Navel Gazing

Just to confirm that I live in a self-interested bubble of whining poor-me's, I thought I'd jot down everything miserable right now, kind of an equal-but-opposite reaction to a Happy Thoughts list.

Yesterday, after going to church alone and self-conciously doing everything from flipping through the hymnal to watching the chorister to walking to RS and having to force myself to not cry because of the loneliness of it (and then force myself to not cry for the stupidness of crying in the third pew back on the right) and answering the several "How are you guys settling in? Are you meeting people?" with, "Yeah, it's great"'s, I came home and flopped around for hours. Four hours. Maybe a little more. I got a few chapters read of the BOM, then fell asleep. I woke up when Andy called to see how I was doing, then fell asleep again. He called again two hours later and made me promise I would get up and go outside, which I did. First I called the Police Department, because the sunlight coming in the kitchen had turned a deep reddish orange and when I looked outside, there was a huge column of smoke that looked like it was coming from right up our canyon. The PD told me it was east of Pocatello on the Reservation, and they were controlling it. It took me a long time to get my clothes and socks and shoes on and get my body outside. Duke pulled me like I was a sleigh the mile to the Gibson Jack trail start, which was ok most of the time, because I was emphatically not holding my gut in, and it was protruding like I was five months from now. I had to stop and squat on the pavement every once in a while to let the sour in my stomach subside a bit. Everytime I wasn't sitting or lying down I felt on the just-shy-of-mouth-watering edge of vomit. Blah.

We had an excellent view of the huge, growing, sun-blocking smoke tower all the way up the hill. Once at the trailhead, I had to just sit by the water for awhile, dipping my hands in and dropping handfuls of water on my arms. I was so hot. I let Duke off the leash so he wouldn't pull me in, and he was pretty good about not taking off. Everyonce in a while he'd come back to check on me, and I'd pet him for a second, but he got into a skunk the other night, and despite my almost immediate hydrogen peroxide and baking soda treatment (which works the best of any other suggestion I've seen, though it has given him some bad dandruff) he still has an odor. So we started walking home with him off the leash. I was sniffling in self pity ("I'm fat, I feel like barfing, I have no friends"). Then a nice dad and kid went by us on bikes, going up. Ten minutes later they went by us again going down, but this time Duke didn't leave them alone and got under the wheels of the dad, just as he was going over a cattle guard. The dad flew off his bike, and Duke got stuck under the bike I think in the cattle guard. The dad was really really nice, more concerned about Duke than himself. Duke had a shredded paw and wouldn't come near any of us. Finally I got him to come to me, and put the leash on him. He seemed to be walking ok. The dad offered to go get his truck and give us a ride back, but I said it was ok, Duke was fine, thanks. They took off, but brought the truck back anyway, which was thoughtful so we hopped in. I had to lift Duke up. The dad said he thought he knew where we lived, we just moved in, right?, so he dropped us off. Bob Marzetti? and Keith?

I called Andy, who was on his way home. We fed Duke lots of treats while we tried to clean his wounds by irrigating it with a water bottle. Andy wanted to try suturing it, so we took Duke to the clinic, where we first tried to give him a lidocaine needle (didn't work), then tried using wound glue, which also didn't work. We grabbed some sterile gauze and brought him home, where we slathered antibacterial ointment in his shreds, wrapped him with gauze, and finished it off with duct tape.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a house full of woodsmoke; the winds had shifted bringing the forest fire smell directly to our bedroom. It's really strong, that end-of-the-fire smouldery smell. Not pleasant. I was going to do laundry this morning--we're backlogged because I couldn't do it a few days ago because of the skunk smell--but anything we hang out on the line now is going to smell like forest fire.