Max is doing a lot better today, but still not a happy camper

We went back to the vet this morning. I was afraid that his adenoma incision had become infected. It's almost artificially bright red, swollen and you can feel heat half an inch away. But the vet says he's okay, and certainly the dog bite gouges are healing beautifully. They're still painful enough that it prevents him from bending enough to start licking or chewing on the adenoma incisions, thus he doesn't (so far) require the doggy humiliation of all doggy humiliations: the cone of silence.

I took a picture yesterday of my clean new table to show how messy it can get in just a few days.


Took two days to get covered in stuff.


How do people manage to keep their places tidy? It's an eternal mystery to me. Have less stuff, I guess. I have all the good intentions in the world, but... blork. There it all lies, crap and corruption barfed up all over every flat surface -- including the floor.

Still waiting for my truck to get fixed. In the meantime, I have a little bit of typing that just arrived, so I'm outta here for now.

Later Tuesday morning

I find art stores, bead stores and people's studios/workspaces/places to be fascinating. They always get me jumped up and filled with ideas, ready to work, but oh, how I do run out of steam by the time I get home and contemplate the garbage dump that is my workspace. I finally found my hammer yesterday. It's been rusting away in the back seat footwell of my truck since last summer, hiding under a year's worth of accumulated trash and Max's takeout containers that he's never put into the garbage bag. In fact, they usually come from the garbage bag. He likes to eat used kleenex. But now that I've found the hammer, maybe I can get some stuff off the tables and onto the walls.

I just discovered why my truck engine light keeps coming on. Briefly, it's a $700 repair job, but it involves leaking heater hosepipes/radiator coolant, and the cheap fix is to disconnect the heater hosepipe (it's the beginning of May, don't need heat anymore, right?), and until tomorrow, top up the radiator with tap water.

Here is the current iteration of my work space. How I ever get anything done let alone found is the eternal mystery...



Computer work station aka messpile on right as you come into the room



Next is the PMC silver leaf coating station



Original work station, two doors, main door resting on bookcase shelf and other on a coffee table, levelled off with two art books, currently unusable state of uncontrolled mess



Edge of new table (took two days to become piled high with more beads)



New table in almost pristine state. That didn't last long.



Fireplace wall, couch with Max and edge of new table

Bead soup table to immediate left of entryway into room

Tuesday morning, it's sunny, and the im-patient is much better

Max is a whole lot better today, definitely much bouncier -- a world of difference even from last night. Still having problems figuring out how to sit down/lie down w/o it hurting, though.

A shred of good news -- the golden's owners showed up last night and have offered to pay part of Max's vet bill. They're genuinely concerned about Mickey's (not Nicky) part in this -- and I assured them that I didn't blame them, and that it wasn't Mickey's fault or anything they could've done/foreseen, just doggie jealousy. I didn't say anything, but I think I'm also dead on that Mickey is far too much dog for retired people, having way too much energy, I've never seen anyone out playing with her and maybe they think that just leaving her outside by herself so she can watch the world go by is sufficient. They have an electronic collar/perimeter to keep her in the yard. She is never taken for a walk that I know of. Of course not. This is the country. Nothing dumber/funnier than seeing all those city transplants walking their dogs along country roads! And picking up poop! Uhhh... that would be me and Max.

Now that I've heard the whole story, what I think Mickey was really jealous of with the granddaughter patting Max is that it turns out that the granddaughter doesn't like Mickey and never has. She's probably scared to death of her size and strength, goldens being huge on the body slams. The granddaughter looks to be late teens/early college age, but quite tiny. They probably weigh about the same and the golden is all muscle.

Max has discovered the nasty-tasting-pill-in-the-banana trick. He ate one, but spat out the other. Toast and jam? Ran outside and spat it out. Tried the remaining pill in his liver-flavoured-but-carob-smelling arthritis chewie chunk and he ate that right away. This morning. Dunno what I'm going to do tonight. He's suspicious of everything I offer him now.

Sunny this morning, so my own mood is a lot lighter. Today I have to deal with the truck as the engine light came on yesterday on the way back from the vet, and I have to have it sorted by Friday so I can go get gas to get to the market on Saturday, and we're almost out of dog food, too. I have to get back to making jewellery. The Oxford Country Spinners and Weavers craft show is coming up on the 14th, and I still have to get stuff up to The Bead Boutique in Kitchener.

Given the circumstances, I gave myself yesterday off, spending all day -- a singularly cold, gloomy and rainy day -- in a depressed state, watching old Last 10 Pounds Bootcamp and Bulging Brides shows on Slice.ca and thinking long and hard about all the exercises Tommy Europe was forcing his bootcampers to do. My favourite part of Bulging Brides is the table shot of all the junk food that that episode's bootcamper has eaten in the previous week/month. I try to do that here -- I have a corner of the counter where I put all my groceries that I buy for the week, boxed/packaged goods, apples, most root vegetables -- it's cold enough that the food stays fairly fresh. Any treats from Saturday's market that sneak in are usually gone by Monday, and then that's it. If only Tommy Europe would do a show called Last 80 Pounds Trashed Knees & Lower Back Bootcamp, I'd happily humiliate myself on it. In the meantime, cue the laugh track: Max and I are off on our poop-bag-carrying walk along the highway.

Other shoe dropping department

In the interest of fitness and weight loss for both of us, Max and I went out for our daily long walk late yesterday afternoon. Also as usual, we stopped by a neighbour's house so Max could hang with his buddy Nicky, a female golden who is twice his size and weight. They've been playing together almost every day for over two years. Unfortunately, the dog got jealous when the visiting teenage granddaughter of the owners patted Max, and before anyone could react Nicky leapt on Max and pretty much tore him a new a... -- literally -- and just missing his spine. Max is coming up to 13, with arthritis, so isn't moving very fast these days, and he couldn't get away. You could have stuck a couple of fingers into one of the gouges in him. I rushed him to the vet, getting there just before 5 pm, afraid they would be closed, but found out they're open until 6:30. They took him into surgery right away, and I picked him up an hour or so later.

After a really rough night, his pain seems to have dropped to a tolerable level -- I know this, given his interest in food today -- which is good. In fact, he's waiting in the kitchen for lunch as I write and it's only 11:15. Last night just about broke my heart. Despite the painkillers and antibiotics, he trembled and whimpered until 4 or 5 a.m. and I could only hold his paw and stroke his head. In all the hubbub, they forgot to take out the catheter in his arm, so we went in this morning to have that done. They said he was doing fine, all the stitches are holding.

FYI, if you ever have to give a dog pills, stuff them into chunks of banana (which Max loves). Down the hatch without a problem.

While waiting to pick up Max yesterday, I got an email telling me that the new art gallery shop applications are being shelved (possibly permanently) because, after a year and a half of renovations to a turn of the century heritage building on the downtown main street, the city council announced at their meeting last Tuesday night, with zero notice or consultation, that they have decided they are now giving the building to a local community college for a satellite campus. However, the gallery director did tell me she really likes my silver leaves. That was shoe number two.

Shoe number three is my truck engine light came on again on the way back from the vet this morning. It appears I now have serious radiator/coolant problems. I'm getting really, reeeeally sick and tired of all of this. Minus Max, last week was equally fraught what with a computer virus on Wednesday, a day and a half without power all day Thursday and Friday morning, with work coming in, and ditto with the engine coolant which I had topped up figuring that was going to resolve the problem.

When I got back from dropping Max off yesterday for his surgery, I told the landlord I wouldn't be able to pay the rent for longer than I'd expected this month (I'm still waiting to be paid for work done in early March and there's not a thing I can do about it) and he laughed. Told me his girlfriend had just phoned to tell him that their basement tenant had just given his notice, so there wasn't going to be a May rent cheque from him, either.

I'm at the point now where I'm just shaking my head, although I guess bin Laden had a worse day than I did. That's pretty wild that they nailed the guy, eh? Even more wild is the book I'm currently reading -- Dead Zero by Stephen Hunter. Around the same time the raid was going down, I was reading about exactly that: taking out bin Laden.

That's my news for this week and it's only Tuesday morning.