almost missed it

something else that has come and gone was my birthday. Last week already, and I was so busy and tired all week that I forgot to post about it. Didn't forget to have dinner to mourn with family and friends at least. Just worked out that I did nearly as many work hours last week as I normally do in a month, and still fitted in fetching pigeons all over. This will only go into next month's salary as contractors bill two weeks ahead, but at least I shall have some cash at the end of next month. Need it, the way I've been blowing bucks at plant places.

Oh yeah, and in celebration of I don't know what, we had snow in JHB last night for the first time in 25 years. Woke up to dog kennels that looked like little ski chalets, with an inch of powder on the rooves. Can't help feeling guilty about the number of warm rooms and blankets I have, when so many people and animals will be out there tonight with little or no shelter. Silent prayer for them all.....

Twiglet....come and gone

Before I even got round to posting anything about Twig, I had to have her euthanased today.
This is the scrounging email I sent to the Andy-fund :

".....there I was, innocently delivering a large donation from Novartis to CLAW, when, as I parked, I saw a dead dog lying on the dirt in the sun.

I looked again, the dead dog stood up, walked over to me and wagged her tail. She put her chin forward for a scratch, then lay on her back hoping for a tummy tickle. As I gave this, I counted the bones in her body - every one of them was visible.
She had been brought to CLAW by her owner, who was eventually persuaded that it would be better for her to stay at CLAW. I took pictures, to show how emaciated she was. Sitting in the office, I thought to myself that I had just taken on a hugely fat Labrador, and the family plan was for us both to lose weight. I looked out the window at her lying in the sun, and the words just popped out - 'if she needs a home, I'll take her'. I was aghast, that wasn't my intention at all. I didn't need another dog, especially not one so fragile. But.....Twiglet came home to us a few days later. The introduction went well, until she and fat CJ were chasing round the garden, and one fat hipbone sent her flying into the swimming pool!

No idea what she is, so we're calling her brand XXX for now, and she's probably about 3 years old. The vet estimates by the size of her bones that she should weigh about 22kgs - currently she weighs 10.6kg. As I have adopted her personally, she's not going to be funded by the Andy-fund at all - what I will be trying to do is to get some dog food from one of the manufacturers for CLAW, in return for using her for advertising. But I can blame Andy for sending me to Claw in the first place!

And on the donation side, thank you to Barb at the Cat Box in Linden, who gave 20 NEW collars, 2 leads and a bag of jars of citronella cream. Did you know that citronella cream is a good deterrent for fleas - and that citronella oil in pot plants generally keeps cats out of the pots?"

Today's email to the group, quite a few of whom had offered either money or food for her (which I take, but pass on to CLAW....) was :

"I'm afraid that there was some bad news with the Twig this morning. She wasn't really hungry, her breathing was a bit hoarse, but she was lying in her favorite sunspot. When I checked on her a bit later, her breathing was very bad, so she went straight to the vet, they took the X-rays planned for this afternoon, and a huge pulmonary oedema showed up, as well as a number of small malignancies.

The vets and I had decided to treat aggressively if there was any possibility of success, but after consultation with a couple of specialist vets, we all agreed that Twig just didn't have the physical resources to fight this kind of battle, and she was euthanased.

I am just so glad that I ignored the little shadow on the couch last night, and allowed her to spend the evening curled up there."

She was with us for only ten days - it would have been nice to be able to give her a good time for longer.....

Other stuff? Same old shit. P-doc has now decided to think seriously about the Ket, so as of last Thurs 21/6, meds are down to 450mg lithium and 40mg Geodon at night, and 10mg Tertroxin, 225 mg lithium in the morning. No more Nardil, no more Ritalin, no more Surmontil, only half the Tertroxin. And even without Twig, I am going through hell again. Good thing is that I don't sleep every afternoon, even though I'd like to. I don't sleep so great at night either, which is why I am blogging at 02h00, 4 hours after taking my meds and sleeping pills. I can sleep in the morning, and screw up the day that way instead, by being late for everything. I'm not drinking, I'm not cutting, I'm not doing bad stuff. I'm just doing the whole obsessive organise my life so as to kill myself neatly bit again - lots of tidying up and throwing away things. Lots of crying. Mostly, the only things that get accomplished are those that I pay other people to do. Oh, and I spend a fortune on plants and potting stuff so that the house looks nice when it has to be sold. It's called the Dead list, and it looks very much like the last one, because since I did some of that, I've gone back to not opening mail and leaving stuff everywhere. I move things from one room to the next, but the next one isn't quite ready for them - cupboards need cleaning out, or it needs a shelf or something, so everything just gets piled there instead, and what was in that room gets dragged somewhere else in the meantime. Oh yeah, and in the past few months some of the pot plants have died of natural causes, some have been killed by the cats eating them, and half of what's outside got killed by an unexpected frost.

This is the labours of Sysiphus.....just going round in circles instead of uphill.

Duckling back in my life, I think

Since DB decided to 'end the friendship' a few months ago, I have been through patches of missing her a lot, and of relief at the lack of intensity. I am asocial, I have friends, but with a lot more space mormally. When I finished being hurt, I was relieved, more than anything else.
She sent the odd text message - I decided that they hurt too much to reply to. Then about two weeks ago, she SMS'd, I replied, we've been kind of taking it easy. And we'll have coffee on Monday. Nervous about it. She is one of my most intimate friends ever, but at the same time, she is almost too demanding. I want the friendship, but not the pressure - it's more intimacy and sociability than I can cope with. Yet it's an integral part of our friendship.
Best bit though, is that she is almost well. Everything sorted except some anxiety,and she is on Ativan for that. Key indicator? She is only seeing p-doc once a month, which means that he agrees that she is doing ok.

I need to write about Twiglet - yet another new member of the family - but need to do an update for her for the Andy-fund. So will cheat and borrow that for the blog.

today sucks bigtime - except

Saw gynae for annual checkup last week. Mentioned really really heavy periods for first 3 days. Ended up having D&C plus strange IUD inserted under GA this morning. How convenient - same hospital as p-doc, so once I was awake, could go for weekly appt with him.

If I wasn't feeling shit enough, I can now add dropping Nardil. Another 4 months wasted. So now we are looking at Ketamine - something I picked up as experimental last year. Now looking reputable enough to try. What's the point.It wont work either.

Good bit was that I kissed him on cheek - as my birthday gift. Not what I dream of, but better than nothing.Yo....fantasies!

i hate gmail. and google. and blogger

I signed up for gmail to flirt with someone I'd met online. What I didn't realise was that it was going to fiddle with everything else, make me change user id's, give me screens full of cr*p before I got where I used to be able to go straight away. Mess up my blogger and make me sign on again all over the place. Just, just..ANNOY me with almost everything it does!

I swear, this flirtation is proceeding slowly because he is in the middle of a major work project, but seeing as we know each others names already, I think I'm giving him a week to put up, shut up or just go back to using my normal email! And then we'll have to see if we can fix the bloggery, googly bits back to how I like them.