May 23, 2006
Guilty Pleasures
One Word-Kelly Osbourne
First-Lindsay Lohan
Ok, good for working out to.
Nothing more.
Really.
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May 15, 2006
Doug Flutie and Patrick Ewing
Doug Flutie announced his retirement from football today. I read the article in the NY Times because I remember when he won the Heisman trophy and thought that he had done so when I was in college. He won in 1984.
It’s sort of ironic that while my career is on it’s way up, professional athletes my age are retiring. Patrick Ewing graduated a year after I did but has retired.
In college they said it was likely that my generation would be one where over the course of our working lives we would probably have several careers.
Personally, I retired from the career of not knowing what I wanted to do with my life in my late twenties. Fortunately in my current career being 43 or 44 does not make one ready to be put out to pasture. It’s only when your brain starts to decline is it suggested that your time is past. Of course, that could happen at 43 or 44 but so far so good.
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New York City skyline
Last month I drove up to New York City for Easter. Throughout college and then for several years after college, before I had a car, I took the train from DC to NYC. I almost always sat on the right side of whatever car in the train I was on. On every trip, there was a moment where the NYC skyline would come into view.
The main landmark of the skyline from the train tracks was, of course, the World Trade Center. I’m not sure I ever referred to the buildings as the Twin Towers, although now it is common to do so. In my mind, it was the World Trade Center, those buildings that had risen when I was growing up. The buildings where once my junior high friends and I went up the top floor and then out to the roof, back when they still let you do that.
After I bought my first car and got a dog, I started driving to NYC whenever I went to visit my family. There’s also a moment on the highway where the City comes into view. It’s more noticeable at night when the lights of the City are so visible.
On this trip, I decided to note the mile marker on the Turnpike where the City first came into view. It seems harder to spot the City now that the WTC is gone. In fact, I have a hard time picturing the exact location of the two buildings. Nevertheless, at mile marker 96, the New York City skyline appeared. My home town.
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April 8, 2006
This dog ain't no dummy
Given Maeve’s illness I’ve experienced an odyssey of finding foods that are cancer defeating yet temptingly yummy. For about two months she ate a (very expensive) high protein food. Then she started refusing it. So I went through several other options until I returned to her old high end (but not cancer defeating) dog kibble.
One of the symptoms of liver damage is poor appetite. Maeve never has a poor appetite, she’s always happy to eat my socks for example, even on a full stomach. But when you find out your dog is sick then the stakes become higher around food.
Last night we went to dog happy hour (dogs play, humans get happy) and then to our friend’s house for dinner. Maeve is usually a handful at these type of events since she can easily place her head on a dinner table and is happy to help herself to whatever is being served. And if the counter tops in the kitchen are just a little bit higher, why it’s just no problem to stand up and serve herself (this is called counter-surfing in the world of Rhodesian Ridgebacks). Maeve is a pro.
She had refused to eat her regular dog food before going to happy hour. After the dinner party we returned home and with some coaxing, finally ate her food. Revealing that her appetite is fine, she just would prefer the chicken, asparagus, potatoes, and salad that the humans were eating.
This morning she was presented with the usual dog food offerings. She turned her nose up at it. I always have a twinge of worry, is this it? Is she not feeling well and that’s why she won’t eat it? After two hours of her hounding me about my food and then sulking on the couch (her not me) I finally broke down and gave her one of the new dog cookies I bought yesterday. Of course, that is what she wanted.
My goal was to give her a cookie after she ate her food so that she would learn that eating her food would lead to the reward.
I put a few cookies in with her food. She ate the cookies and then ate her food.
She won.
And then went into the living room and did a little victory dance.
I kid you not.
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April 7, 2006
Maeve the Dog Update
Had a big scare with Maeve the dog yesterday. She’s been holding her own ever since being diagnosed with lymphoma back in December, 2005. The last week or so she’s been refusing her usual food and acting a little down. Yesterday the first report from the vet was that her liver functioning was impaired suggesting that the lymphoma had spread to her liver.
She has t-cell lymphoma which does not have as good a prognosis as b-cell lymphoma (the more common type) but her immediate response to treatment was remission which usually predicts a better life expectancy (not a cure but at least buying a couple of more years).
But if the lymphoma was in her liver then it would mean that her remission was over. The formula is that the length of the first remission predicts that the length of the next remission will be half of the first remission. Any attempt at inducing remission again would only give her about another month or so.
I opted for the biopsy to determine what was going on. At the same time started preparing myself for the fact that this was it. I wasn’t inclined to put her through more chemo just to get another month. Even though I was very upset, I consoled myself with the thought that without chemo she would have died within a few weeks of diagnosis but chemo had given me a few more months.
You have to measure these things in terms of months when you’re dealing with cancer.
However, the biopsy did not reveal more lymphoma. The best guess is that one of the chemo drugs was toxic to her liver and caused damage. It could be another type of cancer but that seemed less likely. Damage to the liver is still a serious concern and could prove fatal as well. They put her on SAMe which is a holistic treatment which I thought was cool that they were open to that approach.
When I picked her up she was ready to leave, as she always is. She seemed her usual feisty self, even with the liver problems. When we got to the floor we live on she took the leash from me as she usually does and walked herself home.
Maeve has a history of surviving usually fatal events.
As a one year old she helped herself to another dog’s bottle of chewable sedatives. Her stomach was pumped but the pills were already digested. She was fine.
As a four year old, she ate a bottle of chewable pills for incontinence. 3000 mg to be exact. They didn’t expect her to make it through the night. She did. She had some complications and when we called the ASPCA Poison Control center to find out if the complications were typical, their response was that they didn’t have on record any dog surviving a 3000 mg overdose so they couldn’t tell us what would happen. She recovered. I was told to expect that there would be significant kidney damage from the overdose. There was not.
As we left the animal hospital last night, I turned to Maeve and said, “Guess you’re not going to go down without a fight are you?” Her response was to leap into the car to get back to the business of taking charge of her life.
Posted by maeve921 at 12:25 PM | TrackBack (0)
Bush "Okayed" Leak According to Libby
Those comparisons to Nixon don’t seem so far off the mark anymore.
My feeling that the Administration is vindictive has been vindicated.
Posted by maeve921 at 12:07 PM | TrackBack (0)
March 30, 2006
E-Harmony Not
A new friend of mine, a woman I admire and hope to be like when I’m her age, encouraged me to give E-harmony another try. Most anyone who watches tv is probably familiar with E-harmony because of the ads running regularly on tv. It’s very expensive in comparison to other internet dating sites and it touts itself as being more successful because one takes a personality “test” and one is matched accordingly.
(I’ve been watching HBO’s new series Big Love recently and have to say that the founder of E-Harmony reminds me of someone who would feel very comfortable in LDS dominated Utah).
So I got back on e-harmony and put myself back in the system so I could be “matched.” I should add that when I tried the service a couple of years ago (you know that your singleness is definitely an issue when your mother calls up you up an encourages you to try an internet dating site she heard about on tv) I was matched with a bunch of guys who worked for the defense department (read: Pentagon) and were all about supporting the American way of freedom and liberty (for anyone white and American-born).
At the time I thought, oh well, that’s fifty dollars down the drain-but certainly good for a few laughs when I’m feeling amused about the concept of spending money on matches with conservative military men.
So, that brings me to this past weekend when I let E-harmony match me again. And this is what I got:
One man whose hero is: Donald Rumsfield
One man who: wants a woman who keeps her body in good running condition (that’s either like a car or a euphemism for ‘those with cellulite need not apply’)
One man who revealed something only his closest friends know which is: how hard it was for him to buy his condo.
Potential for harmony?
Not.
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