HAITCH TWO OH AND HYPERGONADISM, ETC

Skwirl con cajones gigantes

I still am not sure how to evaluate what the nightly oxygen is doing: Mostly good, certainly going to continue it. I wake up with daily headaches but they are lessening. My morning sugars have plummeted, is that related? I am frequently sweaty at night. I am sleeping longer but still desperately needing daily naps. So something else is still going on. At least Scoutie has now, finally, relaxed about the new Monsser at bedside.

In fact, Scout had a major breakthrough this week -- she can now leap up onto Dinah's eyrie. So keeping her from Dinah's wet food is a fucking issue again, and Dinah's weight gain (another tenth of a pound this week) may be in jeopardy. Further, in figuring out the route aloft Scout sent a massive stack of books and boxes crashing to the floor in the study. After that happened, Dinah refused to answer my calls or come within sight for 12 hours overnight, leaving me to imagine her lying dead or dying beneath a heavy pile. I once again lay awake for hours, sick with dread, wondering whether to wake up Win and Sheldon for an energency call. But at 9 am, Tammi arrived and said Dinah was in the other room, smirking as I begged out her name. It is a real piece of work to love that cat.

I spent some time last night reading what turned up for a Google search of "squirrel testicles". We had a new raider at the burd feeder, a squirrel with unbelievably engorged scrotal balloons in variegated colours. My research revealed this is their high breeding season and yes, they do swell and change hue when the hormones are in full use. But I could not find an image to compare with our guy, whom I have named Zucco Skwirl. Even the examples in the attached video are only half the gonadal size of our Zucco Skwirl. He joins our recognition list, along with Mama Skwirl, Finger Skwirl (one of the fingers on her right front paw is deformed into a permanent fuck-you finger), and the late Overreaction Skwirl, who died horrifically in front of Margot the first day of her visit here last month. No, you do NOT want to know what happened.

I decided to not hand on the note nurse Jessica wrote to the tweaker about my Foley mishandling. Earlier I'd asked the tweak to read aloud some cooking instructions on a bag of rice, and I realized while she is technicall literate, I could argue against full reading comprehension. And Jessica's note was emphatically angry. Instead, I set aside any impatience and kindly, creatively taught her how a Foley functions using some spare nasal cannula tubing and a poet's vocabulary. She got it, she really did, and her hands-on cleaning of me shifted. We both felt triumphant. I'll have to re-do it next weekend, she cannot retain, but such is attendant reality.

I also took this morning's shift to pass on what I know about cooking potatoes, rice, and aromatics. Wound up with some great dishes for lunch and dinner, imparted real food skills maybe she will use elsewhere, and feel grateful to have had enough extra energy to manage it. Oxygen? It's a GOOD thing.