Set me free, why don't cha babe?

Have you ever been stuck in Bad Song In My Head Hell so long that you start singing it, out loud, for everyone within earshot, in the hope you can somehow get them to ‘contract’ it from you and set you free; or so you can have a little company in Hell, at least?

No?

Well I have.

The third glass of wine is helping, thanks.

"Don't ever get into an empty subway car" our family friend B told me (was I ten? eleven?). "Why?" I asked. "Because trust me...there's a reason it's empty." Not two hours later I decided to test her theory and found myself alone in a car with a pile--nay--a mountain of puke that quickly explained it's impressive volume: all who had the misfortune to be trapped with it, were physically forced to ADD to it. In later years other experiences brought to light how sage her advice had been; (seemingly) empty car equaled people sleeping in their own feces, proselytizing Christians, lunatics itching for confrontation. Mummers.

So this morning I was all nose in a book, and got into an empty car.

How was your day?

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson shooting himself is, I have to say, not what I'd call surprising. Sad sure, but no shocker. I mean no disrespect I swear, but seriously--of all the crazy brilliant madmen in all of the world, he was the LAST person likely to grow old and pass quietly in his sleep. He had to go out the same way he did everything else. Definitively. Loudly.

Still; man.

Things that come to mind when you're loaning your mom money and guiding her through a break-up.

Make no mistake, my parents were totally fucking horrible parents. However I gotta say now that they are (and I am) all grown up, I wouldn't trade them. They're really quite excellent. Mostly because they never actually got around to all that silly 'parenting' nonsense when they became mature enough to grasp it. They were too busy spending their newfound maturity on getting their shit together, moving off the commune or coming off the road, trying life sober, with a 'real' job. Totally admirable goals in adulthood. It's just that they got around to those things at about the same time that I did. So we're peers you see. Parent/Child in name only. Equals. And that's great. Now.

But sometimes I wish I had regular-type parents. The kind my friends had. The kind who tell you to bring a sweater. The kind who ask see your report card because they know it's the day they were handed out. I'd love to hear, "Your not leaving the house in THAT are you?" I want the dad who flies into a rage, dead-set on beating the fuck out of the boy who broke my heart (but wouldn't really), and a mom who slips me twenties and says it's our little secret. I want a curfew. I want to have two people I can call when my life has hit an abominable low, who will offer assistance and sage advice instead of saying, "Wow. That sounds rough. Hey, did I tell you I got a call from that agent?..."

But I suppose the grass is greener blah, blah. If I had those kind of parents we wouldn't have whole conversations as Rocky and Bullwinkle. I wouldn't get to have as many spirited, deadly-serious debates over who is the greatest rock drummer of all time. I wouldn't get to swear so much at Thanksgiving. I'd have to sneak around to smoke. There'd be no after dinner family disco dancing hour, and no talking with a british accent all day just to see if anyone buys it. I'd probably have to go to church a few times a year or something. And I wouldn't be able to drink mimosa's and talk about my sex life at brunch afterward.

On Valentine's, as always.

There are many reasons why I love my man. One of which is his happy participation in the filming (via cell phone) of commercials for products we invent. And we have thousands. But today I give you... "Little Jesus Nite-lite".

As you can see, I am a lucky woman.

There is such a thing as great problems to have.

The good news is, our pup is recovering remarkably well at a stunning pace; so the 24 hour death watch is officially over--permanantly, we hope. The bad news is, the death watch has been replaced by a 24 hour 'keeping her from killing her damn self' watch, which is equally exhausting. Living with a dog that is learning to walk all over again is a lot like having a toddler. Except a ninety pound toddler, with four rubber legs instead of two. The second I answer the phone, or go to the bathroom, or head to the kitchen for more tea*, little miss wobbly drawers tries to get up on the couch, or onto our platform bed (not lofted, just real high) or into some kind of wonderful, hopeful, just like her old self-full activity that would undoubtedly cause insane damage to her healing spine if she were to fall. A few times a day we experience the combination great joy/heartbreak of her struggling, successfully, to run to the door when she hears someone in the hall, or when the doorbell rings. She wants to keep going when we are out on walks, wants to keep sniffing, insists on following the kitties, always past the point where she has the energy to make it back home without assistance. She's full of the beans, I tell you. I can't leave her alone for a second. I haven't slept in nearly two weeks. It's fantastic.

*wine

Reason #7 why I'm not accepting visitors at this time.

There's a point at which funk, one's own funk, turns from rank to righteous. I don't know how that is true, but it is. If left to mature properly, that one-day 'yeesh I sure could use a shower' smell blossoms and ripeness into a scent one might more closely identify with a simmering winter stew rather than a rotting slab of road kill. An olfactory delight emerges, rich, full, savory; setting one in a totally sanguine-by-it's-rightness state of mind.

Or I've sat in this house for a week straight and have gone insane. Either way.

With the frightening lack of walking going on around here, it's good to know Freedom is still on the march.

I'd like to give a shout out to our President for providing me a desperately needed break. Thanks to him, and the rancor that flows through my veins each time he opens his mouth, I stopped worrying about my sick dog for like a whole hour.

If you care to delight in the ways in which Mr. Bush cuts straight to the fucking (neatly by-passing the dinner and a movie, nary so much as a peck on the cheek), Think Progress did a bang-up job of posting a lie-by-lie analysis of the address. I suggest scrolling down to the first posts on the topic, and upread. It's more-better that way.

Hanging in.

Welcome to the "All Blue All The Time" blog. Same look. Same host. New, easy to digest "single topic" format. (To wit: visit the nifty people to your right if you crave something other than progress reports, my ongoing attempts to cope, and recent heightened resentment of all human beings. Cuz that's all's gonna happen round here for awhile.)

So, a little more weak today. But a nice, healthy piddle once we got her outside--which is 95% of the battle. As anyone who is disabled or who has suffered from a temporary disability (a broken leg, perhaps) knows well; two flights of stairs has a way of becoming the most daunting, frightening, life-altering thing in the world. By the time we finally get all ninety pounds of her limp body down the stairs, she's spent. So are we. I've also become more than a little afraid that the process of getting her downstairs could be causing physical harm, or undoing whatever healing that may have occurred while she was at rest.

It's been made clear our apartment is not be the most ideal place for a stroke victim to convalesce, and I've been wracking my brain for a solution. Paying our first floor neighbors to "switch" for a few weeks? A one month sublet upstate? I don't know. All I can say is Monk--with his sweet, no steps access to his fenced in backyard--should be glad for his two ferocious attack barn cats, because I'd already have Blue's fuzzy buns moved in by now.

Mom offered to have me stay and help care for her, but it's out of the question because of her 120lb German Shepherd that Blue (acting as 'mother') trained in self-defense when he was a pup; and who relishes the chance to show her up now that he's twice her size. Even though it's only play, that kind of roughhousing could kill her. Anyway he's not fixed, continuously horny, and constantly sporting his freaky pointy extend-o-penis. It turns me off my food and makes Blue nervous. Understandably.

My dad and step mom? (Just typing that made me laugh out loud.) Ah...nope. I'll put it politely and say they're not the most, um, "social" people in the world. Loving? Yes. Kind? Yes. Caring? Totally. Supportive? Absolutely. Perfect parents in every way, if you overlook the part where they'd choose chewing glass while suspended in a vat of poisonous snakes over letting another human being pass their threshold. In the twenty years they've been married I--their only child--have set foot in their house exactly three times. Three. Only once was I invited past the kitchen door. This made the rest of the family wildly jealous because to the best of our knowledge, I am the only living human being to have done so. I'm still working my way up to a glimpse of the sun-room I hear so much about, so an extended stay is...seriously, I can't stop laughing.

Well, back to bed for me. I think I got a whopping three hours last night, and I've got to build up the strength for tonight's walk.

Update

Thank you so much for all the kind words, the rootin', the hopeful stories of your own pets, the Czechoslovakian thumb holding, the good vibes in general. Every comment and email was greatly, greatly appreciated, so wonderful to find first thing this morning. Here's the update:

The MRI results show our pup had a kind of stroke. Specifically, fibrocartilaginous embolic myelopathy, or FCE, or the scariest sounding thing ever. In layman's terms...

Fibrocartilaginous embolic myelopathy is the blockage of blood flow to part of the spinal cord by pieces of cartilage-like material (fibrocartilage) that accidentally get displaced from their normal location in the body and move into blood vessels supplying the spinal cord. This blockage of spinal cord blood flow damages the spinal cord in the same way that a stroke would damage the brain.

There is no medicine, surgery, or treatment for FCE. The spinal cord has to slowly heal itself, as the surrounding disks learn to compensate. Just like a human stroke, there is no telling how fully she will recover. She could be back to 100% in a month or two (well, 90-ish percent, she's not a wee pup anymore), or eighty, or sixty, or she could stay in her current state of infirmity because too much permanent damage was done. However the doctors have assured us that most dogs who have FCE recover to a point where they live productive lives, and some even recover fully. They left us feeling hopeful.

She's home with us now. Wobbly. Scared. Exhausted. As are both of us. But she's home, and can already take a few, drunken steps on her own. We're trying to keep her and our spirits up, in the hopes this is simply the really hard crappy scary part of what will be a full recovery.

Take care, and thanks again.