OmegaMom

I don’t know how J. is doing.  I called last night, forgetting quite how late it was in Chicago, and talked to her for a short while, enough for her to finally grasp who it was who was calling, for me to say, “I love you”, for her to say, “I love you, too”.  I could barely hear her over the sound of the mechanical devices helping her to breathe; at first, her voice sounded like it was coming from hundreds of miles away.

J. is my brother’s mom, my dad’s first wife.  Yet another of that generation, the one before mine, that is slipping away, more and more as the years go by, the losses accelerating.

My dad, seven years ago.  My aunt A., five years ago.  My grandmother, two years ago.  My mom, this year.

J.’s path seems to have been following my mom’s almost exactly.  She, too, had her lung collapse.  She, too, has been hooked up to a device to remove liquid from the lungs.  She, too, has been recuperating in a nursing home.  OmegaBro and SIL were trying to figure out how to take care of her from across the country; they were trying to convince her to move in with them, or to move into an assisted living facility, but she has been stubborn:  she wants to go home. 

I am an orphan.

My brother is soon to be one, maybe in just days.

We are moving on up in the ranks of family as graded by generational status.  Soon, we will be the “older generation”.  We’re not old enough.  It’s not time.  Surely we can have these people around for longer?  To guide us?  To be loved and love us?

This is making mom’s loss hit again; oh, not as hard as at first, but still…

In The Book of the Dun Cow, there is a dog, Mundo Cani, who joins forces with the hero, Chaunticleer the rooster and helps him defeat The Evil.  At times, Mundo Cani erupts into a miserable, lonesome howling of “Marooooooooooned!”  I read the book years and years ago, once, but that image always stuck with me, a sort of archetypal outpouring of grief and mourning and lonesomeness.

I find myself, at times, tempted to just throw my head back and howl to the world, “Maroooooooooned!”

Most of the time this summer, however, I have been merely frozen.

Like a rolypoly bug, I have curled in upon myself, not bothering to write the blog until nagged to by BlogHer’s automatic “We Miss You!” email that explains, sadly, that the ads are being withdrawn until the blog is updated.  Not bothering to look at my email.  Not bothering to respond to emails, or calls.  Not reaching out to local acquaintances.  Just sort of surviving, with a feeling of “One must go through the motions.”  Reading a lot.  Dealing with family things, but mostly with half a mind, or a pane of glass or frozen ice between me and everything else.

Now and then, I pull myself together and do something related to mom’s death.  At which point the ice shatters, and a piece stabs into my belly and I find myself gritting my teeth, pulling my hair, pacing, finally crying.  Afterwards, I carefully retreat back behind the ice, back where it’s safe and it doesn’t hurt.

It was a cold and rainy summer here.  It was sunny and warm here while I was in Arizona, dealing with mom’s hospitalization and death.  But shortly after I returned home, the gray horizon-to-horizon clouds moved in and the temperature dropped and it stayed chilly and drizzly and shadowy.  We broke a weather record for most consecutive days with rain, and the lovely little current-temperatures-versus-average-temperatures graph on Big City’s NOAA weather page showed consistently below average temperatures.  The sun didn’t come out until the first day of OmegaDotter’s new school year…

OmegaDad had his surgery early in the summer, and recuperated slowly.  Then, a week and a half ago, he awoke with a bump on his elbow—which I assumed was some kind of bug or spider bite—which, by the end of the day, had morphed into a horrible angry red baseball-sized swelling.  To give you an idea of how ugly it seemed, I was the one who insisted we go to the emergency room for it, since we had missed closing time at the local urgent care doc-in-a-boxes.  (Normally, I’m the one who wants to wait; OmegaDad accuses me of generally wanting to wait until he’s passed out on the floor before I grudgingly admit that he needs to see a doc.)  Anyway, the thing turned out to be a staph infection (not MRSA, thank heavens for small favors!), and we spent the week traipsing off to the osteopathic surgeon’s office on an almost daily basis to have it drained and bandaged and tut-tutted over.  The prognosis on Friday was if things hadn’t settled down by this Monday, he would have to go to the hospital to have elbow surgery; but, in the meantime, the doc upped his antibiotics.  This, thankfully, turned the tide, and by Monday the doc was most pleased and allowed us to stop packing the wound with gauze and let it start closing naturally.

So this week I finally wrote up an invitation to family and friends to our scattering of mom’s ashes, which we’ll be doing in mid-October.  This, of course, cracked the ice and led to a torrent of tears.  Then I retreated back again.  Tonight, I pulled together email addresses and sent it out.  There are more names and email addresses I need to get, but this is the majority of them, I think.  The ice cracked again.  Since OmegaDad and OmegaDotter are asleep, my outlet is here, at the blog.

OmegaDad wants me to find a grief counselor.  I haven’t the vaguest idea how to start.  As I am not religious in the least, I don’t have—or want—a priest or pastor handy to turn to.  And, as I am not religious in the least, I do not want counseling based in belief of heaven or hell or the afterlife. 

I am at a loss.

In the meantime, the season is rapidly turning towards autumn; trees are yellowing, leaves are falling, blossoms are fading.  Winter is on the way. 

I’ve been busy, because two and a half weeks ago OmegaDad suddenly discovered he had a (very typical) middle-aged man’s problem that needed “routine” surgery.  My last blogpost was written while we were waiting for the “routine” surgery.  Need I say that the phrase “routine surgery” has become somewhat…um…tainted for me after the past year?  After all, my mom had “routine” pacemaker surgery, and my dog had “routine” abdominal surgery, and both died.

So it was amazing how the tension went out of my shoulders as soon as I got OmegaDad back home from the outpatient surgery and things went swimmingly well.

Okay, they went swimmingly well from my point of view, not his.  He is still not happy, because the healing is taking longer than a day or two, and thus he can’t do all his normal activities, nor can he sit for very long and veg out at the computer, wandering the twisty, turny passages of the Intartubes.

The nice thing about the whole affair for me is that it has kept me busy.  I’ve been cooking, schlepping out to the chicken coops, mowing the lawn, reminding about pain meds, washing dishes, in addition to handling the dotter’s affairs—all of which is normally split between the two of us (mostly on his end; OmegaDotter’s schedule keeps me plenty busy normally).  The busy-ness has made it so that mom’s death has been pushed into the background of my mind.  Oh, it’s still there, and easily ramps back up when anyone wants to talk about it, but it’s been pleasant not to be constantly feeling like there’s that black hole in the pit of my stomach.

In the meantime, there are two stories I want to mention here that have caught my attention in the past week.

First off, there’s the press-and-blogger viewing of “Wo Ai Ni, Mommy”, a documentary that follows an 8-year-old from China who is adopted by a family from the U.S.  The film will be premiering on PBS in August; this is the trailer:

When I first watched that trailer, many months ago, it broke my heart.  I imagined OmegaDotter—also 8 years old—in that situation, being taken from her family of four years in the U.S. (Faith was living with a foster family for 4 years) to be adopted by a family from China.  I thought about how she would feel, what it would be like for her, and watching Faith cry that she wants to go home to China just…well…words can’t say how much that hurt.

Two bloggers—Malinda and Peach—were invited to the preview.  While I think that the original plan of the documentary was to be a feel-good happy-happy adoption story, they got a different feel from it.  Read their reviews (linked on their names) and see what you think.

The second story is that of the hoo-rah at ScienceBlogs.  The gist:  ScienceBlogs is a collective blog about (surprise!) science, with a stable of about 70 bloggers from all walks of science, including science journalists, medicos, physiologists, professors, physicists, biologists, archeologists, mathematicians, etc.  It started in 2004 2006 and has gained quite a reputation as the go-to place for science on the web.  This week, however, a blog was introduced called “Food Frontiers”, which was an “outreach” of PepsiCo.  It was given the same prominence as all the other blogs (all invited to join), but was obviously a corporate thing bought and paid for, though not explicitly labeled as such.  And, interestingly enough, while previous semi-corporate-linked blogs had been introduced beforehand, this one hit the SB front page with no warning whatsoever.

Well.  The shit hit the fan.  The question of the firewall between editorial and advertising was debated far and wide.  A subset of the bloggers left the site in response, with pretty candid “farewell” posts explaining why.  A number of other bloggers said they were dubious, at best, and were considering leaving.  One blogger sniffed that it was all a bunch of hysteria over nothing in a very disparaging way.  The management (and, probably, PepsiCo) decided that this was a Bad Scene All Around, and removed the corporate blog in question.  All that’s left is the post mortems.

I watched this with great interest.  My immediate response upon reading the original “hi, there!” post on Food Frontiers was, WTF?!  This is an advertorial, damn it!  What’s it doing not being marked as such?!?!  Ewwwwwww!!!!

For those who don’t know, an "advertorial” is what publishing calls advertising posing as editorial.  In the journalism world, such things are (alas) often necessary to pay the bills, but definitely clearly marked as advertising, usually done in a totally different design than the remainder of the magazine.  Including an advertorial in the midst of the magazine, using the same design, giving it the same editorial weight as writing by the staff, and not marking it (clearly, plainly, obviously) as advertising is a big no-no.  I mean, it’s taboo.  Really, truly.  As someone who spent 10 years writing and editing in business journalism, I can tell you (and those bloggers and commenters who think the whole uproar is a tempest in a teapot) that no matter how you feel about journalists and the ethics of mainstream media, when I say “taboo”, I mean totally, utterly, absolutely, no doubt about it, this is a line in the sand, TABOO.  You do not do this.  And if you do this, and someone finds out, and you are called out about it, you lose serious credibility as a journalistic source.

Period.

It’s like, say, having sex with your sister, that’s how taboo it’s considered.

I was appalled, myself.  I guess I have that verboten written upon my subconscious in letters of fire or some such thing; it was such a visceral response.

(Interestingly enough, I think mom’s response would not have been that emotional.  She was very pragmatic and less likely to imbue the journalism biz with idealism.  However, she would definitely have thought it was a sincerely bad idea, and rolled her eyes at how stupid it was for the management at ScienceBlogs to take that approach.)

Anyway, here’s a round-up of all the ScienceBlogger’s takes on the subject, and various commenting from other sources, courtesy of BoraZ (one of the bloggers at SB).  Alas, it’s not in chronological order; every search I’ve done on various search sites hasn’t produced one, so…start at anything dated July 7 and work your way forward.

OmegaDad tells me I need to write down memories while I’m indulging in them.

My mom–when I was a child–was into hooking rugs out of a variety of cloth that she scrounged from old clothes at the second hand store.

One of the rugs she created was of the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg.  A classic mathematics problem, it was the start of Graph Theory.  So:  In Konigsberg, there was an island in the middle of a river, and there were seven bridges that led to that island.  Somewhere along the line, someone realized that there was no way to traverse those seven bridges without crossing one of the bridges twice.

My mom, being an odd duck, used the Seven Bridges problem as one of her hooked rug subjects.  I grew up with that rug, with the knowledge–imparted to me by my parents–that you simply couldn’t cross all the bridges once without crossing one twice.  I spent many hours on my tummy on that rug, trying first one route, then another, sure that I could figure out a way to cross those seven bridges without doubling back.

I never could.

Many years later, while in the midst of my final attempt at getting a bachelor’s degree, wherein I discovered that it might be fun to get a minor in mathematics, I took a class in graph theory.  It was the hardest damned class I ever took.  It was made less hard by the fact that I spent so many hours trailing a finger across one bridge, then another, trying to figure out a classic mathematics problem in the form of a hooked rug.

That was mom.  Another of her hooked rug masterpieces was a rug inspired by a flight over Midwestern farms divided by a small river.  The fields of crops were staggered–based on the soils they were on, different crops were in different positions, and it so happened that the river was following the course of an old fault.  So a crop of corn, say, on one side of the river turned into a crop of corn on the other side of the river, but shifted by two crop fields down the river.

Somewhere, I have a picture of Mom and my two aunts, sisters to my father.  It’s from before I was born.  My aunts are dressed in lovely, picture-perfect ’50s cocktail dresses, the full skirts swirling around them.  Mom, on the other hand, is dressed in a black pencil skirt, a dark turtleneck, her hair severely pulled back, a cigarette in her hand.  She looks the utmost urban sophisticate, my aunts look like debutantes.

I remember when my first True Love had to leave, and I was left bereft and heartbroken.  My brother’s graduation from An Illinois University was happening, so we all piled into his mom’s Volkswagen van for the long drive to exurban Illinois for the ceremony.  I was dazed and sobbing from the ending of the dramatic love affair.  I spent the few hours to the ceremony sitting on the floor of the van, with my head in mom’s lap, sobbing my heart out.  She spent those hours stroking my hair and letting me vent my angst.

Mom was born in California, but spent many adolescent and childhood summers in Arizona, trekking to the various mountainous areas in Central and Northern Arizona.  When she grew up, she always remembered those times in the pines of Flagstaff, Prescott, and small town Yarnell.  So when she and Dad were thinking about retiring, she began agitating for retirement to Yarnell, Arizona.  She and Dad subscribed to a realtor’s magazine for northern Arizona, and began daydreaming.  Much to the family’s surprise, one day we were told by Mom that Dad (who hadn’t left Chicago since he returned from the Japanese occupation after WWII) had (OMGWTFBBQ!!!) purchased a ticket to Arizona to view a property they had seen in this realtor’s listing.  Three months later, they were packing all their worldly goods to move to nowhere, Arizona (aka “Wilhoit”).

After they moved, I would visit them there, in this tiny not-town in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.  I would sit at the kitchen table hanging out with them, watching through the sliding glass doors as the sun and the clouds would create ever-changing patterns across the valley between their house and Yarnell, highlighting the small canyon that was a feature of that valley, limning the small hills with light and shadow.

I would return to Chicago, to my city life, with my city friends, and find myself, at times, standing on the beach of Lake Michigan, seeing the sun set on the clouds building up across the lake, looking like the mountains of Arizona, and my heart would break with “home” sickness.

So when Dad needed to have back surgery, I chucked everything to move out to Arizona to be with them, to help out with the driving, the groceries, etc.  They had long since moved into Prescott, once-upon-a-time-state-capitol…So I sojourned in their house in Wilhoit, a town of maybe 250 people, and drove up the twisty-turny White Spar Road to the town of Prescott to hang out with them.

They introduced me to strange, secretive gold miners.  They showed me ancient rock art that few people had ever seen.  I would hang my head back against the back seat of cars at night and watch Cassiopeia and the Scorpion rise (at different times during the year) against the backdrop of the Milky Way, which I could never have seen so brightly and clearly even fifty miles from the city.

Mom would spend the evenings poring over the old USGS topo maps of the area, quick to leap upon any small marking that said “ruins” or “spring” or any other interesting feature.  In the morning, Dad would ask her what was on the agenda, and she would pull out the latest map, point to the feature, and say, “We’re going there…”  And go there they would.

Mom was always looking forward.  Her childhood during the Depression, her father’s search for work, his working for the government as an IRS agent, all made her willing to look Forward, rather than Back.  She was an explorer, always.

There is more.  But now I am drunk, and tired, and sad.  My very best friend in the whole wide world died this afternoon.  I can’t ask her, now, “Ma, am I remembering this right?”  I can’t ask her where they were planning to go on that particular day.  I can’t ask her where the photo is, the one of her with her new sisters-in-law-to-be.  All I can do is be thankful that I was there for her, and that she was there for me.  She was my very best friend in the whole wide world.

I miss her already.

RIP GrannyJ–1927-2010.

When I was but a child—somewhere in the region of 10 or 11 or 12—I had my first sinus infection.  Or, perhaps a better way of putting it, my first memorable sinus infection.

“Memorable” is the definitive word.  For all I know, I had previous ones, but simply don’t remember them.

This one began, as all sinus infections begin for me, with soft, puffy skin by the right side of the nose and above the eye and a mild headache.  But the skin kept swelling and swelling, both beside the eye and above it, until my eye was swollen shut.

Um.  That’s a bit of a sinus infection, wouldn’t you say?

My parents, of course, hauled me off to either the doctor or the emergency room; at this point, looking back into the veils of time, I can’t remember which.  What I do remember is being diagnosed with an acute sinus infection (aka “The Sinus Infection From Hell”) and being ensconced in the hospital for a few days while the medicos took care of it.  In particular, I remember The Machine.

It was square and tall and white.  It had a water tank.  It rolled on wheels.  It had a hose.  It had a bulbous glass end that looked somewhat like a dainty glass minaret (or perhaps a stylized glass p3nis).

–>  WARNING:  TMI GROSSITUDE FOLLOWS! <–

This bulbous glass tube was the nozzle end of great suction power.  It’s purpose was to vacuum out my sinuses, sort of a powered, grown-up sized version of the snot sucker every modern parent is familiar with (even those of us who did not have mild, calm babies who would lie still for the dropper up their noses, but babies that would fight against it like snarly feral kittens with every ounce of strength in their small bodies).  Every few hours, a nurse would wheel The Machine into my room, dig the bulbous end into my nose, and then power it up (it sounded sort of like a home power tool), at which point—o blessed relief!—large quantities of blobby mucous would be removed from my pressure-filled sinuses to be deposited into the water tank like grotesque jellyfish.

It was truly, spectacularly, deliciously gross.  The kind of grossness that pre-teen and teenage boys revel in.  I will admit, pre-teen girls revel in it, too.  Maybe even post-menopausal 50 year olds.  I mean, it was gross, but it was really, truly cool, as well.

After this acute infection, I was plagued with sinus infections all the time.  None of them reached the heights of swelling and pain that that particular incident did, but I became very familiar with the soft, painful feeling of slightly swollen skin next to the bridge of my nose and right below my eyebrow bone, which heralded the coming of a sinus headache.  Bleah.  Luckily, our stay in the dry Southwest seems to have changed the tenor of my sinus infections, so they are more cheekbone-y than forehead-y, and my number of sinus headaches decreased immensely.  (Migraine headaches, however, ramped up as I got older, but have now pretty much vanished since the hormonal roller-coaster has ended, yay!)

Goodness knows if the Power Sucker is the modern standard of care.  There’s probably a totally different protocol to follow now, something with lots o’ drugs shrinking the mucus and computerized tracking.  But there was a certain splendid satisfaction to the Power Sucker:  You knew that the mucus blockage was being reduced, and damned if it didn’t feel like it right away, no delays to have drugs kick in or anything.  Just *blammo!*, five minutes of vacuuming and three to four hours of relief.

It makes me wonder why they don’t sell a Home Power Sucker for those days when people’s sinuses go on a rampage.

All of which is to say, I am dealing with some sort of sinus infection right now, one which is mainly concentrated in my eustachian tubes and leaves me feeling like someone is poking an icepick into my ears.  Bleah.  I don’t think the Power Sucker would even help this kind of problem; the main thing to do is to avoid milk and milk products.  (This is problematic when there are fresh chocolate chip cookies in the house.  Or any kind of cookies.  I am of the mindset that cookies must have milk.  Realizing that milk goops up my eartubes has put a damper on my Girl Scout Cookie rampage.  Now I have to weigh the options:  Drink milk with my cookies, The Way God Meant Us To Eat Cookies, or be an adult and realize that if I do, I will have icepicks in my ears a few days later.  Gah.)

(And, no, I have not tried Neti Pots.  What can I say?  Hey, if I wanted to be waterboarded, I’d have become a jihadist, y’know?!)

(To Noreen and Ms. Vinegar Martinis:  You do realize that even the thought of Olympics of any sort scares the snot out of me???  Hmmm.  Maybe that would be useful, given the topic of this post.  In the meantime, I will just let her do team and see how long it lasts.

To Sarah From Italy:  The snow will be gone soon.  I promise.  Sooner for you than me, though!

To Catalyst:  Yeah, but, see, if I can see Russia from my house, that means I’m looking at Siberia, and Siberia is where exiles go.  Hah!

To Kaz and Sarah (again):  Yeah, she has some fine lines.  I’ve gotten used to seeing girls of various ages and sizes flying all over the place, so the dotter’s flips and handstands and what-not don’t scare me any more.)

Ages ago, while living in Small Mountain University Town, I noticed a little massage school next to the pet store we liked to frequent.  I poked my head in, and discovered that they had students doing massages every weekend, and that you could get an hour massage for very small amounts of money.

Later on, Small Mountain University’s classified employee council made an arrangement with that massage school to get an additional percentage off the price for university employees.

I was in heaven.  Maybe once a month, once every six weeks, I’d traipse off to SMUT Massage College and get myself an hour-long massage, emerging limp and noodly and relaxed.

Since moving to Alaska, however, I have been unable to indulge.  Oh, we have massage schools off in Big City, but, hey, it’s an hour-long drive there, and the benefits of the massage would be outweighed by the drive back, in my experience.

When I landed in Arizona again to take care of my mom—which included watching her like a hawk while we were snowbound, preparing small meals and trying not to cry as she barely ate anything, then getting her off to the hospital and being ready to fight anyone who claimed it wasn’t “medically necessary” for her to be admitted to the hospital, then keeping an eye on the staff at the nursing home until it became obvious that they were caring, gentle people who really wanted to help, then spending hours making appointments and visiting and touring assisted living facilities in the area—

Well.  It was, to put it mildly, making me uptight.  Really uptight.  I was finding myself unable to sleep because my shoulders were in knots, and my brain was in overdrive, producing item after item after item to worry about or to remember to take care of the next day.  Something had to be done. 

So I called one of the local massage colleges, to see if they had any student clinics going on.  Lo and behold, though they didn’t have beginning students, they had an “advanced” clinic running for the month.  I signed up.

O what a blessing is a good massage.  What a release of tension.  What a lovely hour or so of mindless bliss, melting into the massage table, feeling the horde of knots loosen—even those that I hadn’t realized were there.  It helped so much that I threw monetary caution to the winds and signed up for one a week while I was there.  I loved every minute of those three hours.

Some specifics:  This was through ASIS, in downtown Prescott.  The masseuse was named Jill H., and she was awesome.  She was gentle, asked questions, sent me a note via mail after the first massage (!!), remembered what I had told her and where all the knots had been on the second and third visits, and was, all around, a boon to me during a tough time.  I highly recommend their services, and especially highly recommend Jill.  (She is also working with a local chiropractor…I have, unfortunately, lost the card she gave me, otherwise I would say which chiropractor.)

::OmegaMom walks into the blog space, blows some dust off the furnishings, looks around…::

Hey there.  It’s been long enough for a post from me that BlogHer advertising sent me a “tsk, tsk” email and turned off the ads.  Hah!

Oh, well; I’ve been busy and tired and uptight enough that blogging (and Twitter) has taken second (third?  Last?) place in the scheme of things.

The good news is that my mom is so, so, so much better.  We moved her into assisted living yesterday; she has all the furniture she needs and today’s chores include moving some plants and paintings and photos so that her space is even more her space.

Every day in the past two weeks has been jam-packed with things related to getting her better, getting the move coordinated, packing, vacuuming, cleaning, packing, vacuuming, cleaning, vacuuming, cleaning.  Twenty-five years at one location does tend to make one accumulate stuff…and much of it, as mom says, “Nothing precious”.  My main learning point–aside from the need for retirement funds, and how expensive assisted living is–is that the investment in a weekly cleaning person is a Must for those who do not have the cleaning gene.  All the dust and the stress has combined to give me a lovely cold with a dollop of super-duper sinus infection on top.  Hah!

Arizona has been irritatingly sunny and beautiful, all the while I have been unable to rest and enjoy it.  Grrr.

My brother arrives today–yay!  Someone else to take the burden!  And I head home on Sunday, to a dotter who finally last night broke down during our nightly phone conversation to say, “I want you to COME HOME!!!”, with her voice cracking into tears on the last two words.  Oh, yes, OmegaDad wants me home, too, but he hasn’t cried–it’s been me bursting into spontaneous tearfests on his long-distance shoulder every few days.  He’s a good dude, y’know?  I’ve done something right to have the Kozmik All let me find him all those years ago.

My main focus with mom’s move–aside from, well, the move–has been to create a colorful and welcoming space for her in her new place.  One of the things I did was taken directly from a blog that my commenter and long-time virtual friend Kaz pointed me to named Attic24.  The lady who writes Attic24 is a lover of all things bright and colorful, and her January 21 post made me re-assess my inward sneer at tulips.

I have always thought that tulips are just too, too niffy-naffy and snooty for words.  Stiff, formal, upright–ptooey.  But in the midst of her posts filled with bright mixes of color, A24 showed a vase jam-packed with multi-colored tulips.  It was bright, springy, the furthest thing from “formal” you could imagine.  So I started searching the local florist shops for tulips.

Of course, none of the local florist shops had gotten the word:  tulips in arrangements meant all one color, all stiff, semi- to very formal, and very little variety in color.  Red was big.  So was white.  And pink.  Never in the same store, though!  Bah.  But Monday I was at the local grocery store, struck by the “manager’s specials” of leftover Valentine’s Day bouquets and tchatchkes, and was lured into their flower cooler.  There, in the corner, was a bucket of tulips, gathered into groups of five stems, each group one color.  But they had orange.  They had red.  They had purple.  Pink.  White.  Yellow.  A riot of colors.  So I cornered the young lady who was putting “for sale!” signs on the manager’s specials, and described what I wanted.

She came through!  One of the nicest things about the move was walking mom into her new place and having her delighted with the (beginnings of) big splashes of color…one of which was a small vase jam-packed with tulips of all different colors, sitting on her dining table.

It’s the small things that make me happy sometimes.  That vase of colorful tulips was a symbol to me, a symbol that mom’s life is not going to shrivel up into a blank nursing home stare, that she’s going to have spring and life and color for time to come.

Since I know some of mom’s regular readers are reading, here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on:

When I got here, she was not herself.  She wasn’t getting enough oxygen, was very weak and tired (couldn’t walk from the front door to the kitchen), and I was very very worried.

And we were sort of socked in by the weather, ugh.  Some parts of Small Mountain University Town got up to five feet of snow last week!  We didn’t get that much, but we did get a fair amount of soggy snow…

Anyway, when we could get out easily on Saturday, I rented a car and we set The Plan into motion.  The Plan was to call 911, get her into the hospital, and see if they couldn’t (a) figure out what was going on, and (b) help, and (c) get her into a nursing home for a month (standard Medicare limit) to rehab her.

At that time she was saying that she didn’t think she could handle assisted living, and should just be put in a nursing home for good.

Well.  At the ER, they found that she had a mild case of pneumonia, which they (luckily) admitted her to treat.  She is feeling much better, says she is breathing better than she has in months, but she is still extremely weak.  I’ve been running errands, running back and forth to the hospital, trying to make various arrangements, and trying to keep her (and my) spirits up.  The hospital is arranging with a local nursing home to take her in, but we’re not sure a bed is available yet.  If so, she’ll be moved there tomorrow; otherwise, maybe Wednesday.

Thank you all for your wonderful comments.  I’ve passed on the comments from her blog to her, printing them out in batches as they come in, and they have been so warm and wonderful and cheering for her.  Kate from HighAltitudeGardening sent her a bouquet of bright and colorful flowers, and they grace her hospital room right now, keeping things cheerful.  Catalyst from Oddball Observations phoned, and just knowing that made her feel special and appreciated (I will call back, just have been busy with family phone calls & emails!).  The outpouring of love for her has been heartwarming.

I will post more later.

Well.

When I wrote that last post, it was going to be followed up by the “And she’s all better now, whew!” post.  But I had things to do that weekend, and places to go, so didn’t write.

But I did notice that mom hadn’t blogged for a few days, and she hadn’t sent me any email.  So I picked up the phone to call her (I previously had been calling her every day, but then thought she was better, so stopped).

At which point, she asked me to come out to Arizona again, saying that things were worse.

So here I am in Arizona, with mom.  I managed to sneak in during a break between the storms that have hit Arizona (and California before that).  The airplane was delayed two hours on the tarmac in Big City due to a malfunction that turned out to be a Ghost In The Machine, and missed my connecting flight in Salt Lake City…but Delta showed how absolutely wonderful it is by automagically rebooking all the people who had missed their flights onto the next available flight.  This was very cool–all we had to do was take our existing boarding pass, run it beneath a scanner, and a brand spanking new boarding pass for the rebooked flight was printed out.

But when I got to Phoenix and got to the car rental place, a snag occurred.  It seems that we didn’t have enough money in our account to cover any car rental (if I had had a credit card, that would have worked, but they automatically block out more money for debit cards, no matter how little an amount of time you want to rent)…paychecks being deposited on Saturday didn’t help.  I was tired.  I just wanted to get up to mom.  So I parked myself on one of the chairs in the middle of the huge car rental complex and proceeded to sob my heart out.

Then I called OmegaDad.

Have I mentioned how much I love OmegaDad?  Well, okay, just thought I’d mention it again.

Anyway, he arranged for the inter-city shuttle to pick me up and get me up to Prescott.  Yay, OmegaDad!

Driving up was an adventure–but the good kind.  See, since I wasn’t driving, I didn’t have to worry about all the water crossing the road, or the high winds, and was perched up nice and high so I could peer out the windows and see over concrete barriers on bridges and wash crossings.  All of which were flooded with rushing water.  Waves.  Crests on the waves.  Waterfalls coming down the rocky roadcuts that we were traveling between.  Snow mixing with the heavy rain when we got to Prescott.

(Up in Small Mountain University Town, they have had something like four feet of snow.  Roofs are collapsing on businesses–the ice rink, the big, comfy used bookstore, the fabric store, more–and the city mayor has declared that all businesses must clear their roofs or face a fine.  The powers that be also closed the main highways around SMUT for 24 hours.)

Anyway, I am here with GrannyJ.  We are working on getting her into a nursing home for a few weeks, to see if they can do anything.  We’re talking about her maybe moving to live with my brother.  Lots of things to talk about.  She is not doing well, but she is–as ever–my sharp-witted, fun, sweet mom.

In the meantime, consider me a poster child for the Sandwich Generation:  OmegaDotter’s birthday is tomorrow, and she is in her first “real” gymnastics meet tomorrow, too, with judges and not every participant getting a trophy.  We had a little birthday dinner Wednesday, and gave her the family presents, but I wasn’t able to arrange her party in time…that’s up to OmegaDad.

I know a lot of bloggers who are having issues with their moms these days.  Kat Kaz (damn, should proofread when I’m posting at midnight!), Laurie, Lorrie, V…I’ve kept so quiet with them about their problems because…well, it’s kind of a “La, la, la, I’m ignoring things!” approach.  But we’re past the ignoring problems part here, and I want to apologize and shout out to all of you to say, “Hang in there, kiddos.”

I will keep all & sundry posted; I wasn’t planning to post tonight, but saw Anon in AV’s comment, and thought I should update.

When you’re a new parent, with a small life depending on you, you find yourself doing strange things sometimes.  One commonality that I’m sure my readers have experienced is how new moms and dads can find themselves stopping by their child’s bed in the night and watching—urgently, because you can’t hear the breathing and you’re afraid that something’s wrong.  You wait, suspended in the moment, your anxiety ramping up, until you see the slow, gentle, up and down movement of your child’s torso in tune with her breathing, and you move on, reassured.

I found myself doing that with my mother while I was visiting over Christmas.

I’d be padding into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and find myself popping in to hover at the side of her bed over her, watching, suspended in the moment, my anxiety ramping up, until I saw that slow, gentle, up and down movement of her torso in time with her breathing.  The anxiety was always there.  I’d find myself sneaking in while she was taking a nap, just to be sure.  The sound of her oxygen machine—which she’s used for years now—receded into the background, becoming part of the everyday noises of the house, but it was still loud enough so that when I’d check her, I’d have to get very close to see the small movements of breathing, to hear anything.  I hovered, just checking.

When we first got there, my brother and family were ensconced in the living room, so we made a nest for OmegaDotter by the side of mom’s bed, and I slept in the bed with her.  It wasn’t reassuring.  She was not her normal self; she was lethargic, quiet, enervated.  We were all worried.  Bro and SIL had taken her on an overnight trip down to Tucson, and from the pictures, it looked like mom hadn’t gotten out of the car much.

So there I would be, in the middle of the night, waking up with one of my infamous hot flashes, and I’d hear mom gasping for breath, with a soft moaning sound that turned into a whimper.  I would sit up and watch her, my brows furrowed, my heart aching.  If it kept on, I would nudge her slightly awake, so that she would close her mouth and breathe from her nose instead, the nose which had the cannula of the oxygen tube.  Then she could breathe, and I would be able to fall asleep again.

Her cardiologist had put her on a huge dose of Lipitor in mid-December.  My brother—at least twice her weight, and with cholesterol levels much, much higher than hers, was on 10 mg per day; she was on 80.  The theory, as we understood it, was that it was a jolt-dose, a purposeful systemic shock—but even so, it was unnerving.  Especially since the medical listings of Lipitor on the web included “enervation”, “exhaustion”, and “weakness” as possible side effects.  We made her promise to go to the doctor after we left to find out exactly why she was put on such a high dose, and see if he wouldn’t lower it.  In the meantime, I suggested that she simply halve the pills and take half the dose.

The day before we were supposed to leave—after my brother and family had left themselves—we went out on a drive to the lake, to see the (vile, mean, odious, scary) geese who had chased me and grabbed my pants legs and pecked the back of my knees in a vain search for bread while I was videotaping them.  It was chilly, but bright.  The dotter and I wandered around, she fed the ducks and geese, I took photographs…and mom stayed in the car.  Yes, it was chilly, but this was not like her.  She said later that day that every day she felt just a little bit worse.  Not a lot.  But enough.  And she was hardly eating at all.

That night, in the kicthen, as I was giving her a hug, I leaned my head on hers and whispered in her ear, “Would you like me to stay a bit longer?”  She reached up her hand to cover mine on her shoulder and said softly, “I think…yes, I would.” 

Hi, all…I’m still in Arizona, and will be for a few more days.  Mom (GrannyJ) isn’t feeling all that hot, and I decided to stay on longer than planned, so I can ferry her to doctors to have her looked at and her meds examined and all of that kind of stuff.

For those who have had to change/cancel flights, a word of warning:  Travelocity customer support told me that the cheapest replacement fare (if we were to change our flights) was going to be $1500 (give or take a few dollars) per person.  At the same time, I was looking at the Travelocity search, and for the same day, I saw many flights in the range of $500 to $700.  Something was just Not Right.  So I went ahead and cancelled the tickets, and we now have a credit to be applied to the rebooking, so even with the rescheduling fee it will be much cheaper.

Later, gators.

ETA:  Oh, my!  I totally forgot:

Happy New Year!  May 2010 be a wonderful year for you all!

Some thirty years ago, I got sick.  And sicker.  And sicker.  So I finally hauled myself off to a doctor somewhere (I do not remember where, or how) and got diagnosed with mononucleosis.  And tonsillitis.  And strep throat.  All at once.  It hurt like hell.  So this doctor prescribed antibiotics for the items that were bacterial, lots of rest for the mono, and some kind of painkiller so that I could actually swallow the other items.

I was supposed to pop the painkillers every four hours.

By the time a day had passed, I was having psychotic delusions that there were giant white rats and cockroaches crawling up the walls of my apartment.

This was not, I am guessing, the intended result.  I ended up calling a friend in the middle of the night, sobbing, and asking that she help me walk the stuff off, or at least keep me company until it wore off.  We flushed the remainder of the pills down the toilet.

This was my first introduction to the idea of idiosyncratic reactions to drugs.

Last Thursday, I got a sudden backache in an unusual spot–mid-back, right below my ribs.  I’ve had an on-again, off-again urinary tract infection, so worried about kidneys.  When the backache didn’t go away, and I kept getting sharp pains in two points directly over where my kidneys should be, I decided to haul my butt off to the doc-in-a-box Monday morning.  (The DIAB offices were quite full and it took forever.)

No bacteria showed in my sample (?!), but the doc decided to treat it empirically:  if I felt like it was my kidneys, probably the best thing to do would be to do some antibiotics and some UTI drugs.

Oh, and while we’re at it, here’s some Tramadol for the pain (”non-narcotic pain relief” quoth the doc).

So I sashay off, get the prescription filled, come home, and pop some pills.

Fifteen minutes later, I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open.  I staggered into the bedroom with a book, and the next thing I knew it was time for dinner.  I sat at the dinner table in a daze, ate a bite or two of food, then wandered back to bed.  At 7:30 a.m., the phone rings, it’s my wake-up call for the day from OmegaDad…I spend an hour awake–in a daze–getting the dotter up and breakfasted and out the door and realize it might be a good idea to email work.  I open up the email program, start typing my boss’s name.  Except I can’t type; it’s gibberish.  I take a deep breath, reposition my hands, and start typing again.  This time it’s only half gibberish.  I take a deep breath, reposition my hands again, and start typing one.  Letter.  At.  A.  Time.

And then I went back to bed.

The end result:  One pill.  Twenty-one hours of deep sleep.  Four hours after that of space-y zoniness; awake, but totally unable to be, say, productive or coherent.

Oh, I woke up here and there.  Let’s see:  the pain-killing portion ran out about six hours in, I know, because I came to enough to think, “Hunh.  It hurts again.”  And I woke up around 11:30 p.m., rested my zoned out eyeballs on the clock, and thought, “I really need to get up to write a filler post for NaBloPoMo.”  Fifteen minutes later, I did the same thing.  Obviously, nothing got done.

So now I know:  no more Tramadol–or related items–for me.

Maybe next year I’ll actually complete NaBloPoMo.  So close!  Wah!

The antibiotics seem to be helping, though.

(And I am totally amused that no-one commented on my defiant liking of Lady Ga-Ga.  I must have stunned everyone into awed and appalled silence.)

I’m very tired.

I’ve spent the day putting small amounts of medicated water into the beak of a very very sick chicken, who wasn’t eating and wasn’t drinking.

And now I have to wrap up a dead chicken and figure out what to do with her.

Then I have to figure out how to let the dotter know that yet another of our pets has died.

Somewhere in there, I want to go to bed and sleep for days.

Chickens may be dumb clucks, but they have personalities and character.  Sarafina was a very sweet bird.

…Goes one of our chickens.  She’s been coughing and pretty languid for a couple of days; when we checked the chickens this evening, she had a bloody nose.

Dr. Google didn’t help.  But after some digging, the only things I could find that produce a bloody nostril discharge in chickens were avian influenza (ack!) and a piece by the USDA that said “serious avian disease”.

I was meaning to respond to some comments made by new readers to my post Dear Diary, but that will have to wait.  (Thanks to TonguMom for the link!)  Time to go out into the 17 below zero Fahrenheit weather and haul a sick chicken back into the garage…

Okay, not the dark.  But definitely the cold.

The local school district had H1N1 vaccinations for registered students.  Having read tales of people waiting in lines for three, four hours to get the shot, I determined we should get there early.  We got there, not the first, but close to it, and waited inside the outer doors, but were not allowed inside the inner doors until it was Time.

In the meantime, more people came with their kids.  And more.  The airlock filled up with people.  And then still more came.

And these idiots propped the door open.

It was 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gah.

But once the time came, we got in and out within ten minutes.  The dotter and I went off to lunch together, then off to her gymnastics class, and then home again.

Not a sign of pain in her arm, not a whiff of fever, not a single side effect.  She was happy as a clam all day long.

Good lord.  Has it really been almost 2 weeks since I last posted?!  I apologize profusely.  Dunno why, but this year I have been in a total blogging doldrum; I come up with ideas for posts and then, like fog melting in the morning sunlight, they drift away, never to return.  Part of the problem, I think, is that Twitter posting has taken the place of my one-off blog posts, the quick-and-dirties that point to a news story or a very cool picture or what-have-you.  The other part is that I think my ability to think Deep Thoughts is atrophying.  This is not good.

But in the meantime…!

I have a new toy wending its way across the country to our doorstep.  I lamented a few weeks ago about trying to do any wildlife photography with our current point-and-shoot digicam, and said I wanted a STUDLY optical zoom.  So I hopped online and started researching.

This is what I ended up ordering:

It’s a Canon SX200 IS, with a 12x optical zoom!!!  Woot!  It is what is called a “prosumer” digital camera, halfway between a point-and-shoot and a digital SLR.  Judging by the reviews on Canon’s website, I will either love it or absolutely hate it.  There doesn’t seem to be an in-between.  What is most consistent is that everyone kvetches about the flash popping up whenever you turn on the camera–this is something I believe I can live with.  What is most amusing is that the people who love it say the low-light performance is awesome, while the people who hate it say the low-light performance is dreadful.  Hmm.  Our current camera’s low-light performance is utterly appalling, so this has to be better!

The Digital Camera Review called it “a solid, better-than-average performer in most respects”, and then went on to say it was a little bit “boring”.  That 12x zoom is not “boring” to me! 

It has automatic mode, but it also has manual control over the aperture and shutter speed, and supposedly can do ISO 1600.  I will be exploring that, to be sure.

Originally, I was supposed to get free shipping, but one of the drawbacks of living in Alaska is that many things that are available to folks Outside (e.g., “the Lower 48″) just aren’t available here.  Ground UPS service from Camera Kings is on that list.  So my carefully garnered rebate form is going to pay for 2nd day air.  On the one hand:  Humph.  On the other hand:  Kewl!

It should arrive Monday, I will start playing with it, and I will report further.

Onto other items:

First, Revere at EffectMeasure says you should get both the H1N1 vaccine and the seasonal flu; the rationale being that the H1N1 may slow down/fizzle out, leaving the normal seasonal flu to start doing its stuff in January and February.  So I am changing my mind on recommending only the H1N1 vaccine.

Secondly, I am finding myself missing Kai more than I thought.  In particular, whenever the urge comes upon me to go hiking (which it hasn’t much in the past few weeks due to illness and recuperation), I realize that we have been hiking together for 11 years…

Thirdly, the “not-flu” is the gift that keeps on giving.  OmegaDad is dealing with a “mild” case of pneumonia and finally seems to be doing better.  After a week’s worth of coping with a wonky stomach, I am now off my favorite Frappucinos–every time I drank one, it made me feel nauseated.

The dotter suddenly wants the computer so she can go play ToonTown, so I am off…

If you can see me, you will see me waving a little white flag of surrender.

We none of us had the flu–officially.  Luckily, the dotter’s pediatrician eyeballed the accuracy rate of the rapid flu tests as determined by the CDC (40% to 70% accurate–almost as good as tossing a coin) and her history of pneumonia, and prescribed Tamiflu. 

Alas, the same did not happen for OmegaDad and me.  OmegaDotter started feeling sick on Sunday (with a bang!), OmegaDad and I started feeling sick on Monday.  We are now eyeing Day 8 of fever and/or general illness.  The dotter, who started one day earlier, and got Tamiflu, has been fever-free for three days, and had energy enough to do cartwheels, handstands, and walkovers today.

I, on the other hand, managed to do dishes and check the chickens in a fit of woohoo-I’m-over-it! energy, which promptly depleted any vestige of fuel my body still contained and I collapsed for the rest of the day in bed feeling like death warmed over.

This is seriously nasty stuff.  At the height, I was running a fever of 103.5F.  The one good thing about the Not-Flu?  I had no hot flashes, ‘cuz I was hot all the time!  Har.  (There was another good thing about the Not-Flu that I thought of, but it has vanished into the mists of vagueness that surround my brain these days.)

You may have noted that I am very dubious about the claim of Not-Flu.  You betcha.  Reading that the flu tests are essentially no better than flipping a coin is enough to tilt my skeptical eyebrow up, sure ’nuff.

In my quest for mindless entertainment, I searched Twitter for H1N1.  (For reference, it’s actually 2009 (a)H1N1.)  Oh, boy.  The woo is strong on this subject.  Let’s see:

• Various claims that a “friend” got the H1N1 vaccine, then promptly came down with it and died.  Let’s just avoid the issue that the vaccine is just now being delivered across the U.S.  There’s a little timeline problem there.
• A person saying she wouldn’t get the H1N1 vaccine because a little kid died of H1N1 around here the other day!!!!  Folks.  That’s what the vaccine is supposed to help prevent.
• People saying they would get the seasonal flu vaccine, but not the H1N1 because it’s too “new” and hasn’t been tested enough.  Okay, this one requires two sub-points:
• FIRST:  Take a look at CDC data.  Ninety-nine percent of the flu cases that are being diagnosed are H1N1.  One percent is “seasonal” flu.  If you were asking me, I’d go for the H1N1 vaccine, not the seasonal flu vaccine.
• SECOND:  Okay, this takes a little longer.  Flu vaccines in general have been around since World War II.  The way the vaccine is developed each year is that WHO epidemiologists take an educated guess as to which flu strains will be prevalent in the upcoming flu season.  This happens around January.  Then it takes the manufacturers of flu vaccines about six to eight months to create a vaccine and get the production rolling on it in time for seasonal flu shots.  This time around, H1N1 showed up in April–months after the regular seasonal flu vaccine process gets going.  However, they had plenty of good virus samples very quickly, and epidemiologists from across the world were rapidly made aware of how novel this one was (like within weeks).  So, the only difference between the H1N1 vaccine and the “normal” seasonal flu vaccine is that (a) they knew exactly what flu they wanted to vaccinate against, rather than a crap shoot of three guesses, and (b) it was a few months later than normal.  But there were a lot of scared governments that pulled strings to get some of the production switched over to H1N1 rather than the seasonal flu.
• Why were they scared?  Because this is a “novel” flu, meaning there are very, very few people who have any immunity to it.  Apparently there was a similar flu in the mid-1950s, so people who are older than that may have native immunity.  But everyone younger than that?  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  The seasonal flu that we normally contend with is usually similar to a flu from the previous year or before, so that most people have had some exposure to it.  This time, a similar flu hasn’t been around for more than sixty years.  To get an idea of how it’s affecting people now, take a look at this chart of “influenza-like illnesses” reported to the CDC within the past few weeks.  I look at the down-tick at the very end of the red line and am hoping it continues, but the kind of upswing shown in the past few weeks is what normally happens in December/January, not September.  So far it seems about as virulent as normal seasonal flu (this is good!), but given the possible numbers of people who could get it at once, the end result could be bad.  Imagine all the hospital ICUs filled with folks on ventilators from the H1N1, and then, oh, a school bus crashes into a tour bus and those people need ventilation and the ICU…where do they go?
• OMG, it contains SQUALENE!!!  It causes CANCER!!!  It kills people!!!!  It has mercury!!!!  And on and on.  Sigh.  Oh, yes, and it’s all a PLOT by the NEW WORLD ORDER…I can’t address them all.  A good resource is EffectMeasure, on ScienceBlogs.

The end result:  the Internet is a marvelous tool.  But if you’ve got no ability to sort B.S. from real information, you’re a sitting duck for the more scary memes out there.

I personally think we all had the flu.  Given the percentages, if we had the flu, we all had Teh Swiney FLOO.  But when that vaccine comes around, I am dragging the dotter in to get it first, and then myself and DH when we’re in the ranks of those who can get it.  (It seems that they’re going to be giving it to kids and pregnant women first, as those are the folks who are most susceptible.)

Anyway, this is just a lot of rambling.  It’s taken me about six hours to write this post, because I have to keep stopping to rest.  Hah!

Hopefully, OmegaDad and I will also soon be feeling better, and no longer like a pair of old damp washrags that have been wrung out and hung out to dry. 

…because the dotter is sick with something flu-like.  The test came back negative for strep, negative for flu, but then the ped chatted up some other ped friends to discuss the sensitivity of the flu test, and given the dotter’s tendency to segue into she-should-go-to-the-hospital type pneumonia, the ped decided to treat it as if it were the flu.

Normally, I wouldn’t go hauling her off to the doctor right away after she got sick.  But given that there was a 10-year-old boy who died of H1N1 within a day after developing the fever up the road in Second Biggest City a few weeks ago, coupled with that aforementioned tendency to pneumonia, I figured it was time to be cautious.

The upshot is the doc prescribed Tamiflu.

(Don’t read the side effects for kids.  Just don’t.)  (I’m hoping we’re not any of the folks who get those side effects.)  (I mean, really, “may be at an increased risk of self injury and confusion shortly after taking TAMIFLU and should be closely monitored for signs of unusual behavior” just sort of raises the hair on my neck.  How creepy can you get?!?!)

The dotter has never done pills (really!), just liquid medicines and shots.   So when the doc asked, I said we should make it liquid…at which point it turns out there is no liquid form readily available, and there is just one local pharmacy that prepares the liquid form.

That pharmacy is, according to OmegaDad, The World’s Least Competent Pharmacy.  This is the result of him showing up at the pharmacy hours after we saw the doctor only to have them take half an hour to figure out that they didn’t have the faxed prescription, and more time thereafter to call up the doctor’s office.  OmegaDad was fuming when he got home, and said, in dire tones, that any further interactions were up to me, because he didn’t think he could keep from blowing his stack.

I call the doc’s office.  I offer to use pills, to introduce the dotter to the concept, so we can avoid dealing with this pharmacy.

The doc’s office calls back:  All the pharmacies in town don’t have the pills in the right strength, so we’re back to The World’s Least Competent Pharmacy.  But TWLCP can’t get the preparation done before they close. 

Oy!

It’s quite the distraction from the oh-OmegaDad-isn’t-going-to-step-on-Kai-on-his-way-to-bed feeling (Kai liked to sleep next to OD’s side of the bed).  The we-don’t-need-to-close-the-downstairs-bathroom-door feeling (Kai would eat the cat food otherwise).  The ongoing reminders.  Sigh.  Thank you all for your sympathetic comments; it has been quite helpful, actually.

In 1998, OmegaDad and I purchased our first house, in Hippy Dippy Enclave In The Woods, near Small Mountain University Town.  Our house had a fenced yard, and we said to each other, “Hey!  We’ve got a fenced yard now!  Now we can get ourselves a dog!”

Somewhere around Mother’s Day the next year, we were at PetSmart near GrannyJ’s house, and they were having an “adoption event”.  So we oohed and ahhed over the kitties, and poked our heads in at the dogs.  There was a puppy there, about six months old, who looked just plain kinda goofy.  He was cute.  His head tilted in that way puppies’ heads do.  We kept looking at him, and talking to each other, and looking at him…

And the next thing we knew, we had a dawg.

We named him Kayenta, Kai for short, because he was a rez rescue dog, a dog of uncertain heritage, one of a large number of unclaimed dogs and puppies that roam the Navajo Reservation, scions of working dogs that herd sheep on the mesas and plateaus.

We brought him home.  We took him out on hikes in the woods, through the Ponderosa pines.  We would stand at either end of a large meadow, and call, and he would run lolloping from one end of the meadow to the other, his tongue hanging out.  We took him to puppy training, and he learned to come when called (mostly), and to walk politely on the leash, and a few other things. 

He was a good dog, for us, but not a good dog for other people.  Our theory was that he had been beaten as a puppy, because if you moved just right, he would flinch, and he hated men.  Women he would tolerate, but men were Bad.  Except, of course, for OmegaDad.

He wouldn’t get into the garbage.  After the first few months, he learned that he did not get people food, and he was okay with that.  He did chew out the crotch of any pair of undies you left out accidentally, so we learned not to do that.  He didn’t beg the way many dogs did–he would just sit there erect, ears alert, and give you an “I am a Very Good Dog” look, one that said, “You know I’m a Good Dog, so you know I deserve a treat.  Don’t you?  Don’t you?”

He loved chew toys.  He would chew them down to frayed knots, and we would remove the knots when they got too smelly and icky, and give him a new rope toy.

When OmegaDotter came along, he didn’t really like her.  He never really liked her, and regularly growled and snapped at her…but he kept it within limits.  The good thing about her, he realized when she transitioned to real people food, was that she dropped food at the table, so she became tolerable.  Not one of his favorites, but definitely tolerable–enough so that she could hold the leash when we went hiking, enough so that she could lean on him (up to a certain point), and tug on him (up to a certain point).

When we moved to Alaska, he joined OmegaDad on the long drive up, getting to see bears and foxes and moose and other wild critters.  He put up with the Shoe Box and our cramped living there.  And when we moved into our new house, he delighted in the big back yard–though, since there was no fence, and we had a Mean Neighbor in the back who made singularly threatening noises the time or two Kai loped through the forest in our back into his yard.  The threatening noises included, at the end, something that sounded like “I’ll shoot him if he comes over here again!”, so poor Kai was thereafter confined to leash on his outings in the yard.

Last year, in May, Kai had a horrible bout of vomiting and bloody diarrhea that culminated in a large whitish chunk being upchucked.  We hauled him to the vet, who dissected the whitish chunk only to discover it was the knot of a rope chew toy.  We immediately threw out all the chew toys we had, and poor Kai was without them.

So we have no idea where he got the rope knot that got stuck in his gut this time.  It may have been while we were out hiking.  It may have been a piece of detritus from the previous owners.

The latest surgery didn’t work.  OmegaDad and I visited yesterday, and today.  When we visited today, poor Kai could barely walk when we tried to take him out for a pee.  When we returned inside, he slipped on the tile floor, and fell all splayed out, and didn’t get up.

The vet ran another blood test after we visited, and the results were bad.  His liver values–which were what prompted the third surgery, in hopes of finding a way to dump the bile that was accumulating–were going up again, instead of down.  The kidney numbers were surging.  When the vet put a catheter in to let him pee, nothing came out.  The end verdict:  renal failure.

So OmegaDad and I went back to the vet’s, and said goodbye to Kai.  We cuddled him, we petted him, we told him he wasn’t going to have to hurt anymore, and Dr. Shauna injected him with the two shots, and he was gone…just like that.  It was quiet, and peaceful, and we all cried, and then we came home to a house without a dawg.

For the past few years, OmegaDad has raved to me about “his” sandhill cranes showing up in the spring and fall, his special viewing place, ooh-ing and aahhh-ing about being able to go out during his (short) lunch hour, drive a few blocks, and eat his lunch while communing with nature, aka the cranes, and how pretty they were.

Today, he called me from work.  “I’ve got a very flat tire.”  Instantly, Super OmegaMom springs into action:  faster than a speeding bullet, she whizzes through the garage, grabs the battery-powered air pump, leaps into the car, and–

…waits for OmegaDotter, who had no school today, to collect all her worldly goods and chattels in preparation for an overnight with A., her best bud.

At which point, Super OmegaMom grabs the Halloween artwork done by OmegaDotter for donation to A.’s Halloween decorations, flips the back seats down, rolls out the bicycle, manhandles the bicycle up into the car, schleps the dotter and all her worldly goods and chattels off to A.’s house…

…and then goes to rescue OmegaDad.

As I delivered the air pump, I suggested we go visit the dawg at the hospital…

Oh!  Didn’t I mention this?!  One night home, and the dawg was once again throwing up everything, we couldn’t get any meds to stay down, we were worried yesterday morning, we called the vet, we took the dawg back to the vet’s, we got a call from the vet mid-day, we drove back to the vet’s office under a low, black cloud of gloom, anticipating that we were going to be told that he needed to be put down…Only to find out, once we were there, that the vets had made a mistake during the first surgery, and they wanted to do a third surgery to correct it.  The good news was that the dawg was not needing to be put down.  The further good news was that they were going to do the surgery for free.  The bad news was…well, three surgeries in a week is an awful lot, and the vet wasn’t sure that this would do the trick for our poor puppy.

But, anyway, the dawg is recuperating from his third surgery, and I suggested we go visit the dawg, which we did.  And then OmegaDad was hungry for lunch, so we grabbed a burger for him from DQ.  And while we were there, he said, “Let’s take a drive!”

“Turn right here.  Turn left here.  Drive straight here.  Turn here.  Slow down.  Slow down.  Just beyond those trees–can you see them?”

See them?!  Holy moly, there were some of the prettiest birds I’ve seen in a long time, and they were right by the road.  We could practically have reached out and touched them.  They had red crests on top of their heads, perched on long, graceful necks.  Their bodies were mottled brown and cream from one angle, an iridescent blue-ish from another angle.  They were just…beautiful.

And I didn’t have my camera.

After taking the husband back to work, I drove home (12 miles), grabbed the camera, and drove back (another 12 miles) just so I could get pictures of these beauties.

Of course, by the time I got there, they had moved much farther back into the field, away from the edge of the road.  This meant I had to zoom in with my point-and-shoot’s all-of-3x-optical-zoom.  Which meant that all I was getting was lousy pictures.  I got out of the car, moved into the greenery by the side of the road–

–and the birds very quietly and gracefully moved an equal distance further away from the road.  It wasn’t like they were scared, or really noticing at all; it was almost as if it were a force of nature, like gravity or magnetism, except repelling rather than attracting.  I move forward, they drift backward.

Bah.  The pic at the top of the post is the very best I could manage.  I ache to have better pictures of those birds.

Obviously, I need a new camera, one with more oompf.  None of this twiddly, pixellated digital zoom, thankyewverramuch.  I want some STUDLY OPTICAL ZOOM, dammit!  So this is my new quest:  cruising CraigsList for a nice used 10x digicam.  The dawg has eaten up a lot of our PFD check, but I think I can swing a 2nd-hand good digicam…Just so that next year I can get better pictures of these guys.

So, after two surgeries and many days recuperating, the dawg is back home again.  We had all been missing him something fierce–even the dotter, who the dawg doesn’t get along with, and who, therefore, doesn’t get along with the dawg.  So he’s back, he’s ensconced downstairs (no stair climbing for a while!), he smells extremely doggy (no doggy baths for a while!), and we have managed to get him to eat and keep down a tablespoon or two of freshly baked chicken and some rice.  Given that he’s hardly eaten in a week, this is monumental.

In the meantime, as soon as the autumnal equinox passed, our area of Alaska plunged directly from late fall into almost-winter.  Typically, the early winter snows creep downward on the mountainsides, first dusting the tops (”termination dust”), then moving on down bit by bit. 

Last week was vintage autumn:  clear, vibrant blue skies, the kind that you can lose yourself in forever, with the sun glittering in etched yellow along the edges of leaves.  We had some winds, and they loosened the fall leaves, which would shower down to the ground like a handful of golden coins tossed into the air.

Then came gray days and rain.

Then came the cold snap, along with more rain.  We had no snow hereabouts, but you could tell the mountains were getting it.  This morning, when the dotter went off to check her chickens, the back stairs were icy.  This afternoon, when we motored off to the vet’s to get the dawg, the sun was out and sparkling from every damp spot on the trees and the houses and the underbrush.

And surrounding the valley, the mountains were covered with snow, two-thirds of the way down.  Yesterday evening, I had caught a peek or two that showed that the snow came almost down to our level, but the sunshine today must have warmed things up enough to melt that snow back.

The mountains seem suddenly more immediate, more immense, more looming, when they are covered with snow; I don’t know why.

Right now, it’s a beautiful sight.  I actually can’t wait until our first snowfall down here.  Remind me of that in January and February, when I am bitching endlessly about the never-ending wintertime, eh?

We got to see the dawg at the vet’s office today; he was totally stoned on pain meds, but even so looked much better than he had yesterday morning.  So we loved on him and snuggled with him, and then left, with promises of being able to check him out tomorrow morning, and maybe take him home.

Mom is out of the hospital, yay!

And I?  Am worn out.  Just plain tuckered.

It has been a bad few days.

A few days ago, I noticed the dawg wasn’t eating much, or drinking much.  Then yesterday a.m., early, the dawg started barfing.  And barfing.  And barfing.  And soon, there was nothing to barf up…but he was thirsty.  And he couldn’t keep that down, either.  At which point, dawg-worrying became intense enough to have us call the vet.

The dawg doesn’t like vets, so we needed both OmegaDad and myself to be there to calm the pup down for an exam.  Then x-rays.  Then blood work.  Then shots (an anti-emetic and an acid suppressor).  Then instructions to wait until evening, then try him on water, then white rice & boiled chicken this a.m.

We walked out having spent $380.  Ack!

The dawg stopped barfing for a bit.  Then we tried him on water later that night, which he slurped right down.

And then promptly threw right up again.

All through the night, the same thing:  drink water, throw it up.

So we called the vet again this a.m., and the vet said it was time for the barium x-rays:  fill the dawg with a barium-spiked fluid and trace the movement to see where the blockage was.  So I schlepped the pup off to the vet again, and dropped him off, with an estimate of another $300.  Ack!

Two hours later, the vet calls, saying that the barium didn’t move more than an inch beyond the end of his tummy, and the only thing to do was exploratory surgery, and here’s the estimate:  $1000 to $2000.  ACK!  ACK, ACK, double ACK!

At which point, the qualms start.  Ooookay, we’re talking serious bucks here.  Ooookay; if it were the dotter, we wouldn’t be balking at the cost, but scrambling to find ways to cover it.  Ooookay; there are people in the U.S. who need that money to get health care.  Ooookay; a dawg is worth it/a dawg is not worth it.  Oookay; there are people who would think we were nuts to even think of paying for it.  Ooookay, there are people who would think we were cruel and horrible for even thinking of not paying for it.  Ooookay; we don’t have the extra bucks right now, but we will have them when our PFD check comes through in two weeks–and yeah, we wanted to buy some toys with the money, but isn’t Kai worth it?

Et cetera.

It was a very odd feeling.

The end result:  A “Care Credit” card, a credit card offered for paying for vet bills.  You can apply over the phone.  Oh, goody.  Just what we need…

So we signed and the dawg went in for surgery, OmegaDad and I went out to lunch, and then I went home.

To be confronted with a message on our phone from a friend of my mother’s saying “She’s ALL RIGHT, but your mother is in the hospital, just released from the ICU, and here’s the phone number…”

Oh, shit.

Two days of ongoing worry were suddenly replaced with frantic panic.

Talking to my mom, and then talking to her doctor, reassured me (currently).  Seems she went in for day-surgery for a blockage in her leg; all went well.  She stayed with her friend for the night, and in the night, her leg and foot started hurting.  She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t go out for her regular weekly breakfast with her buds, so she finally called the doc and asked is this was normal.  He immediately told her to hie herself off to the emergency room.  When she got there, the ER folk all panicked about her heart flutter and kept talking about how she needed a pacemaker right now.  Her doc finally got them straightened out on that (she has had the flutter for quite a while, and has a “strong heart” according to two cardiologists aside from the flutter), but she was admitted to ICU for observation and testing.  While she was there, some bloodwork came back indicating she might have internal bleeding, but everything else was okay; they moved her out of ICU into PCU (?!) and decided to keep her for another day or two.

The end result:  I have been on the phone now to fifty kazillion people for hours.  (I tried calling my Unka Bill in Australia, but when I got through, he couldn’t hear me, so I had to email him [Unka Bill, check your email!].)  Our finances are in a holding pattern.  I’m tired.  I want my mommy.  My mommy wants her camera and a laptop because she’s bored out of her gourd…

Oh, yeah, and mom’s friend says that she’s due to go back for roto-rootering of her other leg in 10 days…

Oh, yeah, and I finally talked to the vet’s nurse, who said that the surgery took longer than expected (that means more $$), they had to take out a piece of the dawg’s intestine, and there was a blockage which looked to be the knotted end of a rope chew toy.  At which point, I was amazed:  we haven’t given the dawg a rope chew toy for more than a year, when this incident happened.  The nurse scoffed.  She said it wasn’t possible.  Well, I can tell you that we removed the dawg’s chew toys that very afternoon, May 17, 2008, and haven’t given him one since, and he’s not allowed out unless we’re with him…sooo…where’d the chew toy come from if it hasn’t been sitting in his stomach since then???

Wah.

Andy Warhol famously said everyone is world-famous for 15 minutes.  Ah, fleeting celebrity!  I have touched upon it.  Yes, me–your very own OmegaMom–I have been mentioned by pseudonym in the New York Times.

Okay, it’s not like I was interviewed or anything (thank the Kozmik All!), and in context it sounds like the dude writing the article assumed that I was some type of epidemiologist or physician or something (I don’t even play a doctor on the Internet, folks!), and it was merely cribbing a comment I wrote on someone else’s blog.

How-some-ever.  It’s pretty cromulently KEWL to see my very own ‘nym on the pages (hey, a web page is, technically speaking, a “page”, right?) of The Gray Lady herself.

The context:  Towards the beginning of the whole swine flu H1N1 pandemic, one of my Twitterers asked if it made sense to deliberately expose oneself and offspring to the new flu now, since it seemed like a mild flu here in the U.S.  At the time, I thought it was a totally, absolutely, horribly lousy idea.  Now I just think it’s a lousy idea.  Anyway, knowing that Revere at Effect Measure was a Good Source of epidemiological answers, I asked in a comment if he’d speak to the “insanity” of doing such.  I got a bunch of responses that boiled down to “NO!  DON’T DO IT!”

Apparently, now that the swine flu H1N1 pandemic is really seeming to be a generally mild virus (so far) (cross your fingers, knock on wood, throw some salt over your shoulder, and maybe even pray to the Kozmik All), the whole “flu party” idea is spreading, enough so that the NYT got wind of it and decided to check it out with The Experts.

Being a modest sort, I didn’t find this thing on my own; however, Effect Measure got a trackback link out of it, so decided to check it out and report on it.  So here’s his take on the question, in more depth.

There it is:  My brush with fame.  Excuse me while I go hide from the paparazzi.

We spent the weekend doing weekend-ish types of things, including OmegaDad replacing the tree swing out front (it had an untimely demise due to rotting rope, which resulted in OmegaDotter being dumped and getting a small rope burn on her fingers).  And while this was going on (and laundry and cleaning and luvvin’ on chickens and stuff like that), I was watching the flood of information on swine flu on the Internet blossom and spread like fungus spores.

Watching the Twitter feed on the search term “swine flu” has been fascinating. 

Some utterly baseless rumors and misunderstandings (these are all things I have personally read on Twitter):

• Since this new version contains elements of avian influenza, swine influenza, and human influenza, it can’t possibly be natural; it’s been cooked up as a biowarfare weapon.  (Flu viruses swap DNA all the time, it’s why they mutate and we need new vaccines every year.)
• It’s a plot by Barack Obama to take attention off of the economy.
• It’s a plot by Barack Obama to force through his national health care agenda.
• It’s a plot by the libruls and Barack Obama to extend government control.
• The meeting between Barack Obama and Felipe Solis, director of Mexico’s National Anthropology Museum (Solis died the next day) was an attempt to assassinate the President.
• Sasha Obama has the swine flu.
• The reason the swine flu has shown up in the U.S. is because of illegal immigrants.  (Let’s just ignore the fact that the majority of the cases identified so far have been due to–eek, gasp!–tourists returning from Mexico.)
• It’s a plot by Big Pharma to drive up medicine sales.
• It’s the result of a slow news week and all media hype.
• It’s the END OF THE WORLD!!!!!!
• You can get swine flu by (eating/fucking/looking at/smelling) pork.
• The governments of the world are overreacting.
• The governments of the world are underreacting.
• It’s the fault of big, bad factory farms.
• I am sick–it must be swine flu!
• I am sick–I wish everyone would stop saying it’s swine flu!
• OMG, I am afraid to leave the house because of swine flu!
• Dudes, just chill out–x people die each year because of ordinary flu/because of car accidents/because of poorly prepared medications/choose your pet issue–so we don’t need to worry.
• Fifty kazillion riffs on the xkcd web comic related to swine flu and Twitter.
• Another fifty kazillion bad swine flu jokes (oinkment, kids kissing pigs, when pigs fly, etc.).

The psychology of the Internet rumor mill is just amazing to me.

Now, I have been reading the blogs of people who are actually involved with epidemiology (in particular, Effect Measure and H5N1), and they are confronted with two choices:  Either react now, or react later.  If they react later and the flu fizzles, hey, it’s okay.  But if they react later, and the flu doesn’t fizzle but turns into a pandemic akin to the 1918 flu, we’re all in deep kimchee.  If they react now, and the flu fizzles, well, it’s like the boy who cried wolf.  Do it too many times, and the one time it’s needed is the time that everyone will yawn, go “Ho hum, another flu panic…”  React now and the flu is a baddie?  Then everything is in place to stage quarantines, border closings, flu meds, and more when and where it is needed.

Right now, it’s really too early to tell.  The reports from Mexico are not good.  What I’ve read is 1600+ sick, with 150-200 deaths so far.  (Actually, what I’ve read in some places is 1600+ hospitalized, which is a major difference.)  By the end of this week, there should be much better data, including how fast it is spreading outside Mexico.

And, of course, maybe by the end of the week, they can figure out just what the major differences are that are causing fatalities in Mexico, but mild cases elsewhere.

This morning, OmegaDad and I girded up our loins (figuratively speaking), and hauled Angie back out to the chicken coop after weeks in the garage recuperating from her last experience of being returned to the coop, whereupon Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken took it upon herself to beat Angie into bloody bits of ground beef.  Fearing a reoccurrence of the same, OmegaDad and I spent an hour leaning on the walls of the chicken coop and snatching up Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken, who turned out to be Comet (the bitch).

I have decided that chickens are visible evidence of evolution, obviously having evolved from dinosaurs.  Carnivorous dinosaurs.  Velociraptor type dinosaurs.  Lean, mean, fighting machines.  That like blood.

(Cue zombie sound:  ::Blooooood::)

What was happening was a disruption of avian psychodynamics.  New hen in the coop (okay, okay, so she’s not “new”, but it’s been weeks, and she seemed new) means establishing a new pecking order.

In general, establishing the pecking order means that dominant bird pecks at lower-status bird, lower-status bird squawks, lowers herself in a submissive posture, and then runs like hell away from the pecking bird.  A quick flurry, and all is over and done with, no harm, no foul, especially no blood.

But Comet’s a chicken bitch.  And Angie’s stubborn. 

Within minutes of Angie being reintroduced to the coop, Comet had drawn blood on Angie’s feet.

Then comes the creepy part:  Comet and Winnie spent the next hour wandering around very carefully hunting down and eating every single speck of blood they could find.  With sinuous and sinister darting heads with beady eyes looking sidelong at Angie, calculating when she was looking away, so that more pecking could be done.

Okay, it was mostly Comet doing this action.  Winnie was alternately pecking at chicken feed, hunting down a few bloody spots of chicken fluff, and running away from Angie’s desultory I-have-more-status-then-you pecks.

Comet was out for blood.  Literally.  Comet was looking for a violent confrontation.  Comet was trying to provoke a violent confrontation.

And Angie wasn’t backing down.  She wasn’t fighting back, but she wasn’t backing down.  Comet would dart in and peck at her then fluff up and posture and threaten, and Angie would put her head down, but she wouldn’t assume the submissive pose (crouching down parallel to floor); her body and tail were still up.  This kind of reminded me of a kid stubbornly refusing to do chores and being sullen:  You can’t make me! read her body language.  Which, of course, drove Comet even more into a frenzy.

So we finally gave in and removed Comet from the coop.

Lo and behold, hours later, no bloody Angie, no bloody Winnie, two eggs laid. 

We will attempt reintroducing Comet to the coop in a few days.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll farm Comet out; we like Angie better (Comet is a bitch).

Other than that…The volcano blew big time on Saturday, dumping lots of ash on Homer (check out some of the pics!), southwards.  Saturday was a glorious, sunny day, and everything was melting, with lots of rivulets and streams of water pouring out from under slabs of packed snow.  I took the dawg for a walk and had a lovely time; I meant to do it today, as well, but then I got struck with either pleurisy or costochondroitis or (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood that it isn’t this one) pericarditis and spent the afternoon dreading every deep breath I took.  Bleah. 

In a few more days, I hit a birthday, a big one.

Broody hen lays eggs.
Alas, the concrete floor is hard
And cracked eggs result.

Sick, whiny dotter
Rejects medicine with pouts.
Mom is now grumpy.

After frigid weeks
The temp goes to plus fifteen.
O joy!  Spring is here!

Boots, chaps, hat, blue jeans:
The dotter rushes to dress.
Saddle Club is on!

Safeway Select food
Is quick and easy to cook.
But does it taste good??

Moans and groans and moans.
OmegaDad is still sick.
Mom is still grumpy.

Motrin is Da Bomb.
One quick dose calms many fevers.
Oh no!  We are out!

Cold moonlit dawg walk.
Two moose pose in yard next door.
Quick, dawg!  Back inside!

We are going on day 12 of two-digit temperatures below zero.  While it is a cause of intense cabin fever, there is beauty in the cold.

When the breeze stirs the trees, the frozen trunks clack against each other with a hollow sound that reminds me of the sound of elk antlers crashing in the dark in mid-September during the season of rut.  Clack-clack-clackity-clack…quiet…clack…creak…quiet…clack-clack-clack…

The crystalline structure of snow changes as it gets colder; when a snowfall is new, everything is hushed, including footfalls.  When it’s this cold, the snow squeaks and crunches as you walk on it; there is no hush.  Scrunch-squeak-crunch, scrunch-squeak-crunch, scrunch-squeak-crunch.

There are times when I wish we had OmegaDad’s favorite non-existent invention, the retina-cam.  Driving the dotter to her gymnastics class on Monday–the only day this week that she’s been out–I saw the late afternoon sunlight backlight the clouds of steam coming off the fire station’s heating system on the roof, and it was beautiful.  Walking out to check on the (voracious, rabid, grape-hunting) chickens in the late night, I was crunching through a cold snowy landscape flooded with the light from the waxing gibbous moon and wished there was a way to capture that picture.  (By the way, this weekend’s full moon is the biggest of the year.)

Each of these times, of course, I have had neither recorder nor camera handy.

Vignettes of the cold:

• The thermometer broke at -80 in Tok.  The Weather Service pooh-poohs it, claiming it was only -65.  Tok is nowhere near us, thank heavens; we’ve only hit -29.
• The good thing about the deep freeze is that when it’s up around zero, it feels warm.
• When it’s this cold, it’s a Bad Idea to unthinkingly grab the handle of a grocery cart in the parking lot with your bare hands.  The cold, it burns.  Fast.
• The plumbers in this area are so backed up it’s frightening; the cold has lasted long enough that normally well-insulated houses have frozen pipes.
• The U.S. Cross-Country Skiing Championships were delayed multiple times; in protest, a group of skiers from California decided to ski in the buff, wearing only briefs, bras, gloves and hats.  “It’s not so bad!” exclaims one insane young man.
• The cold seems to draw any moisture in the house air straight to the windows, where it freezes.  I envision molecules of water doing slo-mo race sequences, a la Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man?  Oh, go away, kiddies, those of us oldsters know what I’m describing), or to the theme from Rocky. 

OmegaDad and I are finally out of the woods in terms of the Illness Of Doom.  Hurray!  The dotter, however, is still sick, still running fevers, and I’m close to the “it’s time for the doctor” stage for her.

We are living in The House of Pain.

I got sick last Friday.  OmegaDad got sick a day later.  I keep waiting for it to Go Away.

Nope.  Now the dotter has it.

WAH!  She was just back to school yesterday!  The end of all the “togetherness”, enforced by the bitter cold, was such a relief!  But this morning, after OmegaDad’s dread Man Cold response woke me early, I slouched out to the living room where the dotter was, she snuggled with me, and said:  “I don’t feel good.  My throat hurts.”  So I hauled out the trusty thermometer, and OmegaDad has a fever and the dotter has a fever and I feel like throwing a tantrum.

In the meantime, I am not alone in being sucked into the Ravenhearst mystery black hole.

Every home should have a chicken in the garage, especially in these uncertain economic times.

Har.

Yes, we have a chicken in the garage.

A few weeks before Christmas, we noticed that Buffy, our Buff Orfington (yes, a highly original name for a Buff, I realize, but it fits if you use the pre-Buffy-The-Vampire stereotype, as she is a Dumb Cluck), was staying in the nest box a lot.  More than a lot, in fact:  she was pretty much camping out there.

OmegaDad, Keeper of The Chickens, became worried, and consulted Teh Google.

It seems that hens are wired to get “broody”.  A broody hen is a hen who is bound and determined–no matter what–to incubate a clutch of eggs.  First, they nest.  Then, they stay there.  They fluff up all their feathers to keep things nice and warm.  Some will pluck their chest feathers off to make the nest nice and fluffy and insulated, and to raise the humidity level underneath their bodies.

In a nice normal flock of chickens, you’ll have a rooster or two to do his studly duty and inseminate eggs; thus the broody hens can collect enough eggs, sit on them for about three weeks, and voila, baby chicks.  Once the chicks are hatched, the hen will be matronly, guide them to food and water, watch over them, and the broodiness subsides:  they’ve fulfilled their biological destiny.

Our girls, alas, do not have a handy randy rooster around.  Their eggs are doomed to never hatch.  Besides, the OmegaFamily keeps on top of things and does a nest sweep twice a day to collect eggs.

In this situation, the hen suffers from a type of infertility psychology:  They brood.  They hunker down.  They want chicks, dammit!  Everything about their bodies switches from producing eggs to hatching eggs, hormonally and physically.  A broody hen without eggs to incubate just keeps on keeping on, sitting on the nest, leaving once or twice a day to eat and get water and deposit a huge, dog-sized turd (really!) (and really stinky, too!).  They lose weight.  They start being susceptible to parasites on the chest and abdomen because of all the warmth and humidity.  They keep quiet and fluffy and start wasting away.  If you don’t Do Something, you will have a dead hen.

You may also have many hens in the same state, as it is commonly thought to be “contagious”.  My thinking on this issue is it’s probably related to the tendency of female humans to synchronize their menstrual cycles:  a broody hen is a hormonal mess; those hormones probably produce pheromones; those pheromones probably signal to other hens that Now Is A Good Time For Baby Chicks.

(Of course, I have absolutely no data to back this up, but when I came across the contagion idea, it just seemed to click.)

The best thing to do in this case is to “break” the broodiness, shock the bird out of the heat/humidity/nesting/hormonal cycle.  Some people apparently recommend dunking the bird in ice water.  My opinion:  ACK!  One person I read up on suggested putting ice cubes under the hen, as a gentler method.  OmegaDad’s thought was to move her out of the main coop, cool her down, and provide some tender loving care.

So OmegaDad hastily whipped up a temporary coop for the garage, and transferred our poor, brooding Buffy there.  The garage, though heated, is at about 50F.  The temporary coop doesn’t have a nesting box, so there was no place for Buffy to snuggle in and generate heat.

She had, by this time, definitely lost weight, and her comb was a pale grey-pink, as opposed to a nice bright pink-red; apparently all this attention to incubating leads the hens to totally ignore their own physiological processes and (if I read things correctly) shunt a lot of blood to the chest/abdomen area.  She was so weak that she wouldn’t stand up when we picked her up out of the nest, but just sort of trembled and sank back down into a squat on the coop floor.

The end result:  We have a chicken in the garage.  The temporary coop in the cooler area, away from the other hens, was apparently just what she needed.  She is now up and about, no tremors in the hind end, eating like a pig, drinking plenty of water, no more gargantu-poops, and her comb is turning bright pink again.  She is also being spoiled because it’s so cold I’m smoking in the garage, and feeding her red grapes now and then.

She is recuperated enough so that when I go out there, she burbles at me for the grapes, and she will jump up into the air to get one from my hand.  Then she squawks with irritation if I don’t give her more. 

So now we know:  If another of our birds gets broody, we’ll nip it in the bud much sooner.  It was just that this happened while I was heading out of town, and we were preparing for Christmas, etc.