In the event of turbulence, please fasten your safety belts

Friday night, Mom and I attended Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s production of “Bach at Leipzig”. I’ll be writing up my review of it (hopefully) tomorrow. I finished the pair of Cascade Heritage socks during the show, which is awesome.

We drove home, and I stayed up later than usual spinning away. When I finally started heading to bed at 2 AM, I noticed that Elphie was having some muscle tremors. They started in her torso, and moved up to her face.

I looked in the dog health book, and among the possibilities were a toxin. So, I called the ER vet, and took Elphie in. To her great discomfort, they did a very thorough check, and assured me that it was very unlikely that she had encountered a toxin.

(Toxins result in seizures, not tremors, per the ER vet. Elphie wasn’t seizing. Thank God.)

The ER vet gave me a list of options, including leaving her there for observation and/or having them administer some activated charcoal in the event that she had ingested something nasty. One of the possible causes of the tremors was anxiety, and given that I changed my routine three consecutive nights, it’s the obvious one, in retrospect.

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know that Elphie is my formerly abused dog. It has taken us a lot of time to get her to the point where she’s functioning like a (mostly) normal dog. Part of this has been through routine, and the ER vet is the exact opposite of routine.

I was worried that Elphie would stress herself into a heart attack, so I said, “Thanks, but I can observe her at home, where she’ll be less anxious. And I’ll be happy to administer the activated charcoal myself.”

The ER vet, not knowing my prowess with medicating my dogs, made sure that I was adequately prepared, sent me home with a GIANT syringe full of activated charcoal. Elphie is a 30 lb dog, and the syringe looked like enough activated charcoal for ME, a 130 lb woman.

When we got home (at 5:30 AM), we sat and snuggled (with Niki, who was NOT amused that he was left home with Mom, who is a champ for coming over at 2 AM and sitting with him). Then, I gave Elphie the activated charcoal, which she took beautifully.

The stuff has a syrupy consistency, and looks like black oil. Per the ER vet, it also stains flooring, so I put down a “dog towel” (a really old, ratty towel, specifically kept for dog purposes), and got about 98% of it into her without much fuss.

The remaining 2% (all over the towel) looks like I used it to take apart and rebuild my engine on it.

At this point, we’re well into Saturday, so I go to bed, and don’t get up until 12:30. Donna and the Minions were headed over, so, I brushed my teeth and hopped in the shower. As I got out of the shower, Donna arrived.

I had a terrific (and much needed) session with her- where she noticed that I’ve been working out. There’s nothing like someone noticing that you’re toning up.

The Minions were champs, we had a great time, and during the course of the evening, Andrew’s first flight was delayed like three times- which meant he totally missed his connecting flight out of JFK and had to fly out the next morning.

Again, if you only know me in the internet world, Andrew has been in Maine since late April. He’s officially back and home forever, but I thought discretion was safer when it comes to out-of-town spousal units. I mean, really! If y’all knew my stash was ONLY being guarded by Niki and Elphie, you might know how to get past my wily guard dogs. Andrew is harder to distract.

In any case, Andrew was tired and just. Wanted. To. Come. Home. As someone who spent the same amount of time working out of state, I would have sobbed in the airport, and possibly thrown a temper tantrum if they had told me I was coming home one single minute later. Props to Andrew for NOT tantrum-ing.

So, again, I stayed up until Very Late spinning on my Tour de Fleece project (which is now only 4 oz away from having the spinning finished) on the new, nameless, Saxony wheel, and promptly slept in until Andrew’s plane was nearly landed.

I dressed up (in one of the new dresses that was ordered and fits), got my makeup on, and went to collect him from the airport. The poor guy was so tired and relieved to be home that he got teary. (In a manly way, of course.)

We went out to get some much-craved Mexican food, stopped at Purlescence (to swap the Heritage sock out for another half-finished pair- the new one there is in Regia Silk, color 0190), and went home to watch Shark Attack and nap.

Despite the fact that we did very little, we’re still exhausted.

Oh, and my shelving should be arriving today. Good timing, huh?