Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

The End of Mac

I think the last time Mac seemed normal was at 6 Tuesday, when he slept on my chest. Gradually over the evening he lost mental acuity. By 1 am I had entirely given up and commenced crying, and we said out goodbyes. It was sweet that he fell asleep for fifteen minutes with his face on my foot, my favorite position.

I really thought we'd go to the vet in the morning. We knew he couldn't spend any of the night unattended. Sleeping on the floor with him would only work if he'd slept. The way he was bumping into walls like a Roomba meant I had to walk with him. I kept squirting water in his mouth to keep him hydrated.

If he'd stayed confused and whiny, that would have worked.  At three he started to cry and get stuck in corners. I found that if I pressed my nose against his and we breathed in sync, that seemed to calm him. At four I woke Gary up so he could spell me. He had woken up a few times at night to give useless suggestions.

I think he tended to the dog for fifteen minutes before he announced we were going to the emergency vet. The slide that had seemed gradual to me must have been a dramatic change to someone who'd slept through the three hour decline.

I don't think I'm giving away any spoilers by saying that on a tv show I watch, a major character just died after a speedy decline. (Shhh - don't tell.) The other characters in the show were unprepared, plus there was a difference in diagnosis in the medical community on the show. (No one knows what show I'm talking about? Good.) I couldn't help thinking, "Augh! It's just like [this tv show]."

We might have had a difference in diagnosis if we'd seen our regular vet. The 24 hour ER vet was a tall woman with curly hair and scratches on her collarbone. She said, "If his kidneys are failing, that can cause heightened blood pressure, and at times that can lead to a detached retina." It was a very capable diagnosis.

After she ran tests she sat us down and said, "His kidney numbers are fine." (Hurrah Gary! He's really tried to lay off the treats.) "He's a little dehydrated." (Go me! Only a little dehydrated.) "However, his liver numbers are high and he has an excessive amount of calcium in his blood, and in a dog that's an indicator of cancer. With his symptoms it seems that he has brain cancer."

Whaaaa - huh? I said, "But how would he get brain cancer overnight?"

"Well, you described weakness in his legs that began a year ago." And of course, I had. I was just so used to carrying the dog around everywhere I'd forgotten it was because his legs were wobbly. And there was a year of puking, and limping, and trembling. Everything I thought was age could be neurological. And frankly, is anyone going to notice neurological issues in our epileptic / MS family? Dog can't walk a straight line? Join the club. Convulsions in our family would be completely ignored. (Another tv show callout.)

We'd already resigned ourselves to putting him to sleep because he was so miserable. The kidney / cancer switcheroo was immaterial. I did kind of want our vet to do the deed, but Gary thought we should have this doctor take care of it. (Again, a couple siding with doctors, just like the show.)

Even sedated Mac was miserable. The doctor pushed the plunger and I waited for his eyes to glaze over, but instead they rolled downward. She left us alone to say our goodbyes now that he was gone.

While we were petting him his mouth opened and he made a clicking sound.

"Involuntary muscle spasms," I thought. "And that's the same clicking sound Mom made while she was dying."

He did it again. Then his stomach gurgled.

Gary said, "I think I can feel a pulse." I couldn't feel it, but he was still warm.

Eventually the pulse faded away, or Gary said it did.

We told the receptionist we were having him cremated, and then Gary added:

"We don't need an urn; we'll just put him in with the other dogs." He explained to the receptionist, "We have a little coffin on our mantle where we keep all the dog's ashes."

(No, we don't have a little coffin on our mantle.) "Casket," I assured her. "Like a medieval-type casket."

We decided to take the day off and alternately sleep and cry. Gary asked me to not pick up the dog food or dishes, so I won't. I promised him I would start peeing in the hallway so he could still step barefoot in cold pee. We promised to start cuddling and kissing each other more. ("[He'd] want us to love each other as much as we can now."- TV show.)

So, sad times here, tempered with a newfound ability to sleep uninterrupted and eat unaccompained by demanding barks. Still, we miss our dog.

Updated: Dog Slump

Dog woke up at 4:45 this morning in full Weather Alert Mode. When he does this I turn on the TV and usually find there is an impending weather situation, and I calm him down, or at least try.

Today's weather didn't arrive until 3:30 in the afternoon, and by then the dog had stress barfed twice He just puked up the bright yellow bile because he'd been too freaked out to eat.

Finally, the bad weather passed. I expected him to calm down.

Instead, he traded in his demanding yip for a pitiful whine. Then he started losing track of where his legs were. Then he began navigating around the room by walking right next to the walls.

And finally, and most concerning, he stands in front of his water dish and whines, but he hasn't had anything to drink all day. I've taken to squirting water in his mouth with a syringe.

So, I'm sleeping on the floor tonight and taking him to the vet tomorrow. Hoping it's the doggie flu....

Update: ... And then he began crying because he was wandering and would get stuck in a corner, then he was crying all the time. So we took him to the all-night vet, and they diagnosed brain cancer (something about calcium in his blood).

Anyway, we put him to sleep. It's very sad. and sudden.

Cooking Slump

2:00 pm. Roast Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic Vinegar Reduction.

Vinegar boiled over. Par boiled the sprouts, dried them, but they were still mushy and sloppy. And vinegary.

4:00 pm. Potato Pierogies from Scratch. After dicing the red onion, I accidently dumped all the red onion in the soapy sink. Rinsed off the onion and transferred it into a bowl. The vegetable steaming basket hurled itself off a cabinet shelf and landed in the bowl of onions.

I said, "Oh, screw this, this is a cooking slump."

No, I thought, I'll cut my losses and just finish the filling, then make the pasta tomorrow when the slump has lifted.

I got as far as, "add 1/4 cup of milk." Went to the store to buy milk. Looked up a replacement for the "garlic chives" the recipe called for (green onions).

7:00 Finished the filling; packed that up without incident. Successfully melted imported butter on top of lite popcorn for dinner.

10:00 Pulled the pork tenderloin out of the oven that had been cooking on "Slow Cook" all day. Lovely. Shredded. In BBQ sauce.

Gary says, "You know I don't like BBQ sauce." Which, no, I did not know that, you always get sauce. WTF BBQ, as they say.

So, even my cooking successes were failures today. Hope the curse lifts for the pierogi pasta.

Pre-C Word

Remember when Gary had that colonoscopy? He had two polyps, both of the angelic variety? They cut them out, did biopsies, and they were pre-cancerous. BUM bum BUUUUUUUUM.

My take on it was, "Awesome, you've had pre-emptive cancer surgery."

His take was more complicated. Somehow he held these opposing viewpoints in his mind simultaneously:

"Gah! Now I have to have colonoscopies every five years!"

and

"What if the pre-cancer comes back in three years instead of five?"

So, I suppose we could schedule him for a colonoscopy ... in what, four years, if five is too soon and three is too short?

Actually, I'm very pleased with him.

Basement Progress

First, the junk men came out and hauled away all my carefully organized junk.

I took some photos to compare the before and after.

Before

After

Before

after

I know! They look exactly the same. Then I found the photo that will express how much progress has been made.

Tony and Alex standing by my junk. They were halfway done.

It looks like I'm junking perfectly good stuff, except for my grandmother's sewing cabinet which has gone legs up in the far corner. They load all the trash in first, then they organize the rest by the charity it goes to - Goodwill, etc.

It made me very proud I had organized it into a trash pile and a donation pile. Evidently sometimes they show up and there has been no preparation. People just start pointing at things.

They were very knowledgeable about my junk. They admired Gary's old bike, and spotted the pidgeon coop I paid $75 for at the Antique Mall (yes, it was possibly my worst decorating decision ever) and knew the name of the car featured in an old photo of my Dad.

Oh, and they put all of Gary's weights into that bench (the one under the Jane Fonda Steps) and hauled it all up at one time.

Now, most of the basement is in that stage of mid-organization when remaining stuff is piled in the middle of the room, but there is one corner that is complete.

The best part was finding that the plastic drawers fit perfectly in the corner.

You can't see it, but each drawer is labeled with the contents, and after I purged I found I have far more drawers than contents. Many drawers have only one thing. So, drawers are labeled "Tiny croquet set" and "small rubber chicken" and "millinery supplies."

And look at this workbench! It's like a man doesn't even live here!

Karma

Years ago, I bought Gary this tool chest, which he almost immediately broke.

I put something too heavy in a drawer, it got off the track, and Gary used brute force to twist the drawer into a half-out position - where it stayed stuck for at least a decade.

Does that go with the tidy organized basement I'm fashioning? No. I thought I might visit Sears to see if I could buy a replacement drawer or slide.

Sales Guy: May I help you?

Me: Do you sell replacement drawers or slides?

Sales Guy: I'm afraid we don't.

Me: Then I need to buy a whole new tool chest.

I imagine that made Sales Guy's heart skip a beat, because he is on commission. Instead, he recommended a curvy hook tool I could try first to pry things unstuck.

So, Sales Guy Mark (or maybe Mike) at Sears at Mid-Rivers put customer service before his commission. I was impressed. I was still thinking about it when I was at the Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a dustbuster. I was tempted by the Dyson handheld, as we all are, but settled on the Black and Decker, which they did not have.

Then I had these thoughts.

1. Go buy a dustbuster elsewhere.
2. WAIT NO.
3. Buy a Dyson at Sears from the Sales Guy so he gets the commission he would have gotten if I'd bought a tool chest.
4. I am a GENIUS.

It was some high level rationalization. I wasn't buying an overpriced Dyson for ME, I was buying to for HIM. For Karma. I had to buy a Dyson. I had no choice.

Sadly, Sales Guy was momentarily not at his post, and the vacuum section was staffed by a woman who was very much ON commission. She shadowed me. I couldn't grab a Dyson and sneak back to Tools. It did not work out. I ended up just writing a nice review about Sales Guy online.

Still, the rest of the day I kept thinking I was getting Karma credit for my good deed, only to remember I hadn't actually done anything. I caught a falling sheet of glass in my bare hand and my hand was not severed. Karma! Oh that's right, I didn't do my good deed. I then unearthed a dustbuster I didn't know I had - but it didn't work. There's some aborted Karma right there.

That was a week or two ago. Since then I bought a rehabbed Dyson on Amazon (25% off) (shut up) and I took that curvy tool and just last night finished fixing the tool chest. It works like a dream.

Adventures In Trivia, Act Three: The Mojo Protects Us

Previously on Adventures In Trivia: After buying a trivia win and Munchkins, we buy cake and wine for our bereaved friend Meredith.

When we set off for Meredith's house, Caroline said she wasn't sure but Meredith might live in a sketchy neighborhood. Of course, as the driver, I needed more detail.

Caroline: "Go east into the city, then turn north."

Me: "Seriously? Shit." We all know if you are in the middle of downtown Saint Louis, and you keep heading east, you will be found dead in East Saint Louis. However, if at the last minute you veer off and turn north, you will only be maimed. North Saint Louis is our second worst neighborhood.

Of course, that's if you're headed in from the west, and we were on south 55. The "sketchy" neighborhood we were headed for is home to safe places like Ted Drewes, Cherokee Street, Mom's childhood home, and my Aunt Nancy's house. But, I've never approached the city from the south, and it was dark, just about midnight, and we still had the high drama buzz going from The Win, so ... this was not destined to be a relaxing trip to Meredith's. it could have been, in the daytime. 

The first exit from highway 55 was terrifying.  The exit ramp was decorated by an oil drum propped up on a platform of two by fours. I don't know why. It spooked me. It must have spooked us all, because with every intersection we passed we got more and more giggly. We didn't really know, but as Caroline said, "Come on, we're three college educated women. We can get to the hood."

Finally we got to Meredith's and we executed a smooth operation in which I slowed the car so Caroline could get out and run up to the porch while I turned the car around. I picked her up headed the opposite way without hardly braking. It looked a lot like a drug drop.

Of course, then when we sped off we were so relieved we got even more giggly.

I was thinking about Aunt Nancy anyway, since we were in her hood, and I remembered how she would bellow "Old Man River" whenever we crossed a river. I thought, "I should belt out 'In the Ghetto,' that'll be funny." And it would have been funny if I could have gotten past the breath I had to take to sing without cracking myself up. Finally I just choked out my plan. 

The route of 55 to Broadway to Meramec was a new road though, and you know I love those. And to bookend the Oil Drum Altar I saw on the way in I saw a giant Native American statue on the way out. What's up with that? Marcia said it was just the entrance to the antiques district on Cherokee street, but it looked very forbidding.

Eventually, Caroline said, "Marcia, ask Siri what's the fastest way from the ghetto to Chesterfield."  The non-stop Mojo had worn us out.

Adventures In Trivia, Act Two: The Mojo Fades then Rises Again

Previously on Adventures in Trivia: We buy ourselves half of a trivia victory. Of course, we were close, and those points may have been ours all along.

So, whether we cheated or not, we were very jazzed after our "victory." (Quick aside: let me take this opportunity to apologize the French for calling them sore losers over the tour de France all these years.) We knew we were at least in second for sure, so we celebrated by getting some Munchkins at the Dunkin Donuts.

We had to go through the drive-through because Dunkin Donuts hours are oxymoronic. Open 24 hours, unless it's after 10.

The celebratory food of choice was 2 dozen Munchkins. The guy passed us the box through the window and said, "I put in about 50."

So, how perfect is that? Undeserved Munchkins after an undeserved win! The MojoMeter was through the roof. Plus, Caroline the Math Maven took home 48 Munchkins because Dunkin Donuts does not understand numbers in any form. We were The Team That Could Not Lose.

The next stop was the Walmart to buy cake and wine for a friend, Meredith. Her greyhound died that day and she couldn't join us. Meredith always eulogizes her friends' greyhounds on Facebook, and we didn't know her greyhound that well. Instead, we wanted to follow the traditional mourning gesture of cake and wine left on the front porch.

We walked in to Walmart at 10:30. Marcia took photos of cheerios and wine and the baby clothes displayed next to the wine. We chose a wine and cake. That really only took about 20 minutes. Then we got in line.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, I said, "There are three of us, three lanes are open, whoever gets to the checker first checks out the cake." I won the race. I touched the belt at my checkout and yelled over to Marcia to get the cake from Caroline.

Marcia came back. "She won't leave her line. She met someone she knows."

Of course. A visit to South County with Caroline is a miles-wide reunion tour. She has worked in every building, has a friend in every subdivision, meets a cousin in every Walmart line. 

I checked out a purchase for Marcia and we waited at the end of Caroline's line for the next four people to crawl through. Then, I swear, Caroline got carded, because obviously she has such powers over numbers that she doesn't look her age, and of course she didn't have her license. I thought we'd have to go through the line again. Marcia played big sister and ponyed up her ID and we were out.

It had been an hour buying the cake and wine. Caroline had been carded at middle age, but my Mojo was fading. I did a donut in the parking lot to amp the Mojo back up, only one, very slowly, and that delighted Marcia. I only realized later that a donut in a Mini Cooper is a mini-donut. Or: a Munchkin.

See? It comes full circle! Like a donut!

Next on Adventures in Trivia: A Tale of Two Neighborhoods, or A Post I Cannot Post on Martin Luther King Day Because it Judges People By the Bars on Their Windows and Not the Content Of Their Character.

Adventures In Trivia, Act One: The Mojo Rises

I picked up Caroline and Marcia in the Mini and we tooled off to trivia. We ended up with just us and Anne at a ten-person table. Sure, the odds were against us, but I was doping. I'd just taken my first megadose of Vitamin D.

Given it was just the four of us against dozens of tables of ten I assumed we didn't have a chance, and I thought I'd test my hypothesis. Often my team's been winning at trivia when suddenly in the final round some other team pulls from behind like Secretariat and wins everything. The winning team always donates their winnings back to the charity.

So I told the host, "Just so you know, if we win we're donating all the winnings back to [the charity]." Then I made Significant Eye Gestures so he would Know.

The host said, "Well, there's not that much I can do to influence that. Winning's really all up to you."

As usual, we were always in first or second place, but then one round we scored a point higher than we thought we should. Caroline noticed, because she has advanced math skills.

I started to get worried. Caroline had already calculated how handy the winning pot would be divided by four, and it was a tidy profit.

At the very end, we lost to some other team by one point.

Sigh. Anne left. Others cleaned up. I went to congratulate the other team who was not even paying enough attention to know they had won, and come to find out they didn't even offer to donate their winnings back to the cause. So I didn't even feel good about hypothesizing that the fix was in.

Then I heard "Ellen! Come HERE."

I went back to our table where a bystander said, "You guys won!"

"They entered the numbers wrong before," someone said, dryly.

"No, we tied," Caroline clarified.

Representatives were called to the front from the two winning teams. Caroline stood up for us. The emcee explained that either there would be a series of tie-breaking questions, or the two winning teams could spilit the pot.

Caroline jumped in. "Well, we're going to donate our winnings anyway -"

The emcee interrupted, "Well, that's what we'll do then. Congratulations to you both!" and it was all over.

So, doping and bribery triumph! We were pretty jazzed afterward. We could not lose! We had the Mojo.

Next in Adventures in Trivia: The Mojo Fades, and then Rises Again.

Vitamin D

Monday: No New Lesions! No! New! Lesions!

Later That Same Week: The neurologist's office called and said the results of the vitamin D test he ran were low. Low normal is 30; I am 13.

When I was first diagnosed, that doctor said they speculated MS had something to do with how vitamin D is metabolized. It made sense, because people at the equator don't get MS and they have plenty of sun, and sunshine helps you make your own D. (Sunshine makes me throw up. I always puked on float trips and camping trips. Sunshine is not "healthy" for me. Exercise makes me barf too. I see a trend.)

Anyway, at the time, that doctor said that taking extra D would not help. Perhaps they thought it was a correlation and not a cause. That was years ago. It seems that now they think that big doses of D will be beneficial.

I start off at 50,000 units once a week. It's prescription, otherwise I'd be slamming back half a bottle at a time. 

I just can't wrap my head around it. I know there was a time a few years back when everyone had the D test and everyone was low. There was a time in the 70s when vitamin C was supposed to cure cancer.

I am skeptical, but they know what they're talking about. Big Honking Doses of D seem to be recommended for people with autoimmune diseases. Okay then. I'm doing this for the 80 year old me, the one that'll have brittle bones because calcium crept out because I didn't get my vitamins.

Perhaps I'd feel better about it if they charged me 4K a month.

Pre-Shelf Elf

I need to say this before the Christmas tree and this ornament go back to the basement.

This ornament has been - I can't say "in my family," that makes it sound like an heirloom. Start again. I did not throw this little elf away when Mom died, though I threw away his five brother elves, and though I knew them since birth.You can only imagine the sense of power I had as a child, straightening his legs, wadding them back up, pulling them out, wadding them back up.

Note the casual crossed-leg posture my elf has adopted. An extra dose of cuteness. Or constipation.

So, on Thanksgiving day I see this floating past Macy's.

My first thought: I thought WE were the only family with the little elf. Second, that elf is barely protecting his shins. Why didn't they cross his legs? And what is wrong with his ears?

Once again I have missed out on some child-centered pop culture. Evidently there's a new book about The Elf on The Shelf, and these elves sit on shelves and spy on children. I suppose this elf's posture was an homage to my elf, called a "knee-hugger" on ebay.

I still like my elf. I still pull out his legs. Secure elf. Wad up his legs. Insecure elf.

Gary's Turn Under the Scope

Monday, I was in buidling B at Missouri Baptist when a woman in the hall turned to me and asked, "Do you know how to get to the fifth floor of building B?"

"I don't think there is a fifth floor."

"They told me to go to Building B, Suite 550. The Endoscopy Suite."

"Ohh! Suite 550 is in Building D, not B. I'm going there tomorrow." And how lucky are you, lady, to randomly ask me, the person who scheduled back-to-back his-and-hers colonoscopies in Suite 550?

So, Tuesday was Gary's turn to have his colonoscopy. He suffered greatly during the prep, much worse than I did. The guilt caused me to have sympathy diarrhea a few hours in.

He felt my Pro Tips were useless. I also told him about AnneP's Desitin tip, and he argued about that too. The next morning he woke me up to tell me his ass was chapped. Welcome to my world, AnneP.

The best part was that when the time came, when he was wheeled in, when he was ready for his close-up Mr. DeMille, they went for his butt and found he had left his underwear on.

Reportedly, they said, "This will not do."

It was his red underwear too. He took it off, they went in deep and found two polyps. They both look angelic to me.

Fifty at Fifty

1995-2010: Over 15 years of MS, I've accumulated 50 "silent" lesions: ones that didn't result in a flare-up. That's 3.33 lesions a year. Only two of the 50 were noisy enough to break though my oblivion, so I've only been in the hospital twice. That's one active lesion every 7.5 years. That is well over the average of one every three years.

(I sound smug, don't I? Hush. You'd be pleased with yourself too. It's a stupid brain, but at least it's discreet. Evidently that's where all my discretion is hiding.)

2011-2013: So, I started 2010 with my fifty vewy-vewy-qwiet lesions. How many do I have now?: Fifty! No new lesions in 2011 or 2012.

The neurologist let me know. We did the seated happy dance together. "The drugs work!"

So, holding pat at fifty.

Then again, it is possible that lesions level out when your estrogen dries up, given that they surmise hormones and MS might be linked. Or, maybe lesions top out at fifty. Maybe they stop counting at fifty. Or maybe it's like the rings on a tree: you earn one for every year you've been alive. No, then that means I'd have been dead the last two years because NO NEW LESIONS.

All the Men In My Life Have Synchronized Cycles

My brother Dave has had the Whooping Cough for a week. We thought it was his yearly bronchitis because it is the same high-pitched keening hideous cough. (People have accused him of augmenting his cough for pity, that's how dreadful it is.) But no bronchitis: whooping cough. In addition to the cough, he has blood on the toilet paper. We suspect he blew out a hemorrhoid during a coughing spell.

Gary is going in for his colonoscopy Tuesday, in part because he too had a visit from the Melena Fairy. (There are only so many ways I can avoid the word "stool.") (Also, don't name your children Melena.)

So, this morning I was in the basement with Mac the Dog, and I don't know why new rooms inspire dogs to poop, but they do. (I can think of three times dogs have gone into newly-built rooms of brand new homes and have been moved to defecate.) Anyway, I scooped it up with a paper towel and yes, there was a decided red tinge to it.

And, yes, they have all been a little cranky.

Slither Gets Two Thumbs Up From Gary

After I spent four hours sorting and cleaning and consorting with mouse crap, I arose from the basement to find Gary watching Slither.

He roared over the sounds of non-stop screaming, "Sit down and watch this movie with me! It's a great movie!"  It was then I decided to donate his weight set to Goodwill.

Right now as I type this the movie finished and he is yelling about how great it was.

Oh, now he's in my room. Live blogging.

"They were nuts only giving it three stars! It wasn't stupid at all! It was ... elegant! It was an elegant movie. You HAVE to watch it with me. It bears watching two or three times." 

I'm watching that movie as soon as he helps me clean up the basement.

Windy City Dreamin' On Such a Winter's Day

A Friend is celebrating a birthday next month, and because her favorite band is playing in Chicago she's celebrating up there. And she's invited her friends to join her, though lo they are legion and scattered to the far corners of the earth.

You realize this is a chance to travel while leaving the dog at home to stay with Gary.

Hotel. First, I get to pick a hotel. This means I get the list of hotels off Concierge.com, Jetsetter.com, and fivestaralliance.com, and then I cross-reference only hotels that appear on all three lists to make a Master List, then I look through Google images to find actual traveler images of the hotel rooms at their worst.

I then make a spreadsheet of the finalists with columns detailing the square footage*, price, airline points, and if there is tea or not. And only then do I decide on the hotel I had in mind when I started, and not just because it has a personal motorized watercraft on site. (I don't even know what that means.)

*This time I ruled out two hotels because the rooms were 600 square feet. I don't need a room that big. I'd much rather have a tiny well-appointed room. They both have the same beds and tvs. Why pay for air?

Travel. I am joining the road trip to Chicago, but I'm staying an extra day then flying home. If you again take the Gary discount (in that I'm not paying for his ticket), then the extra night in the hotel almost pays for itself.

Events. Every time I go to Chicago with Gary we spend all our time in museums. I'm planning non-museum events. For example, in addition to hanging out with the Friend and her far-flung friends, I'm sitting front and center for Book of Mormon. Gary said he didn't want to go when it came to Saint Louis, so I just sank the money for Gary's ticket into my own. I thought about going to the Sunday Gospel brunch at the House of Blues, but I've read some bad reviews.

I am liking this so much.

And They Say I Don't Have a Filter

Soon four of us will be desk-sharing at work: me and one of three other guys. I wanted to express in an email that there was plenty of room in my cube for anyone who wanted to move in.

I really don't hang on to paper at work. I like to travel light at my job. I purge routinely.

Specifically, I have a lot of file cabinet space. I am only taking up 2 inches of one of my two file cabinet drawers. 

I was trying to be hospitable. I wanted to say that since I have the most free space, I probably should desk-share with whoever has the most stuff.

I typed, "I probably should be teamed up with whoever has the most stuff in his drawers."

Then, I backspaced.

Them's Some Fancy Sprouts

One thing I ordered from the gourmet store was guanciale, a fancy italian bacon cured pork jowl. I have read of its unique taste and how you can only get it at the best shops. Yum! The Emporer's New Pork Jowl! That jowl has my name all over it.

Guanciale is best known as the carbonera in Pasta Ala Carbonera, but I didn't want to first try my hand at something so fancy. Instead I tried Martha Stewart's Brussels Sprouts recipe.

Yeah, I did what Martha said, even the ice bath so it would stop cooking at just the perfect moment. Well, I didn't have any ice.

So here's the guincale.

Weird stuff. After a few minutes of cooking the white fat turns see-through. Of course, I was afraid to taste it.

I think I might have overcooked it a bit.

Mac came by and said, "Is that guanciale?"

When it was all done I pulled out a bit and tried it.

It really was different. Kind of like unsalted bacon crossed with barbeque burnt ends. Gary said he thought it tasted like burned pork chop fat. (But Martha said crisp, damnit!)

I don't care even if it was burnt, because I've got eleven more ounces of this. I can fake it till I make it. On the subject of faking: my spice rack is even more awesome than before.

 I hate that all the spice companies went round after I set up my spices. Now I've got a spot for the round.spices too. And yes, I'm inclined to just remove mustard entirely.

I Say Yes, Yes We Are

Friday night:  I cleared out everything in one third of the basement, and Gary put together one half of one set of shelves. Though I tried to help, I couldn't wrestle the metal beams together the way he did.

Saturday: We both hurt a good deal. We agreed we should take three months cleaning up the basement. So, that new timeline gives us until the end of March. Wait - March is his Birthday Month. Well, end of April then.

Sunday morning: Gary got out of bed, stood up, and his back went out.

So, then we had this conversation.

Gary: I should NEVER have put together those shelves without wearing my back brace. I am an idiot. What was I thinking?

Me: I was at the end of my strength yesterday toting all that stuff upstairs, and I barely made a dent in the pile. I think it's clear we need to hire this out.

Gary: NO.

Me: Angie's list seems to always have deals on man hours of labor. We could just -

Gary: NO.

Me: Why on earth not?

Gary: BECAUSE WE ARE NOT PATHETIC.

Gary doesn't realize it, but he said that while gripping his cane, all bound up in two back braces like the Michelin Man.

Later on I began comparing him to Mom. In addition to denying his infirmities, he was pulling a very Mom move: using his cane to drag a heavy piece of furniture across the floor while insisting he didn't want any help. SO Mom. QUELLE Mom.

I suppose I could subcontract out my part of the work on the downlow. I am happy to admit I am pathetic.

Even My Subconscious Knows This Blog Is Boring

Last night I dreamed I was contracting in a military lab. A female scientist said I needed to remove my blouse for safety.

After doing so I turned to face the scientist and I felt the cold air on my boobs just as she said, "Why did you take off your bra too?"

And in my dream I thought, "Oh, this is going on the blog."

Ice Ice Baby

Check out this series of glass igloos. It's for viewing the Northern Lights in Finland:

Each igloo has thermal glass outside, and I suppose that means it doesn't fog up between the heated room and the subzero air outside. Inside there's a bed and a bathroom.

On the downside, during the five day excursion you can only stay in the igloos one night, the rest of the time you have to live in a log cabin and take husky rides and ice fish.

Of course, I could go in and refuse to come out. It looks like a womb and vagina, doesn't it? I'd be a breech birth and plant my feet against the walls of the entry way.

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Sleep inside an igloo in Finland

Oh, If You Insist

So, my boss asked for volunteers today. Space is tight so we need to consolidate cubicles, and that means some of us need to work at home two to three days a week. Hell yeah, I volunteered. I took that challenge squarely on my Spartacus-cleft chin.

Pros

No bathing
No brasseries
No hairstyles
Less deodorant
Less gasoline
Bed and laptop, not chair and desktop
Convenient for cooking and housework

Cons

No socializing
No division between work and home
Can't wear new coat as much

"No socializing" is the only one that troubles me.  Most people have multiple collections: a set of work friends, a set of church friends, school friends, club friends, knitting friends. Marcia has an entire social circle that has nothing to do with work. Libby and Caroline have fellow moms.

What I have now is a collection of work friends, then a mish-mash of one-off friends with no connection to each other. I need another group to lose myself in (and then monopolize every conversation and draw all attention to myself, as I do).

And I need to travel with these people.

Clearly I need to start a band.

Resolutions

Well, the first resolution for 2013 is to organize the basement. Here's the before photo. If you click you might find the Stooges.

The second resolution requires some background. A few years after my Dad died of lung cancer (still smoking on his deathbed) my Aunt began to die of type 2 diabetes. I visited her in the hospital and complained that it seemed people I love would rather die than change their habits.

She said, "Well, you know,it's easy to change when you're 25, but when you're over fifty it's almost impossible to change." Of course, she died a few months later (begging candy bars off her brother till the end).

So, now that I'm fifty, I resolve to change.

First I'll stop smoking. Done! Damn, that was easy. I never started smoking! And ... dessert only twice a week? That sounds reasonable.

 

This Was The Year That Wasn't

The Year In Health

Gary's migraine started bad, kept us from traveling, but got better, until his back went out and kept us from the Nephew's wedding and then we thought his heart was bad, and then we thought his wisdom teeth were growing back, so he slept with bandaids over his mouth for a while.

Mac started out sick but has improved, but still, Mac's health has kept us from traveling.

I thought I'd had a heart attack, but it was the cats. I definitively do not have colon cancer. I found out what was causing me to explode in 2011. (Not my vagina at all!) But I went back to physical therapy for another frozen part.

It assume I still have MS but I still can't get an MRI for my brain. Oh, and it seems I can't control my thoughts unless I have 10mg a day of Celexa in my system. Not normal, but 75% less than what I had before. I gave it a shot.

And no matter what, I'm still four grand ahead every month.

The Year In Entertainment

The best GNO's are the ones when everyone else works and somebody dies. I tried surprising Gary with a party. That worked well.

I read ... how many books? One. Bitter Brew. Heard most of it before, except for the exact addresses of all the Busch compounds.

The Chinese Lantern Festival was disorienting. We had great seats at the Cards game. The Museum of Transportation was transporting. The brewery was intoxicating. Argo to the Five Star Lounge.

We went to concerts: Ingrid Michaelson, Mike Birbiglia concert (and movie) Crosby Stills and Nash, Regina Spektor, Leslie Buckingham, Paul McCartney, Blue Man Group, and everyone but Alanis Morrissette. Of course, Paul was the best.

The Year In Eating

I ate yellow watermelon, pork belly, fresh pasta, churrasco, fusion, The Shaved Duck, risotto cakes, and chocolate,

The Year In Learning

I learned how to make cheese, that intense pain makes me laugh, and that you can't say the r-word for any reason.(Even as an educator. As one childed friend said, the "r-word is the new-n-word." FYI, child-free friends. None of the child-free folks at work knew.)

I learned how to make pie crust, and that flour spreaders go for the throat.

The Year In Nature

I lost a little interest in the northern lights. Cottonwood troubled me. Hail plagued us. Clouds disrespected me.

International Toe Porn Superstar Spunky Labia sported the natural look.

The BirdCam caught opposums, birds, squirrels, and racoons. Ducks showed up, just walking the street. Best of all, we hung out with some cheetahs.

The Year In Round Numbers

I turned fiddy.