Day 3067

Janet is back. I think Dash and I did OK on our own, but taking care of this dog is definitely a team effort. We certainly had our hands full today. Dash isn't eating again. It was really hard to get him to eat enough this morning so he could safely take his pills. He didn't finish the rest of his breakfast until around 3 PM. Right around sunset, his appetite seemed to return, but then he threw up everything right after we finished a short evening walk. It is really frustrating that there doesn't appear to be a solution to this ongoing problem. He'll seem fine for a week or two and then he'll start throwing up again. I guess we could keep him on the Cerenia anti-nausea pills indefinitely, but there's a downside to that as well.

Dash has reached the point where everything he does can have serious side effects. The antibiotic he's taking to clear up the skin infection on his lip appears to be working, but one of the side effects is vomiting. Do we continue the antibiotic? Who knows. I'll contact his vet and see what she thinks. Dash sleeps so much now that he really needs the limited walks he gets to maintain his mobility. He's so fragile though that every time we walk I worry that he is going to injure himself. Maybe I worry too much, but I think I'm just being realistic. Dash is a very high maintenance dog.

I was sad to hear that Tom Wolfe died this week. You could not read something by Tom Wolfe and not be influenced by it. He was one of the most prolific and talented writers I have ever encountered. To this day, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and Bonfire of the Vanities remain in my top ten list. John Fowles is gone too. I used to eagerly await anything new from these two authors. Maybe John Kennedy Toole would be right up there with them if he hadn't committed suicide before A Confederacy of Dunces was published. I wonder who the amazing writers are these days? Sadly, I don't read much anymore.

My friend in Kentucky has finished making an inventory of my collection. Seeing everything on paper makes me realize that I had assembled a much better collection than I realized. I was well suited to being a collector. I had good taste and enjoyed the process of finding a needle in a haystack. It's weird though. The process of collecting had a lot more meaning for me than the objects themselves. Once I stopped collecting things, the objects lost their meaning. Over time, the collections just became a lot of dusty, useless stuff.

I've got to find something to replace all the things that kept me so busy when I was younger. How did I ever find the time to do so much reading, collecting, and exploring new boundaries? Today I'm just tired. A lot of my friends have died. And every time I turn on the TV, I realize that the world has gone to hell in an handbasket. I'm still curious though. That's why I keep writing. Maybe that's why you keep reading too.

Skippy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day