Fickle

I've decided I'm just a series of contradictions. I've been so tired of the cold, but when it got to be 70 degrees in here, I was ready to travel back to January and sprawl in a snowdrift. I want time off, but with reduced hours, I've been at a bit of a loss. (In my defense, having time is much more enjoyable if you have money to pay for project supplies, for lunches out, for amusements of some sort!) And, in January and February, we were on the go, and all I wanted was to be at home, in the quiet with the cats and the books and tea made from our well water, and now we've been home for a few weeks, and I'm lamenting the lack of roadtrips, mostly just because I enjoy riding around with Andrew and catching up. That's all apt to be resolved in the next couple of weeks - Monday we go to Cincinnati, Friday we're doing research in Marietta, in West Virginia for the weekend, and in Chillicothe for the day on the way home Monday. Tuesday is Dayton, and then Andrew leaves bright and early Wednesday for a few days in Philadelphia without me, which will probably be just fine with me again by that point. We've also decided to scrap plans for a trip to Wisconsin at the end of the month, but the May calendar is already filling up.

Ditto for energy. I've not had any for so long, and now, with medical marvels, I'm awake, alert and actually feel a bit like a plant poking up out of suffocating dirt into the sun and fresh air. And now, of course, I want to rest. Not really, but it is a little odd; feels kind of like being attached to an engine that isn't racing, just slowly chugging along and towing me with it. I want to sit, I want to disconnect for a few moments, but the engine just keeps moving forward. Probably just an adjustment issue, but still - fickle.

John Henry's also fickle, which resulted in an interesting week. For two weeks, he was desperate to be rid of his plastic cone, tired of washcloth baths, eye ointments and citrus-flavored antibiotics. Monday, he got his stitches out and there was just the tiniest of divots near the end of the incision. The whole process was quick and painless. We were at the vet's at 4:00, out by 4:10, home by 4:35, and by 4:55, he'd ripped the entire area open again. It was gruesome: a big gaping hole near his eye, a fragment of skin between the tear and the corner of his eye (and between keeping his eye in his head and having it rolling around on his cheek), the loose end of a dissolvable suture flapping in the breeze, and the line of stitches holding his upper lid together widening like threads at a torn quilt seam. And, again, 4:55 - Dr. Fred's office was closing.

So, he got what he deserved. I left an message for Dr. Fred, pulled the suture tight and taped the end to his head with a neon blue bandage, and made him a temporary collar with kitchen shears out of a Cool-Whip bowl and duct tape. Fancy. When Dr. Fred saw him, he asked if we lived in Morrow County.... Anyway, J.H. spent the night (and $95 - the little turd is lucky that he can't mow the lawn), and now he's home again - complete with plastic cone, eye ointment and citrus-flavored antibiotics. I'd have cried if it would have done any good, but I just get to start the process over again.

At the moment, I'm not feeling fickle. I'm enjoying the calm that I'm normally just wishing for. It's raining peacefully and steadily, it's Friday, bills are paid, laundry's in the works, cats are napping and work isn't too demanding. But the line between calm and boring is SO thin....