Black Doggerel

snoooow dogs. complete with me puffing and flopping like a diseased grampus, LOL, but I enjoyed myself anyway.

Traumatised Collie is Traumatised

The vet prescribed medicated shampoo for Spike's continued lickery. I believe I'm supposed to use it once a week. I'm not sure either of us or the bathroom fittings are up for that.

So the doctor thinks I either have post-viral fatigue syndrome or possibly a thyroid issue. Today I went to have blood drawn so they can check thyroid functions. I don't have words for how much I was dreading this. I never had easy veins to start with, and I destroyed what little there was very thoroughly during the junkie years, so that getting blood out of me is normally only slightly easier than pulling hen's teeth. What normally happens is that the first nurse will stab me five or six times in each arm, fail to find a vein, call in a different nurse and sometimes a third, and eventually they'll send me home with both arms bruised and sore from wrist to shoulder with instructions to come in next week so they can try again. When I had my dental surgery they put the drip in my neck because no one in the entire hospital could hit my arm veins. That's how bad they are.

So I'd warned them about sucky vein access when I made the appointment, and they smiled serenely at me and said "Don't worry. We have Ying." I gave them a funny look and went "...Okay. Whatever."

Ying turned out to be a dry, quietly-competent nurse that made it hard even for me to be anxious in her presence. She felt over both my arms carefully before she so much as touched me with a needle and bugger me if she didn't hit the vein squarely on the first damn poke. That's never happened in my entire life with anyone, professional or otherwise, not in those veins.

I have typed more words today than I have in weeks. I seem to be having a good day. This has been driving me batshit because I haven't had the energy for IM conversations. I've been staying out of the Khimeros chat; I've tried, but one of the side-effects of feeling this shitty is that my brain-keyboard filter is holed and shaky and it's too hard not to get snotty with people. So I'm only talking to people who don't tend to piss me off and who understand if I say something tactless by accident. It's made me slightly stir crazy, but most of the time I've just been too fucking tired to care.

This is likely to continue for a while yet. Today's been a good day, but I've had a lot of days when the combined effort of hitting Post Comment, stringing an intelligible sentence together and then typing it has been more than I could deal with.

In other news, Spike is still licking his elbows. Also, I have liquorice allsorts and rhubarb-and-custard boiled sweets, neither of which I ordered - Tesco sent them as substitutes because they'd run out of the toffee I did order. I love the way internet grocery shopping occasionally produces these little serendipities; the rhubarb-and-custards are a bit harder than I really fancied but man, they taste good. And liquorice allsorts are complete love, especially the pink and blue sprinkle-covered liquorice jelly cushions. Though admittedly it's more usual for them to send me filthy camomile tea when I ordered blackcurrant or ginger or fennel, but still.

Today is my Dad's birthday and I feel vaguely guilty that I didn't remember till my sister posted something about it on Facebook. He was never very good at remembering birthdays either, mind you.

/end ramble

1. i aten't dead.

2. sore throat, swollen glands in my neck, a lowgrade headache that's persisted so long I've started to treat it like a regular body part, palpitations, nausea, chronic fatigue on top of my normal chronic-fatigue baseline to the point where walking the dogs round the block needs psyching myself up for as if I were sailing round the world singlehanded on a reed fucking raft. and often a nap afterwards. wtf, body. also my ability to think clearly is intermittent and shortlived. Flowers for Algernon r us.

three weeks-ish and counting. i've told myself i'm calling the doctor monday. everything about this scenario - starting with the having to telephone people and going on into all the possible crap like blood samples, repeat appointments, whatever might be necessary to fix it - makes shooting myself now feel like the saner and pleasanter option by far.

3. Spike had a UTI which is now fixed yay. After talking to vet about foreleg-licking I'm trying him on painkillers. Almost immediately the licking stopped and he's got a bounce back in his step that he'd been losing so very gradually I hadn't noticed it waning. This is not as depressing as it would have been if I weren't still riding the dodged-a-cancer-bullet high, but it's still fucking depressing.

4. finally remembered to plug the battery recharger in so i can at least take photos. m'not kidding, i've had that on my to do list for weeks. all it needed was to flip a fucking switch and it took three weeks to get round to it. what is this i don't even.

I dreamed I was living in an old block of flats, very like the place in Lansdowne where I first lived alone with John except that the flats were bigger on the inside like puzzle boxes. Mine contained room after room full of heavy, dark Victorian furniture, lit by candles; but I couldn't seem to keep the door locked. I woke up in the morning and there was a strange dog, a Great Dane, playing biteyface with Spike. I went out onto the landing to take the Dane back to where he belonged, and one of my neighbours asked me when John would be coming back.

I clutched the ruff of long hair on Spike's neck. "It's complicated," I said. I knew he wouldn't be back. I went back into the room with the long dining table and tried to burn myself with the candles, but all I could do was put each one out, one by one. The hot wax wouldn't even sting on my skin and in any case it was useless, useless. I thought of the cold anger on his face and knew no amount of pain would persuade him to pity or forgive.

Make it stop, oh, make it stop.

slave2tehtink was here and this time she brought her fiance who is adorable. Spike and Squish approve of him thoroughly. Here you see Spike approving at close range.

there are more pics, including the Best Squish Pic Evar but they're on Petunia's camera, so you'll have to wait till she gets home.

good day XD