1/1/2013

Angus the poodle, Husband and I will be welcoming the New Year by sleeping, unless one of us needs a trip to the small room at that exact moment. I'm excessively pleased to have the day off from work tomorrow. It's one of the few holidays with no obligations of any kind. I must say that last week and this week are confusing me beyond repair. Half a day off followed by a whole day off followed by two days of work separated by a snow day when I couldn't get to work followed by a regular weekend; repeat.

As I left the office at noon today, I said to Jane, "Tomorrow's Saturday, right?"

"No," she said. "Tomorrow's . . . Sunday."

"Oh, well then," I said. "I'll see you the day after tomorrow."
"Thaaaaat's riiiight," she said.

It was worth a try.

Thank you, Wikipedia, for this image.

Shelter/Rescue animals are The Best

And so are the people who do the work (that never ends) at the animal shelters.

Two minutes and fifty-two seconds of people who have just fallen in love, or are about to:
Richmond (Virginia) Animal League's Operation Silent Night.  Husband and I have vowed never to have any but a shelter or rescue animal. Or perhaps a barn cat who'd like to have the best of both worlds.

We need a cat. 
The mice are, nightly, holding fancy dress balls in my house, in celebration of MiMau's demise. We need an orphan kitty who knows how to hunt. I've been spending time on Petfinder, but Husband says the farmers over the hill probably have barns full of cats they'd be happy to give up. When I drive past the farms, I slow down and watch carefully. All the cats are smart, staying inside in the warm barn, not outdoors gracefully stretching and washing hind legs, displaying themselves for adoption. 

It's only a matter of time. 

Good news and good news.

The good news is that I'm going to be a great aunt in April. My sister's son and his wife are my only chance to be an elder to any blood relation so this is a big deal for me. They came to visit a few weeks ago and brought their wedding album that they said they'd just gotten . . . two years after the wedding. So we went through the album page by page, photo by photo. I was looking up at one of them, talking, as I turned the last page and when I looked down, there was the black and white sonogram picture, with two little soft fuzzy onesies underneath it. I was nearly overcome. "Oh. Oh! Oh oh oh," I said, as the tears welled up in my eyes. It was nice to be told about such an event in person. When my nephew was in the works, I heard the news in roundabout fashion: my sister told my mother, who mentioned it offhandedly a week or so after the pregnancy's confirmation. When he was born, nobody told me for a few days either, and that only when I asked. So this felt special to me.

I've been up to the attic and have retrieved all my knitting supplies. One sweater finished, many blankets, thumbless mittens and little hats to go. And such cute little simple dresses to make! I haven't yet mentioned it's a little girl, have I? Her mother says she'll be as girly or not-girly as she wants to be. Me, I'll be dressing her in pink and ruffles as long as I can get away with it. 

And the other good news is that I finally got a phone call from the head of the hospital's cardiology department in response to my letter of complaint about that doctor at my stress test. He phoned my cell while I was driving to work on a Monday morning, and I pulled over and spoke with him for nearly a half hour. It seems that the woman who was so unprofessional with me is, in fact, a cardiologist, not simply a technician as somebody had suggested she might be, and I am not the first to complain about her behavior. I gather that the witchy woman will be called upon the carpet and disciplined in some manner. My caller also told me that the test was not so inconclusive as the witch would have had me believe, and after he gave me his interpretation of the results, I decided to have an angiogram. Which I did on December 5. 

And lo and behold, what did he find during the angiogram, but that my left anterior descending coronary artery (aka the widowmaker . . . horrors!) was 80%-90% blocked. 

~drawing from http://www.drarunmehra.com/anginapg.htm

He put in two stents . . . first a littler one and then a bigger one . . . something happened in there after the first one was put in place that made a second A Very Good Idea. The result is that my heart is now able to move the oxygenated blood back out instead of having it accumulate in there like a filling Zip-loc bag. It is a wonderful thing to be able to take a deep breath. It is a wonderful thing to not "lose my breath quickly." It is a miracle to breathe at will and not feel as if I'm climbing a ladder, reaching for my next breath . . . with that breath two rungs above my clawing hands. I'm awfully glad I wrote that letter of complaint.

So.
There you have it.
Good news and more good news.
I am a grateful woman.

Nonsense

Awake here in the middle of the night I read story after story about Newtown, Connecticut. I read the comments from people who blame President Obama, from a man who has legally owned and shot guns all his life, from victims of similar past horrors.

I don't know a thing about guns. I surely don't know why anybody needs a gun that can mow down fifty people in one fell swoop.
I think most gun owners are probably responsible.
But the guns get stolen, don't they? It happened yesterday.

Lots of people in this country are sick in the head. Lots of those people are young or stupid or both.
We start medicating children when they're just past toddler stage because nobody can be bothered to teach their kids how to act, how to control themselves.

Everybody's angry here and nobody's listening to other people. Everybody's shouting down the other's opinion, learning nothing.

I don't know the answer, but I know there are a lot of things here that are very very wrong.

I tried five times to write something that made more sense, but here in this asylum, nothing makes sense, so why should I?

A Woman's Poem

I've been among the missing for a while, mostly due to a lack of thought worthy of expression.

Fortunately, someone emailed the following to me, and it suits my mood, so I'm sharing it with you.

Husband is not like the "he" in the poem.

Anymore.