Late July Dispatches

I can't pin down why, but I've had a hard time sitting down to write lately (state the obvious much?). I've had the time, but not the inclination. Yesterday, I started writing a blog entry but was foiled by a combination of other-things-to-do and internet problems. Perhaps part of it is a sense of Things Hanging Over Me. The summer's over half over and there are things I need to do (finish unpacking, prepare music for my choirs, prepare for the new classes I'm going to be teaching, write thank you notes) and there are many things I want to do (books I want to read, books I want to re-read, some composing I want to do, plus all the general Doing Nothing expected of summer), that it feels somehow hard to do anything. On the other hand, I'm so focused on the mundane things I'm doing (mostly unpacking) that I don't have much that feels interesting enough to write about. Wanna hear about my dilemma with sorting out my non-fiction books? How masterfully I installed the air conditioning, curtain rods, and the paper towel bar, as well as a bunch of power strips around the room? How sore I am now that I've gotten back into working out? With material like this, how can I keep myself from writing?

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Although it may fall under the same category as the above, I'll give a quick update on Beaker. We've been confining her in a makeshift enclosure, using the cupcake tower creatively, with the largest box on the bottom with carpeting and a blanket in its bottom, closed off with a nightstand on one side, the bed on another, and two of the other cupcake tower boxes on the other sides. It's not like she can move much anyway, but this helps to keep her in one place.

Monday night, I dreamed that the enclosure was empty, but after an instant of panic she jumped up on the bed with us. We were so happy that she was able to move around that we let her stay on the bed instead of putting her back.

Of course, that was just a dream. We took her to the veterinary neurosurgeon Monday for a follow-up visit, theoretically to get her catheter out. The doctor decided to leave it in for a bit yet--the plan was to go back in another week to get the catheter and the staples out, but last night we noticed that her catheter tube had somehow gotten sliced open, so we took it out (the doctor had shown us how). It didn't seem terribly pleasant for her, but she had sufficient bladder control to sleep through the night without making a mess and taking care of business this morning. She still can't walk. She seemed yesterday to be making progress, being able to support herself a bit with her back legs and kind of move them, though her toes roll under in a way thay shouldn't. This morning though, she wouldn't support herself at all; I was happy enough with the bladder and bowel control, though, that I'm not worrying too much that she backslid just a bit. We'll just keep an eye on her and try to be patient.

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Orbitz notified me that there was a "significant change" in my flight itinerary for our honeymoon in August. I called to check and found that on August 12 I was scheduled to fly from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, then Charlotte to Phoenix, arriving there around 3:30 in the afternoon. Then, I was scheduled to fly from Phoenix to my destination in Oregon leaving at 10 am that same day. That seemed like a pretty neat trick, but I doubted their ability to pull it off. How the heck does a change like that go through? It only took me 10 minutes to get it explained to the customer service rep--evidently "grasping obvious paradoxes" isn't in the job description.

The good news is that I now have one fewer transfer/layover for my trip.

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