Those of you who know me, or who have been reading this blog for a long time, know that I have an elderly demented dog. Sam’s a 14.5-year-old border collie/mutt mix. I adopted him from the Humane Society when he was a year old. He used to be Quite the Dog.

In case you’ve never seen a demented dog in action, I’ll describe it. It’s eposodic, and occurs more frequently at night, but can happen anytime. When he’s not having an episode, he’s relatively normal. The episodes are now occurring almost daily, and can go on for hours. During an episode, he paces, stares and pants. He paces the perimeter of each room, including a trip into each closet. He climbs in and out of the bathtub repeatedly, sometimes for an hour or more. He climbs up and down the stairs over and over again, and sometimes falls down them. Throughout all this, he keeps coming back into the bedroom and staring at me. He stares at the wall. He pants and licks his lips repeatedly. He is anxious, unhappy and compulsive. I think he hallucinates.

This all started last January, and the vet thought he might be in pain but painkillers didn’t resolve it. Sedatives didn’t resolve it. Clomacalm, an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant did resolve it after a few weeks. He’s been on Clomicalm for 10 months now, but the anxiety attacks started again about a month ago.

Last Friday I took him to the vet for vaccinations and an anxiety consult and also to get her to look at a smelly scab on the back of his neck.

He lost another kilo this year…that’s a kilo a year for the last four years. He’s underweight. He’s deaf. His bowel control is increasingly unreliable. She performed a Menace Test, which involved tapping the nerves around his eyes. His responses were slow and incomplete, which indicates brain deterioration. His dementia is progressing. Brain Diet Dog Food might help him gain weight and regain some of his mental powers. It’s $80 a bag, compared to the $12-a-bag Kibbles and Bits that he now eats.

The scab on his neck was covering a (probably) benign but infected tumor, so she prescribed antibiotics. They had to shave it and remove the scab in order to get a good look at it, and it was shockingly ugly. Yuck. He has lots of tumors now, but the others are all beneath the skin. She drew blood to see if the anti-anxiety meds are doing any organ damage: if not, she’ll up the dosage. She attempted unsuccessfully to get a urine sample, so she sent me home with a contraption for ME to collect a sample.

I left the vet’s office $328 poorer, and all I had to show for it was a bottle of antibiotics and this urine-collecting kit.

When my son was here on Christmas day I said, “Hey James, could you do me a favour?”

“Sure,” he said agreeably.

I handed him the contraption.

“Could you take Sam outside and get a urine sample for me?”

He looked at the contraption. He looked at the dog. He looked at me. “No.” he said.

This is me, collecting urine. It was easier than I expected, but I have to tell you it felt a little weird. Sam didn’t seem to mind, but it still felt weird.

I should find out tomorrow what the results of the tests are, and then I guess I’ll need to make some decisions.

Nobody ever said The Incredibly Brown Room didn’t need a makeover:

But the options were unlimited! I ended up making Angela pick the colours, and got Kerry to approve them (which she did, but with some conditions, like only one accent wall). We used Debbie Travis colours and C-I-L paints. I won’t use C-I-L again: I’ve used worse, but I’ve used better too: better is better.

Prime Time!

They don’t call it Caution Yellow for nothing.

Caution Yellow on fire!

Did you know that under halogen lights Caution Yellow turns Cantaloupe Orange?

A single accent wall in Honky Tonk. (Thanks Kerry, good call!)

The Incredibly Brown Room is gone!

Do you like it? It’s okay, you can be honest. I haven’t decided yet, and am withholding final judement until the trim is done and there’s something to look at besides the walls, like furniture and art. Even if I end up not loving it, I already love it way more than brown.

Remember last Christmas? I tried to opt out of the whole Christmas thing because a) my son and his girlfriend weren’t going to be home for Christmas, b) I didn’t have any Christmas spirit and c) my apartment was full. At the last minute I realized I needed a Christmas tree, for some reason I couldn’t fathom. Of course being the last minute, it was too late. So I decorated my mannequins.

Fast forward to this year: My son and his girlfriend will be home for Christmas, I have a passable amount of Christmas spirit, and my new house isn’t quite full. So I bought a balsam fir, strung some popcorn and cranberry strings, put up some lights and decorated the tree with all my favourite ornaments.

But did I stop there? NO. I have TWO trees this year. Many years ago, my Opa, who was the very personification of Christmas spirit, invented Christmas-in-a-Frame. This year the prototype found its way to me, probably because I now have a basement.

Essentially, Christmas-in-a-Frame hangs on the wall for 11 months of the year. The picture is of an autumn scene. In December, you flip the frame around, open the doors, and fold out Christmas! There’s a little tree in there – you plug it in, push a button, and a medley of Christmas carols begins to play and the lights dance in time to the music! It’s really quite charming, but only briefly: after several minutes you have to pull the plug or you’ll go insane. After Christmas, you fold it back up, lock the doors, and flip the frame around again so it can be art for 11 months. (That’s the theory anyway…in my case it will go back down to the basement, because it’s a rather large and garish frame for a rather uninspired piece of autumnal art. Sorry Opa.)

One-third of Opa’s ashes are in a birdhouse on top of my bookcase, and I like to imagine he’s aware of his surroundings on some kind of cosmic level (I know he’s not, I just like to imagine he is). So I plug in his Christmas-in-a-Frame several times a day for him, and imagine his Christmas spirit springing to life. He loved Christmas and everything about it. He loved taking care of all the little details to create the perfect Christmas. He loved cooking the goose, decking the halls, wrapping the presents, trimming the tree, everything. His Christmas spirit was infectious.

We can’t all be Opa: Christmas spirit, for some reason, is more elusive for some of us. Some years I have it, some years I don’t. Some years I have it but it sputters and fades in the seemingly endless run-up to the big day. No matter how you feel about Christmas this year, I hope you have a Good Enough Christmas. Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect or magical. Just give and take whatever pleasures you can from the parts of Christmas you like, be it the people you’re with, the memories, the clementine oranges, the mulled wine, the day off work, or whatever else makes you happy.

And always look at the bright side: If you love Christmas, it’s finally here; if you hate it, it’s finally almost over!

When Jamie was about three, he loved to personify inanimate objects. (Or maybe it was me who loved doing that…I’m not quite sure.) Anyway, he and the Christmas Tree became very good friends that year. (The graphic on the right is Jamie’s portrait of his friend, the Tree.) Jamie and the Tree had many long and heartfelt discussions over the Christmas season, with me providing the Tree’s voice. Unfortunately, when it came time for the tree to get hauled out to the curb on garbage day, Jamie was devastated and had a total meltdown.

“I LOVE my Tree,” he sobbed from the top of the stairs as I single-handedly attempted to lug the fat, dried-out tree down three flights of stairs, “He’s my very best friend in the whole world!”

“Oh God, what have I done?” I thought to myself, “Why did I have to make him fall in love with a stupid tree?”

I did my best to say comforting mommy-type things from under the tree, but nothing I said could un-break his heart.

“I don’t want my best friend to go in the garbage truck,” he wept, “It’s smelly and yucky in there, and I LOVE him! I NEED him! He’ll be so cold and sad!”

Sometimes a good mom has to think up a good lie in a hurry, and often under difficult circumstances. I wrestled the tree around the first of six narrow corners, while it scratched and bit and jabbed me with its needles. I grabbed it by the throat and shoved it up against the wall.

“Say something,” I muttered to the tree, “And make it good.”

The tree trembled and shed some needles: he knew I meant business.

“I’m not going in the garbage truck,” Tree sang out cheerfully, “Santa is coming in his sleigh to pick up all the trees and take us to a special party!”

“He is?” asked Jamie, still sobbing.

“Yeah!” said Tree, “I’m going in Santa’s sleigh, all the way to the North Pole! I’m so excited, I can hardly wait!”

Jamie stopped weeping and crept down the stairs, where I still had the tree pinned to the wall. Still emotional, Jamie wrapped his arms around the Tree. “I love you Tree,” he said shakily, “Have fun at the party.”

“I love you too!” exclaimed Tree.

“Goodbye Tree,” said Jamie bravely, “I’ll miss you so much!”

“I’ll write you a letter!” Tree promised.

I finished hauling the tree outside, and dumped him unceremoniously in a snowbank several houses down the street (I didn’t want Jamie to see him in the morning).

“You damned well better write to him,” I snarled.

A week later, a letter arrived in the mail, addressed to Jamie.

Dear Jamie,

How are you doing? I am very good. The Christmas Tree party was so much fun and I saw some of my old friends from the forest and my favourite cousin, Bruce Spruce. We played Tree Tag and Needle in the Haystack. We drank special drinks with cherries in them. Some of the older trees drank a little pine wine, but I didn’t: I had spruce juice.

Thank you so much for picking me to be your Tree. I’ll never forget you. Please pick my brother Zeuss Spruce to be your Christmas Tree next year. He’s not as big as me yet, but he will grow.

Thank you Jamie.

Love,
Tree

Sometimes a mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do.

Have I ever shown you my incredibly brown room? This is the room I blog in. My dog and I spend a lot of time in here. It’s the brownest, ugliest, unfriendliest room in my house. A teenager used to live in here: I’m sure it was an ideal backdrop for teen angst. If I wanted to write dark, self-indulgent, soul-spewing poetry, this might work. But I don’t. So I’m going to paint the incredibly brown room.

The only thing I like about the incredibly brown room is that this mask looks kind of cool against a brown background: my son made it for me when he was a weird little kid.

Being a typical Libran (not that I believe in such things), I have difficulty making decisions. Do you know how many colours there are? There are trillions. There are billions of greens, billions of yellows, billions of every single colour, even white. A single strip of green paint chips contains: Meadow Mist, North Woods, Windsurfer, Leapfrog, Lime Freckle and Irish Acres. This is just one of a thousand strips of green paint chips. And each subtle variation of each shade of each colour CHANGES constantly, depending on the time of day and the colours around it and the size of the space it occupies.

Apart from having too many choices, I know I get swayed by the names of the colour. I look at a strip of colours and I like the Jamaican Aqua best, but I want to choose the Tropicana Cabana because I like saying it. Go ahead, say it out loud…Tropicana Cabana…now don’t you feel like picking up a paint brush and enveloping your room in Tropicana Cabana? (My ideal job, by the way, would be Colour Namer. It’s creative, it’s poetic, and I could cross thousands of tasks off my To-Do list each day.)

I had a bedroom once that I painted three times in one week. First a yellow that was too citric once it was on the walls. Then a purple that might have worked in a sun-filled room, but this was not a sun-filled room. And finally a lighter purple that I didn’t love but could live with. (Unfortunately we then painted the entire workplace a depressing shade of purple, and ruined purple for all time for every employee who ever worked there.)

Anyway, back to the apartment. In that same apartment I painted the living room a gorgeous deep yellow that was was warm and cozy in the evenings and absolutely sizzled in the sunshine. I loved it so much I painted the dining room the same colour a few weeks later, and then the kitchen. Suddenly it was too much of a good thing. But I lived with it for six more years.

I think I want to paint the incredibly brown room two different colours: two walls will be blue-green and two walls will be yellow. But which blue-green and which yellow? And which walls will be which? I shouldn’t obsess so much over getting it right: no matter how disastrous my choices, it’s almost certainly going to be a phenomenal improvement. My problem is I don’t just want to improve it: I want to love it.

Over the past two days I’ve spent a lot of time at these two sites: www.behr.com and www.sherwinwilliams.com. They each have an online tool for virtually painting rooms. You pick a room from their selection of rooms, and then you click on different colours to paint them. It’s a cool tool, but they only have grand designer rooms with huge windows and vaulted ceilings and architectural details and fireplaces and expensive furniture. They don’t have any plain boxy little rooms with a single small window and ugly but functional furniture. Normal rooms, ya know? It makes a difference.

Nik, author of that brilliant blog series on the history of margarine, has acquired the best gingerbread porn ever.