Urgh, the sequel

New mini-flare occurred this weekend, predictably, I suppose, after a week-to-month's buildup of too many consecutive baked beans, beers, mildly spicy stuff, popcorn, cheese puffs, Indian food, and two glasses of dark cola. I should be grateful it's not a flare-flare, a flare with teeth. But it's still kicking my ass into this week.

One of the hardest parts is eating. In addition to the emergency I'm on a self-imposed bland diet to shut down the crazy intestinal spasming, and what gets me irate about it is how difficult it is to do. And I'm not talking about the delicious food cravings that start after a few days in. It's really hard to cover your daily caloric requirements with applesauce, yogurt, rice, bananas, etc. Two dubious internet resources and a calculator show me I'd have to eat over ten servings of applesauce to make it. And forget about nutritional requirements, because they are not the priority.

In any case. After a couple of meals it feels like you're stuffing pillowfuls of glop down your throat, because bland diets are, by nature, bland bland bland. And you start to feel adverse to eating, and then because you're eating less anyway you start to feel weak and hopeless, and bland bland bland - er, blah blah blah.

Why yes, I am a ball of delight in times like these. Come back any time! Here, have a dog picture:

Puppydog would gladly eat all that applesauce for me. Yep, uh huh.

Luckily I have some good books on hand. After watching the Mark Gatiss BBC Horror thingie, I was reminded by Google that he'd also written some books, so I picked up The Vesuvius Club. So far it's ridiculous, scandalous, silly, exciting, mysterious, and almost exhausting to read -- but in a compelling way. I'm only 70 pages in, but I can recommend it that far wholeheartedly.

The head, it explodes

The dog has fleas. The dog has fleas. Consequently A. and I also have fleas - or at least A. did last night, on his leg. Don't get me wrong, I grew up reading Ranger Rick and World and various books about critters, even some of my folks and grandparents' National Geographics (none of which inured me to spiders, but what can you do?) but I was still unprepared for how far these bad boys can jump. It was unreal.

So we gave her a quick bath just to scare the little bastards, and today A.'s hitting up the vet and I'm hitting up the store for some weird electrostatic powder thingie that will hopefully clean the carpets and finally we're both shunning the sweet little fleabag until she can be dipped with effective! Prescription! Fleabag cream! And bathed again. At least she doesn't sleep in our bed. (Though not for lack of hopeful brown-eyed attempts.)

She'll get over it.

In brighter news, A. and I finally paid off our car. Conversely this makes me want to drive it less than ever. Since it's probably infested with fleas at the moment, this is likely a good thing.

Cataloging woes

The blog will be on temporary hiatus (read: through Wednesday) as I scramble to finish the Peppery Bitesoffmorethanshecanchew Cataloging Side Project by Wednesday. If only Sunday had not been lost to the mists! If only I didn't have a real job! If only...wait, the U.C. has been surprisingly quiet. This means something...but what?
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