I have always hated Halloween, and this year I have enough hatred to last for decades more.
1 hour and a half into trick-or-treating and the following has occurred:
- we ran out of the 130 pieces of candy we purchased (1 per person);
- we ran out of a 36 piece container of crackers (meant to be for us, broken into desperately by me when Chris did not return in time from the store with replenishments);
- I had to turn off the light so people would stop coming to the door when I ran out of individually wrapped food items and still children came ringing the bell;
- I was threatened by a 15 year old boy who wouldn’t believe me that I had run out of candy and stood at the door saying, “I know you have more, I can smell it” even when I showed him my empty container;
- I have lost track of how many times I’ve had to say, “Do you say Thank You?” (and to teenagers! Who should know better!);
- we have been asked repeatedly to donate to Unicef. I can barely bring myself to give out free candy, and now I’m supposed to give them all my money,too?; and
- I have vowed never to have children. Particularly rude, obnoxious children who show up at your door, ask for more than one piece of candy, don’t say “Trick or Treat” and instead just stand there with their hand outstretched and then walk away without saying “Thank you.”
One girl (possibly 14) looked at the Milk Duds I dropped into her bag, said “Oh, I don’t like Milk Duds,” rummaged in her bag, pulled it out, looked at it again, and finally said, “Oh, well.”
Chris left for about half an hour to get more candy. He had to go pretty far to get it because as he was turning out of our street, he saw that the church across the way is having some kind of festival. Cars are parked all over our neighborhood, and all the kids are coming directly here. So he knew that the local grocery store wouldn’t have enough candy for us, and went all the way to Target, which was nearly wiped out. During this half hour, I thought I was going to literally die, either from a heart attack, or from angry toddlers stoning me to death when they saw that I had given them crackers.
Chris eventually returned with a 100 piece bag of candy, which in the time it took me to write this, went down to about 50 pieces. We will be moving next year. We can’t afford the taxes in this town, let alone the cost of feeding all the children in a 10 mile radius on one night a year.
In other news, my parents had only 5 children at their door while I was having my nervous breakdown. However, my father said they all came rushing up to the door, grabbed at his candy tray and grabbed a bunch of pieces each and scared him so much that he backed away from the door. What the hell kind of “holiday” is this?
Yes, there are good kids out there. Kids like our dogsitters, who come properly costumed (none of that wearing regular clothes and just saying “I’m a gangster, fo’ shizzle!” for them), say “Trick or Treat”, say “Thank you,” politely accept whatever you give them, and enjoy a night out. But every year, there seem to be fewer of them.
by Terry Pratchett
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Commander Sam Vimes has to deal with the anniversary of Koom Valley, long-simmering hostilities between the dwarves and the trolls, a new vampire on his squad, and his vow to get home every day by 6 PM to read “Where’s My Cow?” to Young Sam.
This is another funny entry into the Discworld books. I laughed out loud several times and enjoyed it greatly. There were a few slow spots, but overall this was good and reminded me that I want to re-read the Watch books.
by Nevada Barr
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Newly promoted and newly married ranger Anna Pigeon arrives at her new job as some missing children reappear.
I don’t quite recall the Anna Pigeon mysteries being as gruesome as this one, but perhaps they all are. I would have liked to see more of Anna’s personal life. Her husband is barely mentioned at all, nor did I remember that they got married, which I assume happened at the end of the previous book.
Engrossing, but having a few of the more emotionally available characters return (Anna’s husband, sister or even her dog!) would have helped make this book seem less distant.
Yesterday Chris called me from the highway to let me know he was nearly at our house. Chris was going to take me to the library, and because we were on a tight schedule, I went outside to wait for him after taking care of the dogs.
He hadn’t shown up yet, so I started walking down our driveway. And then I saw it.
Someone had left two big piles of dog poop on our lawn.
Each pile was about the size of two days of all three of our dogs’ poops combined, or the size of one regular dog’s output. And these were fresh poops, too–I’d just spent all Monday afternoon raking the pine needles in that area, and there had certainly been no poo piles then.
Our neighborhood is very dog-friendly. Our street alone houses eight resident dogs, not including those that live on the intersecting streets. On most summer days, a walk around the neighborhood will typically have us running into three or four dogs along with numerous children of various sizes.
When we’d first moved into this house, all the dog owners in the area had warned us about one particular woman on the corner, who hated dogs going on her lawn and would stick up signs saying “A Dog Pooped Here” and other witticisms when she found evidence that a dog had visited.
Although I’d kept a careful, and hopeful, eye out for these signs, I had never seen any. And the woman always seemed perfectly friendly to us and our dogs, but that may have been because we made sure to walk our dogs on the other side of the street from her house.
Normally all the poop on our lawn belongs to our dogs, and we generally try to pick it up every day or so and throw it in the trash. Picking up poop is not a fun thing to do, but it’s part of being a dog owner. If other people choose to leave their dog’s poop on their own lawns, that’s their business — but I expect them to at least respect other people’s lawns.
But seeing those two big piles of poop on our lawn, blatantly belonging to dogs that weren’t mine…well. Something inside me snapped.
I marched down the street, fuming. Before I’d walked too far, I spotted Chris’s car. He circled around and picked me up.
“Guess what happened,” I said. Yes, there was no time for things like “Hi” or “How was your day?” in my world when a crisis loomed.
“Do I want to know?” Chris said.
“Somebody left their dog poop on our lawn! Two big piles!” I announced. “What can we do about this?!?”
“That’s life,” Chris said. “Shit happens.” He giggled to himself. “Shit happens — get it?”
“I get it,” I said.
After we returned from the library, I made Chris examine the poop with me.
“TWO big piles,” I said. “What, did a dog have a stomachache? Why are the poops so close together?”
I studied the poop. By now, Chris had looked at the poop and agreed that, yes, there were indeed two piles of poop on our lawn, and they did not belong to our dogs.
“Why are people so rude? Maybe I should put up signs on the poop piles, too, just like that woman down the street,” I yelled, to Chris’s retreating back.
“The crazy lady? What good will that do?” Chris called back.
“Well, she doesn’t get any poop left on her lawn anymore,” I pointed out.
“Then maybe it works,” Chris said.
I went inside and busily typed up and printed two signs on my computer. Chris found some old chopsticks that he’d been saving for some kind of as-yet-undetermined project, and I carefully taped my signs to the chopsticks.
I went back outside and in the dimming light, drove each chopstick into the ground near each pile of poop.
I felt better.
And I felt even better when I went outside today to check on my chopsticks, and found that both piles of poo had disappeared. Not every piece had been picked up, but the majority of the poop was gone.
Ah, the sweet smell of success.
Note: The pictures are fuzzy because although Chris got me a new digital camera that rocks the shiznit out of the hizzle, I was in a rush to take the pictures because a car was coming down the street toward me and I felt they might not see me over their giant minivan and would run me over if I stayed out in the street any longer. You will be pleased to know that they did not run me over, however, I didn’t have time to focus the camera. You can’t have everything, you know.
Two days ago, my left turn signal began to have seizures.
Had it just been me, I would have assumed this was due to another quirky Made-in-Mexico factor, similar to Chris’s descriptions of his leased VW shooting off plastic parts when he pushed the radio controls. But due to the rising gas prices, Chris had been taking my diesel Jetta to work (40 mpg) and I had been left with Big Blue (”If you ate less for breakfast, I could get 20 miles per gallon!”) for my vastly shorter commute.
The left turn signal clicked and blinked at about double the speed of the regular signal, and Chris complained so much about how annoying it was that I finally looked it up in my car manual.
My car manual said, “If a turn signal fails, the indicator light flashes about twice as fast as usual.”
At the time we discovered this, Chris and I were about to go into Russo’s to buy some produce. After we parked the car, he stayed inside and started signaling while I ran outside to look at the lights.
“Everything’s working fine here,” I yelled from the back of the car.
I ran to the front of the car. The sun was bright, and I couldn’t see if anything was happening.
“Are you blinking the signal?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“I don’t see anything. Blink the right one so I can compare,” I said.
I went around to the right side of the car. Nothing seemed to be happening there, either.
“I still don’t see anything,” I said.
Chris came out of the car. I thought he was going to check out the light situation, but it turned out that he’d merely gotten bored of sitting in the car and watching my incompetency.
Later that night, Chris figured out which light was broken. He didn’t bother asking me to help him locate the problem, and just jumped in and out of the car as necessary. This would probably explain how he was able to diagnose the car in less than five minutes.
When he came back into the house, he said, “The driver’s side light is out.”
“Maybe you better show me,” I said.
He carefully pointed it out–the top little bulb on the driver’s side, to the left of the main bulb. It seemed pretty clear to me.
Buying and replacing the bulb was my job, since this was my car and since I’d taken The Class, so I went to Autozone a few days later. It never occurred to me to call the dealership, because first, I had taken a car class at Brookline Adult Education about a year ago. Although it wasn’t a hands-on class, out of everything we’d covered, I felt replacing a lightbulb was bound to be one of the easier lessons.
Second, when I’d gone to get my annual inspection at the dealership, they’d replaced a broken brake light without asking me if I wanted them to do it, and they’d charged me about two dollars for the bulb and twenty-five for the “labor.”
Autozone was empty when I went into the store. The lightbulb aisle was near the entrance, and conveniently, there was a lightbulb parts guide on the counter below the bulbs. I looked up my car: 2002 VW Jetta.
I followed the grid across: standard headlight, fog light, directional (front), directional (rear)…
Wait a minute. Was my headlight out, or the directional? Everything had seemed so clear at home, but I was pretty sure I’d sound stupid if I went to ask someone for help and told them, “My front left top light is broken.”
I went outside and turned on my directionals, and ran around to the front of the car. Okay. No blinking yellow light; my directional (front) was broken.
I went back inside. The number of the bulb listed under directional (front) was not on any lightbulb packages I could see. I checked twice, then decided to ask for help.
There was still no one in the store, and two employees were talking to each other at the counter. I walked up and waited. A supervisor, based on his differently-colored shirt, also came up and started talking to one of the employees. The second employee, standing less than a foot away from me, carefully avoided my stare and then drifted away from me slowly.
Okay, so he didn’t want to help me.
I went over to the supervisor and the second employee. Surely someone would ask if I needed help. No one did, so finally I interrupted. And by interrupted, I don’t mean I waited for a natural pause in the conversation before I politely said, “Excuse me,” I mean that I started talking while they were still talking. I had never been so rude before, but then again, I’d never been not asked if I needed help when THERE WERE NO OTHER CUSTOMERS AROUND. What kind of society were we becoming when pointed lingering around the counter didn’t get you immediate assistance?
Apparently I was interrupting an important transaction, in which the employee was withdrawing cash using his debit card. I cared not for his debit transaction, and just said, “I can’t seem to find the lightbulb listed in this guide for my car. Could you help me find it?”
The employee said, “We probably don’t carry it then.”
I thought at first he was going to walk off without trying to help me further but the supervisor was still standing nearby and pretending to look interested in what we were talking about, so the employee went to a computer and looked up the part.
“You need bulb 3357,” he said.
“Is there any reason the book lists a different lightbulb number?” I asked.
He paused.
“Well,” he said finally, “let me put it this way. The people who put that book together, well, those people are stupid.”
Okay, then.
I located my bulb, paid, and went home.
In the garage, with various chihuahuas frolicking about my feet, I examined my car. It looked pretty easy. Surely you just unscrewed the screws by the big lightbulb picture, then you just lifted off the –
Okay, so maybe the cover wasn’t going to just lift off. There were parts of the car preventing the cover from coming off, so I tried unscrewing more screws. That did nothing, so I checked my manual.
Replacing bulbs, replacing bulbs–ah! Here it was, see booklet 3-2. I dutifully turned to booklet 3-2 and searched the table of contents. Replacing bulbs, page 80. I turned to page 80.
“It is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to replace vehicle light bulbs…” I read. Yeah, no kidding.
“In many cases,” I read, “other parts of the car must first be removed before you are able to get to the bulb. This applies especially to the light bulbs in the front of your car which you can only reach through the engine compartment.”
Okay, fine, just tell me how to do it. I read on.
“For your safety, we recommend that you have your authorized VOLKSWAGEN dealer replace any bulbs for you.” The manual continued on, but only about Emergency Starting.
That was it? THAT WAS IT? A two-inch user’s guide that had to be kicked and shoved into the glove compartment, and that was all they had to say about changing light bulbs?
Chris wasn’t home, so I had to go to the next best thing: the Internet.
After much searching, I finally found a useful site that explained how to replace the headlight bulb. Apparently I did need to remove all sorts of parts to get to the driver’s side bulb.
First came the big cover with the picture of the light bulb on it. I used a Phillips screwdriver to remove the screws, and lifted the whole casing off.
Then I removed the battery cover. Yes, the battery cover. The space I had to work with was pretty tight, and as one Internet user groused, only his eleven-year-old daughter’s hands had fit.
The battery was located directly behind the lightbulb area on the driver’s side. From The Class, I had learned that my battery cover could only be removed by pushing down simultaneously on two buttons located on either side of the case. Luckily, I had never tightly closed the case after The Class, and so I had an easy time removing it.
Now I wasn’t quite sure what to do. The directions I’d found on the Internet were for replacing the large main bulb, but it didn’t look like my directional bulb would be located in that same casing.
I could see a black case area to the left of the main bulb, which seemed to directly correspond to the directional bulb. Moreover, it had a tab at the top so it must have been meant to be removed.
I tried pushing down on the tab. Then I pulled at the tab, then I pushed in on the tab. Then I swore at the tab, and neither the tab nor I were happy.
I went inside the house and emailed Chris.
“I think we need Art for this,” I typed.
“Nah, I’m pretty good at mechanical stuff,” Chris wrote back.
“This is kind of hard. I had to take apart a bunch of other pieces to get this far. Art won’t know how to do this either, but at least he’ll pretend that he does until it’s fixed,” I said.
I went back outside. I tapped on the tabbed cover. It fell off. Hmm. I guess I had loosened it.
Now I could actually see the lightbulb I wanted to replace. I wiggled the bulb until I got it out, and then I replaced it. (This was not as easy as it sounded, because at one point, I really needed three hands. And as much as the dogs were willing, paws were not the same as hands.)
I replaced all the covers and tested the directionals. The signal was now clicking and beeping at a regular rate and the yellow directional in front was blinking steadily. Take that, useless manual!
Sure, it had taken an hour. But the bulb had only cost $5, and I was cheap labor.
Full directions here.
You will need:
Phillips screwdriver
Good flashlight
Preferably someone to help you
1. Locate the panel on the driver’s side with the picture of the light bulb on it.
2. Using the Phillips screwdriver, unscrew the screws and remove the panel/cover with the lightbulb on it.
3. Remove the battery cover. The battery is behind the lightbulb area, and the case can be removed by pushing hard on two buttons (one on each side) simultaneously while pulling up on the case.
4. Shine the flashlight directly behind the directional lightbulb, which is the top small bulb to the left of the main bulb. You will see a black rectangular compartment covered with a case with a tab at the top.
5. Remove this case. The case will look like the outer edge should stay attached to the tabbed area, but do not be fooled by the tab–this outer edge of the case will actually be removed with the rest of the case. Push down on the tab and pull the case away from the lightbulbs by grabbing the entire outside of the rectangular area. I used a lot of strength, but I don’t think you need to. I think I just was imagining the wrong part of the case being removed.
6. You will see some wires attaching to a white socket-like area. Reach inside and turn the white plastic socket area slightly to the right (while you are standing looking down at it). Pull out the wires slightly to give you more length to work with, and pull out the lightbulb from the back. It will appear as though the lightbulb won’t fit through the hole, but it will–just wiggle it around and get as much length in the wires as you can.
7. Without disconnecting any wires, you will remove the lightbulb. There are two tiny metal clips on either side of where the bulb attaches to the socket. This is where a third hand is useful. Pull the clips apart - away from the socket - while pulling up on the bulb plug. If you are working alone, you can work at one clip at one time, slowly edging up one side of the plug at a time.
8. Stick in the new bulb in the socket until it clicks. Be sure not to touch the bulb itself with your hands. Apparently this can leave oils on the bulb that can cause it to explode or wear out faster than usual, but I didn’t test this out.
9. Work the bulb back through the metal hole.
10. Turn the white plastic socket area to the left, while looking down at it and standing in front of the lightbulbs, until it clicks into place.
11. Replace the black plastic cover with the picture of the lightbulb on it, and screw it in.
12. Snap the battery cover back on.
by Jacqueline Winspear
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, looks into the deaths of two men lost at war.
I really enjoyed the first two books in the Maisie Dobbs series, but this one falls a little flat. Maisie has suddenly become far more spiritual — as in, attuned to the spirit world. The ending, with the revelation of the identity of the person who tried to kill Maisie, is largely anti-climatic and irrelevant. I wish that the author had changed the killer’s identity, so as to tie in better with the rest of the book.
Usually Chris takes care of the dogs every morning of the work week, which means that he takes them outside and prepares their breakfast in addition to getting himself ready for work. As someone who needs less sleep than I do, Chris is also responsible for making sure I’ve gotten out of bed and have managed to stay upright long enough to dress myself.
Yesterday, though, Chris had an early morning meeting at work, so he only had time to let the dogs outside and back indoors before he had to leave.
When I got up half an hour later, I decided to let the dogs outside again while I got their breakfast ready. Mina had disappeared, presumably back into her warm bed, so only Flacko and Paco ventured outside. Neither one bothered to walk off the deck, so I called them inside to eat.
As Paco was walking toward me, I noticed he was hobbling slightly. His back legs seemed to be too close to his front legs. Paco and Mina have both had luxating patella issues, wherein the kneecap slips out of joint briefly. The dogs don’t seem to be in pain when this happens, but they have trouble walking until the knee slips back in place on its own. We give them supplements that seem to help prevent this sort of thing, but Paco’s problem today didn’t look like his usual one.
At any rate, he still gobbled down his breakfast when I put his bowl down with Flacko’s bowl. Mina was still in bed, but lately she hadn’t been eating breakfast anyway, so I wrapped up her portion for later. After eating, Paco walked gingerly around the room, eventually stopping to sit and rest.
Now I was really nervous, because one of the symptoms of Pedro’s myasthenia gravis, which I hadn’t known was a symptom until after his death, was that Pedro would get very tired and suddenly sit down while on walks and refuse to proceed any further.
As in all times of crisis, I called Christopher.
“Did you notice Paco walking funny this morning?” I asked him.
“A little bit,” he said. “But I just figured he didn’t want to walk on the wet grass.”
“Well, now he’s walking like he can’t move well. Almost like he really needs to poop.”
“Let him out, then,” he suggested. “Can he go up and down the stairs?”
I let Paco outside again. Paco stood at the top of the deck stairs, and I carried him down. He hobbled around the yard before coming back to the stairs and dubiously eying them. Tentatively, he placed a paw on the bottom step, then hopped up quickly.
“He can go up and down, but he doesn’t seem to want to,” I reported back. “Maybe I better call the vet.”
“Okay, my meeting’s about to start. Leave me a voicemail when you know what’s going on, okay?”
I hung up with Chris and called the vet. I didn’t think the vet would be able to find anything wrong, but I knew Paco was sick. He just wasn’t behaving normally. As I pressed the buttons on the phone, Paco was settling down on the bunny chair, staring at the wall.
The vet had an opening at 10, so I carried Paco to the couch to sit with me for a little while until we had to leave. Mina, of course, chose that moment to stroll out of her room. She looked at me, yawned, and then went to check out her brothers’ empty breakfast bowls.
Apparently Mina felt she could place an order for breakfast whenever she felt like it. Continental breakfasts between 8 and 8:30 AM were for weaklings. Mina gave me a meaningful look, and then deliberately licked one of the empty bowls. I correctly interpreted this as indicating she would like her breakfast now.
I put down her bowl in front of her, and she licked her way through it rapidly. Paco sick? Well, maybe he should have gotten sick before he’d eaten; then she would have helped with cleaning out his bowl.
I called work to let them know I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to come in yet, and drove to the vet with Paco.
Paco knew the vet. Paco didn’t like the vet. And Paco was plenty mad at me for bringing him to the vet, to the point where he was perfectly willing to behave normally if it meant leaving faster. The vet suspected tendonitis, but said that Paco was walking normally right now and to keep an eye on him.
Paco and I went home, and I stayed home to watch him. He had no interest in eating, drinking or going outside, and it was only with great effort that I managed to convince him to sit on my lap and take occasional sips of water.
When Chris got home from work, he took over watching Paco. Paco was able to walk on his legs, but he acted as though he didn’t want to. He didn’t seem to be in pain when we touched his legs, but there was definitely something wrong with him. He was nervous when the other dogs approached, and cried out when they got too close to him.
“Maybe we should have him sleep in a crate in our room tonight,” I suggested tentatively. “Just to keep the other dogs away from him?”
“No,” Chris said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
When bedtime rolled around, though, Chris seemed a little nervous. He put the dogs to bed and shut the door. Then he brushed his teeth. Then he opened the door again to look at Paco. Then he went upstairs to bed.
A few minutes later, Chris called down to me, “Could you just check on Paco?”
I opened the door to the dog room, where Flacko and Mina had already tucked themselves away into various beds and blankets. Paco, however, was sitting on the futon, staring blankly at me.
“He’s just sitting on the futon,” I reported. I noticed a wet spot on the blanket, but figured Paco had just been licking his paws or something, and inadvertently gotten the blanket wet.
I left the room and went downstairs to get a drink of water. I also got a dog dish and filled it with water, thinking that maybe I needed to move Paco to our room.
I opened the dog door again. Paco was still sitting on the futon, but now he had two wet spots under him.
“He still hasn’t moved,” I yelled to Chris. “And I think he’s drooling or something.”
Chris came downstairs to investigate the drool. I pointed out the drool spots, being careful to claim another wet spot as “just my wet hands–I dripped on the blanket by accident.”
Wary of all the attention he was getting, Paco tried to creep further into the blanket on the futon and into the purple sack bed. Flacko was already inside, though.
“C’mon, Flacko,” Chris urged. “Come out and try this other bed!”
Chris pulled the bed shaped like a miniature house toward Flacko. No dice; Flacko knew a good thing when he had it.
“Why do we have to make Flacko move?” I asked. “Why don’t we just put Paco in the house?”
“C’mon, Paco,” Chris said.
Paco crept off the futon, but all of Chris’s attempts to get him in the house just scared Paco into the brown bed instead. Chris picked up the bed and carried it, and Paco, upstairs while I brushed my teeth.
When I got upstairs, Paco was sitting on the bed next to Chris.
“Hey!” I said. “I thought we were putting Paco on his bed on the floor?”
“Well, he doesn’t want to sit in there, see?” Chris put Paco on the floor, and immediately Paco’s toenails were clattering on the wood floor as he ran around the bed, looking for a way up.
Chris put one of his pillows on the floor.
“Try this, buddy,” he urged.
Paco sat on the pillow, but was not convinced that it was better than being on the actual bed itself.
Chris lifted Paco back onto the bed. “Well, he just wants to sleep here.”
I sighed, and shut off the light. Paco was curled up against Chris and I was on the other side of Chris, so I couldn’t really complain that Paco was bothering me.
As a matter of fact, Paco’s presence in the bed was suprisingly less disruptful than I’d anticipated. Unfortunately, I’d been having a bad bout with insomnia lately, so I just lay quietly in bed.
After an hour or so, Chris had fallen asleep and started snoring. The low rumble of his snores filled the room, but then the volume began increasing. Eventually, it happened:
“Guh….bzzz…guh…bzz..bzzz…BZZZ..SNERK! (cough) SNORK! Whuh?”
Yes, he had snored so loudly that he had woken up not only Paco, but himself.
Paco screamed a little, as Paco is wont to do when being abruptly awakened by a Giant Monster Snore Involving Chest Heaves.
“Sorry, buddy!” Chris mumbled.
Smartly, Paco scrambled to the top of Chris’s pillow to try to fall back asleep.
Another hour or so later, Chris had fallen back asleep. Chris tends to move around while he sleeps, and unfortunately for Paco, Chris flung his arm out and whacked Paco on his head.
Paco squealed.
I decided this was a good opportunity to use the bathroom downstairs. When I came back into the bedroom, Paco was lying on my pillow.
“Hey, how did Paco get on my side?” I asked Chris.
“He’s tricky like that,” Chris muttered.
I tried to fall asleep. It wasn’t easy though. Paco was perched on my head like a hat, and I wasn’t used to wearing a furry hat that breathed heavily while I slept.
Eventually I managed to convince Paco that lying next to me might not be too bad, and he crept under the blanket to rest by my leg.
Another hour passed. I still hadn’t fallen asleep, and Paco was breathing so heavily under the blanket that I was worried he was going to dehydrate. Then he lay so still that I had to stick my hand in front of his face to make sure he hadn’t accidentally died in bed next to me.
But now I had other concerns. My right leg had started aching so terribly that I was convinced I had a blood clot. (I blame that episode of House.) The pain in my leg was so bad that I got out of bed, careful not to disturb Paco, and went into the guest room where my books were shelved. I took down the Merck Manual and looked up deep vein thrombosis.
I was alarmed to read that half of the people with DVT showed no symptoms at all. “Chest pain caused by pulmonary embolism may be the first indication that something is wrong,” I read, with growing concern.
Great, now I had to write, “If I am dead when you wake up, it was a blood clot in the right leg” onto a piece of paper and pin it to my pajamas for Chris to find.
For the lucky few who had symptoms, swelling of the calf appeared to be the main one. I craned my neck and peered at the back of my leg. My calf looked a little bit fatter than I remembered. I turned my head in the other direction and checked out my normal calf. Hmm. Maybe my calves had just gained weight, because this one looked as fat as the other one.
I re-read the symptoms section on DVT, hoping I had missed something. I hadn’t, so I reluctantly put down my Merck Manual and went back to bed. Paco was on my pillow again, but when I tried to move my head so that I would get some pillow, he crawled to Chris.
“Chris, he’s breathing kind of heavily,” I said. “Can you put him down? Maybe he needs some water.”
Chris picked up Paco and put him on the floor. Paco scuttled around us, trying to climb back into bed.
Chris jumped out of bed and turned on the light.
“Come here, Paco,” he called. He dipped his finger in the water bowl on the floor and tried to encourage Paco to take a sip. Paco wasn’t interested.
“Maybe we should just put him in his bed on the floor,” I suggested. It was nearly 4 AM, and I still hadn’t slept.
Chris wiggled the brown bed, which was shaped like a cube with a round hole at one end. “C’mon, Paco, get in bed.”
Paco eyed Chris’s hand suspiciously, but climbed in slowly, looking like a giant poop moving in reverse.
Once inside, he rotated position so that his little head protruded from the hole. He stared at us, unblinking.
“Maybe,” I said slowly, “we should just put him to bed in his room.”
“Okay,” Chris said. He picked up the bed.
I got a drink of water and then turned around to see Chris, both hands full with the brown bed, waiting patiently by the closed bedroom door.
“Ooops! Sorry!” I hurried to open the door.
I raced ahead of Chris and opened the door to the dog room. Chris deposited the Paco-filled cube on the floor, and we went back to bed.
After I got home from work the next day, Paco greeted me at the door, wagging his tail. He was still having some trouble walking, but he seemed better. He was interested in food again, and seemed more cheerful than the previous day. Apparently all he had needed was a few hours away from us to recuperate.
by P.J. Tracy
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Grace, Annie and Sharon disappear, only to get accidentally caught up in the mystery of a town completely wiped out, and the rest of the Monkeewrench gang has to find them.
This is the third Monkeewrench book, and just as carefully planned as the others. The characters all feel real, although I wish I had gotten a chance to see more of their personal lives in this one. There are so many characters though, that more personal lives would make these books incredibly long. The book is still terrific, and I really enjoyed this.
My only caveat is that it’s been a year since I read the last book in this series, and I had forgotten the backgrounds of all the characters, which may be why I felt this one was lacking in personal detail.
by Lois McMaster Bujold
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Miles is on his long delayed honeymoon when he is called away to investigate an incident involving Barrayaran troops, quaddies, and Cetagandans.
This is the last of the Vorkosigan books (thus far; I can only hope more are written), and it neatly brings familiar characters back in an involved plot. Miles is as charming, witty, and insane as always, and if another book follows, I would love to see how parenthood changes him.
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