It's Only A Paper Rose

I always figured if I was going to end up in the hospital, I'd at least want a good story to go with it. And I at least achieved that goal; the nurses all agreed that "I was pole dancing in 7" heels, which I've done before, but I had a new pair with no ankle straps, and when I went to do a one-legged pirouette, my heel moved but the shoe didn't" was one of the better ones they'd heard recently.

Unfortunately it also came at the cost of a thoroughly broken ankle. Both bones, unstable fracture, bad times all around.

As it happens, I'm very good in a crisis. When it happened, there was some pain, but it honestly wasn't that terrible—thanks to adrenaline, the actual pain itself was maybe a 3. Initially I thought it was just dislocated, and having some familiarity with bodywork and first aid, my first instinct was to immediately grab my heel and pull. (This thoroughly freaked out the other girls in the class, but as I explained later, it was better to do it then than later, when the swelling would have set in and the adrenaline wore off.) As that only got my ankle partly back in place, though, I figured a doctor would be necessary, so one of my classmates was kind enough to drive me to the urgent care, where they took x-rays and informed me that no, my ankle was broken, it was time to head to the ER. Brian having fetched the car and caught up with me at that point, we drove to the Rush ER—the doctor at the urgent care said she'd usually recommend a smaller hospital with shorter wait times but the orthopedics team at Rush is legendary. (Rumor has it most of the professional athletes in Chicago go there when they have injuries; from what I saw of it, they certainly have state-of-the-art facilities. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

The ER was a seven-hour wait. On the one hand, I was grateful that my situation wasn't more urgent; on the other, by the time I got in the adrenaline was definitely wearing off and my pain levels were climbing. They gave me a local anaesthetic and set the bone into something resembling its usual shape (a painful process even with the lidocaine); the actual repair would require surgery. We thought I'd be waiting until at least Monday, but they had a doctor who was able to do it on Sunday, so back I went the next day.

To be honest, I was completely terrified. I'm used to being the caretaker in these situations, and "no significant medical history" also means "no idea how I might react to anesthesia or drugs". It was a very different experience from being nine years old and going in to have my arm set after I broke it—then, it was just Another Thing People Did, whereas as a 38-year-old woman I had a much better idea of the stakes and the possibilities for complications. That said, the team was lovely; the anesthesia team in particular consisted of several Korean (I would guess? my East-Asian ethnic identification skills are not great) girls who were super friendly and chatted with me beforehand. There was one person in particular, though, I remember—I have no idea who she was, honestly couldn't even see much of her beneath the cap and gown and mask, but she had the biggest and most sincere blue eyes, and she clearly picked up on how scared I was—she held my arm as they were administering the anesthesia, assuring me that I was going to be all right, that they'd take good care of me. (I wish I knew who she was so I could send her a card and tell her how much that meant.)

As it happened, my skin was so badly compromised from the swelling that they weren't able to do the internal fixation (where they put your bones back together with plates and screws), so I woke up with my leg in an external fixator, also known as the Hellraiser frame—it had pins that literally screwed into my tibia and calcaneus and metatarsal, holding my ankle in place while my skin healed. (The sensation of not being able to move my ankle despite there being nothing visibly restraining it was weird as heck, and is definitely going into a horror story someday.) The idea was to give things a week or so and then come back for the final surgery, so they gave me half a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions and sent me home.

Unfortunately, two days before the follow-up, I noticed a red rash on the skin of my foot. The next day I went to the urgent care, assuming it was just cellulitis (a common complication, especially with external fixator surgeries) and they'd give me antibiotics for it...but their take was that they couldn't rule out a blood clot and I had to go to the ER again. So back to Rush we went.

Luckily, this time it wasn't quite such a long wait (both because it wasn't as busy and because potential blood clots are more time-sensitive, I suspect). I got to have an ultrasound on my leg, and luckily there was no sign of a clot, so then I got to have a CT scan to check the progression of the infection, and they told me they wanted to keep me overnight to give me IV antibiotics and run my situation past the doctors. They put me up in one of the nicest hospital rooms I've ever seen, spacious and uncluttered and new, with an amazing view. (I guess there's a lot of money in orthopedics.) And after taking approximately fifteen liters worth of blood samples, they let me sleep.

(Well, I tried to sleep. About the time the urgent care doctor said "blood clot", my anxiety spiked, and it basically didn't calm down for a good five days—I don't think I got more than three or four hours of sleep a night that whole time. But that's not their fault.)

In the morning, the doctor came by and told me the good news was that the cellulitis infection hadn't progressed past the skin, although ironically, that made it harder to treat (since there weren't any abcesses or discharge they could sample and hit with targeted antibiotics). If I hadn't had the fixator as a complicating factor, he'd've just sent me home with pills, but with the fixator and especially with the upcoming surgery, it was his opinion I should spend the week in the hospital, both so they could hit me with the big guns via IV and also keep an eye on any further complications that might crop up and catch them early. Much as I hated to admit it, his logic made sense to me...so that's how I ended up in a hospital room with a million-dollar view for a week and a half.

In the way of hospital life, it was both very dull and very stressful, and also an abject lesson in how even the most proactive and driven of us sometimes have to learn to let other people help. I was surrounded by people whose literal job it was to take care of me, who were actively working to help me get better, and yet...well, like I said, five-day anxiety spiral. It was hard to trust, if that makes sense. It had honestly never occurred to me how much of the active go-out-and-make-friends part of my personality was a defense mechanism, but here I was making friends with all the nurses/assistants/doctors as if my life depended on it, because in a real way, it did. (One of the night nurses in particular was a fairly closed-up dude—not cold, exactly, but not really one for small talk. It took me three nights to get him to open up a bit, but when he did, my anxiety levels went down significantly. Which probably says a lot more about me and my trust issues than about him. Still, it was gratifying when he said to Brian and me on the third night, "I'm so impressed with y'all, you haven't messed up my name once." High praise!)

Anyway, the infection was a tough one, but by five days in they'd seen enough improvement to tentatively schedule the second surgery, which helped immensely with the anxiety. I slept much better during the latter half of my stay, and while the second surgery wasn't easy, it helped a lot that I had a better idea of what to expect. (Never going to quite get used to the sensation of someone holding an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, though...I could breathe fine, obviously, but the THIS IS NOT OKAY signals were all going off in my brain, heh.) The surgery itself went smoothly, though pain control turned out to be trickier the second time around; they gave me a nerve block (cool thing I learned: even when drugged out and in a lot of pain, I really like listening to people teach other people things about bodies—Rush is a teaching hospital and the anesthesiologist was teaching a second person how to use the ultrasound to guide the needle to the exact nerve cluster), and after that wore off it took a few tries to find a medication dose where I was functional. (Being stoned out on pain meds is not my favorite feeling, but I'll take it over being in constant debilitating pain; knowing that the worst is over and all this is temporary helps a lot.)

So now I'm back home. Brian bought new pillows and a new mattress for the second bedroom, much nicer than the futon-with-memory-foam-topper we had in here before; we also invested in a new duvet cover and sheets from my favorite company. My ankle now has two plates and a dozen screws in it. The doctor says he sees no reason why I won't make a full recovery; depending on how well he's done his job, I may be more prone to developing arthritis in the joint, but that's a problem for Future Me. I now have a whole-ass pharmacy's worth of prescriptions to take, what with antibiotics as well as pain meds and blood thinners and I'm not even sure what all else. I'm getting around okay on crutches; for the first week I'm supposed to be pretty constantly in bed with my leg elevated, so I'm very grateful for my nest of new linens and pillows. So at this point it's just a waiting game to see if there are any more complications.

On the emotional front, I've definitely had a bit of a time adjusting my identity mentally from the "athlete" population to the "patient" population. (The nurses would profess amazement at how mobile I was, being possessed of three functioning limbs and no small amount of core strength, and it seemed almost condescending until I remembered that their pool of comparison was the rest of the patients in the orthopedics ward, most of whom were probably not athletes before their hospitalization.) It's helped a lot, though, in being less frustrated with all the things I can't currently do.

I also need to give a huge shout-out to the friends and family Brian and I have formed here in Chicago. KC (his girlfriend) has been an absolute rock; doing housework and helping Brian set up the new bed and regularly inquiring after how I'm doing/listening to me rant about feeling helpless, as well as loaning me the crutches and shower stool she used after her recent hip surgery. Evan (her husband) drove my to my first surgery when Brian (who'd been up with me in the ER the entire previous night) didn't feel safe to do so. Taylor (my boyfriend) came to visit me in the hospital a couple of times so Brian could have a day off, despite a full plate of grad school work and a difficult transit schedule; plus he's studying to become a nurse so he was able to demystify some of the odder aspects of hospital work culture.

--

So I wrote all that a couple of days ago, and meant to read it over and post it, but (in the way of things when you're recovering) I didn't get back around to it. And today Adora Belle, our eldest cat, was wandering around perfectly normally, went to sleep...and woke up in severe distress and unable to walk. Brian rushed her to the emergency vet, who diagnosed her with a large blood clot cutting off circulation to her hind legs, likely caused by a silent heart condition. There's not really any meaningful treatment, so...at least he was able to be there for her when they did the euthanasia. Even more, KC was able to be there for him, since I'm not going anywhere right now.

Feelings are strange when you're on opioids. To be honest, my strongest reaction has been "are you kidding me right now?" Not that it's that strange for an 18 year old cat to have a sudden health emergency, but it just seems like life's been one string of emergencies lately. I'm sure the grief will come later, and I'll do my best to sit with it when it does.

Maybe I'll lie back and listen to "Comfortably Numb" for a while...

(Gotta say, on the balance of evidence I kinda prefer Aerosmith's version.)

Ups:

My reading was a smashing success, or at least, that's how it felt. We had a good crowd—it appeared to be roughly 1/3 open-mic readers, 1/3 salon regulars, and 1/3 friends of mine (some from Tumblr, some from meatspace). I was honestly humbled by how many people showed up; I'm not sure if it was the novelty of having a fandom writer featured, or the fact that everyone was super into hearing something smutty that night, or my promotional efforts, or just good luck. (Probably some combination of the above.) Regardless, somebody commented later that it was the most people we've had yet at one of the virtual salons (I think we hit 25 participants at one point?), so that's encouraging.

One of the difficulties of doing a Zoom-based reading is the relative inability to get audience feedback in real-time—even if you have your work on a separate device so you can leave the Zoom window open, your eyes are focused on the page, and everyone's muted/in tiny video-chat format anyway so you can't easily read changes in body language. However, when I finished, I came back to a surprisingly lively chatlog—a couple of my Tumblr friends had shown up and been the absolute best hype-men in the comments, even getting some of the salon regulars to participate. (I was somewhat darkly amused to see that, at one point, the conversation had devolved into a not-quite-argument over whether each character was a top or a bottom, respectively. I've seen these arguments turn into outright fandom wars and cause major schisms, but apparently it's less of a fandom thing and more of a human thing? I dunno, I seem to have unchecked the "a character's preferred sex position is clearly an immutable aspect of their personality rather than a function of personal preference and context" box during my Human installation. Luckily the conversation moved on.) One of my meatspace friends who showed up told me later she'd been watching the video feeds and the scene clearly landed; perhaps most encouragingly, the host texted me afterwards (and reiterated in front of our writing group the next day) "You should know you're writing at a professional level, and if you file the serial numbers off there's a good chance you could sell this." Which...I sorta suspected as much, at least in the better sequences, but given my spotty history with longer projects I think I'm best keeping the pressure low until I've at least figured out whether I can actually finish it. Still, it was a lovely vote of confidence.

Condo board stuff is ongoing. I did get a contractor out here whose back-of-the-envelope calculations for the masonry work were significantly lower than the first contractor's. (The scope of work was also smaller, but he considered it sufficient to stop the leaking; his opinion was that the rest of the work the first guy recommended was a good idea, but not urgent.) I liked him a lot, he clearly knew his stuff and was happy to explain his reasoning; I never thought I'd meet someone who got that excited about different styles of brickwork, but I do love people who're passionate about their work. Additionally, it was his opinion that the issue wasn't a leak per se, but bricks absorbing moisture that was causing the water intrusion; that fits with what Aaron (the unit owner) told me about it only being a problem during major/extended rainstorms, and lowers the likelihood of significant damage by a lot. So all of that was a big relief. He's promised to have his formal estimate to me by today, so fingers crossed he comes through and it's in line with his initial assessment. Sunday we have a meeting to discuss all of this and figure out the path forward.

Through a piece of good luck (and a lot of wrangling), I also have managed to achieve one of my low-key goals for the building, and have obtained and set up an extremely high-quality elliptical in the workout room. KC had sent me the Craigslist post (a unit that went for $3K new, selling for $400), I had emailed the board offering to pay for half of it (since I was the one who wanted it) as well as take care of the truck rental and hauling; after some back and forth about insurance and cleaning and maintenance questions, and some low-key grumbling on our treasurer's part, I got everything sorted, got a truck rented, and got out to Northbrook. I was half-convinced it was too good to be true, but nope, the seller was a 70-year-old dude whose wife had purchased it a few years before she died, and he and his son were trying to clear out the garage. Moving it was no joke—the specs say it weighs about 250 pounds, and rarely have I been so grateful for my stocky-but-solid-muscle husband or all the Sculpt classes I've been doing. (It was worth it all just to see the look on the seller's face when we hoisted it up into the bed of the truck with relative ease.) I now have an impressive bruise on one thigh where I rested my end of it at one point during moving, but I also now have a high-quality cardio machine that I suspect will be invaluable during the upcoming (and frankly rather bleak-looking) winter months.

In other positive news, Dexter is hanging in there, far better than I'd expected. When I wrote about him a couple of weeks ago, I'd really thought it was time to call the vet. But it turns out the continence issues were more related to the litterboxes all being downstairs; I set one up in the second bedroom (easy enough to do, since I'm not hosting clients right now) and he hasn't had any difficulty using it. He still has active days and less-active days, but he doesn't appear to be in distress, and he still comes and snuggles on the regular. So we're not quite to the end yet.

Downs:

Well, I mean, there's the obvious.

My personal reaction to the news has been weird. Like, when Brian told me, it was a blow, but in the way that the eighteenth blow in a fistfight is—there's no shock or horror left, just a certain numbness and the grim reality of "well, gotta deal with this too." Which isn't to say I didn't react—I spent much of the evening in a low-key dissociative state, which is unusual (and disconcerting) for me. I've since been experiencing moments of profound grief, for the death of our country's self-image and democratic norms as much as for the woman herself, but in between I'm just...carrying on living. Because really, what else is there to do?

I spent the whole weekend in the Zoom version of a massage seminar I signed up for back in January. And while I learned some potentially useful techniques, it was hard not to feel like the time was pretty well wasted. I'm not going to be practicing probably for another six months to a year at least, and by then the knowledge will be more or less gone. To be honest, I'm not even certain I'm going back to massage as a primary career; right now my primary energy sink is writing, and if I can keep up this kind of consistent productivity even after quarantine is over I may well make this my primary focus and just keep massage as a sideline. I enjoy it, and I genuinely miss that feeling of making people feel better, but I don't miss the constant hustle for clients or the uncertainty of the income or the "???" of a future career path. (I realize, with some irony, that writing as a career is even worse on all three metrics, but it feels like there's so little expectation that you'll ever be able to make a livable income that there's less pressure? Psychology is weird, man.)

So, yeah. Lots of change happening. Some good, some bad, some just...different. I'm trying to stay focused on the things I can do, and not worry about the stuff I can't. It's tough. I'm not always in a great place. But life is movement, and so...onward.

Dexter's been slowly but steadily improving, more than I even expected. We're still giving him fluids twice a week, and he still drinks a lot of water (with the associated uptick in litter box output, sigh), but he's perky and intrusive and seems generally much more like himself. He's also eating again, and even slowly regaining a bit of weight. I'm doing my best to love him while still recognizing that this is likely only a temporary reprieve—but I'm extraordinarily grateful for this extra time with him.

{Stolen from Brian, since his morning-after Facebook writeup was far superior to my 1:30 AM groggy snarkfest.}

SCENE: A BEDROOM (interior, early morning, around 1:00am)

(Two people lay in bed, having just settled down for the evening. They have an early day tomorrow, and are about to drift off to a pleasant sleep. Suddenly, a crashing sound, from outside the room. Neither stirs, as these sounds are commonplace. The crashing noise, however, continues, growing more complex and, in fact, getting louder as the apparent source comes closer.)

ROSE: What is...?

(Shift to BRIAN'S point of view, without glasses. An orange blur shoots by the open door. The crashing noise has gotten even louder and more complicated. A moment later, this scene resolves into a dark comet of terrified TRIPOD KITTEN trailing an orange shopping bag filled with thrift-store ornaments and gifts hurtles into the room.)

BRIAN: Oh, Jesus Christ.

(The TRIPOD KITTEN bounces off the foot of the bed, scrabbles on the floor, then propels itself to BRIAN'S side of the bed. His nose wrinkles as certain smells become reality. The KITTEN has voided its bowels in terror indiscriminately as it has approached. Having at last reached the architect of its salvation, the KITTEN jumps onto the bed, still variously evacuating. BRIAN reaches over to the kitten and plucks the shopping bag off of its head with a resigned sound.)

ROSE: [Laughing herself sick]

BRIAN: (setting the bag aside, sighing, and petting the KITTEN) You stupid, stupid cat.

FIN.

Longtime readers might remember Adora Belle, a cat we adopted some years ago as a companion for Dexter shortly after Mr. Jerry Brown died. She'd had an unhappy past, shunted between multiple homes as her various families left town, at least one of which had mistreated her, but was a very sweet and affectionate cat when she wasn't feeling skittish. Unfortunately, when Brian and I went on our honeymoon, she ran off, probably afraid that she was going to end up somewhere else unhappy. I can't really blame her, but as you might guess, we were rather sad about it - I think Brian in particular felt like he'd failed her.

Six months or so after we moved, we got word that she was still in the area. As it happened, one of our former neighbors took her on, making up a warm dry place for her to sleep under the house and putting out food for her. They've gotten to be friends over the years; Taf (the neighbor) spent quite a lot of time hanging out on her porch talking to her, while Adora Belle sat on the stump nearby and listened.

A week or so ago, I got a message from a mutual acquaintance that Taf was in the process of selling her house and had decided to trap Adora Belle and take her to the humane society, as that seemed the best option. I got in contact with Taf, who was more than a little torn up about the decision - she's an older cat, and with her history might have trouble finding a home, especially in Juneau where options are limited - and assured her that we'd be happy to take her in. She did manage to trap Adora Belle, and took her to the humane society for assessment and to make sure she was still in good health; luckily they said she was skittish but still in good mental shape, and got her shots and dewormed and de-fleaed. (Taf was kind enough to foot the bill for all of this; she must really love her too.) Thanks to them and our friend Jeanne (who, serendipitously, works for Alaska Airlines), she got on the red-eye flight last night, and will soon be waiting for us at the cargo office.

Last night I cleaned up the second bedroom, and we went over to the PetSmart that (conveniently) just opened on the next block over, and got her a bed and a new litterbox and a few toys and food dishes. So now I just have to go navigate the massive distortion of space-time that is O'Hare's satellite neighborhood and find the Alaska Airlines cargo office (no mean feat), rescue Adora Belle from the labyrinth, and bring her home. I'm excited, if also nervous - she got along with Dexter fine, but we've acquired Leo and Tripp in the interim, and frankly we never had plans to be a four-cat household. But Taf has told us that if she doesn't fit in here she'll take her once her house is sold and she's moved, so she won't be without a home no matter what happens.

I do hope everything goes well and she fits in here, though. I've missed her more than I realized.

Flu recovery continues; slower than I'd like, but it's progress. Amusingly enough, my annoyance at the time recovery is taking has decreased dramatically today, as the weather went from sunny and warm to "35 and snowstorming". I think this anonymous person pretty well captured the citywide reaction. I'm slightly annoyed about missing class, but it's nothing I can't make up, and I have all of tomorrow, too.

On the upside, being confined to bed/couch has done wonders for both my social media interaction and my study time. Since the former's probably of little interest to anyone but me, here are some cool things I've learned from my Pathology reading over the past couple of days:

• Growth hormone, in addition to its eponymous function in children and adolescents, is largely responsible for tissue repair/replacement in adults - in short, healing.  It is also secreted almost entirely during stage IV sleep, the deepest level.  This fits with my own lifelong observation that most of the feeling-better recovery from illness takes place during long naps or overnight; it also explains why the people I've known with sleep apnea or other sleep difficulties tend to seem operate under a consistent sort of run-down malaise.  (And it explains many of the statistics where lack of sleep/sleep disorders increase susceptibility to any number of problems, from colds to heart failure.)
• For all that the vast majority of fad diet advice is absolute bunk, it's completely true that the typical American diet is damn near toxic.  The number of digestive and metabolic disorders that can be reduced in risk (if not outright prevented) by limiting intake of preserved/processed foods and refined sugar/flour is staggering.  Unfortunately, despite it having been repeated by the USDA with slight variations for decades, the dietary advice of "eat whole grains, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and some lean meat; keep consumption of processed foods and refined sugars to a minimum" has so far failed to catch on.  Maybe someone needs to take out flashy ads?  "Prevent cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes with this 1 weird trick!"
• Be kind to your liver.  Seriously.  You likely have no idea how much it does for you, every day.  They call it a "live-r" for a reason.
• Unlike the common cold (which is no longer contagious after three days of showing symptoms), influenza remains contagious all through (and, to a lesser degree, for a little while after) the recovery period.  Hence, I am refusing to feel guilty for staying home sick ever again.
• My mother always thought 90s-era Barbie was antifeminist because her feet were molded to wear high heels.  Clearly she was simply suffering from a severe, untreated case of pes cavus.  New from Mattel:  Treat jammed arches and prevent bunions with Orthopedic Barbie!  (Unfortunately, her footwear is roughly five times the cost of her designer heels, because something something capitalism something big government something healthcare.  At least until she's 65 and qualifies for Medicare.)

Forty more pages to go, and then I'm done...until it's time to study for the final.  Almost there!

Also, current average grade is 97.8%.  Just throwing that out there, says the former-barely-B-average student.

Feel-good moment of the day:  pictures from India's first lesbian wedding. What a beautiful commingling of traditions.  They look so happy.

And finally, here's Homework Enforcement Cat, helpfully covering up the answers so I can quiz myself (and pet him).

Good morning, Chicago! Yesterday was completely lovely; the weather warm but not hot. Brian had to work, so I went and had brunch with a couple of friends, one of whom accompanied me for a nice wander around the neighborhood afterward. We got mani-pedis (and, for the first time ever, I managed to keep from smudging mine), and I took her to my recently-discovered favorite salon for an appointment. Yay for girly days! And now my finger- and toe-nails are precisely the same shade of orange-red as my hair.

As of today, I'm in a strange sort of limbo. I was originally supposed to be going to Detroit this week to help with more survey administration, but due to some bureaucratic argy-bargy (apparently two weeks is not enough time for Detroit Public Schools to run a background check) they had to send someone else instead. So now my schedule for the next several days is unusually bare.

This morning, at least, that turned out to be a plus. We woke up to discover a very bedraggled Leo looking shamefacedly up at us. At first we thought he'd taken a dip in his water fountain, but when I wandered out into the kitchen I found the counters and floor turned into a beautiful abstract oil painting. (Brian had been deep-frying chicken pieces last night and left the oil out in a bowl overnight to cool. Which, in all fairness, he normally does without incident.) Mop, drugstore for baby shampoo, bathtime, in that order. Now someone just needs to clean the kitchen up. Guess who's been elected. (Brian held Leo in the bathtub - fully clothed - while I poured water on them, and still got several scratches for his trouble, so really, it's only fair.) Meanwhile, Leo is furiously grooming all the water out of his fur. I predict a massive hairball or two later.

As it happens, I'm still going to the Detroit area on Thursday. Originally I'd been planning to go and visit CJ and Amanda and John the weekend after survey administration, but since that didn't work out, CJ offered to buy me a train ticket. I'm actually moderately excited about the prospect; I haven't yet been on Amtrak, and I'm quite fond of trains. And anything that means less time dealing with TSA is perfectly fine with me.

Mood-wise, there's been a lot of up-and-down recently. I wonder if the lack of yoga is part of it; I applied for CorePower's yoga-for-trade program and got back a generic "we'll let you know if there's an opening at a location near you" response. A month ago. I'm honestly wondering if I should just find a darn part-time job so I can pay for it; I still think their studios are way overpriced, but the improvements I saw in strength and mobility when I was going regularly were...marked. Not to mention how it always improved my outlook and emotional state. Sigh.

Still, I've had a good week now where I haven't been turning into Grumpy Cat every few minutes, and I'll take what I can get. I'm even playing the guitar again! I'd been doing it sporadically for several months, and then for a month or two I wasn't playing hardly at all. But I'm actually excited about it again, which hasn't been the case for a while now. Been thinking about making a video or a recording. Say it with me, folks: we'll see if anything comes of it.

The weather is beautiful today too, if warmer - approaching thunderstorms seem to love pushing the heat ahead of them. I suspect that after lunch I may put on shorts and sunscreen and wander down to the lakeshore with an ice cream bar.

Oh thank god we're almost done with the driving.

Actually, today wasn't bad at all. It definitely felt less stressful than yesterday, despite the fact that the drive was only an hour shorter. Some of that might have been the fact that we weren't losing an hour to time-zone changes - even though it's just a psychological effect, there was a definite impact. Also we got a somewhat earlier start today and therefore weren't driving far into the night like last night. And then there's the "this is the last full day of driving" part to look forward to.

The landscape was much more pleasant. Missouri has lots of farmland, but also lots of trees and rolling hills (and no feedlots that we saw). I was a little nonplussed when I started seeing all the signs for Mark Twain Historic Sites (I didn't think he lived in Missouri, but perhaps I'm wrong?), until we broke through the trees and onto the bridge over the Mississippi River. Holy crow. I mean, I'm from Alaska, I'm no stranger to large bodies of water (or larger-than-life geographical features in general), but...damn. I may have to come back down this way for a long weekend sometime so I can properly appreciate it, rather than just sneaking glances over the side of the bridge.

No major curveballs today, thankfully. We did discover that rural gas stations often don't sell premium gas, but that wasn't a big problem as there were plenty of truck stops that did. At one point Leo's carrier fell off the blanket and tipped slightly sideways, enough to alarm him even through a full dose of sedative, but a bit of repacking (along with propping-up help from my new favorite hoodie) got him righted again and he settled back down. Other than that, things were pretty uneventful, and we got to Lincoln just fine.

Much to my surprise, the cats have been adapting to the various hotel rooms with almost no trouble at all. When we took Dexter and Leo from Juneau to Sierra Vista by plane, they kept us up almost that whole night, yowling and rattling cupboard doors and generally making their displeasure known. I'm not sure if it's the presence of drugs or the lack of issues specific to plane travel (maybe cats really hate pressure changes?), but while they certainly haven't been happy about being stuck in their carriers for hours on end, they've generally settled right in once we let them out. (Tripp is actually snuggling up with Brian and purring like mad right now - it's pretty adorable.) Which isn't to say that I'm not glad they're getting a break, too. They've been such troopers - Bast knows they deserve it.



I'm probably most pleased with this place of the various hotels we've tried. For one thing, it's the only one that has actual conditioner (as opposed to "conditioning shampoo") in the rooms, and for another, the furniture/paint is newest and the bed's probably the most comfortable. Also the front desk girl is super-nice, and (perhaps most importantly) the room doesn't smell like dog pee covered up with cheap air freshener. (I mentioned this to the front desk staff at the last place, and they apologized, but said that they were full up last night and wouldn't have had another room to give us, so I guess it's good that I was too tired to raise a fuss.) But then, my perceptions might also be colored slightly by the fact that WE DON'T HAVE TO DRIVE AT ALL TOMORROW. And then it's all of a three-hour drive to our new place on Monday. Thank God.

Things are better. We ended up stopping in Albuquerque; originally we'd planned to keep going until Amarillo, but that was going to be another four hours of driving. We probably could have managed it if we were fresh, but given that none of us slept well last night and the first part of the day was a frenzy of last-minute packing/cleaning/loading, and therefore everyone was starting to nod over the steering wheel outside Albuquerque, we decided not to push things.

I need to take this moment to extend a very public and hearty thank-you to our friend Robin, her boyfriend Bob, and our friend Michelle for all of their help packing and loading the truck. (Additionally, Michelle was able to take a bunch of our extra furniture, which both saved us the hassle of Craigslisting it and gave her a somewhat nicer household. Win-win!) Also on the roster of thanks is Ian, who not only came to help with packing and loading but is driving the moving truck. And, of course, my husband Brian. All of these folks have been incredibly mature and self-motivated, but with Brian especially, during stressful times like this, it means so much to know that I can trust him to get shit done and not feel like I have to look over his shoulder all the time. (Perhaps the fact that I marvel at this says bad things about my expectations of folks' maturity; I prefer to think of it merely as my impeccable taste in friends.)

All in all, so far this hasn't been anywhere near the disaster it could've been. The biggest curveball has been with the cats; we'd originally intended to fly them up ahead of time and either board them or have them stay with me at a hotel. However, no airline will take pets if the forecasted temperature for the day is over 85 degrees F, since they often sit out on the tarmac a while; given that it's still 90+ in Tucson this time of year, that meant flying them was out and we'd be driving the car with three carriers in the back. I was admittedly panicky about this point; one of our cats goes nuts when you lock him in the carrier, and another goes nuts if you even try to put him in the carrier, so we knew there were going to have to be drugs (and the associated hassles/nervousness) involved. But my mother (bless her soul) said something that put it all into perspective: "Well, it can't be much worse than driving with your two-year-old daughter in the car seat who's just puked all over herself thanks to the windy mountain roads." This startled a laugh from me, as I actually vaguely remember that trip (and definitely remember subsequent trips where my parents were careful to have soda on hand and drive slowly). So today, when I started to freak out about the cats in the back, I just reminded myself that people have to do this kind of thing every day with their own kids - I've got it easy by comparison.

Driving through New Mexico was surprisingly scenic - lots of mountains and fields. Driving through Hatch was especially entertaining, as they're a small town known for exactly one thing (Hatch chile peppers) and are riding that one thing all the way into the sunset. I think we must've passed twelve different chile stands, four different restaurants advertising Hatch chile salsa, and a "Picante Plaza" strip mall.

The cats were somewhat noisier and more active during the first half of the trip than the second; I'm not sure if the sedative effects took a while to kick in, or they decided it wasn't worth the bother to keep protesting, or both. Still, they got through the day with no major casualties; Leo bloodied his nose during one of his more active bouts, and tugged part of the blanket we had up against the back of their carriers inside and shredded the duvet covering. (Fortunately, duvets aren't hard to replace.) They were definitely getting noisier as we hit Albuquerque, which helped with the decision to stop here; they were definitely curious about the room when we let them out but settled in surprisingly quickly. (The familiar-smelling duvet/blanket seems to have helped with that.) And for all the hassles of driving with them, it's awfully nice to stay in a hotel room that *does* have our cats here to walk on us as we sleep. Odd, how you miss that...

Also odd, I don't think it's quite sunk in that we've left Bisbee permanently. My thoughts keep wandering back to our house there when I think of "home" - even though, when we left it, it was completely cleaned out. I guess being in that in-transition period doesn't help, since we're technically homeless until the 30th or the 1st. :)

Feeling much more sanguine about my prospects for sleep tonight - we've proven we can do this! Just two more days (and a short three-hour drive once the current tenant vacates) and we'll be in our new home! I was actually realizing that I've never done a cross-country road trip before, and while "with cats and a household packed into a moving truck" isn't necessarily the way I would have picked, it's interesting seeing the differences between it and flying. Everyone cross your fingers for an uneventful trip!