It's nearly three in the morning and my alarm is set to go off in a couple of hours. This will not be the refreshed, renewed first day back from break one would hope for. Luckily, this week is just reviews and essay writing before the exams, and a few rushed video clips to fill in some gaps that came with the snow day and technical problems.
(The threat of said technical problems is the reason I'm going in a bit early. If my classroom computer has died again, we'll need to go to Worksheetville. The question is, will the school have any paper or toner so I can quickly make some up?)
I messed up my sleep schedule, but I always mess up my sleep schedule. Mike messed up his, too, but he is responding nicely to the Tylenol PM. For some reason, it doesn't work on me. Simply Sleep, which is supposedly just Tylenol PM without the painkiller, works fine... but I goofed up and bought the Tylenol PM. Ever since, Mike keeps trying to put Simply Sleep in the basket, but I'd rather be a tiny bit insane with exhaustion than go unpunished for my sloppy thinking. (Which was probably fuzzy from lack of sleep in the first place.)
It's been a mixed-bag of a break. The car problem wasn't expected and took all day to fix, but at least it was straightforward. Edith leaving us was expected, despite her parents and brother still living the cozy life, but I was so sad at having put of hamster Christmas photos to the last minute that then I didn't want to take them if Edith was going to miss out. And Terry so recently, too.
Still, it made me smile to hang up the ornament we bought when he first got sick. At the time I worried that it was an arrogant display of hope, or maybe a morbid memorial before the fact. I wondered what I'd be thinking when Christmas did come, if it was going to be a reminder of a bad patch or a sad patch. I'm glad that, in the end, I was just pleased to have it, even if it's blurry here:
Edith's brother, Sherman, is living enough for two at the moment. I expect, and I say this lightly but mean every word, that he'll Be Done any moment now. He's running in the wheels and saucer day and night. Sometimes hamsters do this near the end (we call it The Push), but in this case I think it's because we've been letting him play Noseys with Judith and he's All Riled Up. (My, how fond I am of capital letters this morning.) Just noses touching, nothing too pervy. She is a pre-teen to his geriatric self, but it's not unlike Peter O'Toole and Mariel Hemingway in that one movie. (Pause for half a minute to make sure I've got the right granddaughter. Poor Margaux.) There's an attraction there.
I think Sherman is too old to suddenly take up all this jogging, especially if he thinks it's going to impress Judith or perhaps even cause him to eventually locomote closer to her. Judith is an innocent doll with us, right into the hand and looking up for a cuddle, but she's a bit bossy with other girls and today was not in the mood for Noseys. She may end up being a career spinster, like June, who told off Sherman some months ago.
So, sometimes Sherman plays Noseys with Heidi. Yes, things have suddenly become very Laurie-Jo-Amy. And honestly, I think Sherman would play Noseys with Mary, too, because Sherman just loves other hamsters. At this rate he's going to die of happiness. And I'm not sure why I'm complaining, other than it's a bit much in one short period.
Because there's also Snorre, who is also happy and active, although for the opposite reason of having a rich inner life that we can only glimpse in his spazzy outer one. Tonight (last night) he tried to run in his saucer some more. Then he was in and out of the hand. Back in the saucer. In and out of the hand. Where is the hand? Where is the saucer? Repeat, repeat. Have some more seeds. Repeat.
Keep in mind that Snorre only uses two-and-a-half legs on a good day, so this is hard to watch, but he's cool about it, so again this is just me being selfish about things I love getting old and going away.
Which is why whatever's happened to Cricket is terribly unfair. She's not old. And, while it would be completely inaccurate to say I have any favourites, Cricket is a pride and joy. She's Dino from the Flintstones, ready to knock you over with affection when you come home or, in her sped-up world, walk by.
But something happened a few days ago and she took a turn. Became lethargic. Ignored us. Ran away from us. There was a day of grim silences and forced medicine. It's be one thing if she didn't want to be bothered, but it was like we were strangers and she was scared.
Today she woke up and went on alert when I came by. Good sign. I gently approached with the medicine and she took it with interest - a big change the day before, when it was desperate minute after minute of stressing her out while trying to wedge the drops past her clenched teeth. I made my hand available, but she batted at it and ran away.
Tonight she seems nearly normal except for not knowing us. She's messed about some in the sand and played with the new toilet paper roll. Her appetite is very good.
But, who the hell are these people?
She's no longer scared of us, but I still feel like she doesn't know me. She bats fussily then sniffs to see that we're still there, like a new but open-minded hamster who isn't sure what's going on yet. She'll walk onto the hand, but she'll leap away if the hand starts to move.
It's almost like how she was when she first came here. Curious, but completely unwilling to be picked up. I'm sure I mentioned at the time that we thought she'd never be a holdable hamster, so what a shocker when she ended up being THE holdable hamster, the one you - and I do not exaggerate - need only look at and she comes over to be picked up.
The question is: has she been rebooted, or reformatted?
We're giving her antibiotics for infection. I'm leaving out the part of the story where there was blood. "Wait! That seems like a big part of the story!" Well, blood often happens once or twice in a life to girl hammies. It's no doubt related, but since it was over by the time I noticed and could check her, I can't even tell what she was bleeding from. So we're back to the general purpose tactic of the antibiotics. And now she seems physically at ease, so maybe the rest will follow.
Of course, it was just a day or so before all of this that I remarked to Mike that maybe we were going to be lucky with Susan. Susan came into the household with a drinking problem. Alas, hers did not involve drunk dialing, unlike a number of men in Texas who called me over the break. Normally that would be an ego boost, except these were all strangers who got the clever idea to try dialing a certain risque combination of numbers which happens to be my cell phone number. I would change it, but it's good to have someone to shame over the school holidays when the kids are gone. (Still, when your little-known number rings at 3 a.m., you fear the worst. Then, stern comebacks over and the phone snapped shut, you're left with the residue of those thoughts.)
The vet said Susan either had a kidney problem or a form of diabetes that wouldn't show up on test strips. If the former, she had six months on the outside. If the latter, she might brush the average life expectancy, barring any other problems.
Six+ months have passed since we got Susan, who was already three+ months when she came home, so I was very happy. Then Cricket went off. Now hopefully she'll get better. I can't help but keep thinking about my mother's "sweetest kitten ever" who became ill with distemper. She came out of it, but as a she-devil, and she went on to spend nearly two decades as a legend of terror. I still remember waking up in the morning, fear cracking in my whisper as I called out to my cousin on the twin bed opposite. "Khristin?" "What?" "M-M-Mittens. Get help. She's sleeping on the end of the bed!"
I don't even remember how we got out of that one, because my cousin was too frightened to run past, sure the tabby would pounce. I seem to recall that I, heart sinking with the realization that it isn't always best to be the one who's a year older, did a count-of-three-and-jump, serving as a human shield to Khris as we blurred out of the room. Neither one of us was afraid of any cat or dog or critter. But Mittens was like a long-thought-extinct bog moggie, queenly and feral.
I don't know if rodents get distemper, but Cricket was a bit funny-headed to begin with, being so passionate about constant attention. So maybe anything can and will happen.
June got only a short mention earlier. She's running and eating and completely herself, but her tumour seems to be just that, and not any kind of infection. (No one really believed it would be, but the vet said the Baytril wouldn't hurt. So, we tried.) It's not getting bigger as far as I can tell, so I'll try not to think about it.
Kind of like Mike's osteoma. I probably haven't mentioned it at all in the three years since all the drama went down. I'd rather people think I was having an overractive dramatic moment than bring it back into our lives if it is content to stay away.
Mike didn't have the surgery. He seemed to improve. Now, he's been having problems in his face for about a month. This has been tried. That has been tried. A few obvious things still need to be tried.
If you've friended me on Facebook (and really, everyone should - I'm really the go-to person if you want pretend fish or shiny buttons), you know what happened last Friday. Actually, here's what happened last Monday, paraphrased and greatly shortened:
Nurse: "We have your X-ray results. You need to come in for a follow-up visit."
Mike: "I have an appointment on Friday. Can I come in sooner?"
Nurse: "Oh yes, here it is. Friday the 2nd at 4 p.m. No, we don't have anything else available - are you in pain right now?"
Mike (who is in pain every other day, but who wasn't right then and who was thinking like a tea party guest and not consumer/patient): "No, I'm okay. Friday the 2nd at 4 p.m."
Then they talked a bit about what the report from the lab said, which I thought was pretty decent of her, and Mike was able to tell that it's the same old osteoma, but maybe it's bigger now? 1.4 cm... how big was it before? Of course, his X-rays are in a closet somewhere back in Australia. (I still find it completely weird that patients keep their own X-rays there. Weird, but appealing.)
So, this whole break, Mike can't quite relax. Health is the only thing he worries about, and in this concern he makes up for being completely laid-back about everything else. (And when I say "health," I mean "discomfort." No one's cutting back on the post-Christmas chocolate markdowns around here, don't worry.) He can't stop messing with his face, wanting to reach into his nose and yank out a pressure that always feels just-about-almost-maybe-not-quite within reach. Friday was especially a writeoff as the whole day was spent waiting for this appointment and looking forward to making some progress with treatment.
We arrive a little early. I notice the sign saying that our doc's office will be closed. However, he shares an office with another doctor, so the door is open and the waiting room is out of available seats. I figure our doctor isn't open-open, but he's taking care of behind the scenes business and seeing a few patients.
Except no, he's closed, as the other doctor's receptionist tells us from two feet away after we've stood at the window for ten minutes. We call the office number, but it's just a machine saying to call 911 if there's an emergency. (Gone are the days of movies where people begged with answering services to please put the call through even if the doctor is at a party, huh?)
We go home, feeling a like there's got to be a rewind button somewhere, and assume there will be a message on the other voicemail, the computer voicemail, because even though we're on the same insurance and I gave her my cell number, maybe they thought that was just for me. Fair enough. Stupid us.
No message.
And now Mike is starting a new gig, taking a vacant position as his own classroom for rest of the year instead of subbing for another teacher, and this stupid thing that's been bobbing under the surface of our break is still there. Plus now there's the problem of getting a new appointment and me getting across town to take Mike after school, and not wanting to take any sick days because everything's crazy with end-of-semesterness and new-jobness. All stuff that could've been handled beautifully during break.
The alarm will be going off much sooner than when I started writing this, but at least my jaw has stopped shaking. Here, I thought I was in the Pepper & Arthur Club of "Nothing Wrong With Me 'Cept I'm Old 'n Fat," but I was reading myself to sleep and my jaw started shaking, like it was cold. Brrr! Brrrr! Brrrrr! Like that. Except I'm not cold. I think I just felt anxious. (GOSH, I WONDER WHY?) So, I started typing.
Now I feel better. (Thanks.) I have an open tab somewhere with some weblog award-nominee (I only looked because I like to know who's competing with my faves) making a post about how wanting a readership is an assumed part of blogging. Liking, enjoying, wondering about... sure, but wanting a readership. I don't see that as required at all. I seem to remember when it was even considered gauche to want one, because weren't we all just here for the free expression and gaggity-whateverness?
I like to write, but wanting a blog readership comes with too much responsibility for me, like proofreading and remembering to change the names. I'd love to pull a five-figure monthly income (or whatever Poop on Peeps claims) like Dooce, but then I'd have to be Dooce, and that takes work and edamame and a lack of birth control. (By the way, that's an income of cash, not readers. I''m sure the readership is even higher. That's a lot of remembering to insert fresh, original similes into every paragraph while quite literally balancing things on heads.)
So, I wrote all of this because writing is cathartic. I wrote it publicly because I don't mind sharing it, and I know it sometimes helps others to read someone else rambling and griping. (Whether they're reading it to be distracted from their own problems, to commiserate, to feel more smug about themselves, or to reformat it in Word for my inevitable commitment hearing is unimportant at this time.)
If anyone actually this whole post, well, thanks for listening. And sorry for any end-of-the-day-oops-it's-morning jumblyness. Now all this thinking is out here on my auxiliary brain, and I won't have to think about any of it until there's something new to process. Hope for happy neurons. The main brain's going to try to cat nap for 30 then begin the three-month march to Spring Break.
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