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This morning, this little dog showed up at my vet’s, apparently abandoned.

He’s apparently about two years old, friendly but calm, and very sweet. I’m not sure what’s up with the pink skin around his eyes; possibly it’s because his hair is completely, horribly matted — worse than anything I’ve ever seen in my life, the poor little guy. The mats are all down his back, on his belly, on both ears, and seem to gather up all the loose hair around and pull it tightly. Despite the obvious neglect and probable abandonment he’s been through, he seemed very happy just to lie on the floor and let me rub his shoulders and belly.

I’m seriously considering adopting him, if he and Nigel get along. I’m pretty sure that Nigel would love to have a companion, and given the state of the real estate market, it’s unlikely that I’ll be moving to a larger place with a yard during his probable lifetime. A little dog like Gizmo, as they’re calling him, is about as big as I probably should go. He seemed pretty laid-back, which is definitely good, and I loved his little pointy ears.

The thing is, it’s scary considering adopting another dog. I’ve never had more than one dog at a time; what if I screw it up? What if the pack dynamics are horrible? What if there are dangers in my flat that I’ve never noticed because Nigel doesn’t care about them (e.g., yarn), but the new dog finds irresistible and then gets hurt? What if I decide later it’s all a horrible mistake, and I can’t deal with it? (There were times in Nigel’s puppyhood, usually when he’d just taken the sheets off the bed and torn holes in the mattress, that I was convinced the whole thing was the worst mistake possible.) Do I have the time to do this properly, and make sure both Nigel and the new dog get what they need? Can I afford another dog right now, one with an unknown medical history and ongoing grooming needs, with my medical bills and the possibility that, as he ages, Nigel will continue to surprise me with $1000+ emergencies?

On the other hand, can I sit back and do nothing, if there’s a reasonable chance it could work out well?

This is bad timing. I’m leaving for the meeting tomorrow, and really should be asleep by now, but I’m too worked up. I don’t know what to do. The vet is holding him, though, and will give him and Nigel a chance to get to know each other. At least I’ve got a little time to decide, though I’ll hardly have a lot of mental energy to devote to the task.

(Access to the Internet will probably be spotty for a while. I’ll post when I can.)

In the vein of trying to get things sorted out before I leave for the meeting, I finally got around to getting a haircut. Probably about time, because it’s been . . . um, a really long time. I know I haven’t had a haircut since I moved into my flat, and that was just over four years ago. Consequently, the split ends and such meant that quite a bit needed to be chopped off:

The left image is, obviously, the before shot. Cheeks are pink because it was bloody hot, and though the car windows were down, I was at a stoplight and there was no breeze worthy of the name, and when it’s warm I tend to turn crayon-type pink.

Still getting used to the new length. What perplexes me, though, is the fact that hairstylists always twirl my hair around to form ringlets. Do I look like the type of person who should be wearing ringlets? Who am I, Shirley Temple? (At least she didn’t put seven types of styling gunk in my hair.)

The upper GI endoscopy yesterday didn’t show evidence of ulcers, and apparently I’m negative for Helicobacter pylori, so apparently that’s not it. Hmm. The gastroenterologist wants to do either a CAT scan or ultrasound next — he had mentioned it might be my gallbladder. Not sure about that, but maybe. He also said that a couple of areas of my stomach showed ribbing that was a marker for Crohn’s disease in people with Irish ancestry, but he seemed to think that was a long shot.

(The GI guy has a tendency to shoot apparently off-topic questions at me out of nowhere: I was in the recovery room and kind of dozy, talking about my interior bits, and suddenly he started questioning me about my ancestry. Somewhat perplexing; it might help if he’d explain the reason for the question early on, but whatever. Oddly enough, when I replied, “General British ancestry,” he initially didn’t think that included Ireland, even Northern Ireland. Perhaps I should’ve been clearer and spoken geographically rather than politically, and said “All over the British Isles,” but I plead dopiness from the sedatives.)

Anyway, just because it’s been a while since I’ve posted a photograph, here are the stills from the procedure. You can see the ribbing in the left upper and right lower corner shots; click to embiggen, if you’re into that sort of thing. Anyone know any doctors or med students? Maybe we could play Snapshot Diagnosis; first one to pick the disorder that matches any eventual real-life diagnosis gets a pair of hand-knit wool-free socks. Anyone?

In the meantime, at least I’m doing okay. Occasionally my stomach kind of gently nudges me, as if to remind me that it holds the power of life and death, or at least productivity and lying in a limp puddle on the floor, over me, but no real pain, and only minimal nausea. It’s been a week of significant savings on the food front, as well as on the coffee beans and wine fronts, given that I’ve avoided all three pleasant occupations as much as possible through abject, cringing fear of pain — today I’m having my first cup of coffee in over a week, and am equally thrilled with the caffeine and the lack (so far) of negative consequences. Oh, coffee, how I’ve missed you. My appetite is even coming back a little, too, which is a pleasant surprise. I’ll probably hold off on reintroducing the wine for a while longer, because the thought still makes my stomach clench a little with worry.

Little knitting has been accomplished, because for a while there the very thought of yarn somehow made me queasy. (This makes no sense, but I chose not to argue with the body and its peculiar tantrums.) At least yesterday, after Cindy very kindly took me home and I crashed for a couple of hours, I got about 10 rows done on my sweater; I’m about to start the French cable for the waistline. There’s no bloody way I’ll get it finished before the meeting next week, which was my original deadline, but at least some progress has been made.

So, aside from the grisly photos of my interior, not a whole lot to report. I was hoping to have a firm diagnosis by now, but I’ll take what I can get: at least I’m functional, and doing reasonably well, and don’t apparently have anything obvious and life-threatening. It could be a helluva lot worse.

No sooner did the air conditioning at work get fixed (and, to their credit, they did close the office after lunch on Tuesday) than all kinds of hell broke loose on the health front. Yippee. Two visits to the urgent care clinic later, including one in which I started throwing up in the waiting room, they are pretty sure I have a gastric ulcer, and, as an added, surprise bonus, are positive that I’m rather hypothyroidal. (The word “goiter” was bandied about. Sexy.) I don’t know the exact levels yet, or which exact thyroid hormones are involved, but when the doctor called, he sounded a little concerned. I think the words “extremely low” were used.

I have apparently flipped straight into middle age: a week ago I had no prescription medicines at all, taking only vitamins and an omega-3 supplement; now I have two prescription acid blockers, an antinausea medication they usually use after surgery or during chemo treatments, and a fairly heavy-duty painkiller, and will pick up the thyroid meds sometime today. The last is something I’ll probably be on for life. Hopefully, I’ll be able to drop the others, or at least not take them on a daily basis, if my probable ulcer responds to antibiotics. Otherwise, I’ll have to start looking for one of those pill organizers with the daily and AM/PM compartments that all the cool kids are carrying.

We’re still waiting for the blood test results for Helicobacter pylori, but the doctor I saw yesterday wants me to go ahead and schedule an endoscopy as soon as possible, to get an idea of what’s down there. Whee: my very first camera-down-a-bodily-orifice test. I’m thrilled.

Well, okay: the upsides are potentially pretty good here. I’ve had sporadic stomach pain of the “feels like someone’s holding my stomach and making a fist, and occasionally digging in with fingernails” sort since high school, and if I can get that under control, that’ll be a vast improvement. At least knowing what it is helps, too. And it’s probable that getting my thyroid hormones back to normal will help with energy levels, and will almost certainly help me get rid of some of the extra weight I’ve mysteriously gained lately.

Anyway, at the moment at least, I seem to be doing okay. Heavily medicated, but okay. There were a bunch of things I’d wanted to do this weekend — Summerfest, the Indie Craft Experience in Centennial Park, and the fundraiser for a local filmmaker — but I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do any of them. At the very least, I’m a bit nervous about driving if I have to take any of the antinausea or pain meds; also, if I start going downhill again, I’d rather start whimpering, displaying abominably poor posture, and possibly vomiting in the privacy of my own home, rather than out in public.

If I ran the world — or even just ran the place where I work — things would be very different. Different in many ways, but at the moment the most important difference would be what would happen when the office HVAC broke down. (This happens with grim regularity, and is rather darkly amusing because, without naming names, heating and cooling technology is kind of what our little nonprofit group does.)

Firstly, I’d make sure that our office building had operable windows. Also, outlawing fans is a bad idea. Stagnant, hot, humid air feels ten times worse than hot, humid air with a bit of air circulation.

Secondly, I’d give everyone an automatic Heat Day, which is like a Snow Day except in reverse: close the office the instant the heat rose to 80°F (just under 27°C; for convenience, SI users could leave when it hit 25°C).

If that were not possible — visitors were coming from out of town, meetings were scheduled, etc. — then I’d at least try to do something to demonstrate sympathy and concern. Personally, I’d set up a little tiki bar in the break room, and serve free frozen drinks and chilled tropical fruit nibbles to all employees all day.

What I wouldn’t do is just tell people that they had to come in regardless, and to dress “lightly but appropriately” and just suck it up and be a mensch about the heat and the locker-room smell, all the while taking the day off myself.

I’m just saying. . . . It’s currently 84°F (about 29°C), and I’m about this far from either rebellion or melting. Or possibly subliming; it’s hard to tell.

It took me about two hours, I’d say. That’s slow for someone who actually crochets well, but pretty darned good for me.

Most of the afternoon’s been spent playing with yarn and hooks. The good news is that I’m getting better at working the chain — I find it helps if I insert the hook in the first loop, then twist it around and sort of hook over the bottom loop, then twist again so the hook is facing up again. Somehow, that seems to be faster and more reliable for me than trying to slip under both the top loops in one go, or (as I usually wind up doing) trying to pry the second loop over the hook with my fingernails.

The bad news is that my fingers are a little sore, and I only just now remembered that Cindy had a photography show that was closing today, and I’d meant to go to the reception. Given that the reception was supposed to end right about, er, now, I suppose I’ve missed it. Oh dear.

I officially do not have enough time. Well, part of that probably is because of my habit of wasting weekend mornings by faffing around on the computer, and then taking a nap, so it’s largely my own fault, but still, I think it’s a valid point. (I also apparently have enough time to write this long and rambling blog entry, but even that’s taken me the best part of two mornings, so I think it still counts as evidence that I have too much to do in my available free time. Either that, or I’m a really slow writer, which is probably also true.)

I started making a list of all the things I want to organize, redo, finish, or inflict an extra-thorough cleaning on around the flat. When the list reached 35 tasks, I had to put it aside and go for a little lie-down. (The sad part is that I hadn’t even finished adding items to the list — though, to be fair, I did break them down into some reasonably small subtasks, so maybe it’s not quite as overwhelming as it feels.)

My cooking and baking have been virtually nil lately. This week, for instance, I managed to prepare one thing totally from scratch: tofu frittata with asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes, from Vegan with a Vengeance; except that halfway through the baking my neurotic oven freaked out and thought it was overheating, and shut itself off (no, I still haven’t gotten that fixed), so it came out more as a scramble. That, plus the pizza I made last night, which doesn’t count as home-made because I cheated horribly with whole-wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe’s,* prefab LightLife soysage, and Teese. (At least I made the tomato sauce myself, and the broccolini was fresh, not frozen.) Everything else has been from a box or a tub, with a little fresh fruit and raw veg thrown in to fend off scurvy. I’ve got to do better. It’s expensive eating prefab stuff, and although most of the packaging is recyclable, it’s still a waste.

I’ve also been meaning to print out all the recipes from my favorite food bloggers — marking them as “keep new” in Bloglines works, but when you’ve accumulated maybe 150 recipes, it is rather difficult to remember which blogger created, for instance, the cool-sounding chestnut and apple muffins I’ve been meaning to try for the past three months — and put them in a notebook, organized by type and with credit lines so I remember who created which things. It just seems a little wasteful, though; instead, I should probably find some recipe software for Errol the Mac, who is portable and small enough to perch on my toaster oven as I prepare things, and move the recipes into that. (I’ve tried clipping recipes to Google Notebooks, but found it got overwhelmingly chaotic too quickly.) I really need to figure out the best solution soon.

In addition to not doing as much food prep as I’d like, I don’t seem to have enough time for knitting. I’ve got almost all of a sock that I knitted on the plane to Vancouver:

(The lace pattern doesn’t show up well in that, but trust me: it’s there. Once I get around to finishing the last four rows and doing the cuff, I’ll post a picture of it on an actual foot, probably mine — though I should probably shave my legs before taking the photo. Eeep.)

There’s also about 12.5 inches (about 31.75 cm) of a sweater, although the only photo I have shows significantly less progress than that:

Plus the cupcake hat for Christi’s baby, and a couple of projects that are currently hibernating (cabled scarf and checkerboard ankh afghan), and two projects that I haven’t had the nerve to admit to Ravelry I’m working on (hat for myself using this yarn, and a simple lacy scarf in black bananasilk). I like all these projects, but trying to split my time between them all means that nothing is moving very quickly at all — no way I’m going to finish the sweater before our annual meeting, which was my original deadline — and of course the knitting is a distraction that prevents me from getting other things done, too.

Then there are the non-knitting crafts I want to pursue. I spent yesterday afternoon practicing crochet with my grandmother, and actually succeeded in making a small single-crochet swatch. My how-to books have been helpful in learning the concept, but it actually helped a lot having an experienced crocheter right there to watch, to ask questions of (e.g., “Is it supposed to be this hard to work the chain, or am I doing something wrong?”), and just to chat: my grandmother and I get along pretty well but don’t have oodles in common, what with her being the widow of a Southern Baptist pastor and my being a godless heathen, but somehow playing with yarn and hooks gave us some common ground. It was actually one of the most relaxed visits we’ve had, and we’re planning to get together again on the last weekend each month. (Next month, I’m going to try teaching her to knit. Oh boy.)

Eventually, I hope to be able to make some of the cool lacework cardis I’ve seen floating around the Innarwebs, but maybe a good first non-swatchy project would be something small, maybe like these cupcakes. No idea what I’d do with them once they’re finished, but they should be fun and just challenging enough to help me learn.

I still haven’t been able to find the Pebeo Porcelaine pens I want, or the ShrinkyDinks, though to be fair I’ve only looked in one of the more indifferent craft stores. ::cough cough::Michael’s::cough cough:: If I can’t find them in a proper arts supply store, I suppose I’ll just order online.

I’m also curious about beading. This got started while I contemplated another sweater I really want to make, which calls for a silk beaded yarn for the contrast lace band around the waist and arms. Obviously, bug silk is right out, but I’ve got some vegan soysilk yarn I think would be a great substitute. The only thing is that it doesn’t come in a beaded version, and I’m not sure how to tell what size beads I should get to fit the yarn. (You can make the sweater without the beading, but I think the extra sparkle on the accent areas is rather prettier than the plain version.) I’d better learn, because there’s a throw blanket I really want to make, as well, that calls for beading along the edges. Then there is the possibility of making my own stitch markers, which doesn’t look all that hard. . . . What I may do is drop by one of the yarn shops and ask them if they could order a batch of the soysilk for me, and then ask if they have any suggestions on how to bead it.

Of course, if I had truly unlimited time as well as oodles of cash, I’d take pottery lessons and make all sorts of cool and practical mugs, dishes, and ovenware. Last time I looked, though, the classes were priced well out of my reach. I guess I’ll have to save that for when I win the lottery.

***

* The organization of the Trader Joe’s near me still baffles me, and I still cannot figure out where they keep basics like baking soda, but they’ve definitely grown on me. I adore their Tuscan white-bean hummus, they carry whole-wheat pita (staff of life around here) that actually doesn’t contain honey, and their price for Gardenburger ribz is actually rather good. I also appreciate the fact that they slap a big honking V on the front of the packaging of their vegan store-brand items, and the staff actually know how to pack groceries in canvas tote bags. I just wish they didn’t overpackage their produce so egregiously, and would tell me where to find the baking soda.
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