Monthly Archives: March 2007

All things pass away

And I suppose I should have a record somewhere of this one.

My mother’s dog (for that’s what he was, even with years of living with us) Felice is dead. He had contracted an inoperable and likely terminal case of cancer and we chose to put him down on Wednesday rather than prolong his suffering.

I miss him a little, but he wasn’t really my dog. I do miss having a dog around the house though.

Zen and the Art of Cleaning

So I’m cleaning.

Everything.

In the entire house.

Alison has come to live with me and she has an extreme reaction to even small quantities of basically four things:
1) Smoke (moreso to cigarette smoke, but other environmental smokes now bother her where they wouldn’t have two years ago.)
2) Mold spores (this used to bother her, but only in very large amounts. Tonight she reacted to a small amount of mold going airborne from a pot that had been sitting entirely too long in the sink)
3) Dust (this one only goes back about six months, and it still takes a sizable quantity to really bother her.)
4) Pet-related odors (primarily urine,) which is only a problem because cats have been invading our house and rather than fight them off or live with them, our cats have decided that the solution is to mark their territory. Why do my cats have to be so damn cowardly and stupid? I miss my old cat.

My house hasn’t been seriously cleaned before this for upward of a decade. Oh, it’s been cleaned in spots. Sometimes rather thoroughly by some very efficient people. But never at the scale it needs to be cleaned now.

As a consequence, I’m putting in a lot of time trying to render the place as hypo-allergenic as possible, and I’m also looking for a GP (that’s “family physician”) in the tri-cities area that can take (state?) medical coupons as a form of payment. (Hopefully not associated with La Clinica. I trust them well enough for a referral, but it’d be hell getting Alison to go there the way they’ve been (often justly) badmouthed in the press.) This would be in order to get a referral to an allergy/asthma specialist who could actually treat her condition before it gets worse and just kills her by default. If you ask me, the emergence/broadening of four new allergies within a period of about two years is a very bad sign.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to. If you can and are inclined to help with either of these things, let me know.