Inane Chatter

I am now the proud owner of a pair of jazz shoes and a pair of tap shoes because I have signed up for a contemporary jazz class and a tap class (both for beginners because, well, I’m a beginner).  I’m very excited.  The first class is a week from tomorrow.

While I was out shopping for these shoes, John spent the afternoon upstairs with Riley, who still isn’t allowed on the furniture.  The last time we allowed him to sleep on a piece of furniture on a regular basis (a wicker loveseat we kept on the sun porch in our last house almost TEN years ago), he ate it.  Chewed it all to bits ATE it.  So now, Riley isn’t allowed on the furniture, and he knows it.  We know he knows because he never tries to get on the couch or the bed when we’re at home (only when we’re away and he thinks he can get away with it).  Usually.  He’s getting bolder.  Today, with John just across the hall in the office, Riley got on the bed twice.  I guess his dog bed with an old cushy comforter on it isn’t soft enough anymore.  I’ll know he’s made the next logical leap when he tries to get on the bed while we’re still in it.

Riley hasn’t been eating well.  He was eating intermittently before we went on vacation, and we didn’t really ask a lot of questions at the kennel.  They said he did well while we were gone,  but I didn’t think to ask how often he ate.  He didn’t eat when we came home.  We took him for a run this morning, and we noticed we could feel his ribs.  Prominently.  So I asked John to get something delicious for him when he stopped at the store on his way home from today.  He came home with a jar of beef gravy.  I filled Riley’s bowl with the usual dry food, doused it with gravy, and wouldn’t you know?  He scarfed it down.  I’m not sure it even took him a full minute.  I will do whatever it takes to get Riley back to fighting weight.

(No dogs were starved in the making of this post.  He didn’t seem to be suffering or starving (or he would have eaten the dry food in his bowl these last couple of days), and he’s never been one to beg for food (unless it’s steak or something).  Not eating regularly isn’t all that unusual, but able to count his ribs is.)

We’re back home from a wonderful week in France.  We had two days of beautiful weather, then lots of rainy days in a row (COLD rainy days), and then the day we flew out (which I think is still yesterday) was lovely.  Tease.  Pictures soon.  We slept about 10 hours last night.  Went to bed around 7:30, lights out at 8.  It wasn’t even dark outside yet, but to us, 8pm felt like 2am.  Now I’m good.  Riley is happy to be home, and so are we.  (He was a little confused about why we were all going to bed before the sun, but he went with it.)

Thank you, everyone, for your comments, notes, flowers, thoughts, texts, and phone calls.  It was really sweet of you, and we appreciate it.  We’re doing better.  Fewer tearful breakdowns (although we had one yesterday – the vet sent us some of her fur wrapped in a bow and her paw prints on cards, along with personal notes from most of the staff who knew her), more funny memories.  In the aftermath, we’ve found that we’re transferring all of our attentions and worries to Riley, with lots of running and walks, and constant concern over how he’s doing (“Does he look sad?”  “He always looks sad.”) and whether he’s eating enough.  He sleeps upstairs now, on his dog bed, and we (maybe a little more me than we) keep finding excuses to take him places with us.

We’ve put away her stuff, for the most part, but we still have it all.  Her dog bed stays downstairs for Riley during the day.  Her toys are still scattered all over the first floor.  Her leash and collar are still hanging in the hall closet.  Her food bowl is with her medicine in the cabinet.  We will eventually throw out the medicine and the plastic food bowl and the chewed up toys, and we’ll box up her leash and collar.  I don’t know when.  I’m not in any hurry.

Roxy died today.  It’s blunt, but it’s true, and it sucks.  It was this morning.  It’s only been a few hours, but they’ve been the longest hours I can remember.  How is it possible that it’s still today?

I should stop telling people when Roxy is doing well.  That only lasted about two weeks.  Around the middle of last week, she started to slide back into her lethargic wobbly Roxy personality, and by the weekend, she was having accidents in the house every few hours.  She was really thirsty, so she’d drink a ton, and then she wouldn’t tell us she needed to go out.  Annoying and worrying.  We called the vet – turns out the thirst (and subsequent constant peeing) is a side effect of the wonder drug she started three weeks ago.  But that led us to another question: if this is just a side effect, why didn’t it start three weeks ago, when she started that drug?  So tonight I called the vet again and asked if there’s any way we can tell if she has an infection or if this is just a side effect.  They wanted a sample (of course), so I chased after Roxy with an old flat tupperware container and raced the sample out to the vet this afternoon.

They just called with the results.  Good news: no infection.  Bad news: there’s glucose in her urine, which is a sign of diabetes.  We have an appointment Saturday morning now to have bloodwork done to see if she really has diabetes on top of her liver issues (hepatocutaneous syndrome is what’s going on with her paws – all related to the liver) on top of her epilepsy.  If she has diabetes, we’ll have to give her insulin injections twice a day on top of all her other medicine.  That’s going to be tough.  Of course, the vet said that when there are other diseases involved, dogs often become insulin-resistant.  I don’t know what happens then.  I’ll know more on Saturday.

I went shopping a couple of weeks ago and bought the CUTEST dresses.  I wore the sheath dress to the ballet with Emily in March (so I guess the shopping trip was more like a month ago), and I think I’m going to wear the other one (which looks better on me than it does in the picture, if I may say so myself) to a coworker’s wedding in a couple of weeks.  I love dresses.

I am so completely exhausted.  I skipped yoga.  I shouldn’t have, but I got home and told John I was going to go, and his “oh, really?” sounded small and slightly disappointed, and that’s all it took to change my mind.  And the best part is that it’s only just after 8, and there’s no reason I can’t go to bed RIGHT NOW.  I can climb into my nice comfy bed and read my book until I fall asleep and I’ll still get a good night’s sleep…why am I still here?

P.S. Riley’s fine.  His paw isn’t bothering him at all anymore.  No more limping.

Lots of yardwork this morning, followed by errands.  Hooray for Saturdays!  I don’t think anything we did this weekend furthered our plans, except where making our house beautiful helps, but not everything can.  I’m not being intentionally vague about our plans.  They’re just still very plan-y plans.  Long-term.  Here’s the gist: we want to move.  Away.  Far away.  Like to Europe.  It wouldn’t be permanent (probably), but we’ve realized we don’t need that much stuff, and we don’t like doing what we’re doing (9-5 jobs we don’t really care about, not enough free time, looking forward too much to weekends that are too short).  We’ve realized this over and over through the years, but recently we decided to do something about it.  Why wait?  What have we got to lose?

There are a TON of things that we need to do first, the biggest of which are selling the house and finding the right kind of jobs (like the telecommuting kind).  The dogs are the other complication.  They could go with us, but Roxy’s health problems make that difficult.  Not impossible, just difficult.  We have a long, long, LONG list of stuff to find out, stuff to do, stuff to figure out, and we’re working through all those things.  We just haven’t put a real timeline together yet.  Are we trying to go in a year?  This year?  We still have to figure a few things out before we can tell.  We’re working on it, it’s just sometimes a little frustrating that we can’t drop everything and go now.

Silly dog #1 has hurt himself.  John thinks he may have just landed wrong when he jumped off the couch (guiltily, I’m sure).  We’ll give him a day of rest and see how he feels tomorrow night.  He doesn’t react when I mess around with the paw he’s favoring, so maybe it’s minor and will wear off.  I hope.

Silly dog #1 had an eventful evening.  He chased a giant bumblebee around the yard, caught it in the grass, pawed it to death, and then rolled around on it.  His version of a victory lap, I guess.  Then he came in, wolfed down his dinner, and threw it right back up.  Now he’s resting.  Ridiculous animal.

Hi.  Remember me?  How’ve you been?  Roxy’s doing a TON better.  We took her to the dermatologist for a follow-up almost two weeks ago, and they did a biopsy on her paw.  We’re still waiting on the results, but because she had a couple of stitches, they gave us some pain medication for her.  Within one or two doses, all of a sudden we had our Roxy back.  She’s bright-eyed, her ears perk up, she pulls on her leash when we go for walks, she begs for food when we eat at the coffee table, she tries to steal my peanut butter toast in the mornings, she runs off the deck first thing every day, she meets us at the door when we come home – this is our dog.  Does this mean she’s been in pain all this time?  What kind of pain and where?  The vets have checked her out and haven’t found anything that seems to bother her.  If we keep her on pain medication, are we actually helping her or masking the problem?  We’re taking her back to have the stitches remove next week, so I’ll be asking those questions, and we should have the results of the biopsy Monday or Tuesday.

It’s time for a Roxy update.

1. She’s doing SO much better.  She wags her tail sometimes, she gets up without assistance, she meets us at the door and asks to go outside, and she even trots off the deck with some of her old excitement.  Sometimes.  We think the liver medication she’s on might actually be helping.  She’s also not favoring her paws like she was.
2. Speaking of her paws, we took her to the doggie dermatologist yesterday morning, and he confirmed that her paw problems are most likely caused by her liver issues.  His solution is another antibiotic, another topical cream, and a change in her diet.  He says she needs a special kind of protein, so starting tomorrow (when I can get to the store), Roxy will get cottage cheese and calf liver with her regular dog food for dinner.  She’s going to love it.  The best part is that he thinks this should actually improve her paws, not just keep them from getting worse.

Right now, she’s wearing socks and resting quietly on her bed.  (We’re supposed to keep socks on her paws for ten minutes after putting the new topical cream on them.)  It’s cute.

Speaking of cute (or terrifying – you decide):

John thinks it’s fake. I think it’s hilarious either way. Here’s another one:

And here’s a really neat optical illusion.

All videos courtesy of The Daily What (here and here).

Home now.  Still sick.  Thoroughly exhausted.  I think I could have been good at writing telegrams.  We were right on the edges of that big snowstorm that is heading northeast, so there were multiple accidents on the highway this afternoon, and John and I took an alternate route home.  It took us five hours, but the GPS said staying on the highway would have taken almost seven.  Eight, really, since we’d been on the road for an hour when we checked. So we’re home, and the car is unloaded, and the Chinese food has been ordered, and John is out getting milk and yogurt.  Roxy is resting on her own bed.  She was really good this past week.  Very quiet, no accidents, no incidents with Mabel – she was the perfect houseguest-dog.  My head feels both clearer and runnier than it has for days.  I think that’s an improvement, but I’m so over this horrible cold/congestion/sinus infection/HORRIBLE THING I could just scream.  But that would make me cough. And THAT would make me dive head first into a fire pit.  (Because it might feel better.  Also because it was 57 degrees in the house when we walked in, and a fire pit would probably be warmer.)

People annoy me.  I had lunch today with someone I’ve barely seen or talked to in months (we don’t work together anymore), and it was kinda good and kinda awful.  Awful like I don’t want to talk to her anymore.  Good like it was nice to catch up, but awful like after about 20 minutes, I couldn’t handle listening to her (and didn’t want to share anything from my life, either).  Lunch ended eventually, though, and I got to come home and relax a little and then I got to go to yoga and relax a lot.  And now I have to give Roxy her medicine (her 5 tons of medicine), so I’m off.  Sorry for the lack of entertainment going on up in here.

Last Friday was one of the worst days of my life.  It was the first day of the worst week of my life.  On the advice of our regular vet, we took Roxy to see an internal medicine specialist, and after an ultrasound, she told us that Roxy has end-stage liver disease and, to quote the vet, “her time is short.”  We hoped she’d be able to give us some idea of just how short after we got some test results (due the end of this week).  We spent the rest of Friday totally devastated and looking for ways to baby her.  We cancelled the kennel reservation for her for Christmas; she’s coming with us.  We bought low protein dog food and dog treats.  She’s taking more medication than ever, and because her paws are all screwed up (the pads are cracked and dry), we’re massaging her feet daily with this ultra-vaseline stuff called Bag Balm (so called because it was originally developed for farmers to use on cow udders).  We spent all week wondering just how bad her liver disease is and how much longer Roxy might have.  She didn’t seem to be in pain, and the medicine appeared to be helping her, at least a little.  She doesn’t move away when I sit down next to her on the floor (like she used to).  Is that because she’s more willing to let me stay close?  Or because it’s too difficult for her to get up and move?  I nearly broke down in Wegmans while picking out low protein dog treats. It was a horrible week.

This morning, we finally got the phone call from the vet with Roxy’s test results (part of them, anyway).  Surprise!  Turns out Roxy’s liver is functioning normally.  That’s great news!  I mean, it really is, REALLY, but did we have to go through all of that?  It’s too soon to say she’s out of the woods entirely, but her days are no longer numbered (not any more than any other 9-year-old epileptic dog).  Her paws are still in bad shape, her liver enzymes are still a little high, she’s still a little anemic, and we haven’t gotten the thyroid test results back yet.  BUT.  Her liver has not failed.  It may have some issues, but it’s functioning NORMALLY.  She doesn’t need to be on a low-protein diet. SHE’S OKAY.  But that vet needs to be more careful about what she tells people.

(I’m still going to baby Roxy.  She needs babying.)

Riley is going insane, I’m freezing to death, and I think I just heard “Gangnam Style” coming out of John’s office.  The world is ending TONIGHT.  Hug your loved ones and duck and cover.  (Isn’t that what the Mayans said to do?)

Riley has been one uncontrollable bundle of annoying energy today.  If he could focus that energy on keeping me warm, I could handle it, but instead he’s been bouncing off the walls while I sit at my computer and shiver.  The thermostat says it’s 67 degrees in here.  I don’t see how it could be. I’m so COLD.

[Pause while I wrap myself in a blanket.  It's times like these when I wish I had a snuggie.  Kind of.]

Just got distracted by Bookshelf Pr0n and Better Book Titles.  And my fingers are too cold for typing.  So…sure, I’ll publish this disjointed and not very entertaining blog post.  Don’t judge me!

I look like a lizard.  Like a salamander.  Or maybe a newt.  It’s awful.  Apparently, I’ve found another antibiotic I’m allergic to.  Sure, that’s only two now, but one of them is amoxicillin, and that rules out everything in the -cillin family, which I think includes penicillin.  (So someday I’m going to die because I need medication I can’t take because I’m allergic to it.  Yay for me.)  At least with that one, the reaction I have isn’t visible to anyone.  With this one (bactrim), I turn into a lizard.  A lizard on fire.  Ooh, like a salamander!  (I knew there was a reason I went for that one.)  Seriously, though, I look scary.  The doctor said I shouldn’t exercise for a few days (because I shouldn’t sweat – weird, right?), so I’ll be fat and scary.  Good combination.  Too bad it didn’t happen right before Halloween instead of right after.  Built-in costume.

Roxy is still wearing her lampshade, but she’s doing much better.  We gave her a break from it for a lot of yesterday (because we were home and could watch her), and we only had to stop her from licking her paw a couple of times.  I’ll probably be home with her a lot this week.  I don’t want to go out in public like this, so I will most likely work from home.  Today is a sick day.  Morning with the doctor, home for now, another appointment this afternoon – too disjointed to be productive at work.

Man, if I have to look like a mutant (and I totally do), I should at least get some cool superpower.

I think I’m getting old.  My back hurts (lower back – it’s felt achy and a little twinge-y since my last Muscle Blast class two Mondays ago).  My left arm was tingling off and on for almost a week (it’s stopped now) because I think I pinched a nerve doing a handstand in yoga class (a week ago Wednesday).  I make grunting noises when I lunge to get over the dog gate at the bottom of the stairs, and worst of all, I was SO over Halloween after about the tenth group of kids.  I lose patience for that quicker every year.  All we were doing was handing out candy to the kids who came by.  I can’t imagine how the parents of 8 or 9-year-olds must feel, trailing their kids down block after block.  I mean, when they’re 3 or 4 or 5, they’re totally adorable, they need your help, and they get tired fast (very important, that).  Beyond that age, can they even get tired out?  It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

I missed the very beginning of the evening because I had to take Roxy to the vet.  Once again, her paw was bothering her and she licked it so much she made it worse.  Yay for obsessive dogs.

Here’s my sweetpea last night at the vet:

And here she is today, completely miserable in her Cone of Shame. The sock just wasn’t working this time.

We made it through the big storm unscathed.  Well, I haven’t been outside yet, so I guess there could be some damage, but we didn’t hear anything, and John went in to work both days, so he would have seen something.  Last night was the only time the winds really picked up.  Even the rain is finally letting up.  That’s very good news, since Riley is a little stir-crazy.  He spent a lot of today gazing longingly out the front window.

I did a bad, bad thing today.  I opened the giant bag of mini Snickers.  I kept it in the other room, but that didn’t stop me as much as I was hoping it would.  I will be doing my best (over John’s objections, I’m sure) to give away every last bit of this candy tomorrow night.

I took Riley with me on my run the other morning – huh.  Feels like several days ago, but it must have been just yesterday morning.  It’s only Tuesday.  Shoot me.  Anyway, a deer got really close to us.  I think he wanted to play.  It was cute, but Riley was a little freaked out.  The deer was following us down the trail, and Riley kept checking it out over his shoulder, ears pinned back.  It eventually ran ahead of us, and he calmed down, but it made for a very exciting morning.

We don’t get out much.  Actually, part of why I’ve been MIA is because I did get out over the weekend.  Went home to visit Mom and Dad and Corey and Mindy and Mark and Gaby and Candy.  Watched a gaggle of six-year-olds play soccer, found that I’m a natural at soccer myself (when one of those six-year-olds is the goalie), picnicked by the lake, played catch, flew a kite, got sunburned, went for a run – and that was all on Saturday.  It was a whirlwind weekend, but I got to see everyone (for not long enough, but it was better than not going).

And now it’s the work week, the last week of the fiscal year, when everyone freaks out, and I have to go to DC every day.  Here’s hoping next week is better.