Posts filed under ‘Annoyances of Life’
The Insomniac’s Bookshelf: How I read my way through 2011 in the dark
Every night is a new adventure when you can’t sleep. Usually I fall asleep easily and then wake up a few hours later and finally fall back to sleep by dawn’s early light. Yeah, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get me to commit to any breakfast dates. But last night the gods of anti-sleep pulled a fast one on me: I could NOT fall asleep, even though a husband, two dogs and a cat (Dodger has recently been awarded a good-behavior place of honor in our bedroom at night) all managed to slumber sweetly beside me.
Our new roommate: the Dodge
I finally got some shut-eye between 3 am and 6 am, but in the long hours preceding my “nap”, I was grateful for the insomniac’s best friend: a good book and a reading light.
Which reminded me: some Polloplayer readers have asked for another book list update and the last day of the year would seem like a good time to provide it. Thanks to my membership in two book clubs, the list is an eclectic one. The list is chronological, and I’m awarding stars for those of you who are looking for recommendations. I will divide the list into two posts, as it turns out I did a fair amount of reading this year!
January
1. The John McPhee Reader 416 pp
*** Selections from McPhee’s works. Recommended especially for the chapter “The Crofter and the Laird”, McPhee’s enchanting account of life on the Inner Hebrides islands of Scotland.
McPhee lived for several months on his ancestral island of Colonsay while writing "The Crofter and the Laird" (image from armin-grewe.com)
2. Little Bee by Chris Cleave 266 pp
* Not recommended. Everyone loved this novel but me. It was a bestseller but I found the characters unsympathetic and the plot overpromising and implausible.
3. The Iliad by Homer (Fagles translation) 614 pp
***** What can I say? The ultimate page-turner. There will be blood!
4. The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok 301 pp
** Meh. Highly readable account of the author’s childhood with a paranoid schizophrenic mother. For my money, Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle was a better treatment of this genre.
4. Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morrison 570 pp
**** The third and final volume of Morrison’s meticulous account of Roosevelt’s life. A larger-than-life read of a larger-than-life character, this account covers the period of Roosevelt’s life from his White House departure to his death.
February
5. Postcards by Annie Proulx 320 pp
**** Proulx is the rare best-selling author who just happens to be a fine, fine writer.
Annie Proulx's latest is "Bird Cloud: A Memoir" (image from thestar.com)
6. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke by Lisa Jardine 323 pp
*** Okay, this is an esoteric one, but I enjoyed it. Hooke was a contemporary and rival of Sir Isaac Newton who, according to the author, was gypped out of his rightful claim for his contribution to Newton’s inverse square law of gravitational attraction and for his partnership with Christopher Wren to the plans for St. Paul’s cathedral. A fascinating read for a survey of the history and innovations in Europe during the 1600′s.
7. Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore 235 pp
*** I dare you to read this and not be moved. An account of an unlikely and redemptive friendship between an art dealer and a homeless man.
8. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson 304 pp
*** A novel of family tragedy and growth told against the backdrop of rural Ontario, Canada.
9. Rivers in the Desert by Margaret L. Davis 303 pp
**** Fascinating account of the building of the Los Angeles aqueduct, the Owens Valley water wars and William Mulholland’ fall from grace after the tragic failure of the St. Francis dam.
March
10. The Blindness of the Heart by Julia Francke 416 pp
***** Disturbing but ethereally written translation from the German about a woman who had the misfortune to be a child in Germany during WWI, a young adult during the era of the Weimar Republic and an adult mother during the privations of WWII. I should warn the squeamish that there are passages of graphic although not gratuitous sexual encounters between two sisters. An astonishing work from a preternaturally accomplished young author.
One to watch: the German author Julia Francke (Wikipedia image)
11. Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleeza Rice 328 pp
*** I read this after seeing Rice speak. A memoir of the forces that shaped Rice’s childhood and ascent to a powerful Cabinet position in the George W. Bush administration. My impression after reading the book is that the assumption that Rice is a right-wing conservative is far from accurate.
12. Washington, A Life by Ron Chernow 817 pp
***** A stunning biographical achievement and a must-read. I have a whole new appreciation of the wisdom and sacrifice that won us independence and launched our nation.
April
13. Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler 448 pp
*** Interesting account of a journalist’s experience living in contemporary China. Wry humor and some behind-the-scenes portraits of real-life China. However, am I impertinent to suggest that this staff writer for The New Yorker needed a better editor?
14. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks 385 pp
*** As a former musician, I really enjoyed this. I thought it was a much better read than Sacks’ popular The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.
15. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright 421 pp
***** A thorough, searing and often frightening account of the ways in which radical Islam of the 1940′s wrapped its tentacles forward in history and led to the tragedy of 9/11. Prepare to be horrified by the innumerable ways in which the terrorist attack could have been averted but for petty bickering among blockheaded government agencies.
May
16. The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece by Eric Siblin 336 pp
*** A lovely book that intertwines the slim details we have of J.S. Bach’s life with that of Pablo Casals and his iconic interpretation of the famed Bach Cello Suites. Best read with a recording of Bach’s transcendent cello suites at hand.
17. Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury 536 pp
**** A haunting and lyrical fictional account of the squalid lives and shame of defeat experienced by Palestinians from 1948 forward, based on factual interviews the Lebanese author conducted with refugee camp residents.
Recommended: Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury (image from arablit.wordpress.com)
18. Children of Dust by Ali Eteraz 334 pp
** An autobiographical account of growing up Muslim in Pakistan and the US. Interesting, but I personally think the author (whose real name is Abir ul Islam) might have written a better book had he spent some time in therapy and chiseled his ego down to manageable size before putting pen to paper.
19. The Siege of Mecca: the Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov
*** Somewhat esoteric (as you can see I was on kind of a roll with Middle Eastern reading) but significant piece to understanding the puzzle of contemporary radical Islam. The author is a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and has an excellent grasp of his subject matter. This book (a gift from sister-in-law Jean) had been on my shelf awhile and my understanding of it was greatly enhanced by the other reading I had done on the subject.
20. “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas 540 pp
***** Extraordinary account of an extraordinary personage. Also a gift from sister-in-law Jean – thanks, Jean, keep them coming! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a member of a revered intellectual German family, emerged from a somewhat agnostic childhood to embrace Christianity and the pastorate. His conviction that his calling dictated that he work to save the Christian church and Jews in Nazi Germany led him to eschew offers to leave his homeland for safety and instead, place himself on the periphery of a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was executed in the final days of the war.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, second from right, during an eighteen-month imprisonment at Tegel. He was later arrested and held in concentration camps before being executed in April of 1945. (image from being.publicradio.org)
June
21. The French Resistance: 140-1944 by Raymond Aubrac 40 pp
**This is just a small booklet of mostly photographs but gives a rudimentary account of the brave men and women who made up the Resistance in WWII France.
22. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 288 pp
** This novel was on a lot of “best of 2011″ lists. The author’s breezy style and quirky characters make for an entertaining read, but if you’re looking for substance, you’d best look elsewhere.
23. The Devil in the White City: a Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson 447 pp
**** This is a book that rightfully belongs on any “best of” list you want to make. Don’t let the ponderous sub-title hold you back: this is a terrific, gripping read that meshes the giddy excitement of the fair that ushered in the innovations of electric lights, the Ferris Wheel and Crackerjack with the chill of a serial killer on the prowl.
More to come…time for a nap!
What I really want for Christmas: lots of Doxylamine Succinate
I am now on Week Four of the Yuck. That virus that’s been going around and which lingers long, long after its welcome has been outworn.
Sore, irritated throat? Yep, that's how it starts. (image from waytoknowkids.wordpress.com)
Started with a sore throat, bloomed into a nasty respiratory scourge - plugged ears and nose, tightness in chest, Darth Vadar-like raspiness when inhaling and topped off by what is euphemistically referred to as a “productive” cough. Ugh. Misery. Caught it in NYC, brought it to the West Coast where, surprise, everyone else already had it. Bad news travels fast, as they say.
(image from home-remedies-for-you.com)
Week 1 I was brave, Week 2 I hunkered down for the duration, Week 3 it (and I, with my incessant coughing) became a bore and this week, Week 4, well, no one really wants to hear about it, including you.
But there is a silver lining. Rather, a syrupy green lining. Ah, Nyquil!
The good stuff! (image from saltcitygirl.com)
Since I don’t sleep anyway and especially not when gunk is collecting in my throat at an alarming rate, Nyquil is the one and only ticket to rest and sanity. I highly recommend the gel caps, which provide an alternate route to gagging from the taste of the traditional liquid Nyquil concoction. I’ve had several semi-nights sleep thanks to this stuff and got to wondering, what IS it about Nyquil that actually puts you to sleep, being over-the-counter and all?
The answer: Doxylamine succinate! What it lacks in rolling off the tongue, it makes up for in its application as a short-term sedative. According to Wikipedia, “it is more sedating than some prescription hypnotics” and when you can’t sleep because of vats of mucus rolling in waves down your throat, that’s exactly what you need.
It may not look like much chemically, but it packs a punch. (Wikipedia image)
Not an every-night option, of course, but when you can’t breathe and can’t sleep, a dose of Nyquil will give you at least three hours of nighty-night, not to mention some VERY interesting dreams.
I’m pretty sure this stuff in my throat will be in the rear view mirror within a few days but I’m planning to lay in a copious store of Nyquil for whatever virus is lurking on the horizon. I heartily recommend it as a stocking-stuffer, by the way. Just a thought.
By the way, does anyone else feel like Christmas is roaring down the track like a runaway freight train? Fa-la-la-la-la and pass the tissue!
This kind of says it all. (Image from smalldog.wordpress.com)
Chasing Chickens: Harder than it looks!
If you’re following Polloplayer comments, you know that our friend Emily in Oahu is having a dickens of a time catching Casino. Which makes me wish I had video of the CE and myself the other day when the ladies declined to enter the coop. The CE had raked some new leaves in there for them and they were having nothing to do with those scary mountains that had appeared inside their pen while they were on a walkabout.
We'll just stay out here thank you very much
Here’s the thing: you cannot reason with a chicken. This is not to say they are dumb – I’m sure you know some very smart people with whom you cannot reason, correct? (Let’s not be naming names here!) Once a chicken decides she is not going where you want her to go, you are, for all practical purposes, Out Of Luck. We looked pretty much like this in our efforts (no need to watch the whole four minutes; she never catches one, but the music is excellent!)
Suffice it to say that there was much work to be done on my subsequent visit to my physical therapist. Herding, chasing, and catching chickens are not recommended for the faint of heart nor for those without a colorful vocabulary to accompany the endeavor. According to the Internet (where everything is always true, of course) the median salary for a Chicken Catcher (yes, it’s a real job, remember that guy from America’s Got Talent?) is right around $40,000 a year. No wonder the CE and I couldn’t catch those girls – we are vastly underpaid! Maybe we need to learn to sing:
Should you ever be faced with the challenge of capturing or holding a chicken, here are the things you need to know:
1. Chickens will do pretty much anything for food. If you have a yummy treat for them, they’ll follow you anywhere. Except maybe for Autumn, who is just plain recalcitrant and there’s nothing to be done but leave her out there to do battle with the hawk.
"Don't worry about me. I could make mincemeat out of that hawk."
2. If you’re ever trying to impress someone while picking up a chicken, remember this: hold the wings down! Otherwise you will be subjected to a whole lot of flapping at the very least and possible abrasions at the worst – those wings can hurt and I say this from personal experience. But don’t be intimidated, it is mere child’s play:
And why would a chicken not want to be caught? Primarily to evade bad photo ops. If you’re not careful, your owners might start posting pics of you all over the Internet:
Oh, the horror: Luna is caught in mid-toilette. And you thought she managed to look this good just hanging around the coop?
Tis the season for silliness. Good luck getting hold of Casino, Emily!
No, this is not our Christmas card photo - - but it could be!
Someone’s Got a Screw Loose…
I promised you a less-than-perfect-day and we certainly had one this week. I’ll return to the travelogue soon, but first, a real-time update on the Saga of The Foot.
Faithful readers will recall that just a little over a year ago, the CE exercised the pain and suffering clause in our marriage by rupturing his posterior tibialis tendon. This is one of those body parts you don’t know exists until something goes wrong; its purpose is to support the arch of the foot. All you flat-footers out there, get thee to a podiatrist forthwith – orthotics as well as other measures can help if the condition is caught early on.
Note the difference: the foot on the left has a normal arch, the foot on the right is flat, indicating a problem with the PT tendon (image from mdmercy.com)
The CE’s condition was so severe that he had to have his entire foot re-built, which is why he chose to have the amazing and esteemed Dr. Ferkel (who literally wrote the book on this surgery) at Southern California Orthopedic Institute (SCOI) perform the surgery.
Dr. Ferkel, baseball nut and surgeon extraordinaire (image from scoi.com)
This involved cutting into the heel, removing a piece of it and re-fashioning it to stabilize the foot. The tendon was completely ruptured, which means that it basically rolled up like a windowshade and had to be teased out and looped together with another tendon in order to restore function to the foot. (Sorry, I should have mentioned you might need a barf bag before you read this paragraph.) Every physician, nurse, x-ray tech and other human being who has looked at the CE’s scar gets very wide eyes and says “Wow! You had a BIG surgery!” Very reassuring…
Post-surgery last year
The foot is now almost fully functional, although it does appear that the CE has some residual sensory nerve damage. This could have resulted from the original condition, the surgery or the nerve block that was done pre-surgery. He can walk, but he does have significant pain in the foot. He has also had pain from the ginormous screws they put in his heel to hold things together, and he jumped (okay, truth be told, he’s not jumping all that well these days…) at the chance to have them removed.
Yes, THOSE screws!
Last time around, he was in the hospital for two nights, in a cast for a few months and in a boot for what seemed like a lifetime. We knew this time around would be less of an ordeal – for one thing, it’s an out-patient procedure, but we didn’t know much else.
The CE and Natalie, Dr. Ferkel's assistant at the pre-op appointment: WHY is this man laughing?
So it was a relief to learn that although the procedure required general anesthesia, there was the possibility that the CE could bypass having a cast and go straight to wearing that familiar old boot. I never thought I’d be happy to see the boot again, but it’s much better than a cast!
And I was amazed to see how quickly he rallied after the surgery. Here he is just a few hours later:
A few hours post-surgery: they gave him the screws as a souvenir (yes I know there's a bad joke here, but I'm not going there)
Another bonus, since we spent the night in the Los Angeles area, was that Victoria took a break from her studies at USC to come visit!
Victoria just aced a big test! Congratulations!
He’s in considerable pain, but hopefully the heel, at least, will hurt less now that the screws are out. Since he’s on crutches for the next week or two, the CE is staying down in the poolhouse with Chloe, Rosie and Birdie for roommates, but he’s already feeling well enough to hobble around. PG brought lunch yesterday and we had a picnic with the chickens.
Is it wrong to eat chicken salad in front of the chickens?
"I hope he gets well soon so he can throw the tennis ball for me!"
Thanks to everyone for the calls and well wishes, to Victoria for the fruit and the visit, to PG for lunch and to Ashleigh for keeping us afloat until the CE is back to his usual superhuman self.
Polloplayer edit: a fair amount of traffic arrives here via searches for “posterior tibialis”. For related posts on this subject, see “Break a Leg?”, “Getting a Leg Up”, “Cast and Characters”, “Ups, Downs” and “Das Boot and Das Molt”
J’ai un rhume
I can write “I have a cold” in French, but I still blow my nose with a distinct American accent.
Lucky for me, I didn’t get sick until the last day of our trip.
We’re home now, but I’ll resume the travelogue tomorrow – so much more to share!
In the meantime, pass the Nyquil!
How the French do airport fast food
Re-paving Paradise: Carmageddon is upon us!
Sorry all you Royalphiles, but the biggest news in southern California this month actually has nothing to do with Will and Kate’s west coast holiday. What is twisting the heads of Los Angelenos and their neighbors near and far is the anticipated closure of miles and miles of the I-405 freeway next weekend to demolish the Mulholland Bridge.
Gaspar de Portola, an early Los Angeles commuter (image from browsebiography.com)
The demolition is an ambitious component to scheduled improvements for the Sepulveda Pass, where one of the earliest commuters was Gaspar de Portola, commander of the first Spanish land exploration of California in 1769. Accompanied by a hundred mules and sixty-three fellow travelers, Portola marched down the Sepulveda Pass on a mission northward to find Monterey Bay.
Mulholland Bridge as completed in 1960 (image from jewishjournal.com)
The Sepulveda Pass looks a little different now than it did when Portola passed through. Even on a good day, the I-405 is hopelessly clogged, but the mind boggles at the horror of shutting down a stretch of road traveled by well over 300,000 cars on a daily basis. The famous intersection of the I-405 and I-101 freeways has been labeled the busiest in the United States, so it’s no exaggeration to refer to the upcoming July 16-17 closure as “Carmageddon”. (For all you trivia buffs, the title for busiest freeway in North America actually goes to Ontario Highway 401 in Canada, according to Wikipedia and other sources.)
Stay away July 15-16! (image from freewayclosure.com)
While everyone in LA is trapped at home as Mulholland bridge goes bye-bye, they might want to relax with a copy of Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles, which, despite its turgid title, is a fascinating read.
(image from amazon.com)
As a transplant to California, I must have seen the exit for Mulholland Drive hundreds of times with no thought of the history behind its name, but true Angelenos know William Mulholland as the crusty Irish immigrant who prevailed in the fiercely-fought battle to build the Los Angeles acqueduct and bring (or steal, depending on how you look at it) Owens River Valley water to the burgeoning, thirsty community of Los Angeles in the early 1900′s.
(image from destination360.com)
Sadly, Mulholland’s legacy is also inextricably linked to the catastrophic 1928 failure of the St. Francis Dam near present-day Santa Clarita. Hundreds of people were killed in the path of the horrific flash flood triggered by the crumbling dam. Bodies were washed through the torrent to wash up on beaches as far away as Oxnard and San Diego, and continued to be discovered as late as the 1970′s. Mulholland, a larger-than-life local hero, was held responsible for the tragedy and died a broken man.
A 1924 photo of William Mulholland (image from Wikipedia)
When Gaspar trekked the Sepulveda Pass the residents were comprised mostly of scattered tribes of Indians. When William Mulholland arrived in Los Angeles in 1877, 9,000 souls resided in the City of Angels. At the time of Mulholland’s death, population had swelled to more a million and today, nearly four million people drink from the water Mulholland diverted from the Owens River Valley.
(image from californialegacy.org)
When the Mulholland Bridge was completed in 1960, it earned the desultory title of ”a bridge to nowhere” since, at the time, it was scarcely used. Things change, don’t they? Juan Gaspar Portola has come and gone and so has William Mulholland. Paradise has been duly paved, they put up a parking lot called the I-405 and now it’s time for a remodel. Stay far, far away on July 15-16!
“Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot”
- Joni Mitchell “Big Yellow Taxi”
It’s a bird-eat-bird world
The CE and I were having lunch downtown the other day when three aging hippies singing “Imagine” and carrying a “War Is Not The Answer” banner walked past.
My chickens just want peace! (image from commentnation.com)
I wish I’d gotten a phone number because I would like to hire them to stage an hourly parade in the chicken yard. Why? Because when I let Hope and the chicks out of the pen for a walkabout in the chicken yard Saturday morning, we had an unannounced and unwelcome visitor. Hope saw it first and sounded the alarm – she let out a squawk, the chicks scattered for cover and I looked up to see a young red-tailed hawk perched on a branch overlooking the chicken yard.
He looked just like this! (image from redtailnest.blogspot.com)
I yelled and carried on while he gazed inscrutably at the crazy women flailing her arms at him. Twenty-or-so seconds into my anti-hawk dance he tired of the entertainment and flew off.
But he will be back. In fact, as I type this, I can hear the kirrrree-kirrreee-kirrreee call of a hawk circling our property.
I herded Hope and the chicks into the coop and commenced, yet again, to research the subject of hawks and chickens, hoping to find a magic bullet answer to the predatory problem.
Did you know that crows will attack chickens, too? (image from anooshafaheem.wordpress.com)
Speaking of bullets, I learned, by the way, that it is illegal to kill a hawk – or a crow, for that matter. They are included in a very lengthy avian list(http://www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/RegulationsPolicies/mbta/mbtandx.html) protected under the Migratory Bird Act of 1918. Since we have crows and hawks on our property 365 days a year, I am a bit skeptical as to the migratory nature of these creatures, but it is the law of the land.
After the MBA passage, all waterfowl hunters were required to purchase this stamp, the proceeds from which purchase wetlands for wildlife protection. (image from gravesfa.org)
Poor little Luna is prime hawk-bait
A hawk will readily attack a bird up to twice its size, so even Hope and Autumn are at risk. As I stated in the earlier post, a rooster is the best defense against a hawk, but I fear angry neighbors even more than the hawk, so, sadly, no roosters will be roosting in our coop.
These folks have strung a serious fishing-line hawk barrier (image from crippledcollie.com/wordpress/)
Poultry netting is another way to go - I would love a canpy of it over the Chicken Kingdom. (image from flatcreekfarm.blogspot.com)
The challenge, of course, is that the sky is big and the hawks are hungry and there’s only so much we humans can do to thwart their efforts. The only place the chickens are truly safe is in the pen and the coop, but girls just want to have fun and they love their free-range time.
Lucy would like to take her chances with the hawk, but we all know she's just a bird-brain.
Like the peaceable paraders downtown, I just wish everyone could get along. But changing hawk nature (or, for that matter, human nature) is not a likely outcome.
Little Pippa's feathered feet are not likely to out-run a hawk
Thus, it looks like the chicks will be cooped up for the holiday, but hopefully the rest of you are happily celebrating your freedom. Happy 4th, and peace out!
Even the caged bird has a happy 4th!
Terrible. Horrible. No good, very bad weekend…keeping our fingers crossed.
I know you’re getting used to more frequent blog posts, so I will try not to disappoint. Just don’t get spoiled, okay? After all, there’s only so much one can say about chickens and the randomness of life, which is more and more often the topic here, it seems. And this post will be about a little of both.
When I called Autumn to the coop Friday evening, I noticed she was walking slowly. Autumn has always been the athlete of the group, racing so quickly toward a handout of scratch that she often looks like she will pitch forward in a face plant. (hold that thought because “face plant” is not irrelevant to this post.)
Autumn as a baby chick: she's in front with Hope behind her and Amelia in the back
Her gait suggested that she might be in pain, so I palpated her abdomen to see if she might be eggbound. This is a common condition in laying hens, and indicates that an egg is too large or the chicken’s muscles are too weak to push the egg out. Another common, and often fatal condition is egg pertitonitis. In this scenario, the yolk leaks into the abdominal cavity instead of the hen’s oviduct. A more thorough explanation can be found here: http://poultrykeeper.com/common-articles-to-all-poultry/health/egg-peritonitis.html
Since Autumn has not been laying for several weeks and, before that, was laying only yolk-less “wind” eggs (see http://polloplayer.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/chicken-drama-a-broody-wind-eggs-and-baby-chicks-on-the-way/) the spectre of egg peritonitis is a plausible explanation for her behavior.
Autumn as an adolescent, striking her best vulture pose
On Saturday morning, Autumn would not come out of the coop, and when I carried her outside, she did not move from the spot where I placed her. Something was very wrong! I dropped her off at the vet in hopes that they might be able to help her.
What happened next made a bad day far, far worse. I came home from the vet, then tripped and fell against the kitchen door, slicing a neat inch-and-a-half long gash in my forehead. And no, I am not posting a picture of it. Fifteen stitches. The less said about it, the better.
Mine won't have the cool lightning bolt effect, but you get the idea...(image from killerj.wordpress.com)
The weekend was a kaleidoscope of misery: by day I moaned about the after-effects of crumpling my body at full force against a door, whined about the pain in my arm from the tetanus shot, wept over what will be a scar of Frankensteinian proportions, and lay awake at night worrying about Autumn. The vet was unable to come up with an immediate diagnosis and elected to keep her for the weekend to give her IV nutrients; this was not a hopeful sign.
Autumn and her beloved golf ball
I called the vet first thing this morning, fully expecting to hear that Autumn had perished. But finally, a bit of good news: she is alive and “resting comfortably” and the vet will continue to work on finding out what’s wrong with her today. Of my four original chicks, only Autumn and Hope remain. Not a good track record, especially if we now lose Autumn.
I’ve done a bit of research on chicken life expectancy. Many sources claim 7-10 years as an average lifespan for a chicken, but there is an undercurrent of anecdotal evidence that suggests hatchery stock is more fragile. Since many, perhaps most, hatchery birds are either slaughtered for food at six or seven weeks or age, and laying hens often discarded after one or two years, breeding for longevity is not a priority for hatcheries.
Autumn is our most social chicken. She loves to cuddle with the CE.
Polloplayer readers will be the first to hear the news, be it good or bad.
Meanwhile, Hope and the chicks are doing well. They came out of the pen yesterday for their first (supervised, of course!) walkabout
Antibiotics, 1; Neti Pot 0
I know, I know, everyone thinks antibiotics are the devil these days. But imho, Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey are the sexiest men not alive.
Sir Alexander Fleming, the father of penicillin (image from Wikipedia)
They gave us penicillin, which is a good thing, although, to be truthful, the one time I took it my face swelled up like the Hindenberg and I was advised to stay far, far away from the stuff. Without the good work of those fine fellows, however, I would not currently be in possession of a vial of Cefuroxime Axetil. (Note to pharmaceutical companies: it wouldn’t hurt to hire some ad folks to juice up your product-naming division)
Believe me, Gregory House never defended a stash of Vicodin with more fervor than I have for these little white pills. Because, while I would really like to be writing a travelogue of my NYC/WDC trip, I can hardly stand up due to the sinus infection that caught me somewhere along the way.
Vicodin's got nothing on these little gems (image from drugs.com)
No sooner did Taylor and I walk across Farragut Square in Washington, D.C. last week, commenting that neither of us had been sick in a long, long time, faster than you can say JINX, I woke up the next morning with that sensation of a television set having taken up residence in my nasal cavities. I marched right into a health food store and bought a neti pot, sure I could nip the sucker in the bud, but it was not to be. I haven’t taken antibiotics since 2008, but I could tell that’s where this thing was headed in a hurry.
The humble Neti Pot: cute, but pass the antibiotics, please
I learned a gross but handy truth from this go-around with a not-so-super bug. I was under the impression that the color of the yucky stuff you hack up in the morning determines whether you have a cold or a bacterial infection. Not so! Green, as it turns out, is no more diabolical than yellow. (Either one, however, can make you far less attractive to your spouse, who may be wondering about that “in sickness and in health” clause right now…)
My trusty family practice doc (also known as Mr. Pollo Amigo) explained that it’s often hard to tell the difference between a cold and a bacterial infection, snot color not being of any firm medical use, but the tipping point in this case, he said, was the irritation he saw at the back of my throat. Ah, so that’s why it felt like shards of glass in there every time I swallowed!
On Day 2 of the antibiotics and the throat feels much better, the yucky stuff has turned from green back to yellow, and I’m so exhausted (maybe the antibiotics?) I really have to head back to bed and a box of tissues. But before I go, props to one other unknown soul – a shout-out to that nameless chemist at the Vicks Company who, in 1966, cobbled together the recipe for Nyquil. Now that they’ve got that evil-tasting-stuff tamed in a liquigel cap, it’s the next best thing to…well, antibiotics!
My new bff, Nyquil
iPad+Apple+WordPress=No Blog Post
Get your acts together, oh ye masters of cyberspace!
My Mac laptop (which they tout as virus-proof) has a nasty, nasty virus and insists on throwing up page after page of porn pop-ups so vile they cannot be described in the polite company kept by Polloplayer.
And since I’m traveling – in WDC at the moment visiting Taylor! – said laptop will have to live in porn purgatory until the CE, holding down the fort in NYC, can return with it to CA and our trusty computer guy.
I do have an iPad with me, which is of absolutely no use for WordPress since, 1) Apple , in its infinite lack of wisdom, will not allow me to download the WordPress app and 2) body text cannot be entered in a post via the iPad when accessing WordPress via Safari on the iPad.
And this is not just old-lady ineptitude – there is evidence of lamenting and gnashing of teeth on these issues from presumably far more tech-savvy types on support forums for both iPad and WordPress.
I have not included Blackberry in this screed because I am typing this post on one, but they are not entirely blame-free. I cannot post a photo because I cannot access my WordPress app on Blackberry or Blackberry App World – doing so crashes my elderly Blackberry Bold.
What to do? The CE would suggest gathering up all abovementioned devices and hurling them against a wall so that they might never again rise up to interfere with that rarity known as a human conversation.
But Apple and WordPress and Blackberry all know they have me and pretty much everyone else in their thrall and I suspect they will continue to test our resolve – why, why, why no Adobe Flash on the iPad, Mr. Jobs? And iPad and WordPress – could you please learn to play nicely together?
End of rant. Polloplayer will resume next week. Thanks for listening!
