Day 3189

Mondays are just like any other day, except slower. I woke up trying to remember whether I'd taken Dash out last night. It seems like I did, but maybe not. Dash wasn't telling. He was sound asleep in the middle of the bed. He eventually woke up and took his morning pills, but we got off to a slow start.

We should have started our walk earlier, because the temperature has warmed up again. We were both hot and tired when we returned to the house. I need to remember to bring my camera on morning walks. The Egrets and Cranes have returned to the lake and I could have taken some great shots today if I had a telephoto lens. The wide angle lens on my phone is really only good for flowers.

I must not have done all my chores yesterday, because the house was a mess. The dishwasher was full. There was laundry to be done. And most of the wastebaskets needed to be emptied. I'm still amazed that tiny little tasks like these can consume my entire day.

When I got caught up on household chores, I paid the first batch of September bills and took them to the post office. When I got home, I checked the mailbox and there were more bills. You'd think my bills would diminish, since I don't do much of anything these days. Apparently, doing nothing can still use a lot of water and electricity. All my utility bills are way higher than they were five years ago. I don't know why I get a phone bill at all. The phone company should be paying me. All I get is a never ending barrage of telemarketing calls.

Dash has become very needy. He mostly just sleeps during the day, but he doesn't like to sleep alone. He gets mad when he wants to be in the bedroom and I'm in the office. We have a ritual now. I'll go curl up with him on the bed, and then get up and sneak away to do some work as soon as he falls asleep. It works pretty well since he goes to sleep very quickly. After a few hours, Dash will wake up and want to go outside to pee. Then we'll repeat the entire process all over again. It's a good thing I'm a patient person. These days can get pretty long.

I made an appointment to pick up the art I had restored. I'm not going to display the piece again, so the conservator is just going to box it up. I hope I can get the rest of this stuff to an auction house before I run out of energy or lose interest. Truthfully, I'm already starting to lose interest. When I look around the office, I just want it empty. It seems like a monumental job. Basically, I'm still a packrat at heart. I guess I could start by throwing away boxes and boxes of old video tapes. I still have all the camera masters for most of the corporate videos I've produced over the years. I don't have the clients anymore, so there is little use in hanging on to the tapes. Few people could play these tapes anyway. Try finding a working 3/4 inch Umatic machine. Even the newer BetsSP tapes are getting pretty old.

Dash just finished eating a large and very late dinner. I wish he get hungry a little earlier. Eating this late just about guarantees that I'll be taking him out at 3 AM to poop.

Princess is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3184

Dash needed a lot of attention today. He got me up several times during the night and then when morning arrived he was slow and listless. We got him suited up for his morning walk, but in less than half a block, he turned around and wanted to go home. He wouldn't eat his breakfast and immediately went to sleep. I always worry that his heart condition has become worse when this happens, but he was breathing normally and wasn't coughing. I figured he would eat later in the day when he was hungry and I went ahead and fixed my own breakfast.

About 11 AM, Dash wandered out to the kitchen and started to eat. He didn't finish everything before he went back to his bed, but it was a start. Early this afternoon when I was getting ready to take a shower, Dash got up and headed toward the back door. I could tell he was finally ready for his walk, so I quickly got dressed, put his rubber boots on, and off we went. It was a little too warm, since it was the middle of the day, but Dash was determined.

Not surprisingly, he was pretty tired when we returned to the house and promptly went to sleep again.   For the rest of the day, every time I got ready to do something, he appeared by my side and let me know that his needs were more important. Dash has perfected the art of being needy. He knows I will never ignore him. I want him to eat, so I always feed him something when he heads for the kitchen. I don't want him to poop in the house, so I make sure to take him outside at regular intervals. He likes me to lie on the bed with him. The only way I can get anything done is to join him on the bed for a few minutes until he falls asleep and then quietly get up and go about my business.

The only thing on the agenda today was picking up a prescription at the pharmacy. I asked the pharmacist if they had the new shingles shot. My doctor seems to think I need this, even though I've already had the old shingles shot. For some odd reason Medicare pays for the shot if you get it at a pharmacy and won't pay anything if you get the shot at your doctor's office. It's exactly the same vaccine, but two different sets of rules. At the pharmacy, the shot is considered prescription medicine and is covered by Medicare Part D. In a doctor's office, the shot is considered a medical procedure that has not been approved yet. Nothing is covered at all. One more example of our bureaucracy at work.

I was trying to explain to Janet how strange Dash had been acting today, but he was completely normal by the time she came home from work. He eagerly ate his dinner, took a nice sunset walk, and then settled down with Janet to watch Netflix movies. I have no idea how he's going to be feeling tomorrow. Every day is a new day.

I didn't make the cut to cover the Mars landing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I've applied for these NASA events twice before and was accepted both times. I guess my social media status has diminished. When I initially applied to cover a launch several years ago my Klout score was still pretty high and I had a ton of Twitter followers. Now, Klout doesn't even exist and I rarely even look at Twitter. Maybe NASA has finally figured out that I just write about my dog. I am on a waitlist in case some of the other participants cancel, but that rarely happens. When November arrives, I'll probably be glad I stayed home anyway. Lord knows how well Dash will be doing then.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3178

I've noticed that some of the Spring flowers have started to come back in the Fall. This doesn't happen every year, but I've seen it before. I wonder about things like this. Apparently, even annuals and perennials aren't entirely predictable. You usually don't see Antelope Horn Milkweed in the Fall, but there it was this morning.

The wildflowers may not be predictable, but the congressional hearings certainly are. I think you could substitute footage of Neil Gorsuch for Brett Kavanaugh on TV and nobody would know the difference. The questions are the same and the two guys even look kind of the same. Why do we even do these things? Everybody decided how they were going to vote a long time ago. Just vote guys. The endless bickering isn't going to change anything.

Dash was confused this morning. Janet left the house before dawn to take a new class at her gym. When Dash woke up, he panicked when he discovered that his friend was no longer next to him on the bed. It took me forever to convince him that everything was OK. He kept looking for her in every room in the house. I tell Janet now to be sure to say goodby to Dash when she leaves. He's become very needy and doesn't like surprises.

I wish Dash knew that I don't like surprises either. Especially at night. Dash is never very predictable about when he needs to go out at night. Luckily, I almost always wake up when he jumps off the bed. I immediately get up and race to open the back door. For the past several nights he's made it through the open door and pooped on the porch. I'm always grateful when Dash makes it outside. The mess is much easier to clean up when you can use the garden hose.

I got this letter today saying that some company had been bought by another company. "This change will have no impact on your current policy or the quality of service you receive," said the letter. What the hell were they talking about? I didn't recognize the name of either company. Was this a scam, a mistake, or something I had forgotten about? It could be anything. It looks like one more useless thing I'll have to track down. This is what modern life has become. Everything is a potential scam and even if it's legitimate, you know it's going to be a nuisance.

There were storms all around us this evening, but we managed to give Dash his evening walk without getting wet. The trash has already been taken to the curb as well. Basically, I'm done for the week. I'm thinking of going to a hotel for breakfast tomorrow. I haven't done that for a while. Sometime eating at a hotel gives me the illusion of traveling without having to go anywhere. We'll see how I feel in the morning. If it's raining when I wake up, I won't be going anywhere.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2963

Dash wouldn't eat this morning. It took forever to get a minimal amount of food in him so it was safe to give his morning pills. Since it is critical that Dash always takes his phenobarbital on a regular basis to control seizures, a loss of appetite can be pretty dicy. Dash wasn't even interested in banana bread this morning, so we knew this was bad. We decided to give him a Cerenia pill, even though he wasn't showing obvious signs of nausea. Cerenia was really the only tool we had. Three hours later, he started eating again.

Nobody has ever explained how Dash's various symptoms are interrelated. Maybe they aren't. There are so many things that can go wrong with this dog and some of them are life threatening. To me, it is very stressful. My best guess is that the periodic eating disorders are related to his vestibular disease. Depending on how bad the vestibular event is, it can appear to be a stroke, a seizure, vertigo, or an upset stomach. Dash's worst vestibular seizure put him in intensive care for four days. Today's mild event just gave him an upset stomach. By mid-afternoon, he was back to his old self again.

While I was running my Saturday errands, I did some more appliance shopping. I learned that it would be a good idea if I just put a hold on things until President's Day. Evidently you can get some of the best appliance prices of the year during President's Day sales events. I guess it is a tradition to lower prices on refrigerators on President's Day. I'm happy to wait. I wasn't looking forward to buying a refrigerator today anyway.

Now that I'm more or less living on a fixed income, sales have become more important to me. I'll be going to the annual Super Bowl Sale at my favorite clothing store tomorrow. This is the only time when I can actually afford these clothes. I realize that when someone offers you 75% off on anything, they're just trying to get rid of old merchandise, but what do I care. When you're almost 70 years old, nothing ever goes out of style.

Dash has become very needy as he's growing older. Janet is at an animal rescue event tonight and Dash has been throwing a tantrum since she isn't around to sit in bed with him. This is what they do in the evening. Janet watches Netflix movies while Dash takes a nap. He's more than welcome to come in the office and nap while I write, but apparently that isn't good enough. He want's me to sit in the bed with him now.

When I was taking Dash out to pee this evening, I saw a guy lurking around in the dark. He seemed startled when he saw Dash and I and told me he was looking for his Airbnb rental. Given the state of the world today, the guy could have been completely legit. He also could have been a burglar. I told the man that nobody I knew in the neighborhood had turned their home into an Airbnb and he got in his car and left. I felt like telling him that it wasn't wise to go lurking around in the dark in a residential Texas neighborhood. It's a good way to get shot.

I still don't understand the popularity of Airbnb, Uber, and all those ugly Limebikes that are littered around town. If I take a Yellow Cab, or stay at a Holiday Inn, I know exactly what I'm getting. I suspect that I don't possess the level of trust required to participate in the sharing economy. It all seems like buying a pig in a poke to me.

Casey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2941

Slow days can be dangerous. When I don't have much to do, I tend to update software. Lately, these updates come with a lot of rude surprises. Today, I discovered that iTunes is no longer a place to buy and store apps for your phone. I've always bought apps on iTunes and installed them on the phone or iPad later. I thought it was handy that you could activate or deactivate your purchases without actually erasing them. There was also a convenient feature that made it easy to rearrange the apps so they would appear where you wanted them. It's all gone now. Apple apparently wants you to do everything on the phone itself. I guess this is what most people do anyway, but I've never been most people.

It was way too cold when I woke up to take Dash on a morning walk, but the sky was clear and I knew it would warm up later in the day. To pass the time, I made pancakes and sausages at home instead of going out for breakfast. I'm so slow that Dash went back to the bedroom and took a nap before I finished my meal. When Dash leaves the scene while you're eating, you know he's tired.

It's a good thing that Dash still sleeps a lot, because otherwise I'd never get anything done. As Dash has gotten older, he's become a lot more needy and doesn't like to be left alone. He used to be content to sleep under my desk while I'm working, but now he wants me to go sit on the bed with him. If I wanted to spend the day watching Netflix movies, this would be fine, but I still have things to do.

Today I needed to send out my January invoices, but Dash didn't want me sitting at the computer. I took him outside several times and tried to figure out what he wanted. As it turned out, all he wanted was my complete and undivided attention. I eventually had to block the office door with a dog gate. He barked a few times and then went back to sleep on the bed. I'm slowly learning that life is simpler if I wait until he's asleep before I go to the office.

By lunchtime it was warm enough to stay outside for a while and I took Dash on a nice long walk. If I'd taken him on a walk before breakfast this morning, he probably would have been as much of a pest. You have to do everything in the proper order with this dog. Sadly, I have probably encouraged this behavior. I have to do everything in the proper order myself.

We took a second walk around 4 PM, before the air started turning cooler again. Whenever I see a Dalmatian with behavior problems, I know it isn't getting enough exercise. Dalmatians are very active, energetic digs. Even an old sick one like Dash has more energy than me.

One reason I was tired today was that that I had to get up several times and take Dash outside. This is becoming more frequent and is probably related to his new diet. I'm not sure which of the various brands of food he eats is giving him loose stools, but I'm reluctant to change anything. We've got a routine going now where Dash is eating consistently again. One of these days I'm going to need to get him tested for urate crystals again. I know his new diet is nutritious, but it may cause the crystals to form again. It's always something, isn't it.

I wish it would warm up. I don't know why I'm so cold this year because it's always cold in January. It's actually been much colder in previous years, but i don't  recall wearing so many sweaters before.

Pepper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2502

What was Cardinal Dolan thinking when he invited Donald and Hillary to speak at the Al Smith dinner tonight? Somebody forgot to tell these two that last night's debate was over. I usually love the self-deprecating humor at these events, but this was the most acrimonious and least funny roast I have ever seen. George Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Regan have all been hilarious at these type of events. Trump and Hillary were pathetic. They both told a few jokes and then launched into their stump speech. This was a take no prisoners evening. No wonder so many people are disgusted with this election.

I put my trash can on the opposite side of the street this evening. This isn't much of a plan, but it was the best I could come up with. Who knows. Maybe a different truck picks up the trash on the right hand side of the street. I went back to using my original rolling cart, because the robotic arm on the truck pretty well demolished my new can last week. We'll see tomorrow morning whether my talk with the sanitation department had any effect whatsoever. If my trash isn't emptied properly in the morning, I'm going to be well beyond frustrated.

Actually, I'm already frustrated because  today's rain ruined my chances of getting the roof repaired this week. The last time I called the roofers, they promised me that they'd be out again toward the end of the week. Now, they have the perfect excuse to keep ignoring me for a while longer. The coating material can't be applied unless the roof is completely dry, and the rainy season is approaching. It's going to become harder and harder to find a time when the roof is dry and the roofers are available.

The dogs were unusually needy today and it was hard to get anything done. If Dot wasn't demanding attention, Dash was. Dash always gets nervous on rainy days and it was hard to get him to go outside until the skies finally cleared. I knew he had to pee when I got up this morning, but it took four or five attempts to get him out the door. Dot didn't even bother. She just pooped in the house. It seemed like every time I tried to fix breakfast of dinner, there was another mess to clean up. There's nothing like the smell of dog poop when you're trying to enjoy your dinner.

I got another writing assignment this afternoon, but there was no need to finish it today. This will give me something to do tomorrow. If the weather cooperates, I'll look forward to going out for breakfast again. It's been a long week and I need to get out of the house for a while.

Emily is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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