I WANT MY BIG, GAY APOCALYPSE!!

This bit rivals Dave Barry for sheer clever funniness. I absolutely adore it.

I Want My Gay Apocalypse

  garbled out by airyn @ 8:42 PM

 
One Down - Five to Go

Today marks one week after bringing Sumi home post-surgery. It has not been an easy week. Not at all. I had to call Dr. Brown to get supplemental drugs to help keep her calm. He prescribed Torbutol, a highly expensive analgesic that can enhance and expand the effects of acepromazine. Sadly, I haven't found that it helps all that much. Fortunately, she hasn't been waking me up every two hours all night long for the last few nights, but she rarely makes it through without needing to go outside or at least some form of contact and acknowledgement. She is exceptionally frustrated, as am I. We both feel helpless, I think, and of course she doesn't understand why I won't let her play or run or jump or do much of anything at all.

Despite my constant vigilance, several times she has managed to jump up onto or off of the porch, onto and off of the bed (one time each,) and has accomplished several other unauthorized maneuvers. I've decided that if this bone graft survives intact, it will be a freaking miracle. Nothing slows her down! To further complicate things, I have no way of knowing if the thing is healing or if it's been destroyed, and I likely won't know for five more weeks.

It's so unfair to keep her cooped up all the time, so I do allow her a fair amount of time lying on a bed by the couch. Trouble is, occasionally Zephyr manages to entice her into playing, and then one of them has to go into the crate. Currently, Zeph's in there, and for the last hour, he's been mostly staring at me balefully and whimpering, grunting and groaning. He's completely disgusted with everything, but it doesn't seem fair to put Sumi in each time they get rambunctious. We're all just hating this.

Her incisions are healing well, and there's only one spot that seems to be bothering her enough to work at periodically. She's still very gassy, probably from the Cephalexin (the antibiotic,) but her stool has mostly firmed up. She still leaks occasionally, though, which isn't much fun. I have a couple of shots of the incisions' progress here online. The first three are from Monday, when the Band-Aids came off. The others are from yesterday.

• Here you go

In other news, today I ran my first 5k "fun run," put on by Thurston County Parks & Recreation. I haven't been running at all lately, due to troubles with my right knee. So, needless to say, I sort of sucked. However, I finished in 30 minutes and some-odd seconds, 17th overall (out of about 50,) and I even got a third place ribbon for my age group. :-) My pace was under a 10-minute mile, so that was nice. Senior citizens and small children outpaced me by a long shot, though. [sigh] Wendy ran the 10K, and finished at 56:11 - pretty impressive to me. My knee didn't start hurting until after the race, so perhaps the SuperFeet insoles my physical therapist gave me are helping. But right now, it hurts quite a lot. I'm not so sure that running is in my future; I don't want to destroy my joints in pursuit of something I really don't enjoy, anyhow. When Lance gets my bike up and running, I'll switch to that as an exercise instead, along with weights at the gym, and perhaps swimming. When the weather is dry, I'll rollerblade instead. It's kind of nice, running with Wendy and Julie and doing a bit of bonding that way, but I've never liked it. Not really.

Anyhow. That's all I've got.

  garbled out by airyn @ 8:25 PM

 
Day Two

Sumi's Band-Aids came off today, and her incisions look clean and pink. She still wants to be entirely too rambunctious, and I have to keep my eye on her every second she's out of the crate. I've had her out of the crate today for a total of about four hours, and during that time she lies on bedding next to the couch. I sit next to her for most of the time, as she seems to want the contact. I've been trying to come up with things for her to do and to chew on, but it's difficult - even though she's drugged, she's bored and frustrated. She wants to run, to bounce, to play with Zephyr. She doesn't want to go into the crate anymore, as she knows that she'll likely be in there for quite awhile. I usually let her out when she starts whining, in case she has to go to the bathroom, but most of the time she just wants to be out in the living room. Right now, Zeph's in bed after playing Airyn-Kicks-the-Ball-and-I-Bring-It-Halfway-Back (I really can't call it "fetch,") the only real playing we've done in the last two days. Tomorrow, I think I'll wait for Sumi's morning ace to kick in, and then take him over to Ft. Lewis, or maybe go running. Maybe both. But I don't want to leave her alone for two long...she's got diarrhea, and leaks a bit for some reason. Pardon me for being indelicate, but normally, my dogs poop 5 or 6 times a day; today, she's only pooped twice, which doesn't worry me too much, but it leads me to take her out at any possible sign of needing to go.

Having 4, possibly 5, days off is fairly strange. Not wanting to leave her alone right away, I've stayed at home since getting back early yesterday afternoon. Have I spent the time packing? Cleaning? Reading? Heavens no. I have firmly entrenched myself in seasons two and three of "Babylon 5," quite possibly my favorite television show of all time. I'm in a constant state of lump-in-my-throat whenever I see episodes of this show; the writer, JMS, is absolutely brilliant. He can turn a phrase, put a point on it and make the audience gasp, cry, cheer and rage over and over again. I've been entrenched in an artificial world, and quite happily. Wendy would laugh and laugh...she mocks my love of science fiction, and taunts me endlessly with Star Trek convention jokes. Bah.

Tomorrow, though, I shall venture Outside, and not only Outside, but Off the Property. Yes indeedy.

Unless it's raining.

Then I might queue up season four. ;-)

  garbled out by airyn @ 9:51 PM

 
Another Dog Surgery

Yesterday, Sumi underwent Darthroplasty to correct the severe dysplasia in her left hip. The site linked just there has good pictures of the procedure, and this one covers it more intensively. The prognosis is good, although she has to be confined to a crate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...for six weeks. Monday, she had her surgical consult at the Puget Sound Animal Hospital for Surgery, and they put her through a $300 series of x-rays to see if she was a viable candidate for the "best" procedure, a triple pelvic osteotomy. Sadly, her joint was too degenerated, so we did the next best thing, the $2200 darthroplasty. Oy. Thank goodness for Mom coming through for me yet again.

I dropped her off at the vet's office yesterday at about 9am, and was told they'd call when she was done. I took Zephyr to the off-leash park we love so much, ran some errands, went back to the off-leash park, took Zeph into the Redmond REI to try on doggie packs, and then went back to Lance's apartment to wait. A short while after we arrived, the vet called, saying Sumi was awake after her surgery and that everything had gone very smoothly. He told me to call after 9am today to arrange a time to pick her up. I was very relieved!

This morning, I called and was told that Sumi was doing great - a little too great, actually, and was walking almost normally and wanted to push way too hard too fast. I set an appointment to pick her up at 11, and Lance and I went to breakfast, and then to a little beachfront park on Lake Washington to let Zeph run around a bit. We proceeded to the vet's, where a vet tech went over aftercare, medications, do's and don'ts, and all things darthroplasty. She gave Sumi an injection of acepromazine for the trip home, and after it began to take effect, brought her out. Sumi was walking very, very well and wagging her tail, happy to see us. I had put the doggie barrier between the cargo area and the back seat, so that Zephyr could ride in the back seat and not jump all over poor little Sumi-girl. She tried to jump into the Jeep, and I was barely able to stop her in time. Zephyr was very happy to see her, and they sniffed each other through the barrier as best they could. Sumi stayed standing up until we got onto the highway, when she lay down and stayed put til we got home.

I let Sumi and Zephyr reunite briefly, making sure they didn't start playing or jumping, and then I put Sumi into her crate with a marrow bone and a rawhide bone. She stayed there, mostly quietly chewing and sleeping, for almost 5 hours before she needed to go outside to pee, which she did with no trouble, thankfully. She wants to pull on the leash and trot around, and I have to physically stop her from jumping up on the porch. She's doing just incredibly well, and, like the vet tech said, a little too well - it's going to be hard to ensure she doesn't damage the bone graft. If the blood supply doesn't establish itself, the graft will die and dissolve away. She could also break it off. It could migrate. The tech said she's only seen one graft dissolve, so that seems to be unlikely. I'm just worried about physically breaking it. We'll see.

Of course there's more to say, but for now, I'll leave you with a couple of movies and photos:

• A large movie showing how Sumi moved pre-surgery. Notice how, instead of taking long strides, she begins to "bunny-hop" as she runs and trots. That's because her femoral head is popping out of the acetabulum.
• The dogs grazing with the horse, "Mommy," who lives in the pasture.
• A few photos of the dogs, the horse, and a couple of post-op shots.
• A little moving around, post-op.
• Ditto.

 
Among the Many Things I Don't Get

I belong to a small, closely-knit group of friends on a closed mailing list. We're all each others' extended family, and like family, there are always squabbles and whatnot. Tonight, one of my friends asked for help with a problem - two birds had taken to roosting under his deck at night, and the subsequent droppings were causing a problem. He asked if we knew of any humane deterrents, and I provided a few options for him. Another person responded, "My favorite? A BB gun." What the fuck? I know and like the guy who said that, but I cannot wrap my brain around someone deriving enjoyment from the pain, suffering and ultimate death of another living being, however small.

  garbled out by airyn @ 8:40 PM

 
What Planet Am I On

I'm actually bummed out that "24" and "Line of Fire" aren't reruns tonight. Strangely, I'd much rather take a bath and finish Dominion than watch TV. However, I know that if I record the shows, the chances of me actually watching them are fairly slim, and I don't want to miss them. I'd also like to get a little packing done, as I hope to move by March first.

In doggie news, the Cephalexin (an antibiotic) is helping Zephyr's slightly infected demodex spots - the little bumps are gone, yay! I don't know if the spots are getting smaller, but I think new ones might have stopped popping up. We can hope, anyhow. Sumi does indeed seem to have picked it up, too. Tonight I'm going to start her on the Goodwinol, and I'll probably end up ordering a 16oz tub of the gunk, rather than pay $8 a pop for the next however many weeks. These fucking mites are a pain in the ass! No wonder Dr. Nolan looked so dismayed when she told me what it was. Our PetEdge order arrived at work today, though, so I have my doggie vitamins, which I hope will help boost their immune systems to better combat the little varmints. I am all about live and let live, but when something starts messing with my babies, that something had better head for the hills or else face My Wrath.

Anyhow. Dinnertime.

  garbled out by airyn @ 7:02 PM

 
Yup, Lance has it, and he has it bad

We were both watching "Nova" tonight, because he saw it was about dogs, and how they could have evolved so vastly from wolves in only 10-15,000 years (estimates about when the separation between wolves and dogs vary greatly - on the short side, it's 10,000, and on the long, 130,000.) Lance is, without question, A Dog Person. Dogs respond really well to him, too - Lance is Zeph's favorite person in the world, tho it's close between Lance and Wendy. Sumi took to him quickly, and almost all of the wolves really love him, too. Like me (until recently,) though, Lance's lifestyle wasn't suitable for dog ownership. He isn't comfortable with leaving a dog home alone all day in a small apartment, because he knows dogs deserve better than that. I can't imagine not being able to bring the dogs to work every day, and if or when I leave Wolf Haven, it's going to be incredibly difficult to readjust our lifestyles to stay-at-home dogs. It just doesn't seem right anymore. :-

Anyhow.

So we watched this dog special, and this is the message I got afterwards:

"yeah, it was a pretty good show. glad i decided to see what nova was tonight. all dogs all the time. a boy his jeep and a dog. dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog....[thud]"

Lance is going through a very difficult transition period - going from wanting a dog in the back of his mind to wanting a dog very badly in realtime, yet being unable to acquire said canid due to the no animals restriction in his apartment building. Doh. But The Urge will grow, and it will grow, and it will grow, until he can no longer stand it, and he will have to have a dog. And quickly. He'll start prowling PetFinder with more and more frequency, he'll start hanging around animal shelters "just to look for future reference," and then it'll be all over but the crying. Yup.

Mark my words, snazzy readers - my boyfriend will have a dog within 5 months.

And he'll be a great doggie daddy.

  garbled out by airyn @ 9:55 PM

 
The Carhartt People

Just about anyone who works outside knows that Carhartt = Goodness. The fine folks over at Carhartt make some of the roughest outdoor work wear on the planet, and few and far between are the days when I'm not wearing at least two Carhartt garments. Now that I actually have a job that virtually requires, at the very least, highly durable work pants, I have used that excise to build a Carhartt wardrobe - four or five pairs of pants, a winter jacket, a couple of pairs of shorts. And I always want more, of course, but it doesn't come cheap unless it's on sale at the Sunbird in Yelm. Anyhow.

The areas around Olympia are very, very rural - lots of hard-working people in farming, construction and other kinds of jobs that require working outside in every kind of adverse weather possible. These folks generally wear Carhartts, and I like being one of The Carhartt People. When men see a woman in Carhartt gear, she tends to get reappraised, especially if the gear shows signs of actually being used. It's almost as if they say, "Hey! She might actually do real work for a living, instead of sitting behind a desk, filing her nails all day." I admit it, I like that. Can't help it, sorry - it's all a part of my overwhelming joy taken from shattering stereotypes whenever humanly possible. There's a kind of bond amongst The Carhartt People - a slight nod, a raise of the eyebrow, whatever - there's usually some kind of acknowledgement exchanged. This amplifies during really shitty weather - when the foot and a half of snow was down, there was a lot of nodding and impromtu conversations about the weather and how much it sucked to be out in it.

I think there's even a Carhartt People Pecking Order, and it seems to center around how complete your Carhartt get-up is, how worn-in it is, and whether or not it looks like you've been doing Real Work lately. After a Person appraises me, I sometimes get a totally indifferent, flat stare, and sometimes I get a nod accompanied by an approving purse of the lips. I get that more when I've got deer blood or dried concrete on me.

It's all pretty funny, but I do absolutely love it - it's kind of a rural, rednecky subculture, and we all know how much I love the subcultures, despite myself. Course, some of these people might just think I'm an Angry Lesbian, I guess, but too bad for them. The really funny thing is, though, that now I'm so much more comfy in my Carhartts that even on days when I do nothing but office work, I wear them. I wear them around the house. I wear them pretty much everywhere, and I feel really weird when I've got regular jeans on.

I'm Not An Angry Lesbian

Related to both the Carhartt Thing and the Lesbian Thing (and this will surely be more information than most of you want to know about,) I'm trying the Not Shaving My Legs Thing. It's been a couple of months now, and my legs haven't been this hairy since the high school swimming season, when our coach disallowed leg shaving in order to create more drag during the regular season. Then, just before leagues or states, we'd have a big shaving party, and most of us would shave every bit of skin exposed by our swimsuits - legs, arms, everything. Diving into the pool for the first time after at least 4 months of not shaving was like diving into melted butter (cold melted butter, but you know what I mean.) I felt like a seal, slipping through the water with almost no resistance. I don't know how much difference a little leg hair makes in terms of actual drag, but mentally, the difference was huge! We all felt like we were blazingly fast, which of course did make us swim faster. It was pretty neat.

But I've sort of digressed here, right.

So I'm trying it again. Trouble is, I'm incredibly self-conscious about it! I would be absolutely mortified if someone I knew saw my legs right now. Lance included! I've tried to make a point of not letting him see my legs for the last little while, not that it's really worked or anything, but still. It's one of those things that I worry about, but I just can't make myself ask, "Hey honey? Does it gross you out that I haven't been shaving my legs?" because I'm sure he'd say "no," and I'd wonder if he was just trying not to hurt my feelings, and then I think about how much nicer smoothly-shaven legs are compared to hairy legs, and of course just about everyone prefers them. But the smoothness goes away overnight, and then I'm left with prickly-stubbly legs, and I hate that, plus I hate how long it takes to shave them. It's constant up-keep, and we all know how good I am at that! So I'm fraught. There are many warring factions in my head - there's the lazy one, the wants-to-be-ok-with-her-body-and-all-its-foibles one, the mostly-latent hippy one, the prissy one, the princess one, the slightly-more-feminine-than-the-carhartt-one-but-less-feminine-than-the-princess one, the worrier, the one of obsesses about what others thing of her, and others. If the norm was not shaving legs, then I'm sure I'd be fine with it. But a large portion of me is worried about the opinion of others, I'm sad to say, and that portion (and the sub-sections that comprise it) is very concerned about the leg thing. Come spring, when I break out the shorts, I suspect I'll be breaking out the razor again (not that it's put away, because I still shave my pits and, um, other things,) because I simply won't be able to live with my paranoia that everyone's staring at my grotesque legs and whispering about them behind my back.

Happy Puppies

Sumi is doing really well. She went two weeks without an accident at work or at home, but on Saturday, she did pee inside here at work, because I forgot to ask Lance if he'd take her out while Wendy and I ran. Doh. She doesn't whine to go out, but she paces. I'm hoping that eventually, she'll learn to ask to go out so I won't have to worry quite so much. But she's getting all settled in and much more comfortable now. The first few days I had her, when she woke up, it was sometimes with a start, and she'd look around quickly to figure out where she was. Now, she wakes up luxuriously, stretching and wagging her tail. She's a total cuddle-bunny, too, especially in the mornings when we all wake up. She's a lap doggie, and likes to lay on top of people. She adores Lance, no surprise there. She keeps Zeph on his little toes, chewing on him and playing, playing, playing. I really do wish I'd gotten another dog months ago, but I'm also very grateful that Zeph and I had almost a whole year to ourselves to develop our bond. Sumi's hip is still troubling her. When I ran out of Metacam, the anti-inflammatory Zephyr was on post-surgery, I started her on Etogesic, a different anti-inflammatory. Etogesic is quite a bit cheaper than Metacam, but sadly, she's not responding to it as well. At the end of the day, she's very, very sore, and has a hard time standing. Even during the day, she isn't as mobile on the Eto as on Metacam. I've ordered more, and hope it'll help her when it arrives.

I think, though, that as soon as I can afford it, she'll go in for surgery on her dysplastic left hip; I just need to talk to Jerry about which surgery is the best for her. There are at least three options. The first is a Femoral Head Excision, the same surgery Zeph had. I'm not wild about this idea, because it leaves a "false" joint, instead of a true joint. I'm concerned about arthritis setting in too soon with this option, and in the future, I may actually have Zephyr go through a different procedure to reinstate an actual joint, depending upon what Jerry thinks is the best option, should Zeph develop premature arthritis in the hip. The second option for Sumi is a Total Hip Replacement. This is probably the best option, but is obviously very invasive and a huge deal. And expensive, too. It involves replacing her left hip with a plastic cup, and replacing her femoral head with a titanium ball that inserts down into the shaft (that's the part that Zeph might need later.) The third option is something relatively new, called DARthroplasty. This involves cutting strips of bone from the ilium and grafting them onto the too-shallow natural cup. It seems like this might be the best option to my inexperienced mind, but in all honesty, I've not the first clue. There's another procedure, called a Triple Pelvic Osteotomy, but she may be too old for that. Here are some links to pages about each procedure, in case this is something your own dog might need someday, or if you're just curious about some of the surgical procedures available to our pets:

• Femoral Head Excision - with photos
• Total Hip Replacement - no photos
• Total Hip Replacement - with photos
• DARthroplasty - no photos
• DARthroplasty - with photos
• Triple Pelvic Osteotomy - with photos

Keep your fingers crossed for us. Gotta go do some work!

  garbled out by airyn @ 1:40 PM

 
I Think It's a Load of Hooey

Nearly every resource out there will tell you that Demodetic mange (red mange, or demodex) is not contagious to other dogs. However, Zephyr became infected very shortly after Joey, another dog at the office, came down with it. I was willing to accept that coincidence, because demodex can be brought on by stress, and Zeph certainly has had stress over the last four months, what with being hit by a car and everything. For the last few days, though, I've been looking at a couple of places on Sumi, thinking "that could be mange breaking out, dammit," but thought I was perhaps being paranoid. Today, Wendy was looking at Sumi and asked me about a couple of spots on her face, thinking it looked like demodex, too. Fuck! I'm sorry, but that's too much of a coincidence - a perfectly healthy dog comes down with it immediately after being adopted into a home with a dog exhibiting demodex symptoms? I can't accept that. If other dogs come down with it at the office...well, you know what they say: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times in enemy action."

This is very discouraging, because the fucking mites are so incredibly tough to treat! Want to see what they look like? There's a pretty accurate drawing here: Demodex canis. Fortunately, the Goodwinol ointment is really cheap (only about $8 per container, which lasts about 2 weeks,) but it's a freaking pain in the ass to apply, on the face especially. Unfortunately, since Zeph is a herding breed, he is unable to use what is generally considered to be the best remedy, Ivermectin. It is completely contraindicated in any herding breed, especially in any type of collie. Since I don't know what Sumi is, and suspect that there may be Border Collie in there somewhere, I don't dare put her on it, either. Fuck! This is so not cool, people! Poor little pups. I'm going to start Sumi on the Goodwinol tonight; I'm sure she'll be every bit as thrilled as Zeph is about it. She might be more difficult to get it onto, though; Zephyr is essentially submissive, and will stand for just about anything after a firm "NO" when he struggles. Sumi, though, is pretty independent, and although she wants to please, I'm not sure how she'll react to this. She lets me trim her nails pretty easily, though, so maybe it'll go smoothly. I can hope, anyhow. But still - FUCK. :-

  garbled out by airyn @ 7:47 PM