an evening. when kara and i open a bottle of wine, we finish it, and we split it about evenly.

perhaps that's drinking a lot, but i certainly know people who drink more than this.

the other night kara and i went out to dinner and we shared a bottle of wine. in the middle of last week - tuesday i think - yes, the night kara took sagan to the vet and we learned about her knee - we also shared a bottle of wine. aside from that i've had almost no alcohol.

well - i have a bottle of kahlua on the table in the kitchen and i splash a bit into my coffee occasionally and occasionally i have some with milk. but that particular bottle on the table for about two weeks and it's more than half full i think.

(i like girly creamy drinks like white russians and kara likes manly drinks like whisk[e]y, neat. it's just the way it is with us.)

so what's my point? i suppose i don't think i drink top much. of course, with my steatohepatitis, perhaps i shouldn't be consuming alcohol in any form ever again. ugh. i mean, i could handle that, though i would miss it a bit. ginsberg, when i told him i was having two or three beers daily, advised me to cut down, and i certainly did. then the ultrasound tech on friday asked if i was a heavy drinker and i said i didn't feel like i was.

but am i?

liver

i had my abdominal ultrasound today. it was fun. the gel was warm. i was worried it would be cold, but it was warm. the tech guy was nice. he let me watch the monitor while he did his business.

my gallbladder looks good. no stones. my common bile duct looks goood. my kidneys, pancreas, and spleen look good. my liver - not so much. i have a fatty liver. plus it's enlarged, though that could be normal for me.

what does this mean? i don't know. my preliminary research on the internet has revealed vagueness. having a fatty liver is not a good thing but it's not immediately threatening. it wants to get thinned. i see my doctor again next week and we'll talk about these things. i'm guessing it's mostly going to be a diet-and-exercise type deal.

i miss walking. i've been thinking about this. i used to walk all the time. ever since i started to drive, which i did quite late, at age 27, i've been driving places. over the last several years i've abandoned walking. i've got to start walking again.

i work from home, and my office is just a flight of stairs from my bed. so i already walk to work. ha ha. i need to start taking walks after work. i think i'll like that. mostly what gets in the way is the time factor. i'll need to make time to do this after work. just incorporate it into my day.

gimpy bitch

here's our sagan (last week, in the snow that's gone now). poor sagan. kara took her to the vet last evening because ... she's kind of lame.

we thought it was her hip but it turns out it's her cranial cruciate ligament - in her knee! this ligament in her right rear knee is apparently ruptured. the vet launched into an explanation of treatment options. basically treatment involves obtaining radiographs to rule out other problems, and then surgery. the x-rays would run about $400 and the surgery, including internal fixation instrumentation of plates and screws, would be another $1600 to $2000.

we're saying no to this. thank you, no. sorry, sagan, but no. kara didn't say this to the vet last evening but the answer is no.

sagan's cost us enough already. she had a cyst on her paw a couple of years ago - a weird, red, bulbous, nasty thing between her toes - that was quite worrisome and she had surgery there. it was removed, and it came back. then it went away by itself. weird. and last summer there was an issue with the same leg that prompted us to take her to the emergency clinic - nothing was found at that time but it might have been then that this ligament was first torn.

she also went through a period of attacking max - latching her jaws onto his ear and not letting go until kara or i pried those jaws apart. that kind of behavior is unacceptable. there was a period of time during which sagan was one act of aggression away from being returned to the pound.

sometimes she still growls at max but there haven't been any actual attacks in many moons. all the same, she has that history and this makes us less inclined to throw more money at her.

she doesn't appear to be in pain. she's just a little unsteady. she limps. sometimes she walks on just the three legs, tucking the right rear one up near her belly. she's overweight (though not as much as rumble was) and this likely contributed to this injury. she weighs over 70 pounds!

so we're leaving her be. she's a fragile dog, for all her heft.

otherwise she's an excellent dog. she's very smart. she's crazy smart. she was well behaved in the vet office yesterday. she's good with the cats; she shows no aggression toward them whatsoever. she's very good about going into her crate when we go out or when it's bedtime. she likes to tell us when it's her bedtime! i give her hardly any attention and she likes to kiss me.

but no more surgery for sagan. she'll live with the limp. and we'll see what comes next.

bye rumble fish

we lost rumble last night. when i came upstairs this morning to use the computer, she was on the floor, lying by my chair. she was where my feet would be, were i sitting there working. she was dead.

there was no warning; she seemed fine yesterday. she'd always been a fairly subdued cat. she was a big girl, and i'm guessing it was heart failure. something like that. she was about 7.

i had rescued her and yellow from the shelter within a week of moving to seattle in the summer of 1999. at the moment, yellow seems okay. he's not all broken up or anything. i don't know if cats register these kinds of things. these losses.

we took her to the vet to have her cremated. i actually didn't cry until i handed her over, wrapped in a pillowcase, to the tech. the vet said that because rumble was lying in the middle of the floor, and not all curled up or hiding in some corner, it seems that death came suddenly and quickly. that's a good thing.

i was trying to give her a good life. i hope i did. i hope i gave her a good life.

eliot is still here. we had him shaved again yesterday and i think he feels good. max is still here, in defiance of the odds. the vet said that when we called, she'd assumed we were calling about him. and sagan is still here, though she has developed a severe limp. i think her right rear hip is bothering her. arthritis? while at the vet we made an appointment for early in the week. we can't afford another surgery for her but maybe we'll put her on some kind of medication.

but rumble is gone. we called her rumble fish. i named her rumble because she purred real loud, and she gained great girth and took to rumbling around the house; she sounded like a person when she came down the stairs. she still purred, though, when we petted her or when max played with her. she and max got along real well.

at the moment i feel calm about things. it'll probably hit me again tomorrow when she's not sitting on the pillow by the computer here, scratching at my pant leg to give her attention.

bye rumble fish. i love you.