Black Doggerel

Added a new LJ friend today, which prompted a rush of ridiculous embarrassment at the sparsity of intelligent words in my journal of late. It can't be helped. Deathtired is bigger than I am and I can't even let myself think too hard about everything I want to be doing.

Have some linkspam as a cunning substitute for an actual entry. Many of these are regurgitated from my Facebook: I actually hate Facebook, but you wouldn't know it these days. It's just that I can forgive myself for short meaningless entries more easily on Facebook. Every time I try and write more than five words about my life it turns into bitter self-pitying whine; better just to keep my face shut.

( This got bigger than I thought it would )

I have started and deleted this entry several times, because it's uncomfortable and I feel as though I'm doing something wrong.

The lovely people on Khimeros (which you should join because they are lovely people and there are pretty shiny fake pets on it like this) set up an art auction, unasked, to help pay for Spike's surgery. So I am finally making this entry because more than one of you has asked me to, and while I don't like to ask, I am not too proud to turn down help offered.

Well, the surgery's been paid for. So it isn't urgent. It isn't one of those "help me or my dog will have to stay sick" deals. But it was a lot. The diagnostic work pre-surgery came to £1500 - that was my DWP back pay and some that my Mum kicked in. The surgery itself came to £3000. It was paid for by my mother killing off her savings and running two credit cards up to the limit and my sister putting in £500 and now Mum doesn't have an emergency fallback if anything goes wrong in her life. I'm paying her back, but even if I live on ramen noodles and Smartprice baked beans for the rest of my life I can only pay it back pretty slowly.

So since I've been asked, if you want to help, if you can spare it, here it is:

That goes to Mum's bank account, it was set up specifically to help cover the surgery. Please don't think you have to or that you're a bad friend if you don't for any reason. You've already all been awesome; like a huge tidal wave of love and supportive.

My original idea was to try and do art commissions, but I have something close to a panic attack every time I think too hard about that one. What I thought I'd do is a kind of compromise: if anyone puts in more than £7 or $10 (i.e. enough to cover postage and a bit over) I will mail you something I painted. You'll need to give me a mailing address (comments to this entry are screened) and tell me what kind of thing you want. I don't guarantee I'll be able to do exactly what you want, and may fall back on dragons or flying unicorns instead, and it may take me some time, but I promise there'll be SOMETHING.

Meanwhile, Spike is doing good. His teeth need cleaning and his lower lip is getting all dry and cracked where it used to be covered by his upper lip but isn't any more, but these are minor things. He also informed me that handfeeding is for invalids and if I hold the bowl up for him he can eat out of it fine by himself, thanks.

I've caught Mum's bronchitis and have twisted my knee (that first night when Spike puked twice? I slipped in a small pool of it, landed on my arse and apparently near-crippled myself.) so I'm feeling like shit on a stick. But that's minor too, in the larger scale of things.

Love you all.

word of warning people: do not try and grab a pointer trvelling at full speed by his harness in passing. i have a strong grip and pretty good upper body strength but he just blew right through me. feels like someone did their level best to pull my right hand off at the wrist.

to be fair to the little spotted fuck, he WAS coming when called. he just wasn't slowing down or stopping on his way right back to whatever the hell it was in that stranger's back yard that he wasn't willing to leave the hell alone.

spring fever or something, clearly. guess who's going back on his long leash for a while.

still no news from the damn vet. I'm scared to call them myself.

ow ow ow ow ow ow OW.

I've had Spike for seven years now. I already know he moves like a striking snake, can jump seven feet effortlessly and has about as much bite inhibition as a bear trap.

So holding the knotted raggy throw-toy up against my chest while I tried to retie a knot in it was just plain fucking stupid. He sailed through the air past my face, snatched the toy as he went and (accidentally) took a sizeable chomp out of my left boob along with it. TOTALLY MY OWN IDIOT FAULT.

holy fuck, it hurts.

Calling the vet tomorrow for results of last lot of tests and hopefully some kind of plan of action. The mouth thing's looking rather red and angry yesterday and today. Good thoughts for the titbiting fuckbastard would be enormously appreciated.

We had something of a milestone today. Spike has always been very reluctant to surrender a ball - usually I just leash him up while he still has it, and count on him dropping it while we walk home from the park, which nearly always happens because it's not really THAT interesting for him to walk around carrying it once he knows I won't throw it any more.

For reasons I don't feel like going into, today's walk ended with Spike in the house on the dog couch still holding his ball like grim death, and me needing to get it away from him before he destroyed it (he's destroyed one this week already that I can't afford to replace, and we lost one of the rubber rings the week before. I'm starting to be very grateful there are always plastic bottles lying around outside. I'm not actually kidding.)

So I stood there offering treats and asking him nicely to let me pick the ball up, and eventually he actually did. He put it down and he let me pick it up, knowing full well that I was picking it up with the intention of taking it away.

There were a couple of false starts, and I took a collie headbutt to the nose during the discussion but HE DID IT. He got so much cheese for that.

I love my shark boy. Also, my nose hurts.

grrrrah, can't i have one fucking week without something new hurting me?

got collied on the nose when i bent to leash him up in the park and he boinged at just the wrong moment. do not imagine a dog can't leap clear off the ground from a downstay; my dog bloody can.

nose isn't like, broken or anything but i have a big swollen purpling lump on the bridge.

sucky typing due to holding bag of frozen cauliflower on face. sigh.

i'm still getting headaches nearly every day. not really bad ones, just they never go away. i wake up with my head hurting and it never really stops. i'm not worried - i was checked out for neuro damage and all - it's just very annoying and tiring and joysapping.

whiiiiiiine.

small music dump, just because:

The Men They Couldn't Hang - Jennifer Grey - uploaded on impulse because it came up on the shuffle and i thought the friend i was talking to at the time might like it. You might too.

Peter Blegvad - Scarred For Life - today's title track and one of the most accurate love songs i can think of. I love Blegvad so much and not enough people listen to his songs.

that fucking collie of mine's got a head on him harder than a fucking breezeblock. or at least harder than my fucking FACE.

ow ow ow fucking ow.

When I hear about bad things happening, I sometimes have to go and clutch my collie tightly and cry into his fur. Last night, very late, this happened, and he was sound asleep in the hallway. My approach woke him, and as I crouched to hug him his head snapped up and whacked me hard on the bridge of my nose. It still hurts. I suppose it gave me an excuse for crying if I needed another.

Later, I dreamed. I dreamed I was at an animal shelter; one that could probably only exist in dreams, full of happy creatures of many different species confidently awaiting the new homes that they were assured of. The human workers were working their arses off to make it happen; but they were succeeding, smiling because working hard at something you love is no hardship.

Many of my friends were there, though Blaidd and Erin are the only ones I can definitely put names to now that I'm awake.

One of the things this place was doing was breeding peregrines for release into the wild. (I know, but it was a dream, after all.) Shelter workers were packing near-fledged falcons into travelling boxes to be taken to their release sites - dozens of them, crates full of bloom-dusted brown feathers and blue beaks and big dark eyes. When the boxes were full, they would tape poems on the inside of the lids, so the falcons would take the words with them into the sky.

Fly high and go with love.

Spike's paw is not quite healed, but I can't take another day of this. I have to play tuggy with him even if I'm not letting him run - I can hold it so he keeps his front paws mostly off the ground. Trouble with that is that lack of exercise makes him much faster and snappier on the tuggy. He never means to nail my hand. But my pinky's still dripping blood and I am running out of fingers.

In other news, Torchwood finale and Doctor Who season opener double whammy yay! I cried like a little girl, chortled, snorted, squealed, sniffled, gasped in surprise. So very happy, so heartbroken.

Then there was Battlestar Galactica. It's been off the air too long; I've forgotten what was happening and lost much of the urge to care. The characters are still good and all but I was caught between WTF? and meh - I think RTD got all my OMGYAY!!!

I did enjoy Gaius Baltar, though. I'll give it that.

Edited to add: Oh yes. What's this I hear about half my UK-resident f-list getting snow? You utter, utter, utter, utter, utter bastards. Winter completely bypassed bloody Bournemouth yet again this year - I don't think we had more than a handful of frosty mornings, even. And now fucking summer's kicked in here, complete with sweat rash and self-loathing. I hate you all so much I can't even speak. And if any of you who're having snow live in a Council place, would you consider a swap?

Still not dead.

Spike's been driving me (and my neighbours) batshit with his cannon-like barking out of the window every time a cat, squirrel, fox or other dog walks past in his field of vision. I finally had a "What Would Blaidd Do" moment and hit on what should have been the blindingly obvious sensible way to break him of the habit. Instead of concentrating on trying to quell him when he barks, reward the hell out of him every time he glances out the window without making a noise. We've now had two days and only one bark. ONE, as opposed to eight or ten twenty-one gun salutes. Fucking awesome.

In other less awesome news, I got up when that one bark happened because if whatever he's barking at is exciting enough he sometimes needs to picked up and carried away from the window before he'll shut up. Only Squish had left an enormous, rock-hard, jagged-edged old marrowbone right in my path and I came down on it hard. My right foot may never be the same again; it's all swollen and purple and I'm scared I might have broken something in it. This isn't the first time this has happened but I don't remember it hurting to put shoes on before.

ah well. if it isn't better in a day or so I'll go get someone to x-ray it. won't that be a jolly jape? Even jollier than trying to deal with an evil collie who can't understand why he's only getting short walks. It's times like this I feel my only regret about being single.

...I'm still reading you all. It's just... you get into a habit of non-communication and it sort of feeds on itself. The longer you go without commenting or posting the harder it gets to do it; the less you feel as though you have anything worth saying. The jury's still out on the last part but there's people I care about that I never meant to not be talking to. That's you, that is.