Good news on both fronts!

Remember the crazy woman who bought two of my budgies? Well, now she’s selling my second budgie (Calypso) along with a third unknown budgie.

I’m not quite sure what to do. I’m delighted to know that Calypso is alive and he’s got a girlfriend. However, I sold her two budgies and a cage for $50 because I had four budgies and three cages, and it was just too much. I bought one budgie and cage back for $25. If I buy these two, I’ll end up with FIVE budgies and FOUR cages, and be $75 out of pocket.

As for Sam, the demented dog, I was tired of ranting about how bad it was. Meanwhile, the vet prescribed stronger painkillers and sedatives, and Sam kept having anxiety attacks, but clumsy, slow-motion anxiety attacks with his eyes rolling around in his head. He would climb compulsively in and out of the bathtub, but he was so stoned he was *falling* in and out. The attacks would go on all night.

I was seriously considering euthanasia, but I asked the vet if he had anything else in his bag of tricks. He prescribed an anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication called Clomicalm. It’s supposed to take a week or more to start taking effect, and Sam just started taking it yesterday. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but he didn’t have any attacks yesterday evening, and he made it almost through the night without one. He did have one at 4:30 this morning, but it was mild and brief. It was by far the best night we’d had in well over a month. Tonight he seems fine so far….relaxed, comfortable, happy.

I love falling asleep at night and waking up in the morning, and I love being able to look at my dog without feeling either sorry for him or pissed off at him. I think Sam loves being able to walk straight.

Life is good. Today I bought 7 cacti, a geranium, a dracena and a peace plant, and a whack of clay pots and soil and fertilizer. Spring is coming. A good night’s sleep was all I needed.

I know I’ve been neglecting my blog, but this weekend I’ll be posting something special just for Scrim.

In the meantime, here’s a photo of my dog Sam, zonked out after a particularly bad night of being demented. This was right before the move.

The vet started him on sedatives and painkillers a couple of days ago, and it seems to me I’m spending an awful lot of money to keep my dog unconscious. Maybe I need to re-think this strategy.

Both my sisters came in from out of town to spend Tuesday night drinking wine with me, eating pizza, drugging the dog and brainstorming about decorating ideas. Don’t they look adorable sitting on my new loveseat having brilliant ideas?

My dog is demented. For real.

For the past month or so he has been weird. He spends much of every evening and night pacing and panting and trying to squeeze into weird spaces and getting stuck. He gets up on the bed (for some dogs that’s normal, but not for Sam) and then paces on the bed, walking on me, sitting on my head, drooling, panting, and just being restless and bizarre. The other night I had to turn my bedside table upside down just so he’d stop trying to climb up on it – the sound of his toenails repeatedly scraping the surface of it was driving me insane. The episodes of dementia go on for half an hour to two hours at a time, usually once or twice an evening and twice a night. I can’t sleep until it’s over, because he’s so noisy and disruptive about it.

I can’t take it anymore. I feel sorry for him, but I also feel so frustrated and MAD after awhile. I feel guilty getting mad at him, but I can’t help it. I’m sleep deprived. I’m losing at least a third of my sleep hours every single night, and spending that missing sleep time feeling frustrated. It’s like having a colicky baby.

I took him to the vet a couple of weeks ago, and they put him on Deramaxx for arthritic pain, thinking his night-time restlessness was pain-related. It helped for a few days, but that’s all. Today I called the vet, and he said he didn’t want to prescribe the dementia medication (Anipryl) without first talking to that vet who saw him last time, and he’s on vactation. So I’ve got to wait another week before he can start the meds, and then it takes up to a month for them to start working – if they work.

It’s affecting the quality of both our lives to the point where I’m considering euthanasia. Between getting ready to move, waiting for the layoffs, lack of sleep, and having a demented dog, I am feeling pretty ragged.

Remember the other day I wrote about selling two of my budgies? Well…last night I was perusing the same buy & sell board, and I came across an ad in which Mandy, the woman who bought my budgies, was trying to sell one of them. She said her mastiff didn’t welcome him. There was a picture of the cage, with Jazz in it – but Calypso was nowhere in sight. I emailed her and asked her what happened to the other bird.

She wrote me back the ugliest, nastiest email I’ve ever received in my life, saying that I traumatized her wife because my flooors were covered in dead rodents and my dog was starving and she was going to report me to the Humane Society and I sold her crap because the $!%^ bird never shuts up. (This probably goes without saying, but my floors are NOT covered with dead rodents , my dog is not starving and I did NOT traumatize her wife. But Jazz is kind of on the noisy side.)

I was so shocked and horrified I couldn’t sleep all night. This nutcase has my name, address, phone number, and email address. She also has my bird(s). I suspect one of them is already dead. I asked a friend to try to buy Jazz back today, but so far she’s not answering her phone.

UPDATE: She answered her phone and Ken is on his way over there now!

UPDATE UPDATE:

Look who’s home:
Jazz! He and Tango and Blues were so happy to be reuinted, they sat there rubbing their heads together and kissing and making little noises. Jazz has told and re-told his adventure story fifty times, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Meanwhile, the other birds have finally tucked their heads under their wings, and Jazz is still yammering away at the mirror.

Sadly, Ken said there was no sign of Calypso at the nutcase’s house. (Even sadder, she is raising a child.) The only thing that gave me any hope for Calypso still being alive is that Jazz and the cage were returned but the swing and the rope perch were missing. Why would she want those things if she didn’t have a bird? I hope Calypso is sitting on his swing…and I hope he starts squawking too much and she puts him up for sale.

Hospital officials said Whittington, though still listed in intensive care, had a normal heart rhythm again Wednesday afternoon and was sitting up in a chair, eating and planning to do some legal work in his room.

I’ll bet.

I seem to be cursed where the National Arts Centre is concerned. I bought tickets to five plays, five dances, and one symphony. I have fallen asleep during three plays, one dance, and the symphony – so far. Tonight I did not fall asleep.

I had a ticket to see a Japanese dance troupe – Pappa Tarahumara – performing Ship in a View. I assumed the dance started at 8:00 because every other thing I’ve ever seen at the NAC started at 8:00. I checked my ticket as I was heading out the door at 7:20, and dammit, the performance was starting at 7:30. It was literally impossible to get there on time.

I’m the kind of person who would rather be an hour early than a minute late. I even considered not going, but I figured they’d let me watch from the back of the theatre until intermission, and then I could find my seat. And, as an extra bonus, standing up might even keep me awake.

I arrived at 7:50. Big sign: This performance does not have an intermission. Damn. But the usher graciously escorted me to my row, and left me to stumble past five irate patrons who glared at me. I wasn’t sure which seat was mine, but all of them were occupied. The usher returned, took me back upstairs, explained that someone was in my seat and offered to give me another seat much further back. Since the mixup was at least partially my fault for being late, I graciously accepted. I then had to make my way past seven irate patrons, and I apologized to each of them as I passed them. If looks could kill: each of them mustered some variation of a hostile, withering, or disdainful glare.

If I had been them, I would have been irritated too to have to disrupt myself, however briefly, for a latecomer. But I would have accepted their apology with a smile. You never know what kind of a day someone has had, or why they’re late. Maybe their dog died or they found out they had cancer or they stopped to help a lost Alzheimer’s patient. You never know. Each of them, I’m sure, assumed I was just too inconsiderate to arrive on time and therefore deserved their contempt.

I settled into my seat and tried to behave myself. Then I got a tickle in my throat, the kind that you try to suppress but soon you just have to cough. I coughed. The tickle subsided for about 30 seconds, then repeated itself. And again. I wondered if my neighbours would hate me more for coughing a little cough every 30 seconds or for interrupting them again to leave. I briefly considered being considerate enough to smother myself with my scarf. I stayed and tried to time my coughs with the noisier bits of the music.

The performance was weird. People were dancing and pouring water on themselves and throwing things at each other and riding bicycles and dancing with empty dresses and climbing on furniture. There were remote-control bicycle wheels and ships and robots. The music ranged from eerily beautiful to pulsingly exciting to absolutely grating. I was fascinated and thoroughly entertained, but completely baffled by the whole thing. I have no idea what it was about – kind of like that feeling you have when you leave a David Lynch film (“Great film, but WTF??”)