Dirtbunny's Cold, Day 57

I was doing soooooooooo much better earlier this week. The cough had not entirely gone away, but I felt almost normal.

No longer. Now we are back to full-on clogged sinuses, sore throat, raw nose, coughing all the time.

What did I do to deserve this?

Breaking Beagle News

Kirby's pathology results are back and he does not have the awful bone-invading cancer. He has the simpler bone-surrounding nerve sheath cancer. The tumor can be removed without taking his leg after all. He will be getting his surgery on Wednesday and will come home the same day.

Needless to say, the mood here at Chez Nous is much improved.


Isn't Kirby a good boy, getting the "right" kind of cancer instead of the "bad" kind of cancer?

Look Fast!

Too late. You missed it.

We had some snow flurries.

Bad News for Mister Kirby

My special sweetheart has a highly invasive malignant tumor and has to have his right rear leg amputated all the way to the top of the femur. We will probably have that done on Monday so he can be home from the hospital by Thanksgiving (not that he cares it's Thanksgiving, but the hospital won't be completely staffed that day). He is doped up on painkillers right now, his belly is full, and he just wants to sleep. I keep looking at his little leg and thinking about how it isn't going to be there next week.

I will deal with this, and he is going to adapt quickly and be just fine, but I'm pretty sad and raw right now. Fred went blind and he is still the same dog as he was before. Kirby will recover and the pain from the tumor will be gone and he will be back to himself and all will be for the best. But I think I have some crying to do before I settle into this.

Random Saturday

1. It is Day 42 of Dirtbunny's Cold. The plan for the weekend is to stay in, keep warm and dry, rest a lot, and see if we can knock this thing out once and for all. Because I have a little more energy, I am all do-y. You know, be not do , and I'm having a hard time being still and peaceful. Twitch, twitch. I suddenly have a zillion non-postponeable errands to run, not least of which is a trip to the yarn store to replace the Knitter's Almanac that Yarn Bandit ate because it has a pattern I want and a cast-on I want to try. And the Baby Surprise Jacket.



2. Dirtbunny has a follower. She doesn't appear to be related to me and I haven't met her as far as I know. She cooks, she's creative, she has an off-kilter sense of humor, and we have a lot in common, except that she works hard and I gave that up for Lent.



3. Kirby has an E Coli infection. Also, the cytology on his leg mass was inconclusive, so he's getting a mass-ectomy and biopsy on Wednesday. He is not walking very well at all and seems generally miserable. It's breaking our hearts.


4. My wedding anniversary was Wednesday. The Man got me a book of one-skein knitting projects. It was a simple thing, but really thoughtful. I'm getting startitis again.


5. It is at least possible that Kirby's E Coli is giving my stressed-out immune system too much to do and making it harder to recover from my six-week bout of bronchitis. The doc sez I have to kick him out of bed, which I should have done a while ago. This is not easy. Kirby cannot get up on the bed by himself, but he has his ways of being persuasive in the middle of the night. The trick is to comfort him, let him know that you understand what he wants (or else he just thinks he isn't trying hard enough), and then don't give in. We made it through last night (The Man slept on the sofa) and we'll keep working it until he accepts his dog bed again.


6. We'll probably upgrade the dog bed to make it more enticing. That means a trip to the Petsmart, and it's Saturday (when the lost dogs are there) so I'm not allowed to go until the lost dogs have gone home or we might end up with an extra beagle and The Man will just have to leave me for good.


7. I have noticed that my assessment of the douchebaggery quotient of European futbollers is directly related to the insolence of their hairstyle. Schweinsteiger and Podolski cut off the offensive highlights, Sergio Ramos and Fernando Torres cut their hair, and Ronaldinho got rid of the wide stretchy headband that made him look like a low-rent transsexual show girl saving up for the operation and now, suddenly, they all seem a little less like douchebags to me.


8. I need a haircut. I washed it last night and slept on it wet so, well, you know. Good thing the European futbollers aren't making half-cocked judgments about me based on my hair (although my highlights are WAY better than Schweinsteiger's were).


9. The new sliding glass door is great. Too bad that caulk has to smell so bad for so long.


10. I made the worst-ever batch of chili this week. I do not recommend aduki beans as a substitute for kidney beans. Bleck. We ate some of it, but I think we're going to throw the last few quarts away and start over.

How Dirtbunny lost the battle of the door

So Chez Nous is a fairly typical ranch-style house built around 1950. It has two major additions, an expansion to the master bedroom, and a family room, known around here as the Sun Room, both built by morons in around 1980. We love the Sun Room and spend a lot of time in there. It has windows on all four sides. Yarn Bandit takes his morning sun on one side of the room and his afternoon sun in front of the sliding glass door.

We had an energy assessment done a few years ago and one of this house's many energy-related faults is a leaky sliding glass door. Also, the screen is ripped and the handle of the screen door has long since disappeared. We had other fish to fry. We knew the sliding glass door had to be replaced, but we were on the Economy Plan and it could wait.

Sometime around the middle of August, Dirtbunny noticed that the sliding glass door was not properly latched. Naturally, it was presumed to be The Man's fault. Naturally, it was because he was too lazy to close it. Of course, because he never does anything right. So Dirtbunny dragged him over to the door to show him how he had fucked up and to provide him with instruction on The Correct Way We Do Things Around Here (he's so lucky I'm here to teach him). Whaddaya know? It wasn't his fault. The latch had gone all wonky and, well, up and croaked on us. Dirtbunny had a hard time with this at first. How could it not be The Man's fault? But it wasn't. It was the door.

Well we are not going to replace the door this year. We'll just use a dowel or broomstick handle to wedge it shut until we replace it next year. No problem.




Problem: The door is installed backwards. The screen is on the inside. The inside panel is on the outside. To wedge the door shut with a dowel, we'll have to do it from the outside, which kind of misses the point. Dirtbunny announces this to The Man. We'll have to replace it this year or else the house will remain essentially unlocked all winter, which is not acceptable. The Man agrees.

And this is where the Battle of the Door begins. Who is going to take care of it? Bunny sez that The Man is. The Man sez "?" We agree that we are happy with our doors and windows guy and we'll use him again. All The Man needs to do is make the call.

So Bunny waits for The Man to make the call.

He doesn't.

Bunny goes On Strike.

Amazingly, the call is still not made. The Strike is not working.

Bunny re-evaluates her strategy. If the Iraqi people are not going to greet the American soldiers with cheers and flowers, then victory is impossible, unless the Americans redefine victory. Dirtbunny redefines victory.

Here is her battle plan:

• Make the call herself, on the QT.
• Get the guy in for a look-see, choose door style, and sign contract, on the QT.
• Arrange for installation in secret.

Won't The Man's face be red when, six months from now, he notices that we have a new door? How did that happen? Wow, Bunny, you sure got me! It would be a masterpiece of passive-aggression that would make Dirtbunny a legend at the Funny Farm.

I almost did it. The installation was today. The whole thing was a secret until Friday. They called and left a confirmation message on the answering machine. The Man heard the message. Not only heard it, but noticed it and processed the information.

It was almost a masterpiece of passive-aggression. Now it's just Dirtbunny doing all the work around here like usual. Sigh.

I like the new door. And now I'm going to turn the heat back on.

Beagle Paradise, or, Dirtbunny's Cold, Day 36

This morning, Dirtbunny took her seventeen pills and settled in for another quiet day of recovering from the virus that wouldn't leave. I am not exaggerating about the 17 either. It really was 17, and I'm not elderly or anything. Sigh. A good thing about being sick is it means lots and lots of quiet time at home with the beagles. They love it, especially Kirby, who is training hard for the Snuggle Olympics.



Sadly, all is not exactly well with Kirbamente. He had a bladder infection a few weeks ago and we cleared that up, even had the test results to prove it. But it is now back, along with a new rod-shaped bacteria that the vet doesn't recognize, so we are waiting for test results from the big lab. He also has a big growth on his right knee (cytology results pending) and last night, his left foot hurt badly enough that he walked really funny and wouldn't let us look between his toes. Between Patient Dirtbunny (hahahahaha "patient" hahahahahaha) and Patient Kirby, The Man is about to go under from all the stress. Good thing it's a bye week for the Redskins. I don't think The Man could handle the drama from a Redskins game.



This morning, Kirby's foot is a lot better. We have decided not to go to the vet again for now unless it gets markedly worse. He has to go back in a few days when his test results come back, and the vet is traumatizing for Our Little Scaredy Guy. Besides, look at him frolicking this morning:













He isn't suffering, believe me, or we'd be at the vet right now. He even said hello to neighbor Lucy next door. Lucy always says hello to Kirby but Kirby usually ignores her.









The leaves are peaking this weekend. One of our maple trees (the stressed out one near the street) has already dropped his leaves, but the big one in the yard is bright yellow:








Mostly green last weekend, barely green at all now. Falling leaves are pretty and create lots of excellent sniffing opportunities. Is that the face of a happy boy or what?









Here it looks like the ivy goes right up to the street, doesn't it? Actually you can only see the top edge of the ivy. There is about a 10-foot steep sloping drop from there to the top of the retaining wall, and then about four feet of wall, and then the sidewalk, and then the street. He looks safe in the photo, but every time he goes there, I get a little queasy.








Doesn't he have the cutest dog butt ever? And where is Tiki? He's inside, sleeping. Don't bother him. And that's enough dog schmoop for now.




Our best trees are the three Japanese Maples in front. They are a brilliant crimson, which you can't tell at all from this crappy photo:







Next weekend, all that will be left is the dull brown of the oak trees. Being sick means being home to see it. I wish I weren't coughing, but life's not all bad.

Dirtbunny's Cold, Day 34

That's right. Still coughing. I've been to the doctor again and got to use a nebulizer for a while and The Man is picking up some new meds for me right now. He took me to the doctor and said he could hear me coughing all the way from the waiting room. Yikes.

Dirtbunny's Cold, Day 32

We have turned a corner. It's a subtle thing, but my cough has changed. I've had this particular kind of cough before--it's the one that all my colds end with.

knock on wood

So I may actually be getting towards the end of this goddamn thing.

knock on wood