Inhuman Swill

Ella has now possibly ruptured her other CCL (cranial cruciate ligament, analogous to the ACL in humans). She's on tramadol for the pain (an anti-inflammatory would be better but they're really tough on her digestive system) and on limited activity for a week or more. This is actually good news, though, because when I described Ella's symptoms the vet's gut hypothesis was arthritis. Fortunately, the physical exam and X-rays did not support that diagnosis.

But those few moments of facing the prospect of arthritis only reinforce the sad knowledge that Ella is getting older. She's eight years old, well into middle age for a dog, and though we joke (somewhat desperately) that she has another thirty or forty years left in her, we know that's not the case. (It's more like fifty.)

News organizations keep obituaries of public figures ready to go, just in case. I keep thinking that I should start working on Ella's obituary now because I'll be in no shape to do it when it's needed. We are no respecters of species here—Ella is the third person in our family, and I know that when I have to write that blog entry I'm going to leave out some of the important details of her life and personality that I want so much to preserve.

There's the slight crookedness of her spine, which means that when you're walking behind her in a straight line you can see how her hindquarters are angled a couple inches to the right. There's the way she decides some mornings that she wants to walk all the way to the lakeshore and resists all attempts to turn her from that eastward path with a withering staredown. There's the way she often misses the first step when she goes charging up the back stairs. There's the way, when she has a toy in her mouth, that she likes to bash you in the backs of the legs so you'll keep playing tug with her—even if that toy happens to be a stick three feet long and perfectly positioned to take you out at the knees. There's the way that she'll try to pick up even a huge fallen willow bough to drag around with her at the park. There's the way she can't control herself when you reach for the plastic bag with her basketball inside and starts hurling herself into the air to bite at it. There's the way that she invented her own game to play with that basketball, chasing it so she can push it around with her face. There's the way she kicks back dirt in every direction but the direction where she left her droppings. There's the way she loves to tease other dogs when they're leashed and she's not. There's the way she sometimes goes on a tear at the park and runs in huge figure-eights for the sheer joy of it. There's the way, when it snows, that she can't seem to walk four feet without throwing herself down on her back and wriggling around in the powder. There the way, when she hasn't eaten her breakfast, that the urgent devouring of it suddenly sidetracks her when we're trying to usher her out the back door. There's the way that, if we give her a treat before leaving her alone at home, she won't eat it until one or the other of us has returned. There's the way she scratches at the hardwood floor like making a nest before she collapses onto her side and curls up. There's the way she sighs and rests her chin on your knee while you're reading on the couch.

I have to make myself stop now, because I could just keep going. Just like Ella is going to, dammit.

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While we're on the topic, some of you have wondered how I get so many good photos of Ella. The answer is, I take about ten times as many as I ever put online, and when I see Ella do something unbearably cute I try to make her do it again so I can capture it. This picture of Ella examining a toadstool, for instance? Totally restaged.

If you're curious to see what sometimes happens behind the scenes on an Ella photo shoot, this video should give you some idea. I'm not actually taking photos of her here (I'm shooting video, duh), but I am trying to incite her to keep doing cute things over and over again when she's clearly ready to go home already. Oh, well. At least she sleeps well after a play session like this.




Crossposted from Inhuman Swill

Hey, Laura and I are in a book! A whole bunch of our friends too, not to mention Buzz Aldrin. Not our writings but our smiling mugs:

http://www.365portraits.com/book/

What a fun project that was to be a part of.

(Via roadnotes.)

Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes. Don’t fix your hair. Just take a picture. Post that picture with no editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable. Don’t go posting an eight megapixel image.) Include these instructions.



I had to go into the pantry to get my iPhone, which was there recharging, or otherwise you might have seen all the packed boxes behind me right now. (Though I've been ferrying our plants, art, computer equipment, and other odd items to the new place all week, the big move takes place Saturday.) It only occurred to me after the fact that I could have used the webcam built into this fancy new Toshiba laptop (purchased yesterday, because packing my ass off doesn't mean there isn't time to go to Circuit City and buy a new laptop with which to write new stories in the new apartment), but I'm not used to thinking about there being a webcam in front of my face all the time yet. I just finished repainting a little strip of wall in the kitchen where our paper towel holder used to be. Fortunately we still have the leftover Glorious Gold in the storage room in the basement. Ella is keeping me company, by the way:



And believe it or not, that's her prescription bottle in the cabinet behind my left shoulder.

Laura and I are notorious—well, at least at our house, where everything we do is notorious—for procrastinating when there are things we need to have framed. That's why it's a miracle that, a mere month after their purchase, we've taken the prints of our photographs from Bill Wadman's 365 Portraits project [Laura] [Bill] to the framing shop. [Hi, Ken!] [Hi, Derryl!]

Wednesday evening I picked Laura up from work IN OUR NEW USED CAR and we headed north to visit the big famous framing guys. Turns out their master framer is such a master that he only works from about 10:00 to 4:30, which meant we were never going to get there when Laura could come along. So from the recesses of her brain, Laura dredged up a memory of a little art gallery/framing shop near the parking lot where we used to pick up our Zipcar. It was closing in on 8:00 pm by the time we pulled up, and though it was well past the posted hours the front door was open and the proprietor was inside painting. She welcomed us, presented us with some very interesting and attractive options for frames and mattes, and presented us with a total that was less than we'd expected. Altogether a delightful experience.

So then I whipped out the other item of mine that needed framing: a limited edition lithograph (number 1 of 50, in fact!) of a Kenn Brown work that was an incredibly generous gift from the artist himself. (The website for Mondolithic Studios, Kenn's venture with partner Chris Wren, is under construction just now, but you've definitely seen their work.) I'm embarrassed to say that it had taken me nearly four years to get the thing framed, but it's going to look unbelievably cool, and I couldn't be happier.