I am laying on the couch with my dog, Mallon.  We have had her for 4 months now? I have the receipt, somewhere.  A few months after Flash died, unexpectedly, we were searching for a new dog. I kept putting it off, in fear of the feeling of "replacing" Flash,  and Sarah was sending me pictures everyday of rescue dogs to get. See Flash was a special dog.  He was short, he had droopy ears, he drooled and when we first got him he had a hard/stubborn time walking a single mile.  He was stinky, he shed all over the place and he liked to go on nose bound, people loving, adventures from time to time.

I haven't liked dogs all that much in the past, I mean I liked them well enough but I never wanted to live with one, I never wanted to have to vacuum everyday because of one.  But Flash was a special dog.  I brought him in to my work a few times to introduce him to some of my favorite residents.  I became, rather quickly may I add, proud that he was mine.  I lay ed on the floor with him and didn't care that that meant dog hair coated clothing.  I enjoyed having him lay on the couch with me (poor Nubs, I'm sorry it took me so long), I fell in love with this dog.  His ears were my favorite, and he was so handsome.

Sarah called me at work on the house phone one night, which she never does and said that she wanted to bring Flash to the vet, that he was acting funny and not moving.  He didn't budge for food or even water, which he was obsessed with, he wouldn't get up to go outside.  She had a few hours before taken him and Nubs for a dog walk, so we assumed that he ate something that didn't quite agree with him, or that he somehow ingested a pair of our underwear. So we would wait until morning and if he was still acting funny then we would take him in.
A day or two had passed, maybe even three and he was acting like his normal self.  Then he had another one of those episodes.  Meanwhile, in the world outside of our house, one of my favorite residents had been battling with pneumonia during the same week.  My emotions were already trying to prepare me for the heart break of my friend. Sarah came with me to my place of work to be with Blue Jay, I'll call her, I knew she was dieing, I didn't want to miss a minute of her last days.  I was in love with her too. 
When we returned home that night, about 11, he still wasn't moving.  We took his temperature, 98 something, and after reading on the inter web about appropriate dog temperatures, we knew he was in some sort of danger.  I wrapped him in a blanket, put him in the back seat on my lap and we drove to one animal clinic which didn't have an xray machine so we drove to another.  After they took an Xray, and an ultrasound and drew out the contents of his abdomen, within seconds, we realized the depth of his pain, of his injury.  The tests revealed that he had tumors on his liver and spleen, too large to do anything about and too late because they had already burst.  We went over surgery options, taking him home options, and finally, decided to spend our last hours hugging him, loving him and crying with each other. Deciding to let him go was the hardest decision I've ever had to make.  Not jail, not rehab, not dirty streets, not family dysfunction, not every relationship I've ever had to end, has ever compared to the feeling I had that night.  He was laying on the table, with an IV in one foot, just breathing and looking at us.  Licking his lips and looking around, and we couldn't stop crying. I didn't want to say goodbye.  I didn't want to be without him.  I didn't want him to go.
We left with him in a box.
I wanted to bring him to my mother's and bury him.  I also didn't want to miss Blue Jay's passing.  I was so fucking torn between the death and dieing of two beings that I loved so dearly.  Blue Jay would have wanted me to go, Blue Jay loved animals.  Blue Jay met Flash.  So we drove to mom's the next morning, we put some things in his little long box, my brother Tristian read a letter he had written to Flash, and we buried him.  It was all so god damn surreal.  I week later and I still couldn't believe that had happened.
I returned to our home in Maine and I went back to work. That very day I clocked in and went to visit Blue Jay, I was so surprised that she was still alive.  I was so selfishly grateful that she was still alive. She passed that night, and all I could think of was, she waited for me to say goodbye. Not ten minutes after the nurse officially declared she had no heartbeat, I heard her daughter walking down the hallway.   I knew her walk, I knew her footsteps.  I walked into the hallway and tried my hardest to keep my cool.  I was so confused as to the right thing to do, do I tell her before she enters the room, do I let her walk into the room on her own...I started crying and told her Blue Jay was gone.  We hugged and we cried and then I left her alone to cry over her mother.

to be continued...

Is drinking a glass of Jameson at 1:09 AM ever a good sign?  I worked until 10:30 tonight, took a shower, drank some sleepy time tea and tried for the last hour and a half to fall asleep. My mind sometimes, a lot of times, doesn't get negative or positive signals for that matter, to shut the fuck up. I try to let the bitch down easy, but the brain is a powerful bitch with a stubborn mind of it's own.  Oh and my wife has decided we are not getting pregnant right now, or basically until she decides it's time. And this is me trying not to blow the whole ship up.

2 months have past and I have shit to show for it. I messed up the fertility monitor (your only allowed 1 fuck up per cycle, I managed 2), so we weren't able to inseminate last month. Here's looking forward to a September made baby :)

Turns out more than a beer a day, 2 cups of coffee a day and I forget how much sugar, is detrimental to your infertility. A new study for some idiot suggests that having your cellphone in your pocket does as well, although that wouldn't too much surprise me I guess.  So, I cut down on everything and am trying my damn est to switch to decaf. 

My wife and I attended two free Yoga classes last week through a space on Congress st. Never have I taken a serious yoga class before, but it was nice. We took a beginners class (didn't like) and a Gentle/Restorative (did like). I think something I need more in my life is quiet, stillness, stretching and most of all breathing. 

It's a funny thing, these blogs, your writing into the "air and space" as if people give a shit to read it. Mostly I like typing on a computer and use to journal EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, so in pen and ink's memory I try to keep it up.

I survived Pride and all I got was some fucking diarrhea.And it's true, when people say "HAPPY PRIDE", I want to punch them.

Post Vegan/Pre Pregnancy

My 6 month experiment has come and gone, the time I set aside for it anyways. I dream of bloody steak sometimes, but my love and desire to jump in a swimming pool full of goat cheese has passed. Fuck cheese. For now, maybe.  Sarah hates and has hated every minute of my vegan challenge. She has since explained the many ways in which it affects her too, however, it does remain my body and if I don't feel good putting something trivial into it, then I won't. And I won't feel bad about it either. For once in my life, I have a reasonably good relationship with food.


My memories of food in general have not been that positive. When I lived with my Dad and his 2nd wife, they would serve us our meal plates and we had to eat everything on them before we could leave the table. Oh, you don't like brussel sprouts, "your not leaving this table until that plate is spotless". Oh, I gave you 4 cups of mashed potatoes and your already full, "your not leaving this table until that plate is spotless."  When their heads would turn, you had 3 seconds to feed all you could to the 2 dogs drooling under the table. However, they couldn't stand brussel sprouts anymore than I could.  Or, you could ask to leave the table to go to the bathroom, and after being granted permission like a fucking prisoner, stuff your mouth without being noticed, run to the bathroom and spit it in the toilet. Growing up with 5 other kids allowed for the advantage of not being noticed.

Still to this day, I find myself wanting to be unnoticed.

Another memory of food was donuts.  My mothers 8 year relationship with a perverted, alcoholic, mentally compromised, physically abusive boyfriend use to take me to a donut shop every Friday. We would get a dozen donuts to bring home. Chocolate eclairs and lemon filled powered sugar coated donuts, were my favorite. I would eat as many as I could, make myself throw up, and eat as many as I could, and maybe throw up once more. I also remember my Mom making chocolate eclairs once in a while, I did not abuse them however, because my mother had made them, I cherished them.  Much loved staples were  Banquet $. 99 chicken pot pies, TV dinners and spagettio's.  If my mom made it, even just microwaved it, chances are I loved it.

Still to this day, I find myself wanting to throw up.

Onto good, the fertility tracker we call "The Robot", was received in the mail and am excited to start using it. It may be the only time in my life where I'm waiting with excitement to start my period. On that day "The Robot" and I get engaged, and she begins to learn my cycle. Our plan is to start inseminating at the end of July. Course it may take more than one cycle for "The Robot" to learn, so this may get pushed to the end of August. Although it's been years of waiting, I can wait another month to get pregnant. I refuse to use a known donor so as expensive as the price of sperm is, we want those 2 guaranteed fertility days. The possibilities are so fucking exciting. Some people dream of a career, some people dream of meeting their "soul mate" and getting married, I dream of birthing a healthy, adorable baby.

Lazy words

I have no inspiring words for the love for those who are dieing today. I have a new chapter that's speedily approaching, and that is the exact opposite, the possibility of starting a new life.  We had a June start date but that had to be pushed back, due to life getting in the way. Fucking asshole.
Our new start date is July, and with all the luck and positive thoughts on our side, it will only take one insemination.

Onto the business of dieing

I forget sometimes where I work, what it is I'm doing for these people and where the residents end up after all. I love my job, I fucking love my job. I'm surrounded by these once to me, strangers. I'm sought after and demanded by a bell. I'm told what to do and objects to get, sometimes feeling like a "glorified" waitress, housekeeper, punching bag and personal assistant.

 I change beds, I give showers, I get hit and kicked,  I make snacks, clean up spilled drinks or vomit when all other bodily fluids are held in, I get pinched and scratched and told to go to hell. I give back rubs and hugs a plenty, I toilet too many times to count every day. I work about 50 hours a week, waiting, tempting fate to people who mostly don't even remember me.  And I love it, most of it.  

I had a resident die the other night, a lady who sang "Amazing Grace" more beautiful and pure then John Newton.  A woman who told me everyday that she loved me and upon entering her room would say "Hello Daahlin". I would reply "Hi sweetheart" and she would say "Your so beautiful". Alot of the time I would tear up and say " No _______, your the one that's beautiful."  She had rheumatoid arthritis, alzhemiers, dementia, etc. and her whole body was contracting and her bones sounded like they were breaking everytime you moved her.  She would talk in her sleep, making almost no sense but  mostly to her husband who had passed years ago. Listening to her talk of him made my heart soft, daydreaming myself, believing in love ever after.

I've been a CNA for almost a year now and have worked at the same facility this whole time. At which I've watched 7 residents pass on. Some were more sad than others, some affected me more than others. The first time I did post mordem care, it was surreal. So fucking strange and facinating at the same time. Washing up this body that was once alive and able to communicate, once able to consume and be comforted. I helped the guy that came to pick up the body, put it on his stretcher. I started feeling uncomfortable as he put her head on a head block. It then hit me in that moment, that she was just a body. He turned the white sheet over her and covered her face. My face started burning and I felt the panic and sadness fill my chest. Then he zipped up the body bag and placed a decorative quilt over it. I had to excuse myself in which I went to a private room and sobbed uncontrollably for 20 minutes. I'm a visual person, I'm a "in the moment" kind of person, and watching him zip her up was so final, so sad. It wasn't the first time I witnessed this process, this business of dieing, and it won't be the last.

It's very obvious when a person is beginning the dieing process. First they start sleeping all the time and stop taking in food or fluids (not to be confused with having a passing cold or other sickness). Next they start mottling, the feet and hands turn whitish/blueish and the underside of there body (decreased circulation). All of these didn't bother me with ______, it's the death rattle that hit me, that broke my heart instantly. I walked out of her room and told my nurse that she was rattling and instantly started crying uncontrollably. The nurse tried comforting me and told me "you don't always have to be superman, it's ok to cry." She hugged me, which is a little out of character for her despite having 4 adorable children. All I could say was "it's just not fair."  I tend to forget that this is the last stop for these residents, the only way out is in a body bag. They move from the other, more independant, ambulatory floors and end up on our floor.  I forget that they are not here to get better, but to maintain any normalcy they have left, show them love and comfort and give them the attention and respect they deserve.  Even if two months prior they had punched you in the chest and called you "a shit ass Nazi lover".



to be cont...