Diamond Dog

Monty is home and hale and well, if a little worn out from his hospital stay. Stacy picked him up yesterday afternoon and he spent most of the evening asleep; he's on a bland diet and antibiotics and under observation, but seems to be doing okay. He's one lucky little guy.

Most especially glad to have him home again was Willow, who spent a whole lot of the time he was away moping and pining and being Velcro Kitteh on her monkeys ever since we came home the other night without him. For someone who spends as much time as she does as the Squeaky Toy that Moves, that's a lot of devotion. (Of course, I also caught her ambushing his tail last night, which goes to show there are a lot of things she's happy to have him around for.)

Stacy sent me this picture yesterday, shortly after his homecoming, captioned "I look so cute-- you'd never know I just crapped in the kitchen."




(Yes, that's a little red bandage that matches his collar over his IV spot. Poor guy has had that same place shaved three times now since the summer - after his first seizure, to get his teeth cleaned, and now this.)

Not Single Spies

Two things from the last day or so in the Not Good News column:

First, the latest word on my grandmother (better known to us, and most of of you, as MaMa) is that she is not well and fading fast; she's no longer able to eat, which likely puts her remaining time (barring bona fide divine intervention, which I doubt she would welcome even if she believed in it, which she doesn't) as a matter of days. This is not shocking news; she was moved recently to hospice care, and the clock's been pretty much winding down ever since. She is comfortable and well-cared-for and the end is being allowed to take its course, which has been her wish for a long while.

I visited her in her nursing home last April, when she was okay but a little confused, and it wasn't terribly long after that when she stopped knowing who people were when they came to see her. I've felt for a while now that going to visit would be much more for my sake than for hers, and neither of us would get much benefit or comfort from it. If that sounds like a shocking casting-off of filial duty, know that I've wrestled with my conscience on it enough to be prepared to live with myself. A better world would, perhaps, have had her last days spent surrounded by her family in her own home; that world would also not have robbed her of so much of herself in these past few years, so that she's simply existing as a shell of what she used to be. The sad truth is that she's been slowly but surely taking her leave for a while now, and this next step will simply be the final stage of a long process. The MaMa I will mourn is one who is already departed, and that's whose memory I mean to keep alive.

The second thing is that our Monty is currently in doggie hospital for the next couple of days, as we discovered that yesterday morning he ate an entire one-pound fruitcake* - full of raisins, which are very very bad for dogs. We took him to the emergency vet last night, where they are keeping him on an IV and watching his toxin levels. He was, for the record, his usual happy playful self when we took him in, and has been doing well - Stacy called this morning and his kidneys were in good shape (renal failure is the cause of most raisin toxicity deaths, for reasons that are still apparently a little mysterious) but his liver was hurting a little, so bringing him in for detox was the right decision. The doctor is optimistic and so are we, but we're a little anxious nonetheless, so if you have any good thoughts to spare for a very silly little dog whose dad was very careless about what he left lying around the house, they would not be unwelcome.

Updates as I know them.

Update 1/15: Mom talked to someone at the nursing home yesterday who said that MaMa's prospects are anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. That's imminent, but not quite as immediate as I first thought. It could still be more or less any time, though.

Monty's second round of blood work early this morning was pretty good. His kidneys are fine, though one of his liver levels went up some and we need to have him tested again in a few days. He's been perky and in good spirits.** They're trailing off his fluids and he'll get to come home tonight. We are, needless to say, greatly relieved.
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*Those of you who were around for, or got word of, the Great Hoagie Caper of Thanksgiving 2008 will be less than shocked to read this. I suspect he put the whole thing away in less than 90 seconds, getting the wrapper off included.

**And, almost certainly, loud. We've been able to hear him on the phone whenever we've talked to someone in the same room with him. How is it that we ended up with the mouthy kid?

In Poses Keen from Bygone Days

The blogosphere is awash in art of late, it would seem:

First, those of you who are fans of my late grandfather's work should check out this stuff that Tony found in one of the many recent attic excavations. Some of it's the abstract expressionism that he was known best for, but there's lots of atypical pieces there too. (I, of course, like the one that looks like a Great Old One, but YM, naturally, MV.)

Second, Spyder got tapped again to do some artwork for the award-winning RPG Burning Wheel, and is showcasing her fine illos for the upcoming magic-focused book here. (In case you didn't know, she previously did some interiors and the back cover painting for the acclaimed Monster Burner volume, which is a level of coolness I could barely have contemplated so few degrees of separation from when thumbing through the Fiend Folio in my fevered youth.) A great big hurrah to her for this new gig and another tally mark on her Srs Profeshunul Artist board. (Also: Mmmm. Wizards.)

Third, Elly (who is a colleague from my late place of employment and otherwise fellow-traveler, for those of you who have been wondering whence she came to the blogroll) has embarked on the ambitious project of a series of works inspired in part by Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and chronicling the progress (of that, and other stuff too). Aeroplane is a work that's at the very least on my shortlist of Desert Island Albums: compelling, labyrinthine, bizarre, unsettling, and chockablock with strange earworms, which is why I sometimes find myself singing "When you were young you were the king of carrot flowerrrrrs" while I'm doing the dishes or some damn thing. (I recall reading that NMH's aesthetic was once summed up as "like Syd Barrett, but with more sex," and that's about right.) It's exactly the kind of effort I applaud, in part because it's the kind of thing I wish I'd thought of first, though my version would no doubt have more of a Mark Ryden sort of vibe going; I look forward to seeing what she does with it.

So that's at least a couple of you out there who have some catching up to do with the mini-zeitgeist, if you've been neglecting pen and palette of late. Show us yer canvases, baby! Whoohoo! (And this would have been an excellent place to note the official launch of Trixie Magpie, except the site's not up yet, nudge nudge, so you're just going to have to Watch This Space.)

Golden Apple

No one who has known me for long will be surprised to know that Spyder is one of my very favoritest people ever. I half-seriously call her the sister I didn't know I had, mostly because there isn't a word for a person who is neither a relative nor a lover, but for whom "friend" is woefully insufficient.

Anyway, she turns 23* today. I'm heading up Noo Yawkwards in a few hours to celebrate in person; the rest of you should head over to her place and give her a big virtual hug and Many Happy Returns for the sake of her imminent Illumination.

Yay!

*If you have to ask why this is significant, I'm afraid I'm not cleared to tell you. Fnord.