Cupcake Deficit Disorder: Symptoms and Treatment

Let’s talk about cupcakes. I only say this because I am suffering from Cupcake Deficit Disorder. I’m not allowed many cupcakes because they have sugar in them, and I’m supposed to be avoiding the stuff. And no, I don’t want to know about any sugar free cupcakes. If I’m going to eat empty carbs, at least let them have sugar.

Cupcake Deficit Disorder, or CDD as we call it around here, can, if left untreated, affect the central nervous system. It can also increase crankiness and decrease libido (so I hear), as well as turn a completely normal day into a day of darkness, despair, and deceit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is something we all need to avoid, isn’t it? Unless you’re into that sort of thing.

Which I’m not. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m the exact opposite of darkness and despair. And deceit. Though I am not unfamiliar with conceit and am actually quite well acquainted with it. The mere act of assuming anyone wants to read what I have to say on cupcakes proves that.

But back to CDD.

CDD has only one treatment that has been proven, in clinical trials, to be successful. And by clinical trials, I mean this is what I’ve determined works. And that is: Cupcakes.

Yes! The treatment for CDD is cupcakes!

There are several ways you can test this out for yourself, should you suffer from CDD. And how do you know if you suffer from it? There are several very clear indicators, among them:

• Are you cranky first thing in the morning?
• Do you find yourself daydreaming about butter cream frosting on a dark chocolate cake?
• Do you find yourself making excuses to go by Cupcake Royale (or any similar cupcake shop) when you really didn’t need to be on that side of town at all?
• Do you snap at your children, your husband, your wife, or your pets? (This is a very clear indicator.)
• Do you dream of cupcakes when you sleep?
• Do you lie awake at night counting cupcakes in an attempt to get to sleep?
• Do you find yourself planning parties solely to have an excuse to have cupcakes?
• Have you looked up the nutritional value of cupcakes hoping to find that they’re somehow good for you? (They’re not, so you might as well not even look.)
• To pass time on the subway, do you imagine all the different cupcake and frosting combinations you can, and then write them down on a list that you later transcribe?
• Do you have the iPad Cupcake app which tells you where the nearest cupcake shop is, wherever you might be? (This is the absolute best reason for owning an iPad, by the way.)

If you have any of the above symptoms, you just might have CDD. Or you may be naturally cranky. The only way to tell is to try treating CDD and see if that helps.

  

When treating yourself for CDD, or a loved one (sometimes loved ones don’t know they need treatment, so it’s quite all right if you force them to eat cupcakes since you’re doing it out of love), it’s important to remember that quality trumps quantity. You can either make them yourself, if you’re into that sort of thing, or you can go to a Specialty Cupcake Shop. I prefer the second method, since the idea of me baking sort of takes all the fun out of it.

(I love to cook, but baking isn’t cooking. Not only that, but then I end up with way too many cupcakes, and then I’d have to eat said cupcakes, and then you’d all have to come to my funeral after I’ve lapsed into a diabetic coma and died.)

When deciding on what sort of cupcake to treat yourself with (treat yourself with! It’s a play on words!) remember that quality comes first. To do it properly, make sure you know exactly what kind of cupcake you really need. Or cupcakes, if you’re going to be consuming more than one at a time. Fortunately there’s a wide variety of available flavors and types and combinations, so you should be able to find just the thing.

You may want to call ahead to make sure the cupcakes you want have just been baked. There is absolutely nothing worse than showing up at the Specialty Cupcake Shop only to find out that there is no chocolate raspberry left, and that you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. (If this happens, you may want to try throwing a tantrum. Perhaps the Specialty Cupcake Shop will be so in awe of your tantrum that they’ll make more just for you.)

When consuming your cupcake, you have to be in the right frame of mind. You have to WANT to get better. If you consume the cupcake(s) not really caring if you recover from CDD or not you’ll just want more cupcakes and be no closer to recovery. You will, however, be momentarily satisfied until you crave the next cupcake (which may take place in ten minutes, an hour, or three days).  

I’m going to treat my CCD now, and in short order my charming husband will be relieved to see me stress and despair free. Your results may vary.

The Vacation Continues

As we drive home from Kalispell, the setting sun behind us, the sky in the east turns from blue to grey, the sort of end-of-the-day color that heralds the moon high in the sky. The mountains to the east, part of Glacier National Park, grow dim, as if behind tracing paper, the sort of thing we used to make a picture on top of a picture, for those of us who had no art skills. Geese swirl overhead, and it’s so peaceful that none of us speaks.

Or maybe we just have nothing to say. We’ve been to the Winchester Steakhouse, where my stepdad, Jerry, meant to buy us dinner on our last night. But instead we insisted on paying, for his birthday we told him, which is Friday, when we won’t be here. He doesn’t think it’s fair, but charming husband has given the waitress his card before Jerry could do anything about it, so it’s too bad for him.

I haven’t accomplished much during this visit, by which I mean, I haven’t gone through any more of Mom’s drawers, I haven’t winnowed out the discards from the keeps, I haven’t sorted the pictures. Underneath the table is a big plastic box, full of pictures, that I put there on a previous visit, but there’s a  drawer in the desk that Jerry points out to me that is more important to him. “There’s cards and pictures in there, and I don’t know what to do with them.”

“I’ll go through them,” I tell him, and he pulls open the drawer to reveal the folders from the mortuary, the cemetery, the probate papers, and underneath, cards and pictures.

“I want to keep those,” he says, indicating the death documents, “Just in case.”

The next day I go back to this drawer, and I look at the cards and pictures underneath. They’re cards and pictures that someone put away less than two years ago, and they’re pictures of, mostly, the funeral, and the after party (whose idea was it to have an after party anyway?), and the cards are sympathy cards. I put them in a neat pile to take home with me.

I also take possession of my grandfather’s old camera, and I go through some software for the computer, most of which I discard. It’s old and useless. I pick up a few of the small hard disks that were so prevalent just a few years ago (or so it seems) and on them my mother had printed “pictures,” and I wonder what to do with them. I don’t want to get rid of them in case the pictures are ones that should be kept, but how can I tell? My mom’s computer, now Jerry’s, doesn’t have one of those drives, and neither do any of my computers at home. I’ll keep them though, and figure that out later.

Other than that, I’m not productive this visit. Charming husband and I go for long drives and visit Glacier National Park, Jerry takes us for drives and shows us the buffalo down the street, the river that’s perfect for floating, the Canadian geese in a nearby pond, and at night we sit in the living room and we watch baseball. I’m calling these few days a vacation, and so I’m living them as a vacation.

Eventually I’ll have to deal with the big giant box of pictures, unless someone else gets to them first. I’m not sure what to do with them. I don’t know many of the people in the pictures. I know my side of the family, mostly, though not always, and I know fragments of Jerry’s family, but there are so many kids and grandkids and great grandkids and friends and strangers and there’s a past that I don’t even know about.

My mother had a life without me, and there’s so much of it I don’t know about. I was my mother’s oldest, but I wasn’t her favorite, and except for a few of the early years, I lived apart from her while growing up. She loved me, but we had separate lives, and while our lives intersected enough for us to have a relationship, I’m not sure we ever understood each other.

That’s okay. We just did the best we could with what we had. I feel like an intruder, rummaging through the remnants of her life. On previous visits I emptied her closet and her drawers, I took possession of the correspondence she’d saved all her life, and I sorted through the files and labeled them so Jerry could find anything he needed. I showed him where the bills to be paid were, and what he needed to do. I took home a few items of clothing, the last unfinished afghan she’d been working on, a box my uncle, long deceased, had made.

The photo albums sit on the shelves still, the framed photos on the upper shelves. I’ve looked through some of the albums, but I can’t bear to do anything with them, much. I do find a newspaper clipping in one album, a story in which I was featured many years ago when I was an NCOIC in the Air Force. I removed that one and kept it, because it was funny. But the rest? I don’t know. There are many pictures of my mother to be found in these albums, and I don’t want to lose those, but I don’t want to cannibalize the albums either. Neither do I want to take them. They’re not mine.

I can barely keep together the pieces of my own life, much less the pieces of someone else’s. The boxes of correspondence she kept all her life I have now, but I haven’t looked at them, other than when I looked at them to pack them up. They’re not to me, though some of it is from me. But much of it is from other people, perhaps people who don’t want me reading the letters they sent to my mother long ago. Some of them are dead now too.

There’s so much past here. Tomorrow we leave, back to our own lives, and I’ll come back again someday, and maybe then I’ll have a plan. I doubt it though. I’m not much for planning. Maybe someone else will get to the albums and the big box of pictures first. But probably not. 

Tilt A Whirl Hell

Our vacation got off to a smooth start, by which I mean: we managed to take the dogs to the kennel and then leave on the same day we intended to. It’s important to appreciate the small achievements as well as the big ones.

We drove throughout the day, or, I should say, the charming husband drove throughout the day and I played with my iPad, napped, read random road signs, provided a running commentary on the landscape, and did my very best to make charming husband’s vacation a delightful journey. He may scoff at that description, but since I’m the one writing, I get to say what I want.

We stopped in Spokane for the night, mostly because it’s a convenient place to stop.

Let me back up. Here’s the thing. I’ve been meaning to schedule a trip to Montana to visit my stepfather, but since I have a history of eventful journeys I was a bit hesitant. For three of the last four trips the following has happened: I ran into a deer, crippling it and making me cry; I blew a tire in Spokane, on the freeway, on a Sunday when nothing was open; and so on the last trip I took the train, figuring I’d at least be safe that way.

And so the last trip my knee went completely bonkers, and I was unable to walk without pain.

This time, charming husband said he’d come along, and we’d make a vacation out of it. He acts all nice and everything, but I know he just didn’t want to come get me out of the hospital or jail this trip.

Anyway. So we stopped in Spokane without incident, and the next day we went to Silverwood, a theme park in Idaho.

Charming husband loves theme parks. Disneyland is his favorite of course, but Silverwood has roller coasters and is on the way to Montana, so it fit our needs well.

After our last trip to Silverwood I swore off roller coasters, but I’m happy to wander around while he amuses himself on them.

It was a beautiful day in Idaho. Sunny blue skies, warm but not overly hot, slightly breezy, just the kind of Labor Day weekend we always hope for but never get. Shortly after arriving at Silverwood, before we’d done anything other than wander around, we came upon the Tilt A Whirl.

I grew up on Tilt A Whirls. Every year there was a carnival in the local park, and the Tilt A Whirl was a standard, as it has been for many years in many places. When asked, I said, 

“Sure, let’s go on it.”

We stood in line underneath the warm sun, watching the little kids get more and more excited the closer they got to getting on the ride, and even though I felt a twinge of trepidation, I decided it was silly, and at last it was our turn. (It wasn’t that long of a wait, but I’m trying to inject some suspense.) I joked with the attendant that I was escorting charming husband so he could go on the ride. Poor husband puts up with a lot from me.

We sat in our car, and the ride started, and wasn’t that fun? Just like the Tilt A Whirl of yore, back when I was smaller and lithe and not on enough medications to kill a horse, if one wanted to kill a horse by overmedicating said horse. Not that I’m overmedicated, but I’m certainly well medicated.

And as we spun around I started to feel something other than nostalgia start up in my stomach. Innocent harmless butterflies at first, the sudden empty feeling that lets me know that trouble is headed my way, and then, as we kept circling and spinning and whizzing around, I prayed for the ride to stop. Despite my normally heathen nature, despite times call for desperate measures.

It didn’t stop, it just kept going around and around, and the butterflies turned into moths, and then into dragons, and if you’ve never had dragons roaring through your stomach, lucky you, and I hope you never do. I put my hand over my mouth in what I knew would be a futile attempt at containing what was coming up, but I had to try, didn’t I? I kept my hand stuck over my mouth, and as my mouth filled with what had earlier been breakfast (I assume), we kept spinning.

As we whipped past the attendant she asked if I was okay. Or so I’ve been told, I was focused on not spilling my guts as we whirled because that would definitely be a disaster. I could picture it, as I held it in, vomit spewing in slow motion as we continued to spin, a toxic waste dump that could contaminate everyone we flew by, or past, or anyone who followed.

The Tilt A Whirl, that demon ride, started to slow, and as it started to slow I started to retch, and as it came to a stop I threw up everything in my mouth into my hands, making a special effort not to get any on myself.

So there I was, vomit in my hands, and on me, and feeling like I could do it again, easily, with no provocation at all, and the attendant gave us a disposable towel, something they probably keep on hand for those riders who underestimate their abilities, and I emptied my hands into it. Everyone else was off the ride by the time I managed to stand up and wobble to the exit, where I promptly bent over so I could retch into the pretty foliage.

Poor charming husband, trying to take care of me, so worried.

“I need a restroom,” I said, “And I need it now.”

Or, alternatively, “Get me the hell out of here.”

I don’t really remember.

After I cleaned myself up and got some water, I told charming husband to go ride some coasters, and I would sit on the grass in the shade under the trees, and then I insisted he go, since I hadn’t gone through all this only for him to miss the roller coasters, since he was focused on how I felt instead of what he was supposed to focus on, which was Having Fun.

So he went, and I laid down on the grass, at the top of a grassy knoll, where I could have a good view of anyone coming my way, and I closed my eyes.

I stayed that way for a long time. I moved to get up once, but my stomach didn’t want to come along, so I stayed until I felt human again.

It happens eventually, the returning to a human state.

I don’t know if it’s the massive quantities of meds I’m currently taking, but charming husband is leaning in that direction. Could be – I used to never throw up, and I’m starting to make a habit of it. (By which I  mean, that was the second time this year, and we still have the last part of the year to go.)I once had a vomit free streak of like 10 years, and not that I was proud of it, but I never ever throw up. So I used to say. I think my stomach has just had enough of a lifetime of abuse and has decided to fight back.

Whatever it is, the Tilt A Whirl has taken on the patina of a demon, and I shall never get on one again.

We continued our vacation, and since then it’s proceeding as it should, by which I mean, there has been no more public vomiting. Yay me!

Walking Past Dragons

At 4 this morning, which is not a time I typically associate with morning, but more with middle-of-the-night, my dog Ash decided he needed to go outside. He communicates this to me by standing by my side of the bed and making a very slight whimpering noise, the kind of noise no one else can hear, particularly my charming husband, who keeps sleeping. But I, I always hear the whimpering of the Ash. I opened one eye and looked at him, which wasn’t easy in the dark, since he’s black and the room was, at 4 am, black, but I could make out two intent eyes looking at me and waiting for a response.

He only does this when he really needs to go out. He’s not a difficult dog otherwise, normally sleeping all night through like a rock, or a log, or some other inanimate object used to express the idea.

“All right, I’m coming,” I said, and I climbed out of the security of my comfortable bed and the two of us stumbled downstairs, me stumbling more than he, and I let him out into the backyard.

I don’t know what he does out there at 4 am, though I can guess, but the truth is, I don’t really care, as long as he’s quiet about it.

He came back to the door, I let him in, and we stumbled back up the stairs. I headed straight for bed, and had just gotten myself all comfy when Ash was there again, at the side of the bed, with a whimper, and I said, “Now what?”

He whimpered again. This isn’t rocket science, figuring out what a whimpering dog is saying. The only other thing it could be was the dragon in the bathroom.

The dragon in the bathroom is a perennial issue with Ash the Wonder Dog. During the daytime we refer to her as Honey, the Chow Golden Retriever who is also Ash’s best buddy, the older dog he doesn’t hesitate to jump on when he wants to play. But during the night, when she’s sleeping, or anytime she’s between him and something he wants, whether it’s water or a ball or me, she’s an immovable scary object.

“Okay, I’m coming,” I told him, and I climbed out of my, yes, comfortable bed and we walked into the bathroom so I could escort him past the sleeping dragon. Honey, the dragon, didn’t move. Now that she’s half deaf she doesn’t hear us approaching, which means I must be extra careful not to startle her. She doesn’t like being startled. Would you?

But we walked past her carefully, and she stirred enough to almost lift her head, but that was all. It’s not as if she cares if Ash wanders by and has some water. She’s pretty okay with him doing what he wants to do, but he still thinks that she really CARES and would object, even though she has never once attacked him for walking by her. Not once! Occasionally, just because she can, she’ll give out a tiny little growl, as if she would do more if she really cared, if she weren’t so darn lazy, and so he believes his concern is justified.

I do that with my own dragons. They don’t care if I walk by them to get to where I’m going, but I keep thinking they’re going to reach out and snap my head off, or cut me down to size (whatever that means) or somehow make me sorry I ever bothered. They’re not even fearsome dragons! But still, I let them control me.

After Ash drinks his fill I escort him back past the dragon, who has gone back to sleep, or at least seems to be unconcerned with the people and dogs traipsing past her.

I get back in my comfortable bed, and so does Ash, who decides to sleep on the extra pillow I keep above my head for him. He falls right to sleep while I ponder dragons, and how they mostly don’t care what we do. Yet we, or me in particular, for I don’t know your dragons, look at them as if they’re large immovable annoying objects, sent to bedevil me and stop my progress, here to stop me from doing whatever it is I want to do. All I really need to do is walk past the damn things and get on with it.

Ash needs an escort to get past his dragon. And I have escorts to get past mine. There are people who help me with my dragons, who guide me past them in ways I couldn’t imagine. Sometimes I’ll walk right past a dragon all on my own, because I’m learning that it’s possible and that my head won’t explode if I do.

I do try to avoid heads exploding at all times. It’s messy and irritates bystanders.

We all have dragons, though they often turn out to be no more than elderly furry half-deaf dogs who don’t care that we go tromping past them in the dark of night. Or something similar. We can get past them with the help of our friends, and we can get past them all on our own. We don’t need to slay the dragon, unless it’s breathing fire and ready to eat us, we can just walk past them on our way to somewhere else.

Looking at Mental Illness from THEIR POV

 

Just read another story from someone with a loved one with mental illness, and again I hear the same story: His illness is no excuse to act the way he does, nor to treat people badly.

Of course it isn’t. But I always wonder, did anyone take the time to ask HIM about his point of view?

Too often I see the mentally ill told to straighten up, do what society expects, stop acting all crazy, and could you please, while you’re at it, be nice? These are all reasonable requests, as long as we refrain from defining “acting all crazy,” since it can cover a wide variety of things, some of which even the sanest of us participate in.

Buying bottled water, for example. It’s crazy, when you think about it, and when you know that tap water can be better for you, and cost a lot less, but we do it anyway. At least some of us.

I’ve come to the realization that I’m one of the sanest people you’ll ever meet. However, that doesn’t mean that when I’m talking to someone who’s mentally ill I’ll proclaim my superior sanity and tell them to just act like me. Instead, I’ll ask them what they think. I’ll want them to tell me about their delusions, though I won’t call them delusions, and I’ll want to know how they see things.

With my ex-Stew-who-was-mentally-ill (for those of you who haven’t followed the story and haven’t read the book yet), I talked to him. I didn’t just tell him what was going on in the real world, but I asked him about what was going on in his world. I treated his views, as irrational as they seemed to me, as if they were real. Because you know what? To him, that was reality. Telling him to join me in my reality didn’t mean anything to him because he couldn’t see it.

I don’t mean buy into their world. You can’t follow them down that path, at least not far. It doesn’t help them, and it doesn’t help you understand them. And sometimes no matter how much you ask, it won’t make sense to you. It can’t, anymore than what you see can make sense to them. But that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you are relating to them on a level that’s equal. By asking about their world, you let them know you care what goes on in it.

I’ve met people who don’t want to know what’s going on in someone else’s world. “It’s not real, they just need to snap out of it.” Always helpful advice, the just-snap-out-of-it. It’s like telling someone with a broken leg to just walk on the damn thing and they’ll be fine in no time.

But often it matters to them. It matters that someone cares enough to ask. With Stew, we could have these sorts of dialogues, so he could tell me what was going on and I would take it seriously, but I could also remind him that, “You remember, don’t you, that we talked about how only you can see this, and no one else?” And he could remember, usually (not always, I’m not a miracle worker) that his world view was not necessarily the world view I had, or anyone else had. It was distinctly his, but he was welcome to talk about all he wanted, because if you can’t talk about your crazy world with anyone, you’re going to hold onto it even tighter so you don’t lose it.

Even if it’s a sad dark world, it’s still the only world you have, and why give that up? How can you when you can’t see anything else?

Maybe, just maybe, if you take them seriously, instead of insisting they conform to a standard they don’t understand, they might take you seriously. They might come to understand that you’re not the enemy, at least not all the time. Sometimes you’ll still be the enemy, but perhaps just by listening you can become safe, someone they don’t have to fear is going to tell them, yet again, that they’re crazy and could they just listen to reason?

And maybe not. Maybe it’s all for nothing. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to disengage. Sometimes, though, if you try, you can find that disengaging isn’t necessary after all. I tried with Stew. I tried with everything I had, and I was rewarded with his lasting friendship and his support, which are no small things. I was also rewarded with being able to talk him off the ledge when he was on it, which happened more than I would have thought possible. He listened to me even when the voices in his head were telling him not to, because he knew I was listening to him, and not just talking at him. I knew his fears, and I knew his hopes, and I knew, usually, how best to reach him.

Not always. But enough.

Sometimes enough is the best we can do.

Honey Has Been Healed!

Last night we attended a church revival down by the railroad tracks. Crowds of people were clamoring to see the prophet, as were we. I have a fondness for prophets. It was a noisy crowd, but Honey was unfazed, since she couldn't hear them anyway. She did appear to be considering the possibility of biting those closest to us, but whatever. We sat through two sermons, one by a 10 year old child preacher who admonished us to tithe freely in order to secure our eternal salvation, three intermissions so we could buy hot dogs and popcorn, and two interludes of a 12 year old soprano singing first Amazing Grace and then The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The first was okay, the second was wretched.

At last the prophet himself appeared, and said, "I am here to heal the sick, comfort the sick at heart, and collect your money!" This was all in a loud booming voice, except by the end the crowd was screaming hysterically to be saved and most of them may have missed the money part. We had to wait our turn of course. This healing thing is apparently a sort of individual process. If the prophet is as powerful as he would like us to believe, couldn't he just wave his fairy wand over the crowd and say, "There, all done." But no, we were given a number, for which we paid a donation, and made to stand in line behind the makeshift stage.

The first healing was a 42 year old accountant who was complaining of bunions. "You are healed!" the prophet said, and smacked him in the head, causing said accountant to fall backward, where he then hit his head and was knocked unconscious. Guys in black t-shirts rushed on stage and carted him off, and then the next, a clown who was sad. And by clown, I mean a clown, in full clown regalia, with a sad drawn on face and the barest hint of rum on his person. "You are healed!" said the prophet, knocking the clown to the ground, and the clown's sad drawn on face didn't change at all, but I'm pretty sure he was no longer sad. Or would be, once he regained
consciousness. Then a scullery maid, who was suffering from steam burns, who was also knocked unconscious, no doubt so her burns could heal. This went on for half an hour, or an hour, or some period of time that lost all meaning.

Then it was Honey's turn. "If you smack my dog I'll kill you," I said to the prophet. "Just fix her hearing."

"It'll cost you extra," the prophet said, "If I can't smack her. That, and she's a dog, if you haven't noticed."

"Really?" I responded. "I knew there was something different about her. Just get on with it, will ya?"

"If I must," he said, "But I must insist on cash or a cashiers check first. Or Visa. Or MasterCard. We minister to those of all faiths."

"Fine," I grumbled, as I handed over my last few dollars.

"We'll bill you for the rest then. This isn't nearly enough."

I have a mailing address I use for these purposes, so I gave him that. Said mailing address is halfway to Timbuktu, and there's no address there, much less a there there, so I imagine a pile of mail has been collecting there for quite a while. Another bill or two wouldn't matter much.

"Dog, you are healed!" the prophet bellowed, and Honey snapped at him.

Wouldn't you, if a prophet was bellowing at you? Well, true, Honey couldn't hear him, but she got the general idea.

We left the stage as a midget desiring to be tall entered from stage left, but we didn't hang around to see what would happen next. 

After we got home I said to Honey, "Honey? Can you hear me?"

I could tell she couldn't because she made no sign of hearing me. Which is not to say my dog can sign. That'd just be weird.

But this morning she came into my office, and was snapping at me, which is her way of saying, "Can you let me outside now please?"

I turned around in my comfy desk chair and said to her, "Do you want to go outside?"

She responded by barking and jumping up and down, if a dog can jump up and down. Then Ash, who'd been loitering in the doorway, started barking and jumping up and down.

I kept talking to her, and she kept responding as if she could hear what I was saying. Then again, it's hard to tell with a dog. We went into the hallway and I had Andrew call her, and she looked at him, then went to him.

The dog can hear.

After I let them outside I went back upstairs and called out the back upstairs window to Honey. She stopped what she was doing, which was sniffing grass, and looked up, then around. She wasn't quite sure where I was calling her from, but she knew someone was calling her.

I could have just said that the vet had said she might regain some of her hearing once the infection cleared up and the ear gunk was cleaned out from the drops he'd had us giving her, but that doesn't make for such a good
story, does it?

A Good Holiday

You can tell I've had a good holiday when my burns are only first degree.

Fortunately I'm only a danger to myself. Others are safe around me, unless I trip and fall on them, but even then, there's usually a pretty good chance said others can jump out of the way before my full weight descends on them like a ton of bricks. The burns, on the top of my fingers of my left hand, are only slight red marks now, and the swelling isn't bad at all.

Not bad at all. This is my mantra for getting through things like scalding myself, cutting myself, and in general doing damage to myself. I have never broken a bone, but I'm thinking that's only because they're made of rubber.

So other than the whole burning thing, which was only a slight inconvenience and allowed me the opportunity to sit on the couch with my hand wrapped in ice and later aloe while charming husband put together the rest of dinner, life is good. Painful, at times, but what isn't that's worthwhile? (This is another of my mantras that I use to console myself with.)

Last night, which just happened to be some sort of holiday, I started to wonder when we'd moved to a war zone. It must have happened when I wasn't looking, because when looking for a house, I'm pretty sure I checked the option to be out of a war zone. Since I've never been in an actual war zone, only pretend ones, I have no idea what one sounds like, but I'm pretty sure I heard mortars going off, and air strikes, and explosions. I was also not aware that there are so many people around here. There must be, for all that noise to be going on. That, or we invited several other neighborhoods to join us for the festivities.

I'm hoping the fatalities were kept to a minimum.

Used to be, fireworks were a cause for concern around here. Honey does not like them. They hurt her ears, and it makes her upset. I'd be upset too if my ears hurt. But now that she's mostly deaf, she really doesn't care. Occasionally, when the racket was loud and long, she'd bark at it, as if to say, "Shut the hell up, will ya? I'm trying to sleep!" But it wasn't with the former panic she'd have when she was a hearing dog. It's not as if she could hear it all that well. And Ash, he doesn't care much, except for a particularly loud one that'll cause his head to pop up. He likes to sit next to me and burrow into me just in case though. Then again, he likes to do what when there's no sign of fireworks too, so I'm not sure it means anything.

I do have the best life. It's not just on holidays that I notice, but on holidays, no matter the reason, I give myself permission to slack off and do whatever I want, the sort of permission I'm loathe to give myself any other time. If you ask me, I should be doing something useful and productive all the time. Not that I do all the time, but I do heap guilt upon myself if I'm not productive. Not on holidays though. On holidays there's none of that.

Of course, I did do some work anyway yesterday, but it wasn't much, a couple of hours altogether. This was before the burn incident, when I could still move my fingers.

And today I can move them just fine again, so I better get back to work.
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