The SNL references here are older than I am; she doesn't come from France.

Uff da. Un-Mrissish hour. But at least it isn't a Tuesday.

So. Yesterday we noticed one of Ista's eyelids was a bit swollen. Same deal today. We figured we'd keep an eye on it. She was a little punky but not majorly punky, so we figured we could wait for the normal vet hours.

I went to bed at a sane and Mrissish hour, went to sleep, was minding my own business (at least, I presume I was), and then I woke up. Something was wrong. Brain eventually identified something as two things: sound of dog worrying at something and smell of dog blood. She had scratched at her eyelid and managed to make it bleed. So we tried to fashion booties for her to keep her from pawing at it, but she is resourceful, and we hadn't got the fourth one on before one of the first three was off. So -- we figured it was not good to be bleeding that close to the eye, and we figured our own resources were likely to be inadequate to the task, and we took her to the emergency vet.

And she did have a minor infection of the eyelid, and so they gave her antibiotics and a conehead, and she is now trying to figure out how to get rid of the conehead or, failing that, use it for stashing treats to carry around with her. And as middle of the night e-vet runs on the coldest night of the year go, it really was remarkably low-stress -- there was never the "what if our beastlet dies???" moment, just, oh, well, better get this taken care of, then.

And now to bed. The adrenaline didn't kick in ever (due to the no-fear-of-dogly-death thing), so mostly I'm a bit cold and a lot tired. But the dogbeast will be fine, and that's important.

brainless Monday and mines

I have removed the conehead from the doglet. She got stuck in the back woods this morning -- sticks poking into her conehead whichever way she turned -- and it was just not happy for anybody. And anyway the initial horrible itching has apparently let off, and she is mostly just quiet and a bit clingy. So that's all for the best.

As for me -- I had just started to nap when the UPS man arrived, ringing the doorbell and startling dog and markgritter alike, so no nap for me. I seem to be able to address at least a few writing tasks without that bit of sleep, though. It's another one of those cases where the brain has been using background processes to get things ready behind the scenes. Thanks, brain! Not sarcastically, for once. It's one of those days where I feel like I'm dragging my brain behind me on a string, bump bump bump, when it comes to something like conversation or cooking or finding a bag for the recycling. (The bags for the recycling are always in the same place, and we have not run out. Er.) But apparently when it comes to finishing scenes I should have finished months ago, the brain says, "Right, then," rolls up its sleeves, and digs in.

Oooooookay then. Useful, but -- startling.

I think this is one of those situations where I have been quietly sorting through all the ways this scene could go and deciding that I hate them all except for one. It's like furniture shopping: we go out, we hate everything, we scowl and swear, we go out again, we hate everything but one, we buy it, and here we are. What we are doing is dodging the One Twoo Wuv meme. I think that the nature of the character involved has left the Girls Who Like It Are Dirty Sluts meme in the dust 150K-200K words ago. But one still has to give wide berth to the Men Who Like It Are Chauvinist Pigs meme, and the Perfect First Time meme, and the Communication Is Unnecessary meme, and...so I guess what I'm saying is that it's no surprise that this looked hard to do at first, because the whole thing is a freakin' minefield, but really there's only one path left that I can stand at all. In a fair amount of detail, apparently. Go figure.