giveaways

Today, I gave stuff away. I managed to get up the nerve to take Hunny's leftover food to the local animal shelter for donation. They didn't seem to mind that the bag was already open, and they were very sympathetic, and told me to feel free to come back if I ever felt ready for another animal companion. I didn't start crying until I was back in my car. Seeing as it's my time of the month right now, I think I did remarkably well. (I'm now ever-so-slightly-but-nicely sloshed after a bit of red wine for the cramps - medicinal purposes and all that.)

Then I dropped off my old cell phone at the Verizon store. They have a donation box for used phones, which are refurbished and given to the local domestic violence center for use by the women the center helps. Of course, the donation box is at the back of the store, so you have to wade through all the sales people and merchandise displays, but since I already had a cell phone from Verizon, there was nothing they could sell me.

Finally, I dropped off a bunch of books, CDs, and DVDs at the library - stuff I don't read, listen to, or watch anymore. And that reminds me, I need to get a new library card...

I've been listening to the audiobook versions of the His Dark Materials trilogy this week. Philip Pullman does the narration himself, and other actors provide the voices of the characters. The audio versions are really good, and given my ordeal two weeks ago today, I'm even more enthralled with the idea of an animal daemon familiar - or it could be my Iroquois blood attracting me to it. And it may be just my buzzed state, but I wonder if the alethiometer mentioned in the books was inspired by the Antikythera Mechanism. Anyway. Can't wait for the first movie in December.

last HP fling

Dunno about you, but I spent the weekend in bed with the last Harry Potter book and several pots of tea and toast. It was the best medicine I could think of for my gloom and fatigue, and I think it did me some good, despite the fact that it's the last book in the series, and sad and infuriating things happen in it. It was a satisfying read – the big, juicy tomes do that for me these days – and I think Rowling did everything she could to simultaneously close the series and gratify readers, which are no small tasks for a surprisingly monumental multi-book epic. You may think it's blasphemous, but I think the series will stand up there with Lewis and Tolkein and L'Engle and Le Guin and Bradley and Pullman over time.

I didn't pay much attention to the series until the fourth book was published and the buzz really started building, and the only reason I became interested was because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I had gotten a book club offer in the mail – "four books for four bucks," so that's how I got the first four books: first-edition hardcovers for a buck each. Go figure. I decided that if I didn't like the series, I'd only be out four dollars, and I could donate the books to the library. I was nicely surprised, however, as the books were well worth the fuss. I read the first three books in three days straight; I couldn't put them down, and I hadn't devoured books in that way in awhile. It took me another two days to read the fourth book, by which time I had the "Hogwarts headache" from too much intense reading. The darker tone of the fourth book, not to mention the length, was a little alarming, but it more than held my interest. I love it when I can sink down into a story and not surface until I have to and not even notice that time has passed. The books had a good pace, great characters, clever use of myth and allegory, comic relief when necessary, nothing added without good reason and/or future use, all kinds of things that kids and adults can relate to, not-too-preachy messages about tolerance and compassion, and an author who never seemed let ego get the better of her and continued to write a strong story right to the end, which is perhaps what I admire most about the whole thing.

By this point, I realized that most of my friends and co-workers were reading the series too, as were my mom and my sister, and we were all looking forward to the next book and the first film – all these inner children running rampant and free! And that's how I became an HP fan. I never went in for much of the paraphernalia, though I admit to having a Gryffindor refrigerator magnet and a "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" T-shirt, and after some consideration, I am of the opinion that the sorting hat probably would have put me into Ravenclaw. However, that's as far as I go.

I didn't allow myself any TV, radio, Internet, or newspaper access this weekend until I had finished the latest book. And I have now lost all respect for the various Newspapers-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named and their snotty excuses that they had obtained legal copies of the book before its release and were therefore justified in publishing pre-release reviews, some even with spoilers! They have no sense of the fun of anticipation and seemed to have a mean-spirited bent on ruining it for the public, and that sets such a bad example, especially for the kids. I almost wonder if they did it out of spite for the popularity of the series, and how ironic that these same reviewers grudgingly had to use words like "brilliant," and "breathtaking" and "stunning" – you can hear it in the tone of the reviews. It's as though they were almost hoping the book wouldn't be a very good finale and had to look really hard to find fault with it.


So having spent the weekend cloistered (I love that word) with a huge book and tea and a cat (it would have been nicer to have my dog still around too), I now have another Hogwarts headache, and I must see the new film (hopefully, the theaters won't be so crowded now), rejoin the ranks of the living, and possibly re-read the series again, which is really the only comfort now that the last book in the series has been published. There are more good things to look forward to, though – Gwen's tea party in August, another book or three and two films from Neil Gaiman, the first film from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy with Daniel Craig (yummy!) playing Lord Asriel (if you haven't read the His Dark Materials series, I'd suggest that as a handy fix for any Potter withdrawal you may be feeling), a new film about Jane Austen, Sweeney Todd from Tim Burton (that ought to be deliciously creepy), the first film in the Spiderwick Chronicles series, and the next film in the Narnia series, and, I'm sure, more good books to read. That'll be enough to keep me entertained through the middle of next year at least.

it was beige...

...as Grace Adler would say. That's how I'd describe my first week at my new job - nothing exciting or horrible. Just...beige. I went through the usual meeting the rest of staff (and of course, I won't remember two-thirds of the names for awhile), HR orientation and paperwork, getting office supplies and setting up my desk, and getting my feet wet in some of the work I'll be doing. I spent most of the week reading about patient health literacy and editing and revising patient education messages (200 of them, and more to come!) - that part was interesting enough, and it does make a nice change from having to write high-falutin' text for physicians.

The company is going through quite a hiring spree at the moment (two other people started the same day I did, a few others started last week or within the month, two more start next week) because they went from four clients to sixteen clients in a short span of time. Consequently, they are bursting at the seams in their current office space, and the new space (in the same building on the same floor, thank goodness) won't be ready for six weeks. So temporarily, I'm sitting with the programmers on a different floor, which is a bit incovenient seeing as my boss and all the people I'm going to be working closely with are all on a different floor. They're an extremely quiet bunch, which is just as well since we're all in cubicles. I was definitely spoiled at my last job with the luxury of a private office for six years. Here, only Director/VP/CO-level people get offices. Sigh.

A couple of weird things - one of my new co-workers is someone I went to elementary school with, and some of my former co-workers from a company I worked for about eight years ago work in the same building on the same floor I'm on. Why does this happen to me?

Things feel a bit scattered-brained and rough around the edges for a company that's been around awhile. A lot of right hands not knowing what left hands are doing, and so many people still on their learning curves. They'd known I was coming for two weeks, yet no one got around to having a computer or a phone set up for me. I nearly had to wait a week for a computer, but my boss put some pressure on the IT people, so I got one by the end of my first day. I won't get a phone until sometime next week, though. The training so far has felt like a lot of "oh by the way" stuff and very last-minute and jumbled. Supposedly, there's more formal training at the beginning of August.

This company is very programming-heavy. The writing that I do is the end stage of the data they wrestle with. The clinical people comb through medical guidelines and write out rules for determining what meds a patient should or shouldn't take or what tests they should have based on their medical history, and the guidelines change yearly as new studies are done. The programmers run the rules through their very complicated algorithm to match the rules to patient populations. Once they determine if a patient population is large enough for a patient education message, that's where I come in and actually write the message based on the rule, and attempt to make it sound as friendly and unscary as possible. The messages are then published and sent to the patient populations that need them. Nifty, huh?

And I have never seen a company so dependent on spreadsheets! It's like some kind of rampant addiction. They're everywhere - a spillover from the programmers and their raw data and testing, I imagine. Of course, Excel is my weakest program and an editor's worst nightmare. They also use the dreaded SharePoint, which could be worse if I hadn't been forced to use it at my last job, so I'm at least somewhat familar with it.

So losing Hunny last Saturday and having a beige week at work has sapped all my energy, even though I've been in bed super-early all week (I'm in bed writing this on my new laptop - yes, I did buy it like I said I would). My cat, Lyra, has been somewhat subdued all week, especially when she sees me cry at odd moments. She's not used to being completely by herself during the day. I think she liked Hunny more than Hunny liked her. I may get her a feline friend at some point in the future, maybe the beginning of next year. Certainly not right now, though. I couldn't bear it. I'm trying to psych myself up to take the open bag of dogfood to the animal shelter for donation.

I've only been able to muster enough effort to move Audrey Hepburn's Gardens of the World to the top of my Netflix list earlier in the week, and I've been watching the episodes for color and for calm and the pretty British voices (Michael York does some of the narration), and now I REALLY want a garden of my own, but I'm settling for buying a copy of the DVD. The tulips episode alone is worth the price.

bigger, sadder hiccup

I had to put my dog, Hunny, down early yesterday morning. She was 13 years old.

She had a history of joint pain that would come and go, and that's what I thought it was this time. She was fine on Thursday, we went for our usual evening walk. Friday morning, I took her out, and she seemed fine, but almost as soon as I brought her back in, I could tell that something was wrong. One of her back legs seemed to be bothering her, and she was lethargic. She could barely stand, and when she did, her back legs seemed wobbly. I made an appointment to take her to the vet later that day, she needed a check-up and shots anyway, and we hung out at home until then. I gave her half a Rimadyl with some food for the joint pain like I usually do, and she actually became more alert and mobile for awhile. We went to the vet, they did some bloodwork, said her heart and lungs sounded clear, and everything else looked good, and they gave me a refill on the Rimadyl and told me to watch her and keep her quiet for a day or two until the joint pain resolved, which it usually did.

We came home, and she had some trouble getting up the stairs, but that also isn't unusual. I've got five flights of stairs to my condo, no small feat for anyone to climb. She was quiet for the rest of the evening. I tried giving her another half of a Rimadyl, but it was all I could do to get her to even eat a cookie, so the meds wouldn't upset her stomach. This time, the Rimadyl didn't seem to be helping at all. She managed to stand and wobble her way into my bedroom, and when she lay down again, she made it clear that she had no intention of getting back up for awhile. Normally, she follows me all over the place.

I tried to sleep, but I could hear that she couldn't get comfortable. She'd lay on her side, then roll up again, and then lay on her side again. I was torn between leaving her for the night so that she wouldn't have to exert any effort to get up and walk downstairs to the car and seeing how she was the next morning or taking her to the emergency vet right then. I felt guilty either way, but I felt less guilty about taking her to the emergency vet. That was about 10 pm.

She always liked to stick her head out the back car window and catch the breeze while I was driving. Other drivers got a kick out of seeing her resting her chin on the rolled-down window. This time, however, she just lay in the back seat.

The vet and the techs at the emergency hospital were wonderful. After the vet examined Hunny initially, he wanted to do additional bloodwork and x-rays. He said he had some ideas about what was wrong, but he wanted the test results first before saying anything definite, which I thought was reasonable, so he took her into their back area for the tests, and I sat shivering in the waiting room, watching shows on the Food Network on their TV to keep my mind off things. It had cooled down considerably later into the evening, and I was just in a tank top and shorts. It also started raining.

After what seemed like a nervously long time, I was called back into the exam room. The vet had her x-rays up on the light box, and said, "let me explain everything from the beginning, so you can understand how I arrived at the diagnosis, and feel free to ask as many questions as you want." That's rare to get from a vet, let alone a people doctor. Her blood work showed that she was anemic, which would explain her weakness and lethargy. Several other elements in the blood work showed up on the high side of normal, high, or low (and I made a mental note to ask my regular vet if the blood work they had done earlier that day showed the same things). One of her x-rays showed that her heart was smaller than normal, meaning that it wasn't pumping as much blood as it usually would. The other x-ray showed a big cloudy area over most of her lower organs, which is consistent with internal bleeding. He did an abdominocentesis, and what he got out was blood, which confirmed the bleeding. The anemia and smaller heart would also account for internal bleeding. Apparently, she had a tumor on her spleen that had ruptured, and that had caused the bleeding. Usually tumors on the spleen quickly spread to other organs, and given the amount of bleeding, the tumor looked to be large, and had probably been there for awhile, but because she had been asymptomatic up to now, it had gone undetected.

He said he could do immediate surgery to try and stop the bleeding, but at best, she'd have another 3 months or so to live because of the cancer, and even with chemo, she'd not get much more than that. She'd also have a difficult recovery from the surgery due to her age. So I asked about quality of life in the remaining few months. He said the recovery from surgery would be slow and painful, so the first month wouldn't be good, the second month, she'd be okay, and then it would be rapid downhill after that, especially with the possibility of another rupture, which could be worse than this one. He was prepared to do the surgery right then, if I wanted it, but I'd be extending her life another few months more for me than for her, and she'd be the one suffering the most for it, and I've no right to do that to her. I called my sister and told her everything, and then I agreed to have Hunny euthanized. The vet seemed visibly relieved at this, and did I mention that a couple of times while he was explaining everything to me, I thought he was going to cry? He said he thought it was the right decision and that he'd been through this with one of his dogs and had opted for surgery, but if he had to do it again, he wouldn't have put his dog through the surgery and would have put her down instead.

They wheeled Hunny into the exam room, and we waited for my sister. I was a complete mess by this point, but I imagine the vet and the techs are used to it. My dog was her usual calm self, still wagging her tail whenever someone new came into the room and looked like they were going to give her attention. She was making some effort to get up, but anyone could tell it was painful for her to do so, so after awhile, she just stayed down on the blanket. My sister and her husband arrived, and there were more tears. I've had Hunny since she was eight weeks old, and both my sister and my mom were very close to her. I asked the vet to explain the diagnosis to my sister, which he did, and then he gave Hunny the injections, and she very quietly and quickly went to sleep in my arms and never woke up. That was about 1 am.

I somehow made it home, though even that was a trial because this one stoplight refused to turn green, even after five minutes, so I had to drive down the road further in order to turn around. I got home and called my mom, and we cried some more, and I think I got to bed around 2 am.

A tech from my regular vet called me yesterday afternoon to see how Hunny was doing, and I had to tell her that I had taken Hunny to the emergency vet and had to put her down. She was very sympathetic, especially because she remembered my cat, Louise, who died in December. About 10 minutes later, the medical director called me. He had been with Louise when she died (she also had cancer) and had called me in Australia to tell me. He was also sympathetic, and he said that he was comparing the lab results they had with the ones he had just gotten from the emergency vet, and his results didn't show any anemia and only very slight elevations in two other tests, so the rupture must have occurred between leaving the regular vet and going to the emergency vet later that night.

Suddenly losing my cat in December was bad enough. Then I lost my job in May, and now I've lost Hunny, and I'm supposed to start a new job tomorrow. I really don't know how much more stress I can take before I have to give up and crawl into a hole for awhile. I will say this, though - I was supposed to go to a company meeting with my new employers on Friday, but they hadn't finished processing all of my paperwork, so I wasn't allowed in the meeting in case any proprietary information was discussed, and it was just as well since that meant I was home all day on Friday to keep an eye on Hunny. And because I lost my job in May, I was able to be at home with Hunny every day, all day for a month and a half, and our daily walks definitely improved my mood, so a job loss was definitely the best thing that's happened to me all year. I'd feel all the worse if I was still overworked and too exhausted to give her any attention after she'd been by herself for hours on end on weekdays.

I remember how happy and energetic she was when we got her as a puppy. She was absolutely bursting with love for anyone in her path. I remember trying to get a bag of dogfood open, and the bag ripped and spilled dogfood everywhere, and she sat on top of it all and ate around her. I remember the big brown teddy bear we gave her to sleep with. For awhile, the bear was bigger than she was. I remember how her rottie eyebrows gave her face deeper, and funnier, expression. I remember laying down on my side on the floor, and she'd lay down beside me and prop her chin on my hip. I remember walking with her one cold, icy morning, and I started to slip on the ice; I instinctively grabbed hold of her, and she immediately sat down on the ground to steady us both. I remember tripping over the huge rawhide bones she'd diligently and thoroughly go through and leave lying around when she needed a rest from chewing. I remember the vet and the groomer marveling at how well-behaved and happy she was, no matter what was being done to her. I remember the forlorn look she'd give me when I gave her a bath - she'd stand still and hang her head, more or less guaranteeing a cookie afterward. I remember how she mothered my sister's dog, Fiat, and how she kept my mom company when I was away at college and Mom had started her own at-home business.

What makes me cry the most is that she was my one constant in life for the past 13 years. She got me through my parents' divorce, several deaths in the family, moving out on my own, countless one-date wonders and failed relationships, and several job changes, not to mention keeping watch during my panic attacks or monthly cramps or yearly colds. I could have the shittiest of days, but I always had Hunny to come home to, and she would patiently listen to me complain about it all as I mixed up her dinner. Now I don't even have her, and I'm not sure how to cope, especially as I start this new job tomorrow. There had better be a damn good reason why she was taken from me just now, when I'd be relying more than ever on my one constant. If this is some sort of test, I think I've already failed it.

slight hiccup

I'll say this for my new employers, they're thorough. It appears they didn't give me all the paperwork needed for the background check, so I received four additional documents to fill out, which I sent back yesterday. Processing the additional paperwork may put the brakes on my original start date, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it means I may get a day or two more of vacation, but I would like to get over the hurdle of starting a new job.

In the meantime, I've got John McGlynn's CD, Songs for a Fallen Angel, to keep me company and keep me calm. I'm positively addicted to this CD, and that's not happened in a long time. Seriously, I just keep it on repeat play. It reminds me of some of the great '60s folk music with a little Celtic added in for spice. Yummy. I've read that he'll have a new album out at the end of the year, which is good, as I'll probably wear this one out by then.

being the new girl again

This is my last week of unemployment. I've signed papers, and I've been background checked, so it's official - next Friday, I'm going to an all-day company meeting, and the following Monday, I start in the office.

The jitters have set in early, helped along I'm sure by this curiously strong Yorkshire tea I found. Anyway, I'm out of practice being the new girl in the office and having to start all over again and walk on eggshells and prove myself, although I'm sure all of those things are good for me, as far as ego humblers go. I can't say I feel quite up to it, so I'm trying to focus more on new endeavors and writing about new things in this new job. Hopefully, the rest will take care of itself so that I don't worry myself sick about it, which I am prone to do. One of my friends, who lost her husband last year to a sudden heart attack and who is left raising four kids all under age 12 on her own, said that the two most stressful things you go through in life are losing loved ones and changing jobs. No shit.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the time off, however, despite how it came about. I've gotten caught up on lots of things, mainly sleep and reading, and the weather has been great for the most part for being out-of-doors. Forced, sudden vacations aren't so bad after all. Especially since I probably won't get any more time off for the rest of year (the one bitch about starting a new job in the middle of the year) besides holidays since I'm starting over with vacation accrual as well. I had hoped to take a European trip in October, but I think that's going to have to be postponed. Sigh - that's the one thing I miss from my old job (besides some of my co-workers), all that vacation time I had earned over six years...

employed!

My references must have told some whoppers about me because my prospective employers made an offer today. I go to their company meeting on the 13th, and then I start in their office (5 minutes from home!) on the 16th. This means two weeks of an actual vacation without having to do any job searching. Yay!

The Puppini Sisters and the Scarlet Temptress

Heh, my blog title sounds like the title of a 40s-era trash novel, doesn't it?

I've been listening to Betcha Bottom Dollar for a little while now, and I've yet to be tired of it. I admit it was a little strange on first listen to hear swing versions of "Panic," "Wuthering Heights," "Heart of Glass," and "I Will Survive," but they've grown on me. I heard these girls sing acapella on WTMD last week, and they were really good. Fun stuff.

I came across this article about Netflix in today's Washington Post, and it's further proof of why I don't mind being single because it means I can watch my Netflix DVDs whenever I bloody well feel like it without offending anyone, and I would never consider mixing my queue list with anyone else's. Some things simply need to remain independent.