The problem with Fridays
The problem with Fridays it that while it can be assumed, with a piano lesson and home tower bell practise, I will have something to talk about, it’s probably the middle of the night before I sit down and turn my computer on, I’m tired, and the accumulation of trashy catalogues, not to mention the 1,000,000 magazines and possibly* a book or two, is/are looking very alluring. Peter got back from bridge tonight at about 10:15: when the phone rang** I had only just sat down. With my bowl of broccoli.
The day got off to a very bad start however and furthermore the bad start went on and on for hours. In the first place, we seem to be back at square one about the hellhounds’ digestion, which is too depressing to go on about, but I despair. The practical manifestation of despair at the moment is that my vet wants to do a very, very thorough faecal study . . . which means I’m picking up a sample of every, that’s EVERY(*&^%$£”!!!!thing they pass for three days,*** starting this morning. Really just how much of a prat can you look, walking around town with your lab materials, which is to say a long-handled tote bag that I can loop over my head so it doesn’t slide off my shoulder, containing a rich and varied assortment of plastic bags: tiny, slightly larger, slightly larger yet, slightly larger yet, and so on. For the next three days I am the least green person on the planet, and even so, it’s a tote bag rather than a knapsack because cotton tote bags are washable. And the effing lab can deal with unwrapping my little offerings.† I also get to drive my priceless collection to the lab on Monday: because my vet is going on holiday on Wednesday, and will be gone a fortnight, and this means we can just about get the results crammed through in time for him to look at them and–please the gods–discover/prescribe something that will work for longer than a few weeks.
So the next three days are on to be a bit sordid anyway.†† However at least I have a riding lesson to look forward to on Tuesday. Supposing I don’t get lost on the way to the lab and spend Tuesday driving around outer Kent.††† But, as previously observed, I need a new hat. Riding hats go out of date faster than this season’s hot shoes/haircut/diet and exercise plan, and with riding hats you have to care. The days speed by, as my days will, and I decided I’d better play Hat Quest today, in spite of the piano lesson and the bell ringing, because I don’t want to do it on a Saturday amid the throngs of pony clubbers, and Monday was going to be occupied in getting lost on the way to the lab.‡
I had a parcel to pick up at the PO first, so, since I thought Customs might be blackmailing me again, I put my little black plastic credit-card case in my pocket, which is what I do when I don’t want to carry my entire wallet. My wallet closely resembles a brick in both weight and dimensions, although bricks have fewer credit-card slots, and generally speaking it doesn’t fit in pockets, although if it did, carrying it would destroy my posture and probably my spine. Hellhounds and I had a quick plummet around town including a pass through Third House, I picked up the parcel on the way back to the cottage, dropped it off there, bundled hellhounds in the car, and set out for the tack shop.
And got lost. There are two reasons I don’t like driving: I don’t like driving, and I hate getting lost. Which I do kind of a lot of. I did a really good job of getting lost today too–ended up pretty much the other side of England.‡‡ And have I mentioned I was running out of petrol? I was running out of petrol.‡‡‡ Well, I did manage to fight off the gremlins eventually, and found the tack shop. And a nice piece of shade to park the car with hellhounds in.§
And I got out of the car, locked it carefully, began to stride purposefully across the tarmac toward the shop door, put my hand in my pocket and . . .
My black card case wasn’t there.
No. And I didn’t find it either.
I cancelled the card, and since I only run one, to keep my life simple, that means I don’t have a credit card for a fortnight.§§ Not to mention trying to remember all the people who have my credit card number because I don’t pay bills, that’s what credit cards and Direct Debit were invented for. Not to mention feeling even more of a prat than someone carrying a tote bag full of dog faecal samples feels.
And tomorrow I get to do it all again. Well, most of it. I hope we can miss out the getting lost part, and I’ve already lost my credit card. And we’ll have to start by going fabulously out of our direction to buy petrol.
* * *
* Just possibly
** He is obliged to ring me when he gets in any evening he’s playing bridge, because bridge lasts longer than bells.^ If he doesn’t ring me (a) I ring him and yell (b) if he doesn’t answer I go raging down there with all my fur/feathers standing out to make me twice my normal size, expecting to find him unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. And then I yell at him. The system is now pretty well established, however, and I don’t go raging down there as often as I used to. Yes, I know, if we lived together like normal husbands and wives, this wouldn’t be a problem. http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/relationships/story/0,,2272454,00.html
^ Yes. The only things either of us ever does in the evenings are Peter = bridge, Robin = bells +. We lead sad lives. Pity us. Poor, poor us.++
+ Although sometimes they’re handbells! Last Tuesday I rang handbells!
++ I used to want a life. I outgrew this.
*** And it’s even better than that. I’m supposed to keep my growing turd collection in the refrigerator. My vet giggled when he told me this. He can bloody laugh.
† The vet suggested a jam jar–two jam jars, one per hellhound. Not a chance. I’m not going near my refrigerator either: we’re doing a disposable Styrofoam cool box with a rotating assortment of well wrapped cool blocks and bags, kept on the grid above my well in the cottage garden, which is cool anyway. In August I’ve been known to climb in there among the camellias myself. And I’d be very grateful if it stayed unseasonably chilly over the weekend.
†† And allow me one further remark–don’t worry, I really will get off the subject of dog crap in a minute–which is that I’ve already missed one critical sample. When one hellhound is doing his business in the long grass and the other hellhound, also in the long grass, Assumes the Position before you’ve finished with the first whom you don’t dare leave because you’ll never find it again in the long grass . . .
††† Calais? Is it a nice place to visit?
‡ I can see me now, being stopped at the border for Possession of Dog Faeces.
‡‡ The Scilly Isles? Are they a nice place to visit?
‡‡‡ Well, diesel.
§ Note that I almost never leave the car with hellhounds in it, I’m too paranoid about dog thieves. But this tack shop is out in the middle of nowhere and seems to me a rather poor prospect for dog thieves seeking a stake-out, and the point of having brought my wildlife with me is that we were going to stop on the way home again and have a New Exciting walk somewhere. I’d brought the walking-scale map so we could get lost competently.
§§ It interests me that the card issuer, who is, after all, after your money, and finds some remarkably abstruse ways of charging you for services you don’t want, is so laggardly about replacing lost cards. You’d think it’d be delivered by special courier in the next six hours, so as not to miss any Purchasing Opportunity.
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” I’d brought the walking-scale map so we could get lost competently.”
[convulsed with giggling-- because I understand. I use things like rocks and trees and falling-down barns and things as landmarks, rather than trying to remember road names-- so whenever people call the library for directions, I hand the phone to someone else... I can't very well tell someone ' turn left at the big tree with the cool branches, and then go straight on until you pass the barn on the corner.....' ................. well, I suppose I COULD, but it wouldn't really help very much!]
“I used to want a life. I outgrew this.”
[heehee!!!]
“Although sometimes they’re handbells! Last Tuesday I rang handbells!”
[YAAAAAAY! Happy! Congratulations!]
“I have a riding lesson to look forward to on Tuesday”
[DOUBLE YAAAAAAY!!!!!!]
I am sorry you had a generally miserable day
So now you get lots of chocolate and happiness-sent-through-computer, and HUGS!
–Julia
One of my favourite lines in any book anywhere is in Neil Gaiman’s picture book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, which is a great line right there, but there are some brilliant directions in it: Big sign you’ve gone the wrong way; long wiggly bit; fat trees; and my favourite: opposite the cat.
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“opposite the cat”
That is ABSOLUTELY fantastic.
I think I need to use that, now. I will now have to find a time when I can give the direction “opposite the cat”….
:)
hmmm. I think that I will see if we have that book at the library. If not, maybe I should strongly suggest that it be purchased. I can say that the recommendation comes from a VERY reliable source…..
ha.
–Julia
It’s a lovely book. :) Full of that kind of throwaway.
Ooh nooooo. What a rotten day. *sends chocolate*
Poo samples. Lost. AND a lost credit card. How terrible. And you’re up *really* late! I kept checking earlier — about the time you normally post — and it kept getting later and later…
We’re like you — we only have one card, and it’s a check card that withdraws directly from our bank. Last year, we discovered there were charges made for places like McDonald’s (GAG! OBVIOUSLY NOT OURS.) and a car wash (oh I WISH our car was clean) and some gas station we’ve never been to. All in the town near us. It turns out that someone managed to make a duplicate of our card and was using it just a few times a month so we’d just assume we hadn’t done our math right in the checkbook register when our total didn’t match the bank statement. And it worked for a long time, because we weren’t checking the list of charges. NOW we check religiously, of course, but it took forever for the bank and card company to issue us a new one.
Such a pain to have to get a new card. Urgh.
(And you know, I never mind hearing about dog crap. I’ve been desensitized. ;)
Something like that happened on my American card–when I still had one–because I was only using it when I came back to the States so the apparently low level ordinary inconspicuous usage showed up IMMEDIATELY! It was almost funny–but not really.
I guess Pet Poop is all pretty similar. :) :(
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Lit candles and a heap of chocolate to/for you. What a dreadful day!! I hope your hat hunt goes much more quickly tomorrow, with a satisfactory one found. I hope it is cool for you in all good ways. Our weather is predicted to have daytime highs in the high nineties for the next 5 days. If that keeps it cool where you are, I will give thanks for temps I usually abhor.
daytime highs in the high nineties for the next 5 days
********* UGGGGGH You are a noble human being. :)
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Us too- supposed to be 95-ish all weekend. Are you anywhere near Connecticut, GraceNotes?
And I agree. If it keeps it cooler for Robin, I think I will be able to bear the ridiculousness.
:)
–Julia
Yeah, it’s redonkulously hot and humid here as well. But raining, so I’m untempted to go do yard work in it.
Near enough – I’m in Philadelphia.
Aha.
Yep this weather is not fun. If I had a swimming pool I could jump in when it got like this, I wouldn’t mind so very much.
But I think we are helping my grandmother open her pool today. So that is something. Hooray!
Keep cool!
:)
–Julia
I hope that however foecally focused you are forced to become you remain calm, collected and not lost tomorrow. Small changes are always welcome.
My own dogs are concerned for my health, I am laughing so hard. I feel for you on the dog digestive issues; though they are rare with my border collies, they are very worrisome.
I suppose you could be glad you noticed that you had lost yoru card, or else someone could be using it to buy a yacht or else something dreadfully expensive right about now. Or rather, when it’s actually daytime.
I don’t like driving, and I hate getting lost. Which I do kind of a lot of.
Me too. I have an uncanny ability to nearly always go the wrong way.
Have fun trying out hard hats! (Going through tack stores, bookstores and grocery stores are the only type of shopping I like to do.)
I hope the hellhounds are feeling better soon. And stay that way!
PS. Have you seen this? http://www.magatsu.net/maritaltest/ I scored a Very Poor (Failure). *grin*
I don’t think I’m even on the scale. . . .
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It’s possible to get a negative score!
If it makes you feel any better, for three whole months I had to sift through snake feces for an experiment on gut passage time. Ahh those fun college stories. At least my advisor bought me beer and nachoes every week. Sigh! I also have some very exciting stories about measuring fruit fly fat.
SNAKE faeces?? I don’t even know what they look like. and what did you learn about gut passage time?
Okay, okay, don’t leave us dangling, WHAT about fruit fly fat?
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Since you’re asking? ;o) It’s kind of depressing so you are forwarned.
Snake feces look like regular feces except they are often coupled with a white blob of uric acid. In short, it looks a lot like bird poop with a little turd.
Snakes are ectothermic meaning that how fast they digest their food is dependent on the temperature they are at. We played around with temperature and digestion rate to get an idea of how often they would need to eat if the mean temperature continues to increase with global warming. Our results were that if significant temp increases occur, the species of snake we were looking at will have a great deal of difficulty finding enough to eat to both reproduce and live. The message was that global warming is bad and will likely cause extinctions in reptile species.
Fruit fly fat… So I study an adaptation in fruit flies that increases life span. One hypothesis about this life span adaptation in fruit flies is that you can allocate all your fat to having lots of babies very quickly and die young, or save your fat and use it to reproduce a little at a time and live longer. The long-lived fruit flies do store more fat that then short-lived fruit flies. So the increase in life span is not due to being fatter.
Oh dear. Welll, I am a Strange Human Being (but we knew that) because this is all very interesting. About snakes, that’s what you’d *expect*, isn’t it? so pleasing that sometimes things are what you’d think they are, thus proving a variety of things including that you CAN think. (Something I wonder about occasionally . . . ) But yes, yet another thing to worry about.
Okay. So WHERE do fruit flies CARRY fat, is it, you know, *lipids*, like the rest of us, or is bug fat different?
It’s lipids (triacyglycerols) like us. They store it in their abdomen. Oops also noticed a typo. The long live fruit flies DO NOT have more fat than the shorter lived.
The snake research was back in the early 90s when scientists were starting to look at global warming stuff and how it would directly effect animals. One of the intersting things about the snakes I was working on was that some folks thought that reptiles would respond better to global warming than mammals, since there are a lot of reptile species in deserts and other arid areas.
Ah. Yes. You ahve to be careful where you start thinking *from.*
On the dog problem – has the vet tested for bacteria yet? Mine didn’t at first because he thought it was pretty unlikely, but finally when I kept asking he did – and that turned out to be at least part of the problem. My dog is a rescue who survived something like Parvo as a puppy, and I suspect he had permanent damage to his intestines, and will never be exactly normal.
On the hat – if they sell these kind in England, try one with the “dial fit” harness. They are fairly adjustable (and EASILY adjustable) so that if your hair is different or it just doesn’t feel quite right you can immediately make it a little tighter or looser. They have gotten far more comfortable in the past twenty years, and also either cheaper or much more expensive, depending on what you buy. I have yet to read an explanation of why there is one group of helmets that cost from $25 to $75, and another group that cost from $400 to $600.
Poor Robin … it’s all too much! I’ll seek out my chocolate pate recipe for you, that should help!
My “best” credit card disaster was the machine at the tube station which swallowed my one and only on my way to Heathrow. The Transit authority keeps and destroys any cards its machines gobble, no possibility of retrieval. I flew into Montreal and to my horror discovered that the only way to get out of the car park was by inserting a credit card in yet another machine. There was no attendant … no notice what to do if one was stuck. I eventually found a person I could pay with cash, but it was a panic filled quarter hour I spent there.
I then made a beeline for the Etats Uni, figuring I had a better chance of paying for stuff with green backs or a check if I was speaking my native language and in my home state. Since then I have always traveled abroad with a duplicate card stashed under my clothing, and I never pay for my fare on the tube with a card!
Zowie wow. We are such a credit card society any more–you can’t function without one. I keep thinking I should get a second one just for occasions like these, because things *will* go wrong, it’s what things do.
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Oh dear. I hope tomorrow is much, much better for you. Chocolate arriving via virtual delivery truck soonest.
A LARGE delivery truck. Thank you. :)
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Very sorry to hear about your card loss, it is such a HASSLE to deal with replacement issues. Also sorry to hear about the recurrent digestive problems. Yes, they always want you to store the repulsive samples in your fridge; I don’t care how many layers of plastic you put around a stool sample, that doesn’t make it any better. Good luck to the crew at the pathology lab, may they find some answers for you.
Indeed. Thank you.
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Riding lesson? As in horses? Is this just starting again now, or did I miss an announcement?
You know what’s almost as much fun as collecting dog poop for a fecal test? Cleaning up other people’s dog poop after a fecal test. (My mom’s a vet)
Lucky you! :)
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“I really will get off the subject of dog crap in a minute”
Mushers (the people who drive sled dog teams) have a saying:
“You know you’ve really gone to the dogs when you find yourself discussing your dog team’s crap while eating breakfast.” :)
Best of Luck, I hope your kids feel better soon.
Rebecca WinkleBeam
LOL! YOu can’t HELP needing to be interested!!!
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You don’t want to be a casual listener in a restaurant where people go after a dog show to have breakfast. Once the comments about the judging are finished, the main topics generally become dog digestive issues or dog sex. There is an amazing amount that can be said on both topics.
Snork! I believe you. It is very hard *not* to be a trifle preoccupied . . .
When I was nursing, we had a ward fridge where we stored “samples”; only the most desperate would store their lunch in it.
I remember a humungously lovely member of staff being discovered reclaiming food from a corner next to the sample pots. They never worked out why their pulling power suddenly deflated to below zero :)
LOL!!!
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Do your dogs *look* at you when you’re trying to collect samples? Ours does, and it’s quite funny…that look of “Hey? Hey! I’m trying to be private here! Hey!” I feel like a particularly weird kind of stalker.
But many many ballotins (just got Godiva catalog…mmm) of finest chocolate for you. And best luck with the Hellhounds.
Since we live in town now they’ve had to get used to it and they don’t seem to think about it. When hoof and mouth meant no country walks for months some years ago, our whippets, who were NOT used to it, thought we were behaving very strangely.
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I’m glad you posted the living apart together article. Something my guy and I have been considering for a long time, but we were unaware that there is an actual demographic. Neat to see others are enjoying it.
My new manager moved to Guam the same time I did. They don’t take mainland checks here because they take 3+weeks to cash, for unfathomable reasons. So his first ATM withdrawal, he left his only card at the machine and the machine ate it. Having just moved to a remote island with no car, no apartment, and $500 max to live with–I was so glad not to be him! His wife sent a money order via overnight mail, but it took nearly a week to arrive. Poor guy.
I may or may not be imagining a slight imperative (if imperatives can be slight) to be chirpy as **hell** to make it plain that you’re not splitting up and not admitting it. But it was/is the right answer for us–we’d *kill* each other in a small space.
I’d forgotten you were Guam. Are you military, tourism, or Other? Is it at all claustrophobic living on a comparatively small island very far away from anything much else?
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My husband and I live in a large house for two people plus dogs. We have separate offices. He hangs out in the lower level, where the TV is. I hang out on the main floor, with kitchen and radio. If we lived in a small house we too would kill each other. I would like to build one more house, designed to get decrepit in, but it wouldn’t be smaller!
LOL! Yes, exactly! I actually do have fantasies of finding a big enough house for us to move back in together . . . but we couldn’t afford it. The space BETWEEN the houses, when you ahve several, becomes part of your living space. Which is sometimes inconvenient as (*&^%!!, but frequently a good thing! :)
LOL chirpy as hell, yes. We’re starting from long distance instead of from living together so that should help a bit, that we’ve spent a lot of time NOT living anywhere near each other. So if we try living together and he ends up moving out but stays on Guam, it won’t look as worrisome. We can say he was just staying with me until he could find a place =-)
I’m an aquarist at the big aquarium here in Guam. So sort of tourism, but indirectly. I think of the animals more as my customers than the tourists.=-) Actually, I am LOVING it here. There are about 100,000 people on the island, so it is kind of like if you took a big city, took out a bunch of chunks of it and replaced them with jungle, and surrounded it with tropical beaches. We get enough people moving through with the military and the tourists that it has a little that city buzz in places, but there are lots of remote areas and I spend pretty much every weekend snorkeling. The weather thus far is awesome. And I was too hot and wilting in Spain. I’ve been here 2.5 months and I’m not feeling claustrophobic yet, though it does feel isolated. My chances of getting friends and family to visit were much better in NYC. But Tokyo is only a few hours away, so people are always popping over there or to Bali or Manila or whatnot, and a great many of the people here are not FROM here, and hence crazy-enough-to-move-to-Guam types, so it is pretty easy to meet people. Much easier than it was in New York. And I’m budgeting for when the claustrophobia sets in, because I expected to feel a bit trapped, so I can fly somewhere. But even though the island is pretty small, it does have a little terrain variation and you can get inland and out of sight of the ocean, so it doesn’t feel that tiny yet. I’m really enjoying it.
Good for you. Does it have any BOOKSTORES or do you have to rely on amazon? New York? Spain? Were you acquariuming there too? –I think feeling the critters are your clients is the RIGHT attitude. We stopped overnight in Guam on our way to Japan by dependents’ transport ship, when I was a kid, and it was days and days and days from anywhere in either direction. I realise travelling has got easier but it really does feel in my imagination like only slightly closer than Mars.
*****And it’s even better than that. I’m supposed to keep my growing turd collection in the refrigerator. My vet giggled when he told me this. He can bloody laugh.*****
My vet once told me a story about having to transport fecal samples in the back seat of his car during a relatively long drive. He had, alas, put them in those “breathable” sandwich bags, and they “breathed” during the entire trip, making him utterly miserable.
*****It interests me that the card issuer, who is, after all, after your money, and finds some remarkably abstruse ways of charging you for services you don’t want, is so laggardly about replacing lost cards. You’d think it’d be delivered by special courier in the next six hours, so as not to miss any Purchasing Opportunity.*****
Indeed. My AmEx card recently expired, and the new one failed to appear in the mail. I called the company, and a new one, with a slightly different number, was there the next day by overnight UPS, even though I had called the company at 5 PM, which I would have thought would be too late to get it out for overnight service.
Judith