cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recovery This is much better. I've gotten my hair cut, which is like, 'ahhh.' It had been months for lack of cash. I feel lovely now. I also bought a new black hooded sweatshirt that zips up the front on Saturday afternoon. It just felt like something I suddenly needed. I look really fabulous right now. I'm just totally hot. I mean 'hott.' What with the contact lenses and the haircut and being in relatively decent shape. I'm just really fucking hot right now, in my opinion. Which is the opinion that really counts. Trish is supposed to be arranging to get her car towed to the mechanic right now. She'd damn well better get that done. I want my car back. She has been driving it for the last month and has been trashing it. Literally, it's full of trash and dirt and random shit that she spilled. Items of clothing. Diet Pepsi cans. She is such a slob. She tried bleaching her hair last night and wound up with something that looks kinda like season 5 Willow from 'Buffy' and kinda like a Mexican prostitute. It's a good combination as far as fucking her is concerned but if I was her I wouldn't leave the house looking like that. She's going to a proper redhead color tonight. Simon continues to improve. He had plateaued for a while but the last week has been good to him. He's lifting his leg to pee again. That's a big deal right there. It means he has enough strength and balance to stand on just the other 3 legs for that long. He's been having much less pain in his neck generally. He can get off the bed himself and has shown willingness to try to jump up on his own. However, I don't want him doing either of these things because it could cause his vertebrae to re-herniate and start the problem all over again. His appetite is excellent and he's started to put weight back on. He goes outside sometimes just to take a walk and sniff around. He's leading a normal dog life again. It will be a while before he's running around like he was before but he is leading a good, happy life and we've gotten past the hardest stages of his recovery. Hopefully my various critics (most of my family) will eat their words. Simon was NOT a hopeless case and there was never a sound reason to euthanize him. He didn't even end up needing the surgery. All he needed was a chance to heal. Nursing, medication and time. Why are people so ready to give up on animals? Or on other people, for that matter. My uncle was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma something like 18 or 19 years ago and given 6 months to live. He only just died last year. I can't even begin to guess how many times over the years that whispers went around about how "Gary is having a really bad flare up right now and won't last much longer." I even heard his own wife called him "a walking corpse" about 4 years ago. Everyone except me was so ready to write the man off. But he *wanted* to live. And he did live for a very long time after his diagnosis and accomplished a great many things. He got to watch his daughter grow up and graduate from college. He had a very full, happy life. Critics who say that whomever is going to die and should just get it over with generally have very little idea of what they are talking about. If you've never faced the strong likelihood of your own death then you have no idea how much you really have to live for, no matter how much pain and work you will have to get through in order to do so. All of the stupid daily shit in life suddenly seems so wonderful. Driving home from work and getting stuck in traffic. Having a cold. Eating leftovers for dinner. Going to bed. Being late for work. I've had scares with cancer since recovering from the disease as a child and having a kidney removed. In every case, it turned out not to be back. But every time, there is that week or several weeks where I don't know. During those periods, one is psychologically right back there with the cancer. Simon wanted to live. Even at the very worst of it when he was completely paralyzed he wanted to live. I could tell just by looking him in the eye. The way he gazed at the other dogs running after a rabbit in the front yard when I carried him out to 'go.' This common, un-notable, every day thing of a dog futilely chasing a rabbit across a field. He wanted that so badly. And he took such comfort in the small things. I would lift him up onto the bed at night to lay with his head on my shoulder. Feeding him nice, fatty bits of steak by hand. A good brushing. If you are a dog, this is a lot to live for. So now he's on his feet and back to the proper life of a dog. He still has some limitations and isn't yet up to his old vigor or strength. But he's doing pretty damn good for someone whom almost everyone I know was ready to write off. I think Jenny was probably the only person I know who wasn't at least hinting that he should be put down. I bought a new overhead lighting fixture on Saturday and put it in just before dark. However, I don't dare use it. When I pulled out the last bits of the old fixture I saw that the wiring was in pretty bad shape. The sheathing is disintegrating. It wasn't a very sound pair of wires to work with and I suspect that this is not properly grounded. When I turned it on to test it there was a bit of a crackling sound so I turned it off right away. Basically my own work was fine, but the existing wires are just shit. This means that I have to go up into the attic to replace that whole wire all the way back to the last junction box. My attic is a fucked-up, scary place. It's full of dead wasps, old rat droppings and lots of snake shit and shed snake skins. There's a whole ecosystem going on up there. It's not *too* bad under the main area. One can at least stand up. However, heading underneath any of the additions is seriously bad news because the roof lines are much lower and you have to crawl. On your belly from joist to joist or else you'll fall through the ceiling. Not knowing whether that huge fucking black snake is going to suddenly rear up inches from your face. This is really not the kind of environment that one hopes to work in while engaging in complicated wiring. The close look I got at the wiring was just as scary as any of the wildlife. A 5 way junction box with a piece of scrap tin hammered out and screwed in place for a lid. Holy fuck. The wiring isn't all that old. It's just shitty. The strange thing is that while most of it is greenfield (armored) cable that is probably only about 35 years old, the wires inside of the armor have their insulation all dried up and ready to crumble off. They are probably fine for another 10 years IF you don't fuck with them. But if you start moving them around then the insulation is going to come off and then you'll have short circuits and Very Bad Shit. The problem is that in order to replace this wire going from the junction box to the ceiling of the kitchen I have to fuck with all the other wires in the junction box. And risk flaking off their sheathing /insulation in the process. See where this is going? Then I'd have to replace those entire wires all the way back to wherever they go. Effectively putting myself in this position where I'd have to rewire half the house. No thank you. So I've got to approach this thing really carefully. It all just underscores the need to get the new house/ addition built as soon as possible. This whole house as it stands is a heap of shit. The sooner I replace it outright, the better. _________________________________________ I don't ever gamble or play the lottery. But I just got the feeling while I was eating lunch that I should buy a lotto ticket today. Isn't that odd? I suppose that as a one-off thing I should listen to my instinct and buy one. 3:02 p.m. - 2007-12-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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