Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Sunday, April 29, 2007 Back to Reality M. Small is finally getting old enough that we can do yard work without waiting for his nap or a visit to his grandparents to get him out of the way. A couple of weeks ago, Trash and I were busily clearing out the overgrown patch of land in the back yard next to our garage. M. Small was outside with us, but he wasn't running around or making a lot of noise, which is usually a sign of trouble. But every time we looked up, he was busily playing with his giant Legos at his picnic table on the deck. For a good half hour he entertained himself in this fashion while we worked. Why he had to discover this diversion while we were clearing brush and not just sitting on the patio drinking beer was beyond me. No matter how distracted he gets, however, there always seems to be something to prevent us from finishing all the yard work we want to finish on a weekend. Like it starts raining, or my parents invite us out to take a ride on their boat, or we get too tired out, or the sun goes down and we can't see what we're doing any more But yesterday, I don't know what happened. M. Small went out with us in the morning to water the grass seeds, and he never seemed to want to go inside He was perfectly happy to hang out with us while we did whatever, only making one or two dashes toward the street that we had to abort. Trash watered her new plants out front, and dug up our sinking paving stones so she could put new dirt under them and raise them up to a more usable level. Meanwhile, I raked up the past month's worth of leaves and lawn thatch so the back yard looked like a vacuumed green carpet. The only problem with that is that even after six or so years of re-seeding the backyard grass every damn spring, that green carpet still has some threadbare areas. Like roughly a third of the yard. Still, when the snow melted a few weeks ago, it revealed that we had the most surviving grass we've had back there since the year we moved in. My theory continues to be that if I seed every year and keep it alive for as much of the summer as possible, there'll be more to start with the next spring. So far the theory is holding up. While the back yard is 66% grass now, it was only about 65% grass at this time last year. At this rate, I'll have a little more grass each year until M. Small is old enough for me to make it his problem. In the meantime, I'll just continue seeding and watering every spring. It's always a race to get the grass to come up before the giant maple in the back grows leaves and creates a highly localized nuclear winter in our yard that even "shady" grass seed can't survive. We have hopes for this year, however, because we're having someone come to trim that giant maple way back. We would have done it anyway, since its branches practically brush M. Small's new bedroom window and we really don't want any kind of Poltergeist situation arising during the summer's first thunderstorm. This year's crop of grass seed's been down for two weeks, and it's already coming up in spots. Other spots, not so much, but I'm still optimistic. Almost every year, we get a few weeks of having the whole back yard looking rich and verdant. And then something happens, like I miss a day of watering, or I mow too soon, or we get a hailstorm that hammers it all flat, or the maple leaves come in and the grass doesn't get any sunlight until Halloween. I keep waiting to see what's going to kill it this year, An earthquake? A brush fire? Trash and I getting involved in yard work for ten minutes while M. Small is quiet and busy, and then we look up to find that he's been yanking it all out in great fistfuls? But I suppose it has to come up first, which might not happen at all. See, I'm trying to keep a positive attitude. And then we can work on resurrecting the front yard, which the construction from last fall pretty much killed. posted by M. Giant 9:00 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:
We had a similar problem with our (much smaller) lawn. A ten foot high fir tree was killing off the grass that tried to grow in our 10x8 Philadelphia "lawn".
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Why not mulch over the shady area where the grass won't grow? As long as you don't pile it up around the base of the trunk, mulch is better for the tree's root system because it holds more moisture than bare dirt. Also, it is less work (except for hauling the mulch) and gives you an area to experiment with shade-tolerant ground covers. If the ground cover dies, like the grass, then it was obviously not meant to live there. Like the grass.
By Thursday, April 26, 2007 M. Small and I ran into Dr. M. at the Apple Store tonight. "I just bought a Nano," she told us. "You mean I just bought a Nano," I refrained from saying. Actually that didn't even occur to me at the time, and I'm glad, because Dr. M. is the bomb. Maybe when I bring Turtle in for her appointment tomorrow I'll give Dr. M an iTunes gift card or something. Or would that be too apple-polishing of me? Now I wish that hadn't occurred to me, either. posted by M. Giant 8:18 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:I don't think that would be a suck up at all. Even though you are undoubtedly paying out the wazoo for Turtles services, it doesn't mean you can't appreciate Dr. M and recognize that with a small gift. So glad to hear that Turtle is doing well!
By Wednesday, April 25, 2007 Turning Turtle Part III For various scheduling reasons, I had to bring M. Small along with us to the vet on Friday evening for Turtle’s latest round of bloodwork. He was fine at first, because he likes seeing the puppies and the kitties in the waiting room and asking the people behind the counter, “Do you have a sticker for me?” (they always do). I usually bring him when we’re just buying cat food, but this time he understood why it was the three of us. “Turtle has to go to the doctor,” he explained to me. “She’s not feeling berry well any more.” When a veterinary tech came to bring Turtle’s pet carrier into the back to weigh her and get her blood drawn, M. Small protested, “No, don’t take my kitty!” We explained that Turtle would be right back, and that they needed to check on her. M. Small seemed to accept this, but he still seemed to consider it a poignant moment. “They took my friend away,” he sadly told another cat-parent in the waiting room a few minutes later. I love how he makes it sound like he’s living in 1930s Poland. When Turtle returned a few minutes later, Dr. M. delivered the good news that she’d regained two pounds since I’d first brought her in (Turtle, not Dr. M). I said that I was out of some of Turtle’s meds, so the vet asked me to wait for the blood results before she decided whether to send me home with more. I was fine with this. Turtle didn’t protest either. M. Small? Not so much. His interest in the puppy and kitty toys you can buy there wasn’t very long-lived. Neither was his interest in the waiting-room storybooks I attempted to read to him. You know those horrible parents who let their kids scream and run around in public places? M. Small didn’t have a lot of patience for sitting around. He wasn’t going to submit quietly to not being able to explore. I’m saying there was going to be either running or screaming, and it was up to me to find the balance. Fortunately, he’s cute. For a short time, he was distracted by the fact that the blanket in Turtle’s carrier happened to be one of his old baby blankets. Any concern over Turtle’s well-being took second priority to his sudden and overwhelming need to repossess it and wrap himself in it. Sorry you’re not feeling berry well, Turtle. Enjoy lying on your bare plastic floor. After what seemed like about three hours, Dr. M. came out into the lobby to talk to me. I wasn’t there, because M. Small had just made a break down the hallway that leads to the dog exam rooms. But I was able to nab him and we quickly returned to hear the news. And the news was good. Turtle was better. Not entirely better, mind you. But after a week on Prednisolone instead of Prednisone, her red blood cell count stopped stagnating and went up from 15 to 27 in a week. Apparently a well-placed “lo” makes all the difference. This is good because 27 is in the normal range. Dr. M. agreed with me that this was amazing. M. Small also had an urgent matter to discuss with Dr. M. “I got wet! I got wet! I got wet! I got wet in the sprinkler! [actually a spraying leak in a splice between garden hoses, but never mind]” Somehow over his racket I was able to follow what she was saying. The bottom line for me is that for now, Turtle only gets one pill per day. Do you realize what an improvement one pill per day represents over the previous dosage, which was four to five pills and a squirt of liquid antibiotics twice per day? It’s an improvement, I’ll tell you that. It means the difference between six or seven protracted battles each day and one protracted battle each day. Although we’re a little more evenly matched now that she’s gained two pounds back. This was the first time I’d ever seen Dr. M. laugh. I don’t know if it was because a toddler was hollering into her face or relief at how much better Turtle is doing, Frankly, I’ll accept either one. posted by M. Giant 3:16 PM 13 comments 13 Comments:Yea, Turtle!!!!!!! So very happy to read the good news!!
By Yes! Great news for Turtle and for M. Small.
By Gooooooo, Turtle! That's awesome news.
By Instead of fighting over pills with a cat, get this product called "Pill Pockets." They're treats that you can fit a pill inside. I could never get meds into my cat before I got these, but now he eats them with no problem. Wish I had known about these 15 years ago (he's a really old cat).
By That's great news! We found that the "lo" makes a difference with our asthmatic cat also. The prednisolone works like a charm, prednisone not so much. The vet told us that cats typically respond better to prednisolone.
By Hooray for Turtle!!! And thank you SO much for the coffee that just came out my nose when I read the bit about M Small's 1930s Polish experience... ;)
By Yay, Turtle! I've been rotating back to keep posted on her condition and am very pleased to hear her news. Thank you for writing so amusingly about the good, the bad and the indifferent.
By Yay! I'm so glad she's doing better, and equally happy that you only have to shove one pill per day down her throat. Everyone goes home happier!
By That's great that Turtle is doing so much better and yay for less meds! You should get hazard pay for all the pills you had to stuff down her gullet.
By Sorry to be a killjoy (really should have gotten Pamie's Wonder Killer shirt awhile back), but I think it's actually a well-placed "ol," not "lo." They probably added an alcohol group (oxygen and hydrogen) onto the structure of Prednisone. So it's actually some well-placed alcohol, which I think helps a lot of things. No matter what that ol/lo is, yea Turtle!
By As a good friend of mine likes to say, "Prednisolone is the shizzolone." (Did I spell that right?) We joke that this particular drug was named by Dr. Snoop Dogg.
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Yay! I love happy ending kitty stories. My kitty was recently sick and it was amazing how sad it made our house feel until he was himself again.
By That's wonderful news! I'm so glad Turtle is better.
By Saturday, April 21, 2007 Air Head The last few days, I've been enjoying something I'd almost forgotten how to do: breathing. I'd been battling a cold for the last couple weeks (if one can be said to be "battling" anything when lying around feeling sorry for oneself), plus springtime allergies. As a result, my nose became a snot-spigot stuck in the "on" position. I was going through tissue boxes at an alarming rate. And then, last Friday night, my teeth started hurting. I thought it was just one too many Gobstoppers that day and didn't worry about it, since I have a dentist appointment coming up soon anyway. It's not like a low-grade ache in my upper molars was going to deteriorate all that much in the next few days anyway. When I woke up Monday morning, the pain in my upper jaw was gone. But then somehow, the exertion of getting dressed and getting ready and getting to work brought it roaring back, to the point where at 9:30 in the morning, I could hardly see. I was wondering if I had somehow cracked a tooth all the way up to the roots. Funny, it didn't feel loose at all. Still, how was I going to make it to my dentist appointment in this kind of agony? Then I realized that the pain was actually more like below my cheekbone instead of above my teeth. And my admittedly vague understanding indicated that I had a sinus or two passing through that area. I also realized I'd never had a sinus infection before, and thus didn't know what one felt like. I wondered if that was what I was having now, and not some kind of catastrophic dental emergency after all. Because that would be awesome. At ten a.m. on Monday, I told my boss I was going to the Minute Clinic. She thought that was a great idea. I don't know if you have Minute Clinics where you are, but they are absolutely excellent if you go in already knowing what's wrong with you. I walked about four blocks in the skyway to this little storefront office smaller than a convenience store. There's a little waiting room in front and an equally little exam room in back. After about a ten-minute wait while other people were seen, I got my turn and told the LPN that I thought I had a sinus infection. She asked me a few questions, shone lights into all of my cranial orifices, and said, yep, you nailed it. She wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic, which I went and had filled at the downtown Target an hour later. I did ask about painkillers, and she suggested some OTC ibuprophen. I suppose that given the speed, convenience, and value I was getting, I was sort of pushing my luck if I was hoping to get any Vicodin. Maybe if I'd bitched about it being more like a Five-Minute Clinic. But the ibuprophen I mooched off a coworker took most of the edge off while I waited for the antibiotics to do their thing. Dude, those antibiotics worked. Cleared me right out. Not right away, mind you. But on Tuesday morning on my way to work, I blew my nose at a red light and by the time I was finished with that tissue it was so heavy that my car started listing to one side. Later that morning, the most amazing thing happened: I could feel air moving behind my face. It was the most remarkable sensation. One becomes used to effectively carrying around a fifteen-pound bucket of phlegm on one's shoulders, and forgets that the proper term is "nasal passages," not "nasal plugs." Whereas before, my sinuses were all but permanently clogged with stubborn goo that even the most assiduous blowing could not fully clear, they now feel like mighty, open wind tunnels where engineers might test aircraft prototypes. The space between my ears feels like it has its own weather system. I'm not constantly wondering where my next box of tissues is coming from. I can even, for long stretches of time, breathe with my mouth closed. But should I be worried that my teeth are still kind of sore? posted by M. Giant 9:03 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
Dude, you're going to annoy the NPs if you call them LPNs. These are not folks to be trifled with, either.
By I always know when I have a temperature because my teeth ache. So maybe you have a low-grade fever accompanying your infection?
By Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Hot Mess Lunch The advantage of having both Trash and myself working downtown is that there are literally dozens, if not scores, of places where we can walk from our offices and buy something for lunch. The disadvantage of having both Trash and myself working downtown is that there are literally dozens, if not scores, of places where we can walk from our offices and buy something for lunch. It's convenient and tasty, but potentially very expensive. You can't buy even a decent fast-food lunch downtown for less than six bucks, plus most of these places have a tip jar out as well. Part of the jacked-up prices is from the amount of rent that businesses have to pay to maintain space in the Skyway. And part of it is the "stadium tax" for that new baseball park that nobody ever asked us if we wanted (oh, wait, they did ask us, like a hundred times, and we said no every time, and then they got tired of asking us and decided to build it anyway, in part by raising my property taxes, and will I ever so much as get a free ticket to a Twins game or fifty cents off an eight-dollar beer? I will not). So anyway, one of the money-saving things Trash and I like to do around the house is spend a little time every weekend making our lunches for the coming week. Hang on just a second. I'll get back to the entry after I look at the beginning of that first sentence again, and chuckle to myself about how it makes it sound like we churn our own butter and make clothes for M. Small out of dryer lint. So, yes, we generally make our lunches for the week on weekends. Trash is really the mastermind of the whole effort, coordinating which pan goes on which burner and who's bringing what which day, while I generally have my hands full just keeping something stirred. It sounds like a big, hairy effort, but usually within an hour we're putting lids on the plastic food containers to stick in the fridge, and only forty-five minutes of that hour is spent looking for those lids. Part of what makes it easier is the slow cooker. It's especially handy for roast and veggies. On Saturday night you brown a roast, stick it in the crock pot with some potatoes and carrots and mushrooms and onions, add seasonings and various fluids, and scoop it all out into containers at some point on Sunday. Tasty treat sensation. Trash, being a vegetarian, doesn't eat the roast, which leaves more for me. She likes the veggies, though, which I can take or leave. It's really win-win, except for the roast (which is getting into reasons why Trash is a vegetarian, so we'll leave it at that). The only problem is getting enough seasoning in there so it tastes like anything when it's finished. I learned how to make roasts in a roaster pan in the oven, not by essentially boiling them for twelve hours. You can't be shy with the seasonings. Last weekend, I wasn't. We've got these big, Sam's Club-sized plastic containers of garlic salt, garlic powder and onion powder that looked like they were going to last forever until we started using them on slow-cooker roasts. There's no finesse here. Pretty much all you do is open the shaker side of the plastic lid, tip the bin upside down over the crock pot, and give it a couple of hearty squeezes. You know you have enough seasoning when the top edge of the crock pot looks like it's been in a room where someone's sanding drywall. Except last week, I accidentally opened up the wrong side of the plastic lid on the garlic powder container. That is to say, the spoon side. Suddenly my roast was obliterated by a garlicky snowdrift. I heard vampires screaming from seven miles away. I was able to spoon some of it back out (and it was on there thick enough that the first few scoops went, uncontaminated, right back into the container), but I was still pretty certain that underseasoning wasn't going to be a problem this time. Sure enough, when we decanted it into the Tupperware that night, we tasted it and agreed that it was "a little strong." Trash was especially disappointed because the consistency of the gravy was perfect, and that never happens in the slow cooker. "Well, all that garlic powder thickens it up nice," I pointed out. I'm not entirely ashamed to say that I didn't brown-bag it every day last week, even though I was sick on Tuesday and on vacation on Friday. Next week? Maybe we'll just bring frozen burritos or something. posted by M. Giant 3:33 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:My mom did that with cayenne pepper once. After that, ALWAYS pour seasoning into your hand first, THEN into the pot!
By One time I killed my sister's goldfish by doing that with fishfood.
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The perfect crock pot - pot roast ) or as my family calls it, the 1 pound pot):
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I invented a recipe for garlic butter a couple of weeks ago that I sold for a very nice sum of money to Iran and North Corea.
By Mine involves the roast, 2 sliced onions, the veggies, a bottle of beer (excellent tenderizer) and heaping spoonfuls of whatever spices smell good - often cumin, corriander, some dried hot pepper and some black cardamom pods. But really, I think the beer is the secret for the delicious taste.
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Beer is totally the secret ingredient.
By Sunday, April 15, 2007 Feed the Need M. Small has a few current obsessions, and all of them were encouraged when we went down to Iowa to visit his grandma this weekend. Hot Air Balloons The town where Trash's mom lives has a hot air balloon museum. We went there on our last visit and got M. Small a pair of socks, but one of them has since disappeared and M. Small's plaintive cries of "hot air balloon socks!" every other time we dress him have become tiresome. Se we stopped in again to look at the pictures and the balloon baskets while Trash bought him a case of replacement socks. He was very glad to be making a return visit to what he called the "balloon-seum." The town also has an annual balloon festival at the end of July, and on our way out of town we asked M. Small if he'd like to go. "Yes!" he cried. "Let's go now! Turn around!" Drums We stopped in at the locally-owned music store just up the street from grandma's house, where he tapped his hands on a few of the drum kits and ended up leaving with a baseball cap that advertises Zildjian cymbals. I'm not sure we got all the way home with that, though, so maybe that's a bad example. Also, as we were walking along the huge wall of guitars, he asked, "Where are the violins?" So like me, and yet so different. Fans M. Small is still fascinated with fans, although not quite with his original religious fervor. But one of his most exciting finds at the music store was a window fan, so they still hold his interest. One thing we've always wanted to do on one of these Iowa trips was stop by one of the giant wind farms on I-35. If M. Small is obsessed with the five-foot tall fan at church, our reasoning went, just imagine how he would react to a close-up view of a two-hundred-foot high wind turbine, let alone hundreds of them covering several square miles. Unfortunately, the timing has never quite worked out (largely because we prefer to drive at night, while he's sleeping). But this time, we left Great Grandma's house in Des Moines when there was still over an hour of daylight left. M. Small spent much of this hour trying to convince us to stop at a McDonald's instead of falling asleep like we'd expected. But then shortly after the sun dipped below the horizon, I got off the freeway and pulled the car over on the side of a dirt road next to a field. We were about a hundred yards from the nearest wind turbine, its eighty-foot blades whirling lazily above us, with ranks and ranks of its brothers stretching off to the horizon in both directions. "I SEE A FAN!" M. Small said. "I SEE ANOTHER FAN! I SEE ANOTHER FAN!" We sat there in the car for a few minutes, admiring all the majesty, and then drove on. Exhausted by his rapture, M. Small fell asleep in the car seat and didn't really wake up again until eight this morning in his crib at home. Fire Engines After visiting a real, live firehouse a couple of weeks ago and actually getting to sit inside a real, live fire engine, M. Small has been informing us regularly that when he grows up, he will be a firefighter. His activities will, he will gladly tell you, include driving the fire engine, dinging the bell, climbing the ladder, and, of course, putting out fires. Gifts from his grandmother this weekend included a toy ambulance, (yet another) toy fire engine, and a rescue helicopter. The helicopter has a little spring-loaded button on the side of the fuselage that you can press to make the rotors turn. Basically, it's all of M. Small's obsessions in one handy, portable package. It goes in the air! It has spinning blades! Firefighters ride in it! M. Small even made up his own little cheer: "Holla, holla, holla, helicopter!" If I can just figure out a way to attach a crash cymbal to it, it'll be perfect. posted by M. Giant 7:06 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:
My little brother was obsessed with fans when he was young. One year for Halloween, my dad took apart a small fan and attached the front part to a belt. Add one mask and black pajama pants, and Danny went around that year as the "Fan-tom of the Opera." My dad also wrote a book for/about him called "Dan's Fans," in which the narrator (my brother) expressed his desire to be a fan when he grew up.
By Balloon-seum? He came up with that by himself? He has mad language skillz!
By Tuesday, April 10, 2007 Bam-Bam and Band-Anns You think you know M. Small from reading this blog. You see a tall, beautiful, blue-eyed tyke who always talks in complete sentences and never drops a single R down the front of his adorable little outfits, let alone the occasional stray pea. But I'm afraid he isn't quite perfect.  There are days he gets into what I call "Bam-Bam mode," where he's basically grabbing and throwing and breaking and disassembling and scattering everything he can get his hands on, and then spitting grape juice on it. There have been evenings where we've been doing nothing but constantly following him from one mess to another, and while we're cleaning up one, he's already made the next. Just prevent the first mess, you say? Well, fine, in theory, but that first mess is a little something I like to call "breakfast." And then, during one of his several "time-outs" of the day in the back bedroom, he makes use of the time not to reflect on what he's done and why it was wrong, but to strip the bed and put his muddy shoes on the fitted sheet. "Sorryyy!" he sings gleefully as he upends a box of crayons. Bam-Bam mode takes away a tiny part of the guilt over how lucky we got to get such a great kid overall. So does this: M. Small has a bad toe shape. That probably sounds like something that would be noticed by dog show judges and nobody else, but it has practical implications. Because of the shape of his big toes, M. Small is growing up with a tendency to get ingrown toenails. We've already had each foot get infected once, and combined with his plaintive reports of "my toe hurts" during this period, it's not something we want to put him through again. So each evening and each night, we apply little bandages with a drop of antibiotic ointment to each toe. His "Band-anns," as he calls them, have become as familiar to him as his socks and shirt. He needs to soak in a warm bath almost every night, as opposed to who-knows-how-many kids his age who just get hosed down in the backyard twice a month whether they need it or not. And then after his bath I do his Band-anns (just as Trash did them at breakfast that morning), and we have a little bit of fun looking at who's on them tonight. The past few months it's mostly been Cars characters (Lightning the Queen, Blue Car, and Tow Truck the Mater), but today we switched to Winnie the Pooh. I had to think fast to come up with an explanation as to why Eeyore looked sad. You can't exactly tell a two-and-a-half year old what clinical depression is (especially after a full day spent in Bam-Bam mode). Last week, at our doctor's recommendation, Trash took M. Small to a pediatric surgeon to see what could be done. The good news is that he doesn't have to have surgery to correct it, at least not for a while. I admit I don't relish the thought of changing his Band-anns every day for the next three-quarters of a decade. I hold out a faint hope that he'll be able to manage that last year mostly by himself, albeit with some prompting from us. It's a pain, but we're still incredibly lucky with what we got. Toe bandages certainly aren't something to go all Eeyore over. posted by M. Giant 4:44 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Ahhh poor M. Small! I've had two or three supposedly one-shot deal toe surgeries (same thing...) - I've got abnormally large toenail beds, as opposed to weird shaped toes. Keep the Epsom salts on hand - and don't trim his nails too short!
By I love the picture of M. Small, and I don't believe he is ever anything but an angel.
By Saturday, April 07, 2007 Turning Turtle II: A Turn for the Worse There was good news and bad news at Turtle's last visit to the vet this week. The good news was that she's gained a little weight back, her spleen felt a little smaller, her nose and gums looked pinker, and the heart murmur she'd developed as a result of having such thin blood had gotten quieter. The bad news arrived when the bloodwork came back. The week before, her red blood cell count had risen from twelve to eighteen, well on its way to a more normal and healthy twenty. This week, the count had dropped back down to fourteen. Even when Dr. M. double-checked it and even sent it to another lab. Dammit. Dr. M. decided that we not only needed to up Turtle's daily dosage of Prednisone, but also put her on a new immunosuppressant to keep her body from destroying her red blood cells. If she were a dog, we could just train her not to destroy her red blood cells and that would be that, but after about three hours of sitting on the couch, shooting Turtle with a spray bottle every time a corpuscle went kaput, I realized I was wasting both of our time. Nothing for it but to continue the medication. So now, twice a day, Turtle gets: 1. One Predisone tablet. 2. One half of one Prednisone tablet, in addition to the previously mentioned full tablet. This counts as number two because while it's not a full tablet, it's still a second independent object that I have to get inside of her. 3. One immunosuppressant capsule. This is a round capsule that's just big enough to irritate her yet just small enough to make it impossible to cut open and sprinkle its contents on tasty food (which she probably would not then eat anyway). 4. Half a milliliter of an antibiotic liquid suspension. In addition to which, once a day she also gets: 5. One quarter of a tablet of something that's supposed to keep her stomach from getting upset by all the drugs I keep cramming into it. Dr. M. feels bad about all the medicine I have to give Turtle. She even gave me some little chicken-flavored pockets for hiding pills in. It's certainly not her fault that Turtle doesn't like those even when they don't have pills in them. The pills are the easiest, believe it or not. All I do is place one hand across the top of her head, force her jaw open, and place the pills way back on the back of her tongue so she can't spit them out. I try to do this at least two pills at a time in order to limit the number of trips I have to make into there. She recovers quickly after the first insertion, but the more I have to do it, the more upset she gets. Please do not take that last sentence out of context. When I was talking to Dr. M. about this on the phone, she said that although she feels bad about all the pills, at least the antibiotic is easy because it's fish-flavored and Turtle should like it. "Oh, no, she hates that most of all," I said brightly. And it's true. Her reaction to the allegedly fish-flavored sludge I squirt into her mouth is considerably stronger than that of any of the pills. While a pill will cause her to work her jaws for up to two full seconds, she'll theatrically cough and spit and hack like Bill the Cat for minutes after the liquid dosage. In fact, I have to leave an interval between the pills and the goo, because otherwise she'll cough up the whole mess shortly thereafter. And if there's anything worse than sticking four pill fragments down the throat of an unwilling cat, it's sticking the same four pill fragments down the same throat of the same, now even more unwilling cat, after the pills have been thoroughly coated in green-brown slime. At first I wondered if it wasn't the flavor she objected to, but just the fact of any liquid being squirted into her mouth at all. Here's how I tested that theory: Strat is now in his fourth year of living with diabetes, thank you, and twice a day he gets a dollop of soft food before his insulin shot. Turtle and Phantom (collectively, "the girls") share what he leaves behind. The other night, Turtle was already burying her snout into Strat's leftovers. I happened to have her evening dose of antibiotic all ready to go in the plunger thingy, so I squirted it onto the soft food. She looked at me like, Why'd you have go and ruin a perfectly good treat? I picked up the little bowl and stirred the stuff in to even it out, which seemed to improve it enough in her eyes for her to grace it with one small lick. And then she stepped back and stared at me balefully. I prepared another dose of antibiotic, explaining, "You can either eat that food with the medicine in it, or I can squirt this into your mouth. Your choice." Do what you have to do, her basilisk glare replied. So I did. She coughed and spit and hacked. The next morning, the soft food was still there. I don't know how long I want to keep doing this (actual answer: two weeks less than I already have been). But today, M. Small said something we've never once talked to him about. While I was downstairs with him, he heard Strat up in his room, meowing over the baby monitor. "That's your kitty," he told me. "Strat." He added, "Phantom is Mommy's kitty. My kitty is Turtle." So I'll keep doing it for as long as it takes. Labels: Fuck labels. posted by M. Giant 7:13 PM 6 comments6 Comments:
You are just the best dad. I wish Turtle all the best, of course, but M. Small is super-duper CRAZY lucky to have you and Trash.
By I sympathize so much -- my dog ( 120-pound Great Pyrenees) had the same attacking-her-own-red-blood-cells thing -- we discovered it when she started bruising all over -- if we'd been 12 hours later she would have been gone. Prednisone, antinausea pills, the whole works. The good news is she recovered in about 3 weeks and lived a long and healthy life, with no recurrence. It was three really rough weeks, though. Hang in there. Turtle sounds like a fighter.
By
You have my sympathies. I remember when my kids were young how difficult it was to explain a pet's illness.
By I really enjoy your blog and wanted you to know how much pleasure your writing gives -- and "Come on, Turtle!"
By Java didn't like those pill pockets either (and they're expensive!) - but he was fine with soft treats (like Whisker Lickin's) smooshed around the pill. Plus, we figured - extra calories - what the heck! Worked like a charm.
By My father had a disease similar to this - myelodysplastic syndrome - and a course of stepped down prednisone did the trick. It completely reversed the anemia & its related issues and put the syndrome into remission. I hope the same happens for Turtle!
By Wednesday, April 04, 2007 Inside Out I have to sleep barefoot, no matter how cold it is. Sometimes I'll go to bed still shivering from a recent dash outside and leave my socks on, but even then they're off before I go to sleep. I don't know if it's because my feet get too warm or if it's a form of claustrophobia. I can really only ever sleep in a big t-shirt and floppy flannel pajama bottoms. I know this about myself. And yet, it's nearly impossible to look at a toddler in his footie pajamas with anything other than envy. M. Small would now like to show you a few of his favorite jam-jams. First up are his Elmo pajamas, which are a festive purple with red Elmos all over them, doing things that I don't care to examine too closely. Here they are, properly accessorized with a clean paintbrush and a half-eaten biscuit (we're lucky it's not the other way around):  Here's an eye-catching number with wide, bold stripes in red, white, and varying shades of blue. It's easily his most visible sleeping outfit, and I'm surprised it doesn't keep him up at night:  And here he is in what appears at first glance to be blue camouflage, but which on closer examination turns out to be a crazy pattern of overlapping human figures in various athletic poses, like an orgy at SportMart:  Noticing a pattern? So did we, but it was a different pattern. It's been a while since he's reliably gone right to sleep when we put him down at bedtime. Most nights he's able to keep himself entertained in those last waking minutes with a running monologue of whatever's going through his head at any given moment. And sometimes the little commentaries that reached us over the baby monitor were a bit more external in nature: "I'm still awake!" "I took my jam-jams off!" "I took my diaper off!" "I got it all over!" It wasn't so bad -- although slightly worry-making -- on nights when he would quietly strip to his diaper and we would find him fast asleep on his mattress with all the blankets on the floor, exposing himself to the elements. Less optimal were the nights when we would go in and find him hopping up and down in only his t-shirt next to a damp Rorschach blot on his sheet (and blankets, and half the stuffed animals) that couldn't possibly have come from his sippy cup. Changing his sheets every night quickly grew tiresome, as did the differing cleaning instructions on his stuffed caterpillar, stuffed hippo, stuffed Curious George, ad infinitum. We thought about only putting him in PJs that snap at the neck, but he doesn't have many of those in his size any more. We were considering safety pins and, failing that, a padlock. Fortunately, a friend of Trash who has a three-year-old came to visit a couple of weeks ago, and she had a simple yet elegant solution that had saved her sanity during this stage of her son's toddlerhood: put the pajamas on inside out. Then he can't get to the zipper, can't take them off, can't remove his diaper (or pull-up, as of late), and can't leave a warm, slippery puddle for us to step in when we enter his room to see how much air he's getting on his impatient vertical leaps. And it's working. But do you think he's onto us? 
posted by M. Giant
9:21 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:Wow! From his pictures you can tell he is going to be tall. When I was around M. Small's age (or one day, M. Tall!), the doctor put me at ninety-fifth percentile for height. Many growth spurts later, I'm 5'11". Here's looking up at you, kid! --Lila
By
Also entirely aside from the cute jammy pictures: I just said (verbatim) aloud to my husband, "I can't believe how big he is already" - as though we knew you all in real life. That sounds like a great solution to me - I was going to toss out "duct taping his diapers", in all my non-parental wisdom.
By
And a third person who pulled up Velcrometer, looked at the pictures, and announced to her husband "Look how tall he is getting! He is going to be as tall as his daddy."
By
You can also just try putting the diaper on backwards. Somebody gave me that advice, and it worked. He was potty-trained by the time he figured out how to take them off that way, anyway.
By We did use duct tape on our son's diapers for a while. Thankfully, potty training came soon after...
By OK - the last picture is to.die.for. I am totally in love with your little boy.
By
Is that one of the big green vanilla-scented Soothie pacis?
By I still sleep with my nightwear inside out, although it's so my princess-and-the-pea-like skin won't be irritated by seams and labels. Itchy!
By ha! In that last photo, he looks just like a young Sinatra, saying hello to an admirer as he strolls into the Sands before the 10:30 show.
By
You sure do have a clever boy. I never did think of turning a set of pajamas inside out.
By 
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