Confessions of an Internet Junkie

I managed to drag my weary butt outside this morning to help Dar with alpaca chores. I fed the herd, she fed the horse, I did the water and she did the poo piles. It was about 9:30AM and we actually had a bit of sunshine going, but it wasn't hot by any stretch of the imagination. Still while I had the hose out filling the big water barrel we have for them and little Ripley came up and stuck her face in the spray, I got the message that she would like to be sprayed.

Alpacas love to be sprayed. Loooooooove it. OK, except for Valentino and Suki who are the glam gods of the herd. But everyone else? Pushing and shoving to get into the spray. I obliged and then I began to refill their wading pools. The next thing I know I've got five large alpacas jammed into one tiny little kid's pool. I don't know how they kept their balance, but they were loving being sprayed while standing ankle deep in the pool water. They are so weird.

I would have liked to have played longer, but this double damned fatigue just will not give me a break. It's going on two weeks now. I take ritalin if there's some errand or chore that I absolutely must do, because otherwise it's like forcing my body through a sea of molasses. Everything is difficult and concentration most of all.

Bah. Enough. This will break at some point, I'm sure. In the meantime, everyone please do a little "Put Lee's permanent residence visa in the mail NOW" ritual/dance/whatever, because this waiting is getting old. And my febrile imagination is cooking up all sorts of unsavory scenarios to explain why I don't have it yet. Believe me when I say that none of us really want that.

Why aren't you watching True Blood yet? Because they now have the cutest couple in the long history of cute couples on this show. ( Spoiler ) So pull out your favorite bottle of ABO and watch it, OK?

It's Canada Day, and that means . . . fireworks. At the neighbors. On both sides. I still can't get used to the idea of it being legal, having been raised where it was a crime to set them off. Needless to say that the cats and the alpacas are not very happy about this particular part of the holiday. Poor babies.

Not much else is happening that's newsworthy. I'm still not back to what passes for normal for me these days, but I have been getting out and about (or owt and abowt as they say here) for the past two days anyway. Maybe it's the start of an upswing. One can hope.

I grow weary of the 24/7 coverage of all things Michael Jackson. Or maybe that's just happening on MSNBC. I just switched channels and CNN seems to be reporting on, you know, news. I spoke too soon. "Coming up on AC360 - Michael Jackson and the dangers of abusing prescription drugs." Give me a fucking break.

Awwww, cute ad on TV with dogs. Thank you, cute ad on TV with dogs.

I have finished 10076 games of Solitaire on my computer. It's mindless. I apparently am very attracted to mindless.

Really, that's about it. Oh, we have a young blue heron who has claimed our pond as his. Hers? I think it's male because the colors are pretty vibrant. Whenever he gets scared away from the pond, he flies up to one of the tall trees in our neighbor's field. It's a strange thing to see a heron perching in a tree. I'll just leave you with that thought.

1. I've still been sick all week, although functioning better than I had last Sunday. My health has been steadily declining, but Dar is keeping my hopes up with the fact that after a high fever your metabalism and other systemic workings need to reregulate for about a week. Today is a week since I got that high fever, so I'm expecting improvement to start tomorrow. Shall we say 6:30ish in the AM? Would that be acceptable, immune system? **muttered imprecations**

2. I still don't have my permanent work visa. This is making me crazy. They said it was ready to go, just missing a stamp on a form. I sent in the final forms and they received them May 25. Send me my visa!! I've got doctor's bills piling up here. I'm forgoing blood work that I should be getting monthly. I'm canceling long-standing appointments because of my OHIP still being expired because I need the damn visa already. Sigh. Please send it. Please.

3. I've started writing again. Slowly. It's picking up a piece that I dropped three years ago. I'm editing and kicking it around. Now I'm thinking that it's whiny and self-indulgent, but I also think that I can save it with more editing and a tighter focus. It's baby steps right now, but I need this. I need to know that I can still do something.

4. I want to enter a picture I took into the local agricultural fair. The only subject for which I had a suitable picture to enter was Cloud Formations, so I'm going to show this one.
( Cumulostratus at sunset ) We'll see how it goes.

5. True Blood may drag me back to fandom. Great characters, some fine acting all the way down through the minor players, and a definite style. And it's an ensemble show, which is always a plus for me. What do y'all think of it?

6. One or more of the cats has turned into a literal head hunter. So far this week Mark and I have chucked out a headless bird, a few headless mice, and several headless frogs. The bodies are apparently trophies to be displayed in the hallway on the carpet - which is where we keep finding them. It's a mystery.

7. Oh, yeah. Remember our mentioning how the house is cursed? Well Dar was talking to an EMT last week, and he said that people think the whole road is cursed. There have been three suicides on this road, the latest one last month. Maybe they were being haunted by various local headless fauna. Time to go, honey. Oh, yes.

Well, parts of it anyway.

( Farmer Lee, back of the house, peony )

I had a number of people ask me what I meant when I said that the alpacas were uncooperative in walking out to the garage to get sheared. I figured a few pictures would tell the tale better than I could. This is Spartacus, but it was the same routine with about six of the alpacas.

( Adventures with Sparky )

I baked two of these for shearing day, and I'm happy (and relieved) to report that they were a huge hit. I promised sffan that I would post the recipe, so here goes. It's as easy as, well, pie :) Enjoy

Old-Fashioned Fudge Pie

Ingredients
* 2 squares (2-ounces) semisweet chocolate
* 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 eggs, beaten
* 1 (9-inch) unbaked pie crust

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heavy saucepan over low heat. Remove the pan from the heat and add the sugar, then the eggs; beat well. Pour the filling into the pie crust and bake for 25 minutes or until just set. Serve warm or cold, with ice cream or whipped cream.

We had our shearing today. It rained all morning, and true to form the sun didn't come out until we were just about finished. It went well, all things considered. Some of the alpacas were extremely uncooperative about walking from the barn to the garage where we had set up shop. It's a distance of about 250 feet, and a couple of them took over 20 minutes to travel from A to B. But it's done. I didn't get a lot of pics, but I've got a few representative ones here, mostly of little Suki. Whose fleece is like silk! None of us could get over how extraordinary it is.

( Anyway . . . )

About 32 hours left. I'm still hoping that the rain will hold off on Saturday. Wet alpacas mean 1) they stand a great chance of getting hurt because it's more difficult for the shearers, and 2) the fleece needs to be handled differently (and we have more work afterwards) because it will be wet. Besides the joys of of moving a dozen obstreperous and large animals 275 ft from the barn to the garage where the shearing will be done. And back again, of course. Dar is working up some sort of Angry Alpaca Movator for the biggest and the baddest: Satine, Conchita, and Gertie. The rest of them will be a relative breeze compared to those three. It's actually kind of funny how spooked the rest of our friends are about working with suris. It's like huacayas have the reputation of being sweet and passive, and suris have the reputation of being . . . not so much :) I've heard several people in our group refer to them as devils. Unfair! High strung, that's what they are. But still sweet. To us anyway.

Dar has been cleaning out the garage - and if you've ever seen our garage you know what a Herculean feat that's been. I keep trying to help and she keeps kicking me out, so . . . I do little stuff around the periphery instead. It's looking very good, and she should have it finished by tomorrow.

We did a massive shopping run. Two different stores, overflowing carriages in each. I won't scare you with the total bill, but even the cashier gasped. And we're both all about buying stuff on sale, so that mostly goes to show the volume rather than the high prices. I don't know how we managed to fit it all in Q's little Ford, but we did. (And we get to do it again tomorrow, too!) We'll be feeding 20 people for 2 snack breaks, lunch, and dinner, so it adds up. I made two chocolate fudge pies this evening, which are resting in the extra refrigerator. (If they turn out halfway decent I'll post the recipe.) Tomorrow will be a lot more cooking and cleaning. And then Saturday we shear.

Well Dee and Fred will shear - the rest of us will have enough to keep us busy just helping with the animals and dealing with the fleece (which has to weighed, sorted, and cleaned), and of course, getting the animals there and back. They also have to be weighed and have their annual shots given, their nails trimmed and in some cases their teeth have to be trimmed as well. (I'm very squeamish about that part.) Hannibal will have his fighting teeth removed, and Valentino and Sparky will need to have theirs checked as well. It's a big spa day for alpacas. A big stressful spa day. Dar has some naturopathic sedatives to give them all, and that really helps. If everything goes well, we should be done by mid afternoon. (Please let everything go well!)

Meanwhile, I should have been asleep about 90 minutes ago. For some reason I'm a little stressed. Hmmmm. I wonder what could be the cause. Heh. I make myself laugh. Have a good one, guys.

From sffan. And for sffan, too :

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

So many. And I'm grateful for each of you.

1. I'm watching Law & Order: UK, and Jamie Bamber's English accent is very disconcerting. It keeps throwing me out of the story. FWIW, I'm liking him more in this than I did as Apollo - not because of his acting but because mostly I thought Apollo was an ass.

2. The answer to my clenching jaw was .5mg of Lorazepam. Nice and relaxed after that, and I got the added bonus of a solid 8 hours sleep. I sleep about 6 hours a night usually, and that's with frequent wake ups. I need a lot more than that these days, and I find that I end up having to go back to bed after having been up for an hour or so. I don't sleep in because I have so many meds to get down in the AM.

3. Speaking of meds, it looks as if my maintenance dose of prednisone is 4mg. Stepping it down to 3mg leaves me with so much fatigue and pain that it's too hard to function. It amazes me that 1mg can make that much of a difference. Don't get me wrong - with 4mg I still have fatigue and pain, but I can work my way around it. I'm trying to find the absolute minimum that I can get away with. I'm still going to try to step down every few weeks or so just to see what happens. I keep hoping that I'll go into remission, but I know that not everyone gets that lucky. I don't want to think that I'll be tied to pred for the rest of my life, but I'm grateful to have it when I need it.

4. I'm trying to get back into writing, but it's a scary proposition. I haven't written purposefully for several years now, and during that interim lupus has had its way with my fluency. Not to mention my ability to type :) I want to try to finish a long essay that I started (and quit) in 2006. I was rereading it earlier today, and I could barely recognize myself in it. I don't know if I can still write like that, but I have to try. I see a lot of frustration in my future.

5. Now they're on the "order" part of law & order, and it's the damn wigs that are distracting me. I can only hope that I'm never dragged into a British court, because even with my minimal OCD tendencies, I know I'd be trying to pull someone's wig down so it looked like it fit rather than perching precariously like a recently deceased albino muskrat on the person's pate. OK, you know what I'd love to see? Dolly Parton and her humongous hair playing a British barrister. Can you just see that curly little wiglet clinging for dear life to Dolly's mountainous mane? It would be like a little sheep straddling an alpine peak. Baaaaaaaa!

I've never flounced out of a room. Or an online community. Or pretty much anything at all. But if I do, I'm definitely going like this:



Image by Melissa McEwan

How can I sleep if I can't unclench my jaw? A question for the ages. Or at least for the aged. I can't afford to get a mouth guard. (Which sounds like some big lug standing over me all night threatening my teeth if they clench.) Maybe I shall trot outside and get a stick to clench on. That ought to freak out the cats. And Dar.

( The world's roundest cat )

( Three pics )

Let's try to start the day with a smile, shall we?




These are twin Matschie tree kangaroo joeys peeking out of their mom Milla's pouch. How cute is that? Awwwwwww.

That was me. I. Anyway, I ended up staying home from the Ride for Heart event this morning. Dar, Mark, and Q took off, and I fed the animals and puttered a bit. I did get a few short naps in between phone calls and sprinting to the bathroom. (May I just say that if you're looking for an effective diuretic, I highly recommend Lasix/Semide, 40mg. Just don't stray too far from a toilet for the first four hours, especially on a day with high humidity.)

In one of those naps I had a horrible dream that the alpacas were being attacked by a herd of wild . . . beagles. It sounds funny, but really - beagles are used on fox hunts; they know about running animals to ground. Anyway, I was fighting them off when the phone woke me up. I much prefer parts of my earlier dream where misspamela, my friend Robin, and I were hanging out at a casino in Vegas when we got into a funny, casual conversation with both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The not so funny part of the dream was that I showed up at this vacation(?) with only $20 Canadian on me and no way to pay my part of the bills. Aren't anxiety dreams a laugh riot?

We had a young raccoon in the yard yesterday out at the pond. Mark spotted him, and it did look like he/she was hunting for frogs, of which we have many. Many. Help yourself, raccoon. I tried to get a picture, but the critter was mostly obscured by the time I got back with my camera. Sigh. I haven't taken any pics in a long time, and I miss it. I've been too tired or too sore or too busy, but I've got to squeeze some time in there to get back to it. For whatever their quality, taking pictures makes me happy, and that's not something I should just shrug off.

Two more weeks of group therapy. We started off with 10 women and one man, but that quickly shrunk to the core group of six women. It's not what I was hoping for - it's pretty basic for those of us who have gone through one-on-one therapy before - but it has provided some helpful pointers, and I like the other women. I adore the social workers who run the group. I have a soft spot for social workers anyway. They're so earnest, and I don't mean that at all in a negative way. While I haven't found anything in group to help me specifically, I have found it fascinating to watch the social workers using their skills in dealing with the group dynamics. They excel at bringing the focus back to the group while still supporting the individual. I really enjoy watching pros do their stuff, regardless of what the stuff is. Unless, of course, it's being a professional pain in the ass, but even then I sometimes have to sit back and marvel.

We've had major car problems this week, and if it weren't for Q and her stalwart Ford, we'd have been up the creek without a paddle. It seems as if I've spent that last few days pretty much living in cars, running a lot of errands, driving Mark to and from work, and spending way too much time commuting back and forth to garages. We think the problems with the Jeep are finally settled, at least. My car's been off the road since last November, and there's no time in sight when it looks like it will be repaired. Maybe the Mennonites have it right with their horse and carriage ways.

I finally figured out the correct way to run the air compressor that inflates the tires on the lawn tractor. Go me. It's funny how when you do something right it takes a lot less time and a lot less hassle and actually completes the task you've been trying in vain to complete. I put in a lot of work today on one thing or another, but I got a great deal of satisfaction from looking around and seeing the effects of my labors. Of course I'm going to be paying for it later, but for now? It's good.

Having upped my prednisone dosage has helped with the overwhelming fatigue and pain. Now I just have run-of-the-mill fatigue and pain :) We have less than two weeks to get the barn cleared out for shearing, and that's going to take a massive amount of work. I'm just keeping my mind set on June 21, which is the day after the shearing. I think we're all looking forward to some down time around here.

My only living uncle (and my favorite uncle, too) just had his right leg amputated below the knee. I was talking with my brother tonight, and he said that he got the chance to visit our uncle in the hospital. Come to find out, the amputation is due to a wound that my uncle received in WWII when the submarine he was serving on surfaced to rescue a downed pilot in the ocean, and they were attacked from the air. He said he'd been waiting for 65 years for the wound to lead to this. He's a funny guy.

Tomorrow is the annual Ride for Heart event to raise money for local cardiac units. Dar was one of the founders of the event (started in 1993), and it's near and dear to her, so we'll all be out there at one of the rest stations handing out water, fruit, and protein bars to the riders. Dar is in charge of the medical guys, and runs the aid station at the finish line. It's supposed to rainy and cool, so I hope that they still get a decent turnout.

And I need to get to bed, because it's going to be an early morning and a full day. Hope all is well with you, my friends.

Shearing at our friends' mill took place on Saturday as planned, but there were 32 alpacas instead of the 27 we'd been anticipating. We were set up in Deb's big ass barn. Really, some of these barns are just huge. Ours is the equivalent of a big dog house in comparison. And it was dusty. But there was plenty of room to put up three holding pens, Dar's medical station, the livestock scale, two shearing tables, and four skirting and sorting tables to be use once the fleece was off the alpacas.

The first two weeks I worked with the animals on the tables, keeping them calm, holding them still, helping to move from side to side. Last week they had loads of help on the tables already, so I ended up skirting the fleece which means standing over tables made of 1-inch square mesh and picking through the fleece for short pieces, guard hair, and cleaning it of things like timothy heads (weed with seeds), big pieces of hay and straw, and the occasional piece of clinging poo. This last time I was relegated to skirting again, but I got a break every once in a while to help bring in recalcitrant alpacas who most definitely did not want any of our nonsense, thank you very much. There was one young girl alpaca named Juvy Hall (don't ask) who was quite the escape artist. She figured out how to break open the metal gate by sheer force of her body (150 lbs of pissed off alpaca), and she bolted. She really just wanted to get back to her usual paddock so it was fairly easy to get her and bring her back. Then I got to be her special guard, which in this case meant holding onto the gate and the latch as she tried her mightiest to get past me. Girl is strong My personal nemesis for the day (a guy named Ian) came strolling by with some twine to hold the gate closed. Uh, no, I don't think so. But he insisted in that condescending tone men like him use, so I figured we caught her once, we could do it again. And that's what happened: a lunge or two by Juvy, the twine broke (surprise!) and off she ran. They finally gave her a sedative and put one of her friends in with her, and she calmed down a bit.

There were serence alpacas and sedated alpacas and screeching alpacas and very scared alpacas, but eventually they all got done. A few of them were cut by the shearers - four this time, iirc - but the worst was the cut that was given to the Wonder Stud two of our friends went in on halves each for. His name is Accolade, he has a bunch of breedings already scheduled and his injury? The shearer sliced into one of his testicles. I'm female and I got all owwwy when I heard. That poor boy! There was no swearing or finger pointing or blame assigning, but it was all quiet and tense while Dar checked him out. She didn't have to suture the cut, but she did have to crazy glue the flap back and then bandage it up. darlong has the story and pictures on her LJ post if you want to check them out.

We only had about five alpacas left to do when the storm hit. The wind had been picking up in intensity for at least an hour before, and suddenly it just slammed into us. We closed the big barn doors which buckled and flapped in the wind. Peter grabbed a removable door and hauled up the ladder on the side of the interior and manhandled that in place over the big opening that had been left in place for a grain elevator that never got installed. Of everything going on, that made me the most nervous, and I was very relieved when he finally got the door secured and climbed back down. The barn has a metal roof and what with the high winds rattling the doors and walls, the pounding rain, and the booming thunder you couldn't hear yourself think. One of the women who was there to help out in the kitchen in the house got caught in the barn with us because the storm hit so suddenly and fiercely; she was really freaked out. Our biggest worry is that the hydro (electricity) would get knocked out by the storm, but we made it through OK. It only lasted about 30 minutes and then the sun came out again. (We found out later that it had split one of the two trees that we have in the main paddock. We're going to see if we can save it somehow.)

All in all the shearing took 11 hours. It really took a toll on me. I'd had a busy week prior to that Saturday and I was already dealing with a lot of pain and fatigue, but these were our friends. They always came when we called for help, and there was no way that I was not going to be there for them. By the time it was over I was barely hanging in there. I had shooting pain from my lower back down my right leg that got much worse whenever I walked. And thanks to the killer fatigue walking was an effort anyway. My hands were on fire and very painful, and the dust had set off my asthma. Plus the minor stuff like headache and sinus pain. I was very glad to get home and take a shower and get to bed. My legs were very painful by then, along with all the other pain and fatigue, so I decided to just medicate myself like crazy. I took two Baclofen and an oxycontin and just prepared to be out of commission for 24 hours. And I was. I slept well through the night, then I got up at my usual 6:30-7:00AM wake-up time. I fed the cats, took my daily morning meds, had some breakfast (to help stop the nausea they cause), did a little cleanup, and then I went back to bed. And slept almost straight through to 4:15PM, getting up only to go to the bathroom or when Mark slammed his bedroom door which is right next to mine. I wobbled around for a bit, did some more chores slowly, painfully and grudgingly and managed to stay awake for another 7 hours or so, then I fell asleep again.

Today has been better. I managed to stay awake all day, so that's a victory \0/ I probably did more than I should have since I'm still recovering, but that's life at Casa Serenity/Longshadow Farm. It's always going to be that way. It's not helping that I'm tapering off prednisone again. I only took 2mg today, and that may be part of the problem. The pain is more intense; the fatigue is more intense. I desperately want to get off this steroid, but I may need to up the dosage again to help me get over the effects of last week. Magical thinking on my part, you know? If I wish it hard enough, I can stop taking the pred and I'll have no ill effects. I'm nothing if not devoted to that particular happy ending. I'm not giving up yet.

And as you might be able to tell from my being so yakky here: I have my new laptap power adapter. Yay! It came in this afternoon, so I hot-footed it out to the Apple Store in Kitchener to rescue my poor self from internet withdrawal. It was terrible ::shudder::

And now I have to go to sleep. Yet again. I hope that tomorrow is a better day, but I'm prepared for it not to be. Someday it will be, right?

I just stopped by to say I must be going. Man, I miss Groucho Marx sometimes. Not so much his cousin Karl. Not nearly as quick-witted, you know?

One of those posts. Tired. Waiting for various pain meds and prophylactics to kick in. Or maybe they have. I should be asleep. We have to be at the shearing tomorrow by 8:30AM latest. I should sleep. I'd like to sleep, really, and I would if my frakkin' jaw would unclench. And my left hand would stop cramping. Which makes it exciting to type, too. Don't know where that came from, but starting last week, my hands cramp up. The joints in my fingers are going nuts, each one trying to take off in a different direction. Oooooh. Maybe they're cursed. Maybe I have Lindsey's evil hand issues from Angel. If he gave me his evil hand, then he should damn well give me that fabulous apartment he had. It only seems fair. I mean he doesn't need it now that he's dead! Sorry, Q.

God, my ass was dragging this evening. Everything was an effort, you know how that is? So everything, of course, got dropped or tangled or hung up because th eUniverse likes to play shitty games like that. Funny, Universe! You should go on tour, really. So there I was out at the paddock, having hooked up my little wagon to my little tractor and hauled some hay and grain and rabbit pellets out to the guys, and I'm trying to get it into the paddock without letting Hannibal or Delilah or especially Ozzie out. Ozzie is two weeks old now and full of beans. Jumping beans, I think. And I could see him eyeing the open gate all, "ooh, oooh! What's out theerreeeee? That looks like funnnnnn!" At which point he would go racing through the gate on his very long freakishly fast legs, and I'd be running after him and Delilah would be running after me screaming and Hannibal would chase all of us because he's a herd sire and he needs order damn it! And then the rest of the herd would get it on it, alarming and humming, and Jester would be stomping around neighing, and even the fucking bullfrogs in the pond would get all pissy about the uproar and start bellowing at me, and it would have been bad. So I did a lovely balancing act of pirouetting around with a 35 lb bale of hay and a50 lb bag of feed, fending off various camelids. And it worked.

And yeah, that's it. Drugs kicking in. Bed now. Twenty-seven unsuspecting alpacas are sleeping their last fuzzy sleep tonight. Tomorrow? BUZZZZZZZZZZZ. And clip, clip, clip of nails. And their yearly medical shots. And some will get their teeth done. Many times during the day I find myself singing the little happy spa song from the Wizard of Oz. A clip clip heah and a brush brush theah, and acouple of la-di-dahs. That's how we pass the time away in the merry old Land of Oz. Of then the Wicked Witch of the East shows up and ruins everything, and I think I just figured out where my reluctance to go to a spa came from. Surrender Maystone. The manicure is just not worht it.

Good night, my pretties. And your little dogs, too.

Loads of birthday wishes make me smile, so thank you all again :) It was a low key day but a pleasant one. Dar and I went into Elmira (it's as small as it sounds) and rummaged around the Mennonite second-hand store for a while. I found a pair of pants that are not jeans, and she came out with 4 or 5 blouses. Then we ambled over to the Mennonite restaurant for coffee and their most yummy bran/chocolate chip muffins. Later on this afternoon we noticed that the alpacas had made a bit of a break for it by switching paddocks. We'd been keeping Hannibal and Delilah and her baby Ozzie separate from the others for a while, but Valentino (aka Houdini) figured out a way to knock the gate down so it was one big alpaca party going on out there. They all looked very pleased with themselves, I must say.

This evening Dar and I went to see Star Trek. Finally. Now don't hate me, but I didn't love it. I liked it. I just didn't love it. I thought it was a good origins movie, though, and I'm really psyched to see the next story now that they have everyone in place. Loved Spock. Loved Uhura. Loved Bones and Scotty. Liked everyone else - even Kirk once he settled down. The movie didn't really come together for me until the last third, but then I truly enjoyed seeing the crew working together. It has the potential to be a great franchise. And Leonard Nemoy? You're the best, man. The best.