boys

i haven't posted any pet pictures in a while, so here are a couple. this is dagmar yesterday, courtesy of kara, and eliot today, courtesy of me. they're good boys. dagmar's a lumbering galoot who likes to plop all 60-odd pounds of himself on top of us when we're in bed. he licks our faces, which we usually don't mind. though i don't like it when he licks my glasses and kara doesn't like it when he licks her neck. sometimes after the dogs are crated for the night i find eliot and carry him downstairs to he can spend some quality time with us as we slink off to sleep. he enjoys our attention for a while but then, i guess when we quit paying attention to him (as we're sleeping) he gets restless. but he's afraid of walking through the room where the dogs are crated, even though they're locked up. poor little boy.

jenny boylan

my old college writing teacher is so famous. and i knew her before she was a she. i'm a bit upset that i never caught her appearances on "oprah," but, you know, i don't watch a lot of oprah. or larry king, for that matter. still. it's exciting to see her in the news, in such a positive way. yay jenny!

i regret to admit that i haven't read her first memoir, she's not there, though i'll be sure to get her new memoir, i'm looking through you (when it's out in paper). my favorites of her books remain remind me to murder you later and the planets.

clean cat, snow, pipes, pain

i had eliot washed & shaved today. it's pretty clear from his behavior that he feels a lot better when shorn. plus he's nicer for me to touch, smooth & clean.

it's snowing like crazy, at least in a pacific northwest sense. it's been snowing for about 5 or 6 hours in a row. there's snow on vehicles and on the grass, but it's not sticking to the roads yet. when i went to pick up eliot, visibility was all but nil. lots of boneheads are driving without their lights on. the roads are a little slippery but they're not too bad. oh, i can handle a car in the snow all right.

next door to the groomer is that pet stuff store i like, lucky dog outfitters (i wish they had a website i could link, but they don't), a dangerous place indeed. i got the dogs some woolen toys (such as this one). they really like woolen toys. i also got them each - wait for it - a cow's trachea! it's the hip new dog chew toy, apparently. the place also had pig hearts, dried, but i am going to wait until next time to get them those. tomorrow? we'll see how they like these windpipes first.

i still have some pain in my mouth, but i'm running out of vicodin. (we called for more pills and i was prescribed vicodin instead of percocet.) i'm actively rationing my pain meds now, trying to take only 2 a day. i hope the pain goes away soon. my postoperative visit with the surgeon is a week from today. i don't want to ask for more drugs, but i suppose i could.

reassociation

i'm back to work today, after a total of 5 days off. it actually feels like i've been off much longer. it didn't take long for me, spending all day in bed and on a narcotic pain medication, to become dissociated from my real life. after only one full day there was quite a distance between me and transcription, between me and my life goals (such as they are). i've been lucky in my postoperative course. none of the horror stories i have heard about wisdom tooth removal have been applicable in my case. i've had virtually no swelling, and no bruising. there's been some pain, but really it's more of an ache, duller than pain, as well as a strange sensation, either of the sutures being there or of the teeth not being there. kara got in my mouth with a flashlight the other day and said, wow, your teeth are plumb gone.

so i don't know how i feel about going back to work. it had to happen, sooner or later. i suppose i was starting to get bored with that in-bed-all-day lifestyle, so i suppose i'm ready to restart things. i'm still not eating solid foods; i'm not actually sure when i can do that again. i'm tiring of these soft things and ready for a bit of variety, but i don't want to bust open anything in my mouth, do i?

hour

one moment i'm lying in a reclined dentist's chair in the middle of a medium-sized room, covered with a blanket, surrounded by staff/nurses. the surgeon himself is inserting the iv in my right cubital fossa but i hardly notice because i'm telling these women about how we keep our cats feeling safe from our dogs (hey - they asked!). (we use baby gates - we have 3 of them in use.)

and the very next moment i'm in a different medium-sized room, in a different chair, not reclined, asking a woman (maybe someone from the previous room, but i'm not sure), the only other person in the room, if i can have the fragments of my teeth. it's hard for me to make myself understood because my mouth is full of gauze. she tells me, not unkindly, that this is the 3rd time i've asked this question and no, i can't have them; they've been disposed of.

then i see kara and am helped up out of the chair. with assistance i walk to the car. on the drive home i giggle about the lost time and the goofiness of the whole situation. where did my mind go during that hour? for it was about an hour that i lost. i wish i could get a recording of that, where it went, what i experienced, somehow.

percocet makes me a little nauseated (i have yet to eat anything this morning) and seems to give me some chills. but right now i don't have any pain. i can feel the sutures in my mouth. and i had gauze pads in my mouth all day yesterday as tamponades, but by the evening the bleeding had stopped for the most part. no swelling as of yet, and no bruises.

loss of wisdom

the time is nigh: my 4 wisdom teeth come out tomorrow morning. (the only really impacted one is the left lower; and that's the one that's in contact with the mandibular nerve, so its removal will be the riskiest part of the procedure - i could conceivably have permanent loss of sensation.) my appointment is at 9:30. kara is off today & tomorrow, and she went to the store this morning to pick up cream of wheat and soups and apple sauce and yogurt and ice cream. tomorrow she'll come with me to the surgeon's office and drive me home, as likely i'll be a touch loopy afterwards. i think she's looking forward to caring for me, to ministering to my needs. of course the only thing i'm really worried about for tomorrow is the insertion of the iv line for the sedation. silly me and my needle phobia. but at my colonoscopy last summer, that bit, as well as the rest of the procedure, went smoothly, so i'm sure as can be that this will too. kara's working saturday and sunday, but i have 20 tablets of percocet, several movies tivo'd, and about 150 pages of bleak house to get me through the weekend. i reckon i'll be fine.

found in translation

so here's my friday morning post, very popular indeed, in spanish. how about this? i like how it looks. i'm read round the world. i really should learn spanish. hm. is this indeed spanish? i should admit that i'm not even sure. (though i do know a little german. he's sitting right over there.)

72

i just checked this blog's stats, and apparently blue fancies got 72 hits yesterday, which is about 7 times its usual daily hits. golly. i guess it was all because of rufus. and, because i know you're all as excited about rufus as i am, here's a link to photos of rufus (with some fans i totally don't kn0w) the night we saw him, and if you scroll down, maybe halfway, you can see a bit of what i wrote in this space yesterday. someone copied and pasted me, or something. is that allowed? are there rules about this? not that i'm upset - should i be flattered? - but it's weird. anyway.

lungs

well, rufus has got a pair. he was just plain tremendous last night when we saw him up in seattle, at the paramount. it was just he on stage there, on his own, singing, alternating between the piano and the guitar, accompaning himself. if you don't know from rufus, treat yourself here. just one song, as a wee taste: here's lyrics, here's a video. (alas, we did not shoot this video - our seats were not that good and he was not wearing that red shirt but rather a superb vintagey sweater.) he was astonishing up there. and throughout the concert (which lasted an hour and a half) i thought about poetry, writing it. i don't have the delivery system he has, that voice, the music, so he has an advantage there. but all the same, i was thinking about it. really doing it. and i still am. i was inspired.

still, it's frustrating if not infuriating to keep going around and around in my mind - long fiction, short fiction, poems - coming to no decisions, writing nothing - and i haven't really written a poem since, i don't know, 1991? but that's where i'm leaning right now anyway. (poetry - the least commercially viable form of writing out there! sounds like a fit for me. actually, kara thinks i have a knack for writing jingles and should go into advertising. hey?)

anyway. rufus wainwright was wonderful. i would definitely see him perform again. (he's playing in portland tonight, and part of me is tempted to shoot on down there.) (incidentally, he said that the night before he'd been hanging out with and singing for jake and reese [are they together or are they not?] in hollywood!)

okay then. let's calm. i'm something like 66.90% of the way through bleak house. i admit i'm getting a little twisted up in the myriad characters and situations, but it's still a heck of a ride. and now i'm going to exercise a bit, and then have a shower, and then prepare my 2007 taxes and get them over with for another year.

penis and testicles

i came across these images in the course of my job-related research today, and i liked them. for that reason and that reason alone i share them with all who visit my little portion of the internet universe. the male genitalia are more complex than i sometimes realize. (who knew a testicle had an appendix? and who knew what a raphe was?) go figure. and today i typed a disporportionate number of urologic operative notes that these images helped me complete to my own satisfaction. i hope you find them as informative and enthralling as i do.

in other news, the dogs have not been eating and have been acting lethargic and mopey for the last couple of weeks. dagmar (who has a penis but no testicles) was the worse off of the two, so kara took him to the vet yesterday. she was sold some expensive canned food, which both dogs seem to like. today they're eating and have much more energy than they have in the last couple of weeks. previously we'd been feeding them iams dry puppy food, at which lately they have been turning up their noses. dagmar had blood drawn and the vet called today to say his lab values are within normal limits. so maybe they're just finicky? we'll have to find some sort of balance, i suppose. it'll get worked out.

other other news: kara and i are going to seattle to see rufus wainwright (her newest crush) on thursday, and next monday i'm returning to my quality assurance duties in the office. so these are exciting times to be sure, pictures of male genitalia notwithstanding.

54.36%

as of this morning i'm on page 468 of dickens's bleak house, over the halfway mark, and about 60 pages ago one of the characters spontaneously combusted! kaboom! i'm not saying which one, because that would spoil things for future bleak house readers. but i admit it surprised me. i wasn't expecting something like that to happen in a book such as this. i wonder if spontaneous combustion was a new phenomenon, er, i mean urban legend, back when this was written.

and i forgot to mention, not that anyone cares really, but my qa responsibilities in the department have been (temporarily?) taken away from me. it was nothing i did, as far as i know, though paranoia has been known to strike. no, it's because the department as a whole is behind on our minutes - there are too many as-yet-untranscribed minutes of dictation - and we need to catch up. so i've been home typing all week - day 5 is about to start for me. i haven't done straight transcription for 5 days in a row since early august. i haven't stayed home working all week since early august. and i'm finding i rather like it, which also surprised me a bit.

i don't know if i'm going back to work in the office next week, or the week after, or, really, ever. it is my opinion that our current qa manager ought to be handling the flagged reports (as it is technically her job) and not need my help with them, though if she does need my help i won't be complaining, because i still like that kind of work. but being at home all day and typing is good too, at least for the time being.

oh - and the dogs did not go back to daycare yesterday, but they're going tomorrow. and i'm off tomorrow, so i have the whole day without them! yay! though i am going to the dentist for a final cleaning tomorrow morning - the 2nd half of my mouth, the right half - before my oral surgery in 2 weeks. smaller yay.

daycare day 1

this picture might actually be a bit small, for a change, but it's of dagmar and steve inside a little fort, protecting it from a marauding beagle, on their very first day of daycare yesterday. it's a still from a webcam at the place. it was a joy for me to be working here in a quiet home yesterday, and when those dogs got back in the afternoon they were sure pooped. it was wonderful. today they're staying home with me but maybe tomorrow they'll go there again.

kelley a-go-go

i have a writer acquaintence in seattle named kelley eskeridge, whom i actually haven't seen or talked to in some years, sad to say, though i follow her career from way down here in tacoma. today i learned she has a new gig: go-go dancer. oh my - kara & i would totally love to go see her dance, but the venue is a lesbian place that apparently isn't totally open to men. but they seem to not mind transvestites, so perhaps if i got myself tarted up a bit we could gain entry. it would be oh so fun to go see her dance at this place, where the dancers are 36 & older. anyway. we'll keep our eyes peeled for kelley's schedule and then maybe make arrangements for a special trip north.