Category Archives: Zelda

The story

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in Pets, Zelda

≈ 14 Comments

I’m going to start with the good news: Zelda is going to be fine. Most likely, anyway, but let’s stick with the optimistic belief for right now. Zelda is going to be fine.

I’m going to point out some more good news: people are kind. I’ll elaborate more on that in a minute.

And some more good news: we got incredibly lucky. We really did. Every time I think about that, tears start rolling out of my eyes, but it doesn’t change the truth — an inch to one side, a different spot on her body, and her story would be over today and I would be devastated. So I’m not devastated and that’s good. I’m just kind of… well, crying a lot.

So, the story: I’m in a nice campground, my first New York State Park, which shall go unnamed because I don’t hold the park responsible. Oh, but it really is very nice. Loads of green grass, a water view, sea gulls swooping in, lots of people but big spaces so we’re not all on top of one another.

And I’ve had a very nice day. I sent out an email to my mailing list this morning and have gotten some lovely emails back from people happy about Grace, and then I worked on Fen for a while and liked what I wrote. The weather has been pretty overcast, but not unbearably hot. In the late afternoon, the van is getting toasty, but there’s a cooler breeze outside, so I decide to take Z for a walk.

We’re walking along and I am totally in my head — I don’t remember what I was thinking about, but I know it wasn’t admiring the scenery or being in the moment. I’m just daydreaming. And then suddenly a dog is jumping Zelda.

A bigger dog.

And it’s not playing.

It’s trying to kill her.

And I hate to admit this truth, because I do think that they get a bad rap and I have known some lovely pit bulls — our back yard neighbor dog Haley was a sweetheart — but it was a pit bull.

And it was not going to let go.

And that’s probably why pit bulls get such a bad rap. They’re terriers. They are absolutely determined, they have been bred to be absolutely determined and they are not giving up. I was trying to pull it off — totally willing to get bitten myself, not avoiding its mouth at all — its owner was trying to pull it off, a guy from a neighboring campsite was trying to pull it off, and that pit bull did not give a damn what any of us were doing. It had its prey in its mouth and it was keeping it.

The guy from the neighboring campsite got a stick and started hitting it and whether it was that or the owner getting a better grip on its harness, they finally got the dog off Zelda.

She had been bitten only once, but it was deep, all the way through her shoulder. I was shaking. So was she, probably. Stuff happened. People talked. I wrapped myself around Zelda and tried to breathe and tried to organize my thoughts about what needed to happen next.

That’s where the people being kind comes in. Neighboring campsite guy — named John — gave me water, got a wet cloth for her, offered me a ride back to the van (eagerly accepted). He stopped on the way and reported what happened to the campground host and then to the ranger. He called his dad and asked him to investigate vets, got my number from me so he could call when he knew more. He dropped me off and I carried Zelda into the van. She couldn’t put any weight on her leg.

Some people were walking by the van on their way to the water, with a small dog. I said to them, no preamble, “Where do you live? Do you live here?” The woman gave me a name, I said, “Where is that? Is it near here?” She started describing its location, somewhere around Buffalo, I think, and I interrupted her and said, “No, too far, I need a vet here,” and headed to my next door neighbor, who also had a dog. I did the same thing to her.

Within minutes, I had four or five or six people, gathered around me and Zelda. Bringing her ice and a first aid kit, finding a vet, calling an emergency vet service, handing me the phone, cleaning up the blood, bandaging her puncture, finding the one on the other side. Fairly soon — also forever, but I know it was fairly soon — I was on the phone with the vet. She was about 45 minutes away, an hour given that I was going to need to pack up the van to get there, and it was after hours so walking in the door was going to cost $175. By this time, I was pretty sure Zelda was going to be okay — we were both traumatized, but it was her leg, not her face or abdomen. But I was going to feel a lot better when a) a vet told me that and b) a vet gave her some painkillers. So I packed up the van and headed off.

The vet was lovely. Truly a nice person, very gentle with Zelda, and pretty gentle with me, too. She sedated Z, took x-rays to make sure her leg wasn’t broken (it’s not) and gave her lots of stitches. I knew that antibiotics were in our future, but when I said that Z’s weight was a little lower than usual because she hadn’t been eating during her three weeks of antibiotics for ehrlichia, she gave her the antibiotic shot instead of pills. Z’s not out of the woods — the vet was worried about nerve damage and warned me that there’s going to be some deep bruising. Z’s probably going to be in pain for a while and we’re going to have to start doing gentle exercises with her leg in four days to make sure she maintains the muscle.

But she’s alive.

I’m incredibly grateful for that. Apart from that… I don’t really know how I feel. People have suggested that I should be angry, and maybe I should, but I don’t feel it. People have told me that I need to make the other dog’s owner pay for her vet bill, and obviously I should do that, but I don’t know, I don’t, can’t, feel the energy to make that happen. I stopped by their campsite to tell them that she was okay and they were apologetic but they didn’t offer to pay the bill and I didn’t ask. I didn’t feel hostile to them, I felt sorry for them. They were so in the wrong and that’s their karma, not mine. But we all got lucky. So, so lucky.

And people are kind and at the end of the day, that’s what I want to remember.

But I really wish I could call my mom. Three days from now, it will be seven years since she died, but she’s still the only person I want when what I really need to do is cry and say how scared I was and cry some more. I miss her.

Progress report

09 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Boring, Grace, Zelda

≈ 6 Comments

Tried to write a post last week, and you know, I just didn’t have anything much to say. It is an incredibly beautiful summer in Pennsylvania — blue skies, warmth, green grass, lightning bugs, blueberries. I’m so glad to be here. It’s amazing to me how much it pleases me to know that I will not be driving more than ten minutes for any day of the next two weeks.

I’m spending much of my time staring at a computer screen, writing a sentence here and there on Grace and then deleting it. I consider it absolutely ridiculous how much I’m agonizing over this — seriously, I know I’m not writing the Great American Novel, it’s a happy romance, all that needs to happen here is for my delightful heroine to fall into my charming hero’s arms with a nice fade to black. But knowing that apparently doesn’t make it any easier for me to actually write it.

I’m still persisting, though. I’ve considered re-reading the whole thing to see if it makes any sense, but I’m not going to — I’m going to give it to three first-draft readers as soon as I actually finish a first draft and not even look at it again until they’ve finished reading it and sent me back comments. And if they never finish reading it, I will know that it just doesn’t work and I’ll let it go. And get a job as a waitress, maybe, because if I’m not going to be a writer, I seriously need to do something with my life.

The other thing I’m doing with my time is fighting with Zelda. I used to say that Zelda would do anything if I could make her understand what I wanted, but this is no longer true: she understands that I want her to take her pill and she is sad that she can’t oblige me, but she also thinks I’m trying to feed her poison and she is not going to cooperate. I would love to get someone to take a video of me trying to get the antibiotic into her, but it would be a long video.

I can try to hide it in any food and she will turn her nose up at it. Nothing works for more than two pills. She’s now refusing to eat steak, prosciutto, hot dogs, chicken, canned fish, as well as canned dog food, if she thinks there’s any chance it might contain a pill. I literally put chocolate on a pill — a tiny amount, I know chocolate is deadly for dogs in any quantity — and she ate it once, but then not a second time. That’s how desperate I’ve become.

Fortunately for my sanity, the Best Brother Ever is feeding her slices of Whole Foods roast beef when I bring her in the house. She’ll eat that when he feeds her. I’ve thought about trying to get him to give her pills, but I suspect she would willingly starve to death in that case and I’d rather know that she’s getting at least a few calories.

Some days I don’t bother trying to make it easy, I just try to force it in her mouth. This morning, I got it in her mouth, held her mouth closed, stroked her neck while whispering sweet nothings to her, and counted to 60. At the end of my count, I let her go and she spit the pill out at me. Not the first time.

I have to remind myself on a daily basis that ehrlichiosis can be fatal — if she dies of it, I’ll hate myself if I haven’t actually kept her on the antibiotic for the whole three weeks. But I am counting the days until we’re done.

I wish I was also counting the days until Grace was done. But every day I wake up thinking, “this is it, I’ll finish today” and every day, I go to sleep thinking, “maybe tomorrow.” But it’s still early, so I’m still on the “this is it, I’ll finish today” mantra for today. It’s more likely if I start staring at that file, though, so I think I’ll get back to that. 🙂

Maumee Bay State Park

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in Campground, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

Deer and bunnies and redwing blackbirds, lush green grass and huge campsites, trees and terrific hikes and an enormous lake nearby… of the four Ohio state parks where I’ve camped, Maumee Bay, near Toledo, is by far the nicest. I could happily stay here for weeks, I think.

The one negative is the bugs. There are tons of them. I try to remind myself that bugs are a symbol of a healthy eco-system and no bugs would mean no redwing blackbirds, but still… not a bug fan.

And alas, one of the bug problems turns out to be a problem that it’s too late to worry about, at least to some extent. There were warning notices at the front desk about ehrlichiosis — a tick-borne disease — and how to avoid getting it and what symptoms to watch for. Unfortunately, Zelda was diagnosed with the disease an hour earlier at the vet. So I guess I can worry about catching it myself, but I don’t have to worry about Zelda getting it. She’s on antibiotics and I’m trying not to obsess too much. Or to think that if I’d never moved into a van, never started traveling, she would never have encountered whatever tick made her sick. Those thoughts are not useful thoughts.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Michigan. Still not done with Grace — I’ve spent hours and hours of writing time on a single page in the past week. I thought I knew how something ended — thought I knew it for a long, long time — but when it came down to it, it just didn’t work the way I wanted it to. Or I couldn’t make it work the way I wanted it to. But I think today I finally let go of that section and moved on.

And now I’ll do the same with this blog post. 🙂

Edited to add: At the vet’s office, Zelda was the third Zelda they’d seen in two days, but the other two were both, “Zelda, Princess of Hyrule.” I heard that and said (of course), “But my Zelda is the Princess of Hyrule!” She was, in fact, named after Zelda, Princess of Hyrule, I just never used the full name. But I’m totally adding it now.

Random memories

19 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

Zelda under a blueberry bush

In another week, there will be so many ripe blueberries on the bushes that picking them will start to feel like an exhausting, never-ending chore. But I have basically missed them. Yesterday, my brother and I picked one small leftover container’s worth of the first ripe berries, just before a nicely torrential thunderstorm hit. Today, I’m headed off. I’m trying to remind myself of all the things that I’m looking forward to in the next week — family, friends, a birthday celebration, a state that I’ve never visited before. I know once I’m on the road, I’ll feel more excited. But it’s hard to say good-bye. It’s been a lovely few weeks in PA, perfect weather, great company.

Random memories that will make me smile:

Last night, we all played Exploding Kittens. Each of us, upon going out, made some sort of melodramatic sound of despair/explosion noise, and when my SIL lost, leaving my brother as the winner, she said to him, “I hope you’re happy, sitting there all covered in cat guts.”

One night last week, at the dinner table, we somehow wound up in a discussion of bears, and my brother told my niece that if she was ever trapped in a corner with baby bears and the mom bear was charging her, she should just pick up the baby bear and throw it. Just remembering the look she gave him — half serious consideration, half “what??” — makes me want to laugh. I don’t think she was worried about the impossibility of picking up a real baby bear, I think she thought throwing an animal would be cruel. But hey, she’s got a plan in the event she’s ever hanging out with some random baby bears and their mom gets upset.

My nephew invited me to play a video game and said he’d watch. It was a game about droids and Detroit and within the first twenty minutes, it had me cleaning a bathroom. I only lasted a few more minutes before saying, “yeah, no, I can do this in real life if I want to,” and went back to playing a game that let me shoot kobolds in a sewer instead.

In other news, not as much progress on Grace as I wanted to make. But! On a day when I was writing myself notes that included such constructive criticism as “abysmal,” instead of starting major revisions, I walked away. In some sense, I think I can call that progress. I actually wound up reverting to the previous day’s version that day (minus mean notes, therefore) before leaving it alone for a couple of days. But today I am going to try to get at least a few hundred words written before I start driving. I hope they won’t be words that I later label “abysmal.”

Salthouse Branch Recreation Area

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Campground, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

Why is driving so exhausting?

I guess that’s a rhetorical question: the answers are sort of obvious. But there’s a reason most people don’t spontaneously say, “Hey, let’s go for a three hour drive today, won’t that be fun?” Or a four-hour drive, or a seven-hour drive. And driving slowly — with breaks of a day or two between chunks of long driving days — doesn’t make the experience any better. Crazy ten-hour days of driving require recovery days but so, apparently, do five-hour driving days. At least for me.

But I broke my drive from South Carolina to Pennsylvania by stopping for two nights at Salthouse Branch Recreation Area in Henry, Virginia. It was about five hours from Santee — albeit closer to seven with stops for gas, dog walks, and lunch, so I got there on Friday with plenty of time to relax. Along with all the rest of the people in the state who wanted a nice relaxing Memorial weekend Friday. I believe I complained that at Santee I could see my neighbor’s trailer instead of a nice view? At Salthouse Branch, I could see eleven trailers from the van door. At that, it was still nicer than a typical independent parking-lot style campground: my site was small and not level but at least there were grass and trees and beautiful water within walking distance.

path into woods

Also some nice looking trails, but I did not take advantage of them. It was a bad combination of circumstances. First, I was tired — long driving days do that to me. Second, it was hot enough that I didn’t want to wear long pants and socks and hiking boots. And third, although also relevant to the second point, there were ticks. So many ticks that I was literally flicking them off the water hose and steps. Given the number of tick-borne diseases that I’m scared of, bare legs in the woods felt like a no-brainer level of stupid thing to do. So we admired the above path, but we didn’t go very far on it.

Also, there were dogs. Not on the trails, but in the campground. Lots and lots of dogs. Oh, my gosh, the dogs. I like dogs (obviously.) But at least some of these dogs’ owners had given up on keeping their dogs quiet and there were so many dogs in the campground that there was a continual dog chorus going on. Two brown labs behind me needed to say hello to every passing visitor and the little black dog across from them felt compelled to respond. The park was completely full, so there were a great many passing visitors.

Zelda never barked once. I would be a smug dog owner about that — my good dog! — but she’s losing her hearing (sadly, another symptom of canine dementia), so I think she probably just didn’t hear them. She’s also gone back to being ridiculously picky about her food. Yesterday, she declined steak for breakfast in favor of a couple bites of my niece’s breakfast cereal. I will seriously feed this dog anything that she wants, but she changes her mind about what that is on an hourly basis. But her energy level is great and she’s been enjoying playing with toys again, so I’m not worrying too much.

And I’m now in Pennsylvania, where I will be staying for the next three weeks. Less driving, more family time, yay! And hopefully some writing (finally!!) of an emotionally satisfying romantic ending. I’m as close as I’ve ever been with finishing a first draft and I have no impulse to go back and start re-writing, so that’s good news. Now if I could just get on with it!

Commencement and other things

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Personal, R, Self-publishing, Translations, Zelda

≈ 8 Comments

This morning, I knelt on the floor at my dad’s house to rub noses with his dog, Gizmo. Gizmo is, I think, a mix of cocker spaniel and poodle* — golden, soft, fluffy, with an extremely endearing underbite, and a passionate devotion to his person, my dad. With his person out of the room, he was willing to come be loved up by me and maybe even play a little.

When Zelda saw what we were doing, she decided to come play, too. Within minutes, she and Giz were both chasing after a squeaky skunk, racing down the hallway after it, shoving one another out of the way, even playing tug as they were bringing it back to me. Zelda was play bowing, batting at the toy with her paws, even mock growling, and Giz’s tail was wagging a hundred beats a minute.

If I’d had a tail, it would have been wagging even faster than Giz’s.

So Sunday before last, Z was sick and getting sicker. Not eating, hiding under the table, lethargic, no energy. Not even interested in going for walks. I’d been bracing myself for the worst and it felt like the worst was coming even faster than I could have imagined. Last Monday, I decided to stop the medication she was on. On Thursday, I got the news that she had no signs of a UTI and so I also stopped the antibiotic she was on. She started getting better immediately. Yesterday, at my dad’s suggestion, I took her to his vet. Instead of recommending an ultrasound and x-rays, which was where I was at with my vet, his vet put her on estrogen.

Wow. Just wow, wow, wow, wow.

The vet said it would take a couple weeks before we’d know whether it was going to help with the peeing problem, but watching her play with Gizmo; having her almost drag me out of the van to go for a walk in the rain; seeing her lick every last speck of food out of her dinner bowl, then nose me and look expectantly for more… I will buy stock in doggie diapers, I will plan on doing laundry as often as it takes, but oh, it’s so nice to have my energetic dog back!

a cute Jack Russell terrier in the grass

Zelda, attending R’s commencement ceremony. She listened about as well as some of the students around us did and was much less chatty. But it was a very festive atmosphere!

In other news, R’s graduation was lovely. New College students treat commencement as a combination costume party and picnic. It took place at sunset, by the water, and while there were appropriate speeches, suggestions to go out and change the world, and professors attired with dignity in their academic robes, the students were celebrating.

sunset with silhouettes of people

New College commencement

R had been torn earlier in the day whether he was going costume-party or dignity, but he went with the costume and I got to watch — with immense pride — my six-foot four, bearded son accept his diploma while dressed as a lobster. I’d been thinking prior to the moment that despite the whistles and cheers and yelling of the audience, I’d probably only be able to bring myself to applaud until my hands hurt, but as it happened, I yelled and whooped for him with the best of them. I’d worried that I might cry, but I think it is actually impossible to cry when watching a lobster graduate. There was much beaming with pride, though. He told me later that his favorite part of the evening was all the parents of the kids he works with coming up to him and asking to take his picture to show their kids.

And then another nice thing happened this week: I was taking care of some basic business stuff, including checking to see whether the Italian translation was finally available, and I remembered that I’d scheduled free promotions for the other translations. Instead of going to Amazon and looking for the German translation, I used Google and it took to me Amazon-Germany, where I discovered…

screenshot of German bestseller list

A German best given-away-er

I could have used Google translate to read the reviews, but I didn’t — I just enjoy knowing that they exist. And that for a brief moment in time, Ghosts — or rather, Die Gabe der Geister — was an international best-given-away-er.

*edited to add a message received in my email:

The Giz is pissed at you. He is not in any way genetically related to any Cocker Spaniel. He is a ferocious peek-a-poo, a descendent of a fierce line of savage Pekingese who mauled Cocker Spaniels every day. He will probably bite you the next time he sees you.

Roses

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Personal, Zelda

≈ 6 Comments

roses

My dad gave me roses for Mother’s Day and I have been appreciating them all week. They’re perfect roses — they opened nicely, they look lovely, and they smell beautiful.

This morning I found a trail map of Oscar Scherer State Park — the place where I’m staying, and where I’ve stayed several times before — and I realized that there was a long trail that I’ve never been on. It leads to another lake, one that I’ve never seen. I’m leaving today, so I don’t have time to do it on this visit, but I mentally noted it for the next time we’re here.

And then I wondered whether Z would be with me the next time I’m here. She’s not doing great. She ate breakfast a couple of days ago, but now she’s pretty much turning up her nose at any food unless I hand-feed her, and even then, she eats a few bites and then turns her head away. The one exception was beef with sweet potatoes yesterday afternoon — she nosed out almost all the pieces of beef on her own, avoiding all the sweet potato, but at least she ate.

This morning, she was restless at 5AM, so I took her out, but she seemed confused: she just stood in the campsite and trembled, no peeing, no walking, no sniffing. I brought her back in again and put her up on the bed with me (she’s been sleeping on the floor, her choice) and by 7AM, she’d pretty much covered the sheets with pee. So today will be another laundry day, which is fine. But then instead of telling me at 6:30 that it was time to go out, she had to be persuaded to come for a walk. She did walk, eventually, with lots of very normal sniffing, but her walks are getting slower and shorter.

All of that added up to me being very sad when I thought about the trail that we’ve never seen and wondered whether I’d ever see it with her — and then I remembered: R is graduating tomorrow. My frequent visits to Oscar Scherer are coming to an end, because I’ll no longer have a reason to visit Sarasota. Maybe I’ll come back someday — it’s a great park and I love it here– but it’s not like I’m looking at a guaranteed return in three months or six months or even ever. So yeah, maybe I won’t have Z with me when I come back and maybe she’ll never see that trail, but life is change. Sometimes that means it hurts, but I wouldn’t want time to be frozen.

And meanwhile, we have today. It’s going to include — well, laundry, obviously. But also some good work on Grace, I hope; some texting with friends; some family time with my son and dad and stepmom; some delicious food, including a celebratory restaurant meal at a place where Z gets to come join us on the patio; and maybe even a movie.

Also, some appreciation of some lovely roses. They won’t last forever, because nothing does. But today they are beautiful and I am grateful to have them in my life.

Miscellany

14 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Cover design, Grace, Personal, Zelda

≈ 12 Comments

R told me a very funny story about love bugs yesterday (while we were having a nice Mother’s Day brunch) and it almost made me feel kindly toward them. For a minute or two. It didn’t last.

For those not from Florida, the bugs colloquially called “love bugs” — I have no idea what their real name is — have a brief mating season in spring and in fall. Every few years, their mating season is insanely crazy and there are bugs everywhere. You can’t go outside without breathing them in, because there are so many of them. They will crawl on you, they will get in your hair, they will fly in your face, and they will cover your vehicle. Yesterday, during my drive to Sarasota, I probably killed hundreds of them, maybe thousands. It does not make for a cheerful drive. So, so, so gross.

Fortunately (?), it’s also really rainy. Enough so that I checked the weather this morning with a wary eye. I’m not leaving Florida until R graduates from college and there’s no way I’m missing his graduation, but we actually might be looking at the first named storm of the 2018 hurricane season. About three weeks too early, but Al Gore warned us a long time ago about changing weather systems. It’s not a surprise. And it is handy for rinsing off dead love bugs.

I’m waiting on test results for Z, but she is unchanged. Yesterday afternoon, she peed on both beds, so I spent the afternoon and early evening doing laundry. The campground (Oscar Scherer Stat Park) has a nice washer and dryer, so I managed to get clean sheets on the beds, but it cost me $7 total. That’s going to be an expensive daily habit.

Meanwhile, she rejected fresh Atlantic salmon and rice for breakfast. I ate some and it was quite delicious. But she seemed hungry before I gave her the pills she’s supposed to take and it finally occurred to me to wonder whether the medication — which is not doing anything for the peeing problem — is making her nauseous. Turns out the side effects are restlessness, irritability and loss of appetite. I’m thinking we are going to stop those pills. I’ll continue with the antibiotics, at least until we get the test results. Eventually I will become nonchalant about the peeing, I suppose, if the other options are starving dog and/or dying dog. Peeing dog is fine in comparison.

I actually really wanted to make some cute flow chart graphics for this post. The first would ask, “Has Zelda peed inside?” and the answers would be, “No,” leading to “Of course not, what a bizarre idea, why would she do that?” and “Yes,” leading to “Seriously? WTF?”. The second chart would ask, “Has Zelda peed inside?” and the “Yes” response would lead to a bunch of variants, like “Did she pee on me?” and “Did it wake me up?” and “Did she pee on so many things that I must immediately do multiple loads of laundry?” and so on, with answers that would include “Great!” and “No problem,” for the lesser pee issues. Honestly, pee on the floor only bothers me now if I step in it.

However, creating a flow chart turned out to be a lot more work than one would expect. I wound up having lots of fun playing with book cover designs instead. I’m a long way away from needing any new book covers, but it was fun to try out some variations. (I was using free templates from Canva and my own photographs.)

possible new covers for A Lonely Magic

Of course, the book I’m really working on is Grace, so I should get back to it. No progress this weekend, unsurprisingly, and this week — given the graduation and the distractions inherent in being in the same town as R — is probably not going to be my most productive, but I’m really pretty close to finishing a draft for the first time ever. And I have no current impulse to start over from the beginning, which is a good sign.

I’ve got one other distraction happening this week, though, which is pretty fun. When I was walking Z this morning, I was wondering why it felt sort of like Christmas Eve. You know the feeling, that slightly magical sense of anticipation? And then I remembered that it’s because The Penderwicks at Last releases tomorrow. Yes, it feels like Christmas Eve because of a book. But I love the Penderwicks and I’m so looking forward to getting lost in their world again for a few hours.

First, though, some Grace!

Onward…

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Grace, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

sunrise

The good news: I have written words on Grace. Progress! And after spending a couple of days mostly saying things like, “I hate this book, this book is so stupid, I hate this book,” last night I re-read some of the earlier chapters, trying to find a detail I needed, and it made me laugh. I actually made my friend L (whose driveway has been my home for the past couple of days) listen to me read bits aloud. She didn’t laugh, but that was okay, because I was mostly interrupting her in her own writing. And my own laughing is sufficient motivation to continue writing today. Someday I really am going to finish this book. I will probably hate it and think it’s stupid, but at least it has parts that are fun. That’s going to have to be good enough, I think.

The bad news: Z and I will be going back to the vet tomorrow afternoon. She’s now drinking lots of water while turning up her nose at most food, including plain chicken breast and ground beef with sweet potatoes, and she threw up her pills this morning, so… well, I guess the good news is that it looks less like dementia. And more like kidney failure, so it’s not exactly what you would call good news. I feel a little sorry for my vet, who spent hours valiantly trying to save B three months ago, including taking her turns holding an oxygen mask over his face while he snuggled in her lap. I know she doesn’t want to give me bad news anymore than I want to hear it. But we’re probably going to try some antibiotics, so maybe Z will be feeling much better soon. Fingers crossed, prayers said. And thank you for all the sympathy and good wishes — I so appreciate them.

Back to Grace. Not sure the LZSP strategy of trying to focus on work is really working out — I seem to spend a lot of time staring into space — but word-by-word, I will finish this book.

L.Z.S.P.

07 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Anxiety, Audiobooks, Zelda

≈ 12 Comments

dog picture

On Thursday, I got nothing done. Zelda had a vet appointment at 4PM and I spent the day trying to drown my worry in puttering. Laundry, re-organzing cupboards, washing dishes, wiping down the floor, folding clothes in different ways… Eventually, we made it to the vet, who ruled out a urinary tract infection or kidney problems. That left, as I had suspected, hormone-related urinary incontinence.

Or dementia.

Don’t ever google canine dementia.

It’s not something you want to know anything about if you love a dog, not unless you’re forced to.

Zelda started the incontinence medication on Friday morning. It takes between 5-10 days to take effect, so the fact that she’s peed in the van multiple times since then does not mean that she’s got dementia, not yet. But the incontinence really is getting dramatically worse — she went from an unexpected accident inside in February to peeing on my bed on April 13th, to doing it again a week later, then three times within a week, then yesterday three times within the day.

I am… well, somewhat distraught, actually. It’s not just the peeing, although that’s obviously uncool. Yesterday she managed to pee on two fitted sheets, two pillowcases, and a top sheet! Plus the floor, plus a rug, or maybe two rugs. Fortunately, I’m parked in a friend’s driveway, so there was a washing machine nearby.

But she’s also not eating well, she’s doing weird things like burying bits of food around the van (so not okay), she’s sleeping on the floor instead of my bed, and, of course, every odd thing she does now looks like a symptom of dementia to me.

I don’t think I could possibly be living a worse lifestyle for a dog with dementia. And my vague thoughts of settling down by renting a room from someone are obviously impossible with an incontinent dog — I can’t imagine how stressed out I would be, if I was that tenant.

After I lost B, I realized I needed to develop a Zelda Loss Survival Plan. I can’t remember if I wrote about it, but I really did take it seriously. I knew that if losing B was bad, losing Z was going to be… well.

Anyway, I was walking her this morning and realized that the fundamental problem with my ZLSP is that it also needs to be a LZSP — a Losing Zelda Survival Plan. If her loss isn’t a lightning bolt, but a long, slow nightmare that includes the possibility of her no longer recognizing me, no longer knowing who I am, becoming aggressive… yeah, I need a different plan.

I have no idea what that plan looks like, but it probably starts with taking one minute at a time. And in this minute, it’s a lovely day in Florida. It’s probably going to get too hot, as always, but my window is open, I’m listening to clucking chickens from the neighbor’s house and chirping birds, and there’s a cool breeze.

I haven’t managed to get any writing done at all in the last week — haven’t even tried! — but I am working on a project that I should finish my part of today, and then I’ll try to get back to Grace. And the project that I’m working on — well, maybe I should save the details for another blog post. But for me it involves listening, not writing, so it’s a novel experience. WordPress just tried to change “novel” into “lovely” and I wouldn’t describe it that way — I actually find it sort of uncomfortable and torturous — but I think the end result is going to be excellent. And in the moment, it’s a really good distraction from worry. Perhaps my LZSP should include immense focus on work?