Inhuman Swill

Now that I am in the second week of a sometimes debilitating cold, and wondering if it's really something worse, I am reminded of the occasion a few years back when Laura was sick with something similar and visited a doctor in our neighborhood whom we had never gone to before.

He was, it turned out, a fat, hairy Greek doctor with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a gold medallion, and who reeked of cigarettes. He sniffed near Laura's face.

"Eureka!" the doctor exclaimed.

"Eureka?" said Laura, nonplussed. What had he found?

"Eureka da strep!" said the doctor, writing her a prescription for an antibiotic. "I smelled when you come in."

True story.

Our friend ellapup is spending the night in the hospital for monitoring and fluids as she recuperates from a particularly nasty bout of gastroenteritis and its attendant dehydration. Please, no flowers. She would only eat or more likely shred them. Squeaky toys always put a wag in the ol' tail, though.