So, poor sweet pea gets stung just about every other time we go to the woods these days. It's super pathetic too because every time she runs up me, tail between her legs, butt all turned down and she sits on my foot. Then, I run my hands over her body to make sure the little fracker isn't in her fur anymore, and if there seems to be an area she is poking her nose into I will give a good rub to make the hurt go away and then we continue to walk. I was hoping that the temperatures in the 30's the last 2 nights would put an end to the bee situation, but she got stung again today.
Also, I came back from the woods felt a tickling on my thumb and looked down to see a deer tick crawling up my finger. I jumped up to flush it and it fell off. There was a bit of a panic as I ran for the vacuum and then ran it over the general area 12 or 50 times in hopes of sucking up the (expletive) little thing. Then I showered in boiling water just in case it had a friend in my hair or some thing.
In health news, did I tell you that the chiro thinks I have anaplasmosis? I tried to go to a doc to get blood work backup and he was not a think outside of the box doc. He used a lab that has a 90% false negative rate, so no surprise, negative. In the mean time, I pooped out something that belongs in a movie, like maybe Alien, so I am quite sure I have some kind of worm. I am going to a different doctor on Friday because I decided to find myself a GP, so I put the alien in a chinese food soup container with alcohol and will bring the Alien with me and hopefully get a prescription for some anti parasitic drug. I'm so physically and emotionally exhausted I can barely function.
I am not sure if I ever told you about the first time I met Pal. We were both transfer students who went to find housing with our mothers on the same summer day before school. Back in the pre computer day, a student had to physically go to the campus housing office, leaf through books of housing ads and then drive around in hopes of finding a place. Wherever my mom and me went Pal and his mom were there. At the end of the first unproductive day my mom and I decided to take a walk after dinner. Just as we said "I wonder if that guy found something" Pal and his mom rounded the corner. We burst out laughing and greeted them, telling them we knew they were doing the same thing as we were and wondering if they had had any luck. They had not. My mom and I had been in the housing office at the end of the day when a call came in and we were going to see a 4 bedroom place the next morning and invited Pal to come along. The place was perfect, and we each signed a lease for one of the bedrooms on the spot. Standing outside the house Pal took my hands in his and said he was so excited and that he knew we were going to have a great time- or something along that line. It was waaaaaay too friendly for me, and I went home thinking I was about to live in the same house as some kind of weird stalker guy. Then in the first week I happened to share with Pal that I was huge I Love Lucy fan as a kid, and if asked I would have told you I wanted to be Lucille Ball when I grew up, because I did, except I knew you couldn't actually be another person, so I never told anyone that. The next day Pal slips a card under my door. He was a big note under the door slipping kind of guy. It had a picture of Lucy on it and in the card he tells me how happy he is we met. I loved him from that moment on.
Pal's husband died last night. He had been suffering from Parkinson's for about a decade. It was awful. In the beginning there were a lot of medicines to try, and he could still do things, and slowly he lost all that ability. It was incredibly sad when he would call me to chat because he had thought of something he wanted to tell me but if I didn't answer with what he was expecting me to say he couldn't follow the conversation and it would be so awkward and lonely-even though we were on the phone with each other. I feel really guilty because with everything going on in my own life, I just could not bring myself to go see him and be his friend through to the end of his tragedy because I am living my own tragedy here and I just didn't have it in me. I just didn't have enough strength for his sadness and mine. And now Pal is in this weird alone place. We spoke for a super long time this morning and he said it was a very strange feeling to think of himself as single person. His life had been so consumed with his husband's care for so long. You know how that is, right? You get so busy with the stuff that you aren't thinking forward- just for the day. They had been a couple for about Josh's whole life- so almost 18 years. I'm so glad I got to be at their charming little wedding. They had a tiny ceremony- each one inviting only 5 people so that there were 12 of us around a giant table for a catered dinner under a nice tent in their back yard and then in the end all sorts of friends showed up for cocktails and desserts. It was really lovely.
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