The neighborhood thing was the German Shepherd, Oso. His owner's daughter had accidentally let him out. Doc, who had left early, tailed him a few blocks, trying to get him to return home. When that failed, Doc came back and talked to Steve down around the corner, who went to try to talk to Oso's owner, who was chewing out his daughter for letting the dog out. Steve returned and took down Doc's directions and went to get Oso. Doc continued on to work. He called me with the information and told me it had been enough time for things to cool down, and could I go give the info of where Oso was headed to his owner?
Oso's owner doesn't speak English. I speak really bad Spanish (most of it comes out French, I am of the opinion that multi-lingual schizophrenic folks can only lead to hilarity). So I wrote a note and translated it, and carefully thought out what I was going to say, in the fewest words possible, so I didn't sound like an ignorant American, harnessed my dog, and went to Oso's house.
I noticed that Steve's Jeep was back in the driveway and wondered if he'd found the wandering Shepherd. As soon as Chewbacca and I reached the edge of Oso's property, he and his new brother started barking madly at me. Oso was home. I didn't have to go talk to the angry Latino man or his crying daughter. I was so relieved. I went up and pet Oso, he recognized me and shut up for a minute. Then Chewbacca and I walked home. In fits and starts. Because Chewy didn't know it was an errand, he thought I had just taken him out for a walk. So he was stopping to pee on everything and I just wanted to get home.
We finally got home, and I called Doc, who was at work by now, and changing clothes in the bathroom, and let him know that Oso was home, emergency over (he had been headed toward a very high traffic, high violence neighborhood). He went on and on about how strong I was and how smart it was to translate the note so I was prepared, and how he knew he could count on me when he really needed me.
Yeah, Doc and I are friends again.
What was I supposed to do today?
This transition to habitual laxative use is killing me. I really don't know how bulemics do it. I'm just taking one little tiny pink pill at night when I take my night meds. That nets me three hours of that oogy feeling, cramps, and the eventual purge. I am going to lose weight this way, even without the mega doses that those with eating disorders put their bodies through. But I have to do it. I last ate corn three weeks ago. That was revisited today. THREE weeks ago. That can't be healthy. I had no idea what damage the Seroquel was doing to my colon. You should see it in that x-ray I have from this spring. It's terrifyingly large. Pushing my lung out of the way, so I wasn't getting full breaths, and that was what complicated the bronchitis and threatened to turn it into pneumonia. And every little random infection I get, I wonder if it is connected to the toxins building up in my body. My liver has got to be near shot. I don't even want to know about that. That's what is going to kill me, a lifetime of pills building up in my liver. Bah, Who wants to talk about this? Not me.
I figure in a week or so I'll be used to it and it will just be part of my schedule. I am also hoping that I will be able to take the pink pill every other night instead of every night. Right now I'm concentrating on cleaning myself out, detoxing, if you will. Then I will get onto a regular schedule with it so it isn't taking me out of the fight every day of the week. It really did today, and I ended up taking a nap, which put me all off. This has been a day off. I don't think my to-do folder got any larger. But then, I haven't been on the computers all day. Yes, a to-do list is no longer enough. It has to be a to-do folder. With projects in subfolders. Each with their own text documents explaining all of the gathered files and where to get the missing files to complete the project and the software needed to complete the task. Right now I need to install 2 Adobe and 1 extraneous things to do the work in this week's folder. They are also in the folder.
I am now doing everything I can when I am inspired to remove any excuses I might have when I'm not so inspired. Keeping projects going over a period of time, working on them gradually nets me a better result and less stress. By keeping projects of varying complexity and difficulty in various stages of completion almost guarantees that I will always be able to find something I want to work on. Whether it's taking more notes, or opening the whole thing up and diving right in.
Did I mention that between Scout's color, and the flat screen's color (they match), I have learned that the color on my other laptop, Bollux, is completely off, and very very blue. Microsoft can send that upgrade to Scout at any time now so I can put Photoshop on her. I really really really hate thinking that people are seeing my images differently than I am. Be it better or worse, I want it to be the same. I have a very particular way of seeing things, and I need all the power at my reach to try to convey that to other people. I don't need extra cyan watercoloring everything for me but not for my audience. That just frustrates me. You have no idea. I am so SO picky about color, shades, hues, contrasts, compliments . . . I'm as obsessed with color as I am with fonts/type. No color is unimportant. I demand full control over every color in any image I work with. Even ones that are only represented by a handful of pixels. There should be an industry standard. I expected more of Acer. I still expect more of Acer, I'm impressed overall with my experience with their laptop. I almost got another one. I just happened to get a better deal on an Asus this time around. Better than a pre-programmed consumer-toy HP. The sweetened cereal of the computer world.
I think I'm rambling because I am lonely and I am procrastinating. There is something I want to do, but I have to do many other things before I can get to that point, and you guessed it, I don't want to do any of those other things right now. What I really want to do is clean the house. But I did that last night, and during the day today, so there's nothing else to clean. One of the curtains needs to be put back up in my room, but I need Doc's 6'+ frame to do that.
Doc and I have had discussions about what Japan did during WWII that was so horrible. And he just says, they did some really bad things. But he won't talk about it. He will talk around it, but it isn't his generation's shame to carry, so he doesn't. I think I get that. The newer generations will apologize for their ancestor's horrible behavior, but they won't flog themselves with it. That was Abe's attitude when it came time to visit the WWII memorial in Japan this year, and he chose not to. We watched to see how the Emperor would react to this, and surprisingly, he took it in stride. What is done is done, and the perpetrators are no longer in power and those who are in power have learned from history (one would hope), and an apology is enough. We can't change what our great grandfathers did or did not do. And their grandfathers did some fucked up shit. We toyed with such sadism in Vietnam, but the Japanese took it to a whole new level when they were taking over China's cities, long before WWII ever started for us. If you're curious, do a little reading on the occupation of Nanking and the genocide that happened there and the secrets that are still kept. I learned today that the whole world is capable of pure darkness. It's not a cultural thing, it's not a racial thing, it's not a religious thing, it is hardwired in us to be the most horrible of monsters on this planet, and revel in it. It doesn't make me feel so bad about being a second-generation American.