Category: June 2018

We didn’t really have a “take your dog to work day” today. But I’ve noticed that occasionally people will have dog with them at work. It’s not like you can just bring your dogs all the time whenever you feel like it. But I think it’s tolerated in situations like if they have a vet appointment and it doesn’t make sense to drive all the way down to Albuquerque and back again (it’s more than an hour each way).

So I figured I’d give it a try.

After all, if the big cone wasn’t enough to clue people in that this wasn’t an ordinary situation, the two big gaping red holes in her head would.

I figured worse case scenario my boss would ask me to take her home. Turned out he was quite supportive.

Of course it helped that Rosie is the calmest dog I’ve ever known.

She never made a sound. Most people didn’t even realize she was there.

LOL! I saw this bumper sticker today. This is so me. I so need this bumper sticker!

We think she’s going to be ok. She has a large abscess on her head. She went to the emergency vet last night, where they lacerated it, performed a saline rinse, and gave her antibiotics and pain killers. I’ll take her to my vet in Santa Fe on Monday morning for a follow-up.

She hasn’t eaten well all week, but we didn’t think too much of it at first, because she often loses her appetite. When I got to Placitas on Friday night, I looked her over, in particular her belly, but couldn’t see anything wrong. By Saturday morning I thought she might have an ear infection, and I gave her ear drops. I went to give her more ear drops on Saturday night and that’s when I discovered her head was swollen and her right eye was pushed shut. It felt like there was water under her skin.

We took her right away to a 24-hour emergency vet in Albuquerque. The freeway was closed in one section, so it took awhile to get to Albuquerque. Finally we arrived, filled out the paperwork, and waited and waited. After half an hour went by and no one had even glanced at her yet, I asked about the wait time. They said another hour. So I started calling around. The other well-known vet, on the same street, also reported an hour wait. That vet suggested we call a third emergency vet I had never heard of, in a sketchier part of town. The third vet said they could take her right in, so we drove over there. By that time it had been well over two hours and it was late in the evening.

The new vet took her back to examine her immediately. They said they would need to sedate her, but promised to go light with the sedation, given her age and the fact that she was very lethargic already. She is also very patient with procedures and rarely wiggles or even shows pain. The procedure took less than half an hour, and she was never all the way under.

She looks terrible. They shaved half her head, and they want the abscess to continue to drain. So yeah. Open head wound. Also it’s still swollen and misshapen. I’ve got some really gory close-up photos that I won’t post. Here’s one from a distance.

I think we all need cheered up after those miserable last couple of posts. And I’ve got another post in progress, about more issues at the Placitas house, that I’ll post today too. Always issues! So meanwhile, let’s take a breather.

Here’s my boss (in the red hat) playing water guns with my coworker’s children in the park:

Here he is drying off in the New Mexico sun, lol. In the background you can see two coworkers having a very long discussion. About what, I don’t know, but they are both on the team that is struggling a bit right now with team cohesion (among other things). Hopefully this retreat was helpful.

He’s impossible to see, but there’s a coworker of mine up in that tree. He’s in the center of the photo. See, even New Mexico is sometimes green.

Speaking of green, here’s my backyard after we had some actual real rain a week or so ago. It left everything completely wet! In some parts of the country you take that for granted. It rains, things are wet. Around here it’ll rain and you’ll go outside and everything’s still dry. How is that even possible? This time there was so much rain overnight that things were still soggy in the morning. Like it should be.

In other cute and cheery topics, Laura sent me these photos of pig races, lol, they are adorable:

My friend Tracey sent me these rodeo photos that same weekend. It’s too funny, I have a good friend and a daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area and do I get photos of sophisticated cultural events? No, I get rodeo pictures from both of them. I guess because the sophisticated cultural events are too ordinary to be remarkable.

Speaking of local culture, look at all the organic Asian sauces I discovered at Sprouts Market!

Speaking of retail opportunities, for those of you who are familiar with the San Francisco Outlet Mall in Livermore, get a load of the Santa Fe Outlet Mall:

Yes, it is open! For those of you unfamiliar with the San Francisco outlet mall, it is a terrifying, thronging mass of humanity. Busloads of tourists pour out of San Francisco and drive all the way to Livermore to spend enormous amounts of money at the outlet mall (I often wonder if they know what they’re getting into, it’s a very long bus trip). When we lived in Livermore, we lived very near that mall. One time we accidentally turned into the mall parking lot on a weekend afternoon and it took us an an entire hour of gridlock before we could get back out of there! Thousands of parked cars and busses cover acres and acres of pavement and nearby fields, and all the driving lanes in the parking lots are completely bumper to bumper with people simply idling, waiting for someone, somewhere to pull out of their parking spot and attempt to go home. Talk about taking a wrong turn!

Meanwhile, one day after work a week or so ago, I decided to stop by the Santa Fe outlet mall, which is less than a mile from my house. I’ve never been there since I’ve moved to Santa Fe, even though it’s very close by. I went into the Loft, which a coworker had recommended. There were as many sales people as there were shoppers (a total of about two of each). It was a very relaxing shopping experience, and I got several cute summer items at less than half price.

Ignore the wrinkles, that’s just from being crammed into my bag for the weekend trip down to Placitas. They just need a moment in a hot dryer.

And, a snake. What, you don’t find snakes to be cheerful? Yeah, maybe not. But I figured this would be a good spot for it because I don’t have enough to say about it to make it its own post. So, yep, a snake. Probably a bull snake. Harmless. Useful. They eat mice. Yay!

Once again it has not been an easy week. Last time I posted, early on Wednesday morning, I was hanging around at home waiting for my migraine medication to kick in so I could go to work. Usually the meds work fine and I can continue with my day (not feeling great, but able to get my work done at least).

On Wednesday morning I was having a little bit of trouble wrestling control of the migraine, and by the time I figured I had it handled, I ended up going in to work a little late. But then a few hours later it just got away from me.

It’s only a few times a year that I completely lose control of a migraine, but it’s just hell when it happens. The nausea hit suddenly at 1:00 and I realized I had to get home immediately. This is why it’s so important that I not have a commute. By chance, I-25 south was closed due to a bad wreck that same afternoon. But my Santa Fe townhome is only 15 minutes away, no freeway required, so I was able to get home in time.

I gave John a call so he knew what was going on. He called every couple hours for the rest of the day to make sure I could still answer the phone. And it was all I could do to answer the phone. But if I didn’t answer, he would have driven up to Santa Fe, and there’s no point for that. I don’t need anything when I have a migraine, I just need to be in a safe place to wait it out.

When it gets really bad I can’t talk right – my speech gets vague and disoriented and slurred. I can hardly move and stumble around with poor motor control. And I don’t see well. And the misery I can’t even describe. It’s severe pain and nausea, but it’s more than that. It feels like you’re dying, and you definitely wish you could die (don’t worry, I’m never suicidal, it’s not like that). It’s just a feat of endurance that’s the hardest thing I do in life. Except I don’t actually do anything. I just lay there, half out of my mind, and wait for it to be over. They realize nowadays that a migraine is a type of seizure, a low, slow seizure. And there’s certainly stuff going on in the brain that isn’t explained by just pain and nausea. It peaked about 8 PM, and by about 10:30 I was mostly ok.

The next couple of days I just had a regular headache, you know, the type people take aspirin for. And I sort of felt like I had been hit by a truck. Totally wiped. But I went to work and got some stuff done.

My department actually had a retreat in a local park on Thursday. My headache was pretty bad, but tolerable. If I had been feeling better, I would have done a better job of networking with the other teams. But mostly I just sat with Roz. That’s my new coworker I think I’ve mentioned, who is Laura’s age and reminds me a lot of Laura. And of myself at that age.

Her first name doesn’t fit her. Her last name is beautiful, (which I won’t mention here in a public blog), although it’s not her original last name (long story). But her first name should be something more dignified. Although she is also tough. And scrappy 🙂

Roz knows a lot about chronic health issues. It was nice to have someone who just understands and isn’t afraid of it. Most people who don’t really understand, can’t be with it in a courageous way. They just want me to be better. Which is a type of caring, but it puts pressure on me to be better, when it’s not actually in my control. It sets me up to fail.

I’m home sick with a migraine this morning, and I think I just need to sit and write for a little while. It’s been very stressful. Everything is probably going to be ok, but there’s far too much going on.

At work one of the managers, whose team works with my team, made a series of personnel-related mistakes recently, and the consequences have been affecting me and my team. I’ve been worried that either she, or one of her employees, or both, could be let go.

Then last week a well-liked senior manager lost his son to an undisclosed illness. This pretty much shattered everyone.

Then toward the end of last week, we were all abruptly told to leave early, at 4:30 PM. No one had any idea what was going on, but due to an accidental “reply all”, we knew that HR was involved. Uh-oh. Who’s getting fired? The next morning we found out that a completely different manager, not the one I was worried about, was let go. I have no idea why we needed to vacate the building for that, because she wasn’t even there – she had been out on leave for a month (I had assumed it was for medical reasons). I really didn’t see this coming. I didn’t even know there were any issues. I have no idea why she was let go. As you can imagine, everyone is on edge.

Then John and I had a difficult weekend. We are trying to do way, way too much. After the fiasco with a very inept contractor last summer, John has been wanting to do all his own remodel work. Not only is he wanting to be the general contractor himself, he’s wanting to do all the drilling and hammering himself. It’s understandable, but unfortunately, it’s not a realistic solution. He spends 50 hours a week at work, and then he works all weekend. We are miserable, and the house is miserable to live in with everything undone and our possessions still in boxes, and progress painfully slow.

We own several houses, we manage our rentals ourselves, we both have full-time jobs in different cities, I run a small side business, and we simply have to employ a good handyman/contractor. Or sell the house as-is and take the loss and buy something modest that doesn’t need so much work. John cannot do it all by himself – we are working ourselves to death. Plus, if John has any hopes of me ever coming around to liking that house of his, this is not the right strategy. I currently HATE that house.

I asked a well-recommended contractor to come over on Sunday and he seemed competent. He does both indoor and outdoor work. I’m going to have him start with a few things in Santa Fe, and if his crew does that well, I want him to tackle the Placitas house next. John says he wants to work along side him, and I’m like, no. Absolutely not. No. Too many cooks in the kitchen, plus, we need our weekends for other things. For us. That house has become larger than life.

My new home security system talks. I call her the sci-fi lady because of her weird voice. But that’s not the problem. The problem is she talks – at random times. Like when I’m on the phone in middle of a coaching session. Or worse yet, in middle of the night. About stupid things – apparently there is a bracket loose somewhere and she needs to tell me this at 4:17 AM. “Warning. Hallway. Warning. Smoke detector bracket loose.” How does the manufacturer of this modern marvel think this is somehow ok? In middle of the night?

So I turned the system off. But the next night, the sc-fi lady was still talking! Even though I had turned her off. She talks when off! So I was up and crashing around at 4 AM, trying to find the right plug to pull (she’s hidden in a cabinet behind a TV).  But then I wondered, if I unplugged her, would that would set the alarm off? Have you ever heard a house alarm go off? OMG.

I figured if I was going to end up standing in the front yard with my fingers in my ears apologizing profusely to angry neighbors, it would maybe be better if it were light out. Even better if I were dressed. Maybe even some coffee in my system. Maybe early morning is just not a good time for all that to happen.

So after work I called John for moral support, took a deep breath, sent up a quick prayer – and unplugged her. She glowed an angry red. She has a battery backup. She’s still alive! Now she’s going to guilt-trip me about her low batteries all night. “Warning. Batteries low. Please plug into electric outlet. Warning. Batteries low.”

So I took out her batteries, which required secret knowledge and a screwdriver. Now she’s laying in pieces on my dining room table.

John and I were joking – what if she’s still talking tonight? “Kristina. Why’d you remove my batteries? Kristina. Don’t you like me? I was only trying to be helpful. Kristina.”

I’ve been slumming it in Santa Fe with no internet, just hot spotting when I need it. Then we decided we ought to put home security systems in both houses, because there’s often no one at the house in Placitas, and I’m up here alone in Santa Fe. So this weekend, John came up and helped me install internet and a security system. I love the new internet, but the security system – not so much.

What I originally wanted was just a camera at my front door so I could see what’s going on out there without opening the door. But we ended up with some sensors for the doors and windows, and some sort of Alexa type thing that talks at me. She has a freaky sci-fi voice that I guess is supposed to be soothing or sexy or something and it’s awful.

I’ve turned it off for now, until we can figure out how to make it behave. The sci-fi lady talks too much. At first I thought she was just talking at me when I came home. It’s not a very welcome greeting either. She starts out – “Warning.” Everything she says, starts out, “Warning.” Then she goes to explain that the system isn’t set up with dispatch (yes, we know, we didn’t want to sign up for that service). Then she goes on to tell me that the keypad isn’t working, even though it appears to be working. She says this every time I come in the door.