Welcome to the world, kiddo!

This is my new little godson Charlie, born on January 2nd. Isn't he just all sorts of cuteness? I am just aching with a bad case of baby envy. Quick, get me my insulin...

Gotta admit, his Mommy and Daddy do make the cute babies! All kinds of congratulations to my Favorite Family Unit!

Success!!

Am I gonna let you read it yet? Uh... no. :-)

NANOWRIMO!

Well folks, it's that time of the year again. The time of year when I start to dream typing, to hear the pecking of keys in my sleep. It's not enough to be in school, and programming for a living. I need to write novel too - there just isn't enough typing in my life!!!

Seriously, I did this last year and I found it to be very cool. The novel I wrote was shite, really shite, really, really shite, but the exercise of actually completing a 150 page book was great! It seriously made me feel capable of completing anything.

And this year I have - egad! - a plot! And characters I really dig! And a fantabulous (is that a word?) setting. And I had so much fun writing the first 2500 words of the bugger this morning that I really didn't want to stop to go to work (darn thou work, thou interferer of creative endeavors!).

Seriously, Nanowrimo is cool. I'm loving it.

We'll see how I feel in my posts of a week, two weeks, and three weeks.

Now back to it!
Me

A Bat Boy and His Bat Dog

Happy Halloween!

It's More of a Commute, Really...

The Dawg, he of the creative and ever more bizarre medical issues, is DRIVING ME NUTS.

He wanders from food bowl to front door and back, doing the circuit over and over, with a crazed look in his eyes that says "if you died right now, I would quite happily eat you. If you don't die soon, I may have to take you out myself. It's nothing personal. Oh, and could you manage to snag the handle of the fridge on your way down?" I'm worried. I have decided that I can't continue to subject him to these high doses of steroids, no matter the outcome of taking him off of them. The misery of being hungry all the time, of never being sated, is too much. Last night we were out until 2am and he ripped into Luna's food and ate, I kid you not, about twenty pounds of dog food. He was STILL HUNGRY. This is not good.

Every day it gets a little harder. I look at him, this dog I love, this longest of long term relationships, the closest thing I have ever had or may indeed ever have to a child, and it pains me so much to watch him decline. He's been with me for so long, through my entire adult life. He's gone from old, to ancient, to positively -- well, what's older than ancient? Whatever it is, that's the category he's entered. Until the Pemphigus came along, he was in amazing shape for a dog his age. The vet says his liver, heart, lungs, kidneys are still as solid and healthy as can be. He doesn't suffer from arthritis, or incontenence like a lot of elderly animals do. He looks like hell, but other than the skin disease, and the meds (the symptoms of which appear to be almost as bad as the disease itself) he just ticks along. So what can I do?

I suppose I must try to be patient, and follow the best advice of the expert dog skin disease vet I'm hemmhoraging money at. I hope the dog, or the vet, will let me know when it's time to let him go. For now, he roots around the table at my feet, ever on the alert for tiny scraps, veritable molecules, of FOOD, FOOD, FOOD.

Pemphilumphigus!

My Old Dawg, the Sweet Manatee himself, has decided recenly to engage in a new hobby; Losing Skin and Costing Us a Shitload of Moola. Decidedly ancient and yet still hanging around in his old dog body (as long as there is meat on the earth, he will do his best to stay here), he has developed Pemphigus, a fine rare autoimmune disease which causes the immune system to attack, of all things, his skin. So he now resembles the Velveteen Rabbit, all threadbare and patched up and most definately REAL. It looks as though he's been attacked by a set of renegade shears. And life right now is ALL ABOUT THE DOG, as in "Did you pill the dog?" and "We need to bathe the dog" and "Parts of the dog need to be vacuumed off the living room floor." Nonetheless, he seems quite pleased with himself, and despite the fact that I know more than a few of my friends and family members are wondering why we're sustaining the poor guy's miserable existence, he isn't really any worse for the wear. He just looks like he's being systematcially tortured by a fascist regime hoping to extract the secrets that enable him to sleep for twenty three hours a day. We've taken to calling him the Pemphilumphigus, after the Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.

To Breed or Not to Breed

That is the question...

I'm of the age whereby quite a few of my friends are either done makin' babies, or are even as I write this implanted with bun in said oven. About twice a month (ovulation and just before my period, go figure), I feel a primal hunger, an aching, to run out and get myself pregnant. It's a strange urge with a deep source, a pang deep down on the instinctual level. Twice a month, I feel like I'm going crazy with the need to make myself an infant. I guess it's that Old Devil Time, playing his tricks with my biological clock.

There are so many reasons not to have a baby. I could go into them in whiny depth, but the bottom line is that I just do not have a lifestyle and the resources that would properly support a child right now. There are many, many reasons not to have babies, the most prominent being that there are just too many fucking people in the world already. I argue myself in circles, but the urge to procreate doesn't go away. It's getting stronger. It won't be denied!

I'm really not sure what to do about this. I've determined that my body isn't likely to get pregnant without some coaxing, so unlike many mamas who become mamas because it just happens, that isn't likely to be my story. If I want a baby in there, I am going to have to work to make it happen.

It seems to me like I'll be missing a world of great experiences either way. Childless, I'll never get to experience what it's like to be a parent. I'll never feel that bond that a mother feels with her baby. But childed, I'll miss out on all the experiences I'm likely to have with more time on my hands and less responsibility.

And if I have to listen to one more completely sleep deprived, poop covered mother tell me that it's "so worth it", I might just heave.