Quick & Dirty News from Here

1.  I come to you fresh from watching Juventus pull out a squeaker of a 2-1 win against Lazio which keeps them first in the league by one precarious point.  My boyfriend Alessa got the winner at around minute 83 or so.  That brute Kozak seems to have broken Leo's nose.  ADP kissed Claudio.  And at the end, when the tifosi were all signing the Juve song, Gio joined in.  &hearts

2.  Juve spams take me pretty much an entire day to put together.  I just can't do them regularly and still keep my job.  I miss doing them, but it can't be helped.

3.  Der Kirbenhund has a new trick.  Every day, he comes up with something new to give us all a heart attack.  Yesterday, it was a runny pile of poop surrounded by a lake of mucous and bright red blood.  Today, it was about five minutes when he decided he was unable to stand up.  So we get all frightened and worked up and then everything goes back to normal as if nothing happened.  It's freaky.

4.  In connection with #3, I'm sure I told you all before that when I walk into the regular vet, it's like Norm walking into Cheers.  We have now reached the point where it's the same thing at the specialty vet.  *sigh*

5.  In connection with #3&4, Kirby is no longer on chemo.  His platelet count is so low (below 8,000 when 200-500,000 is normal) that it isn't safe.  There is very little that can be done about this.  It's possible he has a tick-borne infection that can be treated, but if it isn't that, then we are pretty much at the end of the medical merry-go-round.

Aside from the five minutes a day when he has us completely scared out of our wits, Kirby is not acting sick at all.  He doesn't seem to be in any discomfort, and he's happy and affectionate like always.  That's the important part.  Truly, I'm almost glad that there aren't really any medical options left to pursue.  It would suit me fine if he were to stay around forever, of course, but we are way past the point when it makes a difference if we understand what's going on.   If his platelet counts can't be raised, then does it really matter what the cause is?  And if it doesn't matter what the cause it, then why should we be extracting bone marrow samples and doing more ultrasounds?  He has been a medical mystery since the beginning when he started coughing up chunks of plastic; bloody diarrhea for no apparent reason is just another bit of unexplainable Kirby-ness that makes him my Special Sweetheart.  It's time to enjoy the time he has left while he still feels good and can still be a dog and do dog things.

6.  I've tried going vegan again.  So far, about two weeks.  Oops.  Except tonight, we finished off a bottle of salad dressing that has dairy in it.   See this one is vegan, but this one isn't. Perhaps you can see how Mr. D brought the wrong kind home.   I forgot it wasn't vegan and didn't throw it away and so it accidentally made it onto the plate and into my tummy.  Oh well.  It's a sunk cost.  Whether I remembered to throw it away or decided to finish it off can no longer have any effect on the market for animal products, so it was essentially a neutral act.  This is all going pretty well.  It's easier than I thought it would be, and I've discovered that there is a whole lot of vegan junk food available if you have the patience to read labels at the Fresh Fields.  I've also figured out which type of soymilk makes good gelato, so we've got it covered.

Except for one thing.  I listened to a podcast the other day featuring a short story, A Dog's Tale by Mark Twain.  I cried for hours and stayed red-eyed and puffy for three days.  Every time I looked at one of the beagles, I could imagine them being in a cage at a market in China, waiting for someone to choose them to eat for dinner.   The details of what people do to animals are just too much for me.

Lost footage recovered

I discovered a whole bunch of podcasts on iTunes and I was messing around when what should appear but some old beagle videos I took a few years ago that I thought were lost.  How they ended up on iTunes I'll never know.  Anyway, this one shows my boys before they went all white in the face and back before Kirby's illnesses, back when he was sleek and fat.    I'm glad I found this.  As he beautiful as he is now, it's good to have something to remember how he looked then.  And Tiki was way squirmy.

Enjoy.

EDIT:  If it isn't working for you, follow this link.

Eat, Beagle, Eat!

Breakfast:

• Bread chunks soaked in milk?  No
• Dog food?  Hell no.

2pm when Bunny Gets Home:

• Bread chunks soaked in milk?  Yes, please.
• Banana?  Um, okaaay, I guess.
• Tuna salad that fell out of Bunny's sandwich?  Yes, oh God yes!
• Teeny chunk of cheese?  Meh.  

Suppertime:

• Dog food in the dog dish?  No way.
• Cucumber chunks from the salad Bunny is making?  Yum.
• Dog food from Mr. D's hand?  Mmmmmmaybe, but only a little.
• Bell pepper chunks from the salad Bunny is making?  Chew chew, spit it out.
• Lettuce from the salad Bunny is making?  Lettuce!  AWESOME!  Chew chew.  Wait. I hate lettuce.  Why do you keep giving me lettuce?  Spit it out.
• Broccoli bits off Bunny's plate?  Yum.
• Bits of ham off Bunny's plate?  Yum.
• Cooked carrots from the special supper plate of people food Bunny made just for beagles?  Yay!  Yum.
• Bits of ham from the special supper plate of people food Bunny made just for beagles?   Ecstasy!
• Cooked carrots from the special supper plate of people food Bunny made just for beagles offered after the beagle realizes that there is ham?  Ptooey.  Where's the ham?
• Broccoli bits from the special supper plate of people food Bunny made just for beagles offered after the beagle realizes that there is ham?  Sniff, sniff.  That is NOT ham.  *rejects*
• Bits of ham from the special supper plate of people food Bunny made just for beagles?  *Snoopy dance*
• Cold boiled potato from the special supper plate of people food Bunny made just for beagles offered after the beagle realizes that there is ham?  BRING ME THE HAM, WOMAN!  
• Cucumber chunks offered after the ham is gone?  bleck
• Cold boiled potato mixed with a little milk and the scrapings of ham bits from the serving platter?  Yes, but I'm leaving behind the bits of potato that are still solid.

Quick Beagle Update

1.  Lest anyone think Tiki has been forgotten, I'll have you know that I felt his beady eyes on the back of my neck a while ago.  He was standing in a sunny spot on the floor, just north of a comfy dog bed that was NOT in the sun spot.  He used his Beagle Mind Powers to get me to get up and check on him and then move the dog bed into the sun for him, where he is currently all hunkered down and napping happily.

2.  Kirby started chemo on Monday.  Once every two weeks for about 5 months.  We expect he's got about 9-10 months.  He's refusing to eat dog food, but he was quite pleased with the chicken and rice I cooked for him last night.  No thanks on the sweet potatoes, which he's liked before.  He hasn't lost his appetite, he's just being a pain in the ass.  He probably overheard the oncologist telling us to feed him whatever he'll eat that won't blow out his gall bladder (that means an all ice-cream diet plan is out), and he's going to hold out for better fare.  Willful creature.  *sigh*

A Day of Dirtbunny

Originally posted on January 10, 2012



5:45 am:  Alarm goes off.  Hit snooze.
5:52 am:  Alarm goes off.  Hit snooze
5:59 am:  Alarm goes off.  OK, OK, I'm up.  Go get Mac to see if anyone commented on yesterday's post.   No.  Look for transfer news, read a little real world news, decide Newt Gingrich is still a dick.  Mr. D comes in with my coffee, then he gets in bed and starts snoring.  Drink coffee.  Play one sudoku.  Decide not to play another because I'm about five minutes behind and I don't want to aggravate the beast within Mr. D.

Get in shower.  Contemplate speeding things up by not conditioning hair, but opt in favor of conditioner.  This turns out to be a wise decision.

Brush teeth.  Examine eyebrow.  Where is are my tweezers?  Mr. D has borrowed it to remove glass shards from the washing machine (don't ask) because he forgets we have needle-nose pliers for that.  Summing up:  he borrows it/them for an illicit purpose and then he doesn't return it/them.  Wash it/them carefully with alcohol and tend to eyebrow.

Start getting dressed.  What am I going to wear?  Put yesterday's dirty stuff in hamper.  What am I going to wear?  Can't put on pants until I've put lotion on my legs, and shouldn't really do that without doing my feet as well, and if I'm going to do my feet, which I really must, I'll want to put socks on immediately, so need to choose some socks before I can start any of this.  Before I can choose socks, I need to know what else I am going to wear so I can, you know, match, sort of.

What Dirtbunny has been obsessing about this week

ISSUE NUMBER ONE:  SPECIAL SWEETHEART

Hey!  That's the same color nail polish that I have on now! OMG.  I haven't gotten my nails done since before Christmas. *sends Mr. D out to clear an ice-free path to the car.*

The Farm Box

Long-time readers (both of you) know that my aunt runs a non-profit farm in Connecticut that does animal rescue and animal-assisted therapy.  On years when I either have my act together so I knit a lot, or years when I am a complete mess so I don't do anything but eat/sleep/knit, I send her a box of my stuff to sell at her annual fundraiser.  Last year was largely OK but not great, so nothing.  This year I started out with my act together and have ended up a complete mess* so I have stuff to donate.  My aunt sent me a box of yarn spun from wool from some of the animals, as I documented here,** and I finally have some output.

Wretched

Summer continues to trudge along Chez Nous.  The farm box comes every Wednesday and the dogs beg for whatever might be in there, which lately has included a lot of kale.  You want kale?  OK, here you go:

They greedily grab it, chew it a few times, spit it out ("yuck") and then beg for more:

Spring Update

The Helping Profession has changed my meds again and the adjustment period has been a bear.  I've been feeling sick pretty much all the time, plus confused and depressed about being sick, and angry that I haven't figured out how to regulate my treatment regimen so that I'm not feeling lightheaded and stupid all the time.  I think the worst is over  *crosses fingers*  because I'm back to being ordinarily stupid rather than exceptionally stupid.  I just have to remember to eat before 3 pm and space my calories out more throughout the day.  I've "just" had to do this for the last decade and so far I haven't done that good a job but, hey, tomorrow's a new day.

I've had a few sick days, so I've had some extra TV time and, around here, TV means football.  The season is almost over.  Two more weekends before we enter the Dark Times.   Meanwhile,  ADP just signed a contract extension so he's good for one more year.  The zebes aren't completely out of it yet, but they've reached the point where it isn't enough for them to succeed--others must fail.  Today's Juventus match is probably ending right about now, so you can guess what I'm doing tonight.  There's also the Giro d'Italia.  My boyfriend Fabian Cancellara, along with the Schleck Bros., moved to team Leopard trek this season, but none of them are participating.  Someone from their team actually died today after a crash.  Wow.

More odds and ends

I think I've finally found the perfect coffeemaker.  See if you can find the one thing that keeps me from getting it.

We have a new tenant at our office building.

Odds and Ends

Number One

I've had a question or two about the football photos.  Tuttosport, being in the tank for Juventus as it is, usually has some really good stuff, but it's protected from downloading.  I get most of mine from either Daylife.com or Zimbio.com.  There are some on Getty's site that don't show up anywhere else, but they all have water marks.  I haven't found anything from last week's Juventus-Torino charity match.  However, a few days ago Daylife posted a few photos from the Bari match back in January, so sometimes they publish things late.  Photos from the Toro match could show up later.

Juventus Offside has posted video of the match, if you're interested.

Kirby goes for a walk

Kirby doesn't go on walks any more.  This started in the fall when he couldn't walk.  Once his treatments started working, he was able to go, but had gotten used to being a couch potato, and we didn't have the heart to force him.

Since then, I have tried to walk him, but his stubbornness goes to 11.  He sits his little dog butt down and makes you drag him.  I guess that at some point, he gives up and does what he's told.  But first, you have to drag him far enough for him to get little scrapes on his legs and tummy.  You may think that a steady application of calm, assertive energy will work as magically as it does on TV, but  no.  When he starts to bleed, I give up, so I don't know how far I have to go to win the battle.

This cannot stand.  He needs some exercise for one, and he needs to be reminded that the house does not revolve around him.  Stop laughing.  So today we went for a walk around the block.  Sort of. Tiki and I took a walk around the block.  Kirby took a ride halfway around the block to Bogie's house and walked home from there.

For a dog with mental issues, he's pretty good at geography.  When we're going away from the house, he fights every single step, but he always knows when we've reached the point where we're starting back, and from there, he's all "race ya!  Last one home has to feed the beagle!"  So you see, it isn't a matter of "can't."  It's all about the "won't."  Silly boy.

Dog News

Ugh. So as we all know, Kirby Sweetheart has numerous medical problems. The most troubling right now is an inflammatory disease which may or may not be GME (if you look up encephalitis in dogs, you'll find it. There's a reason no one calls it by its full name). This is what is suspected to have caused his little "can't walk" problem last fall. Since then, we've been going in every six weeks for a chemotherapy treatment called CCNU (I don't know what that is either). It suppresses his immune system in an effort to calm the inflammation that gives him so much trouble, so we have to get blood work done regularly to make sure he hasn't got an infection. The treatments have been more or less working. He's always walked funny, and now he just loses his balance on the rear end more frequently than he used to.

Only last week he started limping on his front legs. We went through another round of very expensive tests and the latest is that this is probably is progression of the inflammation and, since it manifested while he was in treatment, it means the CCNU isn't working as well as it used to.

There's a lot of uncertainty in all of this. GME is progressive and usually/eventually fatal. I've known this for six months or so, but he's been doing so well that it has been easy to pretend that this is just another one of his chronic problems and it's perfectly manageable. He's getting to be an old dog, and he could be even older than we think since we don't know where he came from. Right now we're going to switch to more frequent treatments and when that stops working, there are other drugs we can try, and so forth.

He's happy and doesn't seem to be suffering at all. However, the bottom line is Kirby is getting worse. This is real.

My immediate coping strategy is to eat everything in the house that's remotely appealing. Maybe I'll snap at Mr. D over something meaningless and maybe I'll look to see if there are any cigarettes in the drawer. I hope to have a better plan for tomorrow.

No Big Deal

It's 6:30 pm on Friday night.  You're hungry.  You're tired.  Tomorrow is Saturday.  On Saturday, at 10:00 am, you are expected at Mel's for craft club.  You have promised to bring food--specifically, madeleines.  You made this promise willingly and enthusiastically.  Somehow, however, you have arrived at 6:30 the night before and you have not started the madeleines.  What do you do?  WHAT DO YOU DO???

Aftermath

It's the fourth day of Christmas.  There are fresh English football matches to watch and frigid windy weather to keep us inside and stale Christmas cookies to throw away and I'm starting to dream about my job again and to make lists of things I gotta do again and new books to read and old knitting to finish and I'm only sleeping twelve hours a day now instead of sixteen.  Time marches on, but before I start on the final 2010 clean-up and embark on 2011, let's review Christmas 2010.

It snowed:

Just barely, but there were five minutes of "Ooh!  Pretty!" to go along with the cocoa and kringle.  Note to self:  write thank-you note to MIL.

Clown pants

I work at home a lot.  My job is pretty much reading, thinking, and writing, and I can do that better at home  where there are fewer external distractions.  There still are some, but they're good:  a view of trees, a squirrel eating my tulip bulbs, children getting out of school, the changing light as the sun passes overhead.
I've got my stuff and my comfortable chairs and I can cook for lunch instead of reheating stuff or buying a grease bomb from down the street.  There is color on the walls here.  The rugs are nice.  It smells better (mostly--depends on Tiki).  If I want fresh air, I can open a window.  If I want music, I can play whatever I want as loud as I want.  I've got my dogs with me and I can hear them breathing/snoring, and feel Kirby's fur on my feet (he's clingy.  Tiki likes his space.)

I've got the best of the offices allotted to widget monkeys like me and I like my office.  But the external distractions are more numerous and more irritating:  loud hallway conversations, a neighbor's excessive perfume, the smell of another neighbor's laundry detergent, the churning grind of the ventilation unit, the paper jamming in the shared printer outside my office door (it's a piece of crap; we've been begging for a new one for several years), people fussing with the printer to clear the paper jam, the IT guys fiddling with the printer and devising a short-term solution but not solving the real problem (i.e., the printer is a piece of shit), the sound of sirens in the street, the picket line chanting in front of my building (some people don't like the landlord's business practices), demonstrations in front of the American Enterprise Institute down the street (some people don't like Dick Cheney or Karl Rove).  The walls are boring and the lighting is bad and the ventilation is OK but not good enough for my particular sensibilities and the carpet is grubby.  Etc.

Dogs Hate Daylight Savings Time

Their tummies say, "It's suppertime."  Their eyes say, "It's getting dark.  It's suppertime."  Their humans say, "It's only 5 o'clock.  It's not suppertime."  Their tiny little brains reply, "Then why are you in the kitchen messing with stuff that smells like food?"  Their Bunny says, "I'm always in the kitchen messing with food, at least when I'm not taking a nap."  They say "Gimme some.  NOW."  Bunny's feet say "Scoot."  And no supper is forthcoming.  And you can't reason with them that it's only once a year because they don't remember for one and for two they find no comfort in that.  

I woke up at 7:00 today, only it was really 6:00, and I celebrated being up by watching football.  Viola--Donkeys were live online at 6:30 a.m., so I had coffee and sleepy beagles and yarn and I watched football in bed.  The league decided to have some 6:30 12:30 matches on Sundays, probably for television purposes, but some Italians are predictably decrying the intrusion of crass popular culture into the sacrosanct rituals of mass and Sunday dinner with the family.  This is a little hard for me to understand as a secular American, because everyone knows that it's church and family that encroaches on television, not the other way around.  Anyhoo, you can't expect the die-hard fans ("ultras") to skip the match because of church and family, so they go, but they don't like it.  A few weeks ago, I can't remember which match, but the ultras went to the game, but protested:  By bringing sandwiches to the match.  And eating them.  

Stuffed-up November Blahs

We have a cold.  Both Mr. D. and I are afflicted and we have both missed some work. The fact that it happened to be a Champions League/Europa League week had nothing to do with it.  We're mostly better now, at least I am.  Tragically, we do not feel well enough for yard work, but that's fine, because I'm not obsessing nearly enough about the bulbs I haven't planted, the woodpile I haven't dealt with, the fencing I haven't finished, or the compost heap I haven't moved.  Unless I work myself into a full-blown anxiety attack, I probably won't get around to it until next week, and when I do it, I'll be out there red-faced and weeping about how much it sucks to do yard work.

It was a busy month chez nous.  My job got bigger and I had end-of-year craziness to deal with that was never my problem before.  Mr. D had to go to Pork Barrel University again.  We took a vacation for the first time in three years.  The old folks visited.  Football started, and so did both Champions League and Europa League, as well as qualifying matches for Euro 2012.  This year, this means more than just hours watching football and thinking unclean thoughts about football players because now I am writing about it for a online community of Serie A tifosi.  I'm responsible for covering Juventus, so I'm doing match reports after every match (one or two every week), and covering the transfer market and whatever other news may come up.  I love it, but it's a time commitment.  Aaaaaaand,  Kirby stopped walking, so he spent a few days in the hospital getting expensive tests, and his progress since then has been up and down.  When he's up, he can do pretty much everything, but his balance is tetchy and he's prone to falls.  When he's down, he can't walk, has to be carried everywhere, and has to be supported when he potties.  And no, we still don't know exactly what the cause of all this is, and yes there will be more vet trips (including tomorrow) so the doggie neurologist can assess his progress on his treatment plan.  The space bar on my laptop needs to be hitjust so, which means weird things happenwhen I write.  And there has been knitting.

Marco Mercoledi

The 2010-2011 Serie A season finally started last weekend.  Juventus, um, lost, and now there's an international break.  That affects all the European leagues, so there will be no fresh football over this long weekend.  Whatever shall I do with myself?

                                                              
One thing to do is babysit der Kirbenhund.  He's still not doing so well and can't be left alone because if he starts attempting to wander around, such as, for example, to see where Bunny went, he could fall and hurt himself.  Like yesterday, when he fell and bit his lip and bled all over.  Poor baby.  Eric and I are doing tag-team telework and canine pharmacology.  The weather is supposed to be nice, so I hope he can have sometime outside (being watched like a hawk).

That's an odd expression, isn't it?  It means, of course, to watch something with carfeul attention, but it sounds a little like it's the hawk who is being watched.  I suppose the contemporary equivalent would be "watch like porn," but I'm not going to be the one to introduce that into the lexicon.