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45 kids participated in this evening’s Magic Tournaments at Ockanickon which is 15 more than I can comfortably manage by myself. I enjoy short spurts where I am running close to capacity and tonight that happened until at 7:45 PM when a Naylor Ex Machina occurred and Joe arrived. He smiled, did the the 30 things I asked of him and allowed the next two hours to pass as a kinetic blur.

The evening was satisfying. An unusual number of people said “thank you” or that they enjoyed themselves, possibly because they could tell we were understaffed. I had brought food to thank you staff and I derive a simple satisfaction from covering someone’s basic needs. I ejected two people from the event and neither person argued with me. One of my auras appears to be one that radiates a sense of “you’re not special” and I’m glad that a certain part of my imposing presence has not been lost as I shrink. A final note was funny:

Staff Member: Terry?
Me: Yes.
Staff Member: Can we be friends?
Me: Why couldn’t we?
Staff Member: Because you’re like 30 and I’m 17.
Me: Well, don’t expect me to invite you out for cocktails and I doubt we’ll see each other outside of summer camp, but I think we meet the friend definition of “being on good terms”.
Staff Member: So, if I need advice or something, I can contact you?
Me: Yes. Yes you can. Here’s my card.
Staff Member: *receives card* Wow.

Be mistaken for an adult. Achievement Unlocked.

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Mike, Kacey, a friend of Kacey’s, and I went out to dinner this evening and I reflected for a moment before diving into my dinner. I was quite hungry, but I had to smile at the 6 oz beef patty with cheese and some red peppers on it served on a portobello mushroom with a side of broccoli and some ranch dressing. I had negotiated “½ Price Burger Night” at Stanley’s without looking like a tool or doing a “hey, could I substitute” and also because I was eating broccoli.

Maybe I just assumed I didn’t like broccoli or there was a time when I genuinely didn’t like broccoli but I’ve been eating a lot of it lately. I put together a list of foods I’ve eaten more in the past three weeks than during the rest of my life combined:

Broccoli
Cauliflower
Sugar Snap Peas
Portobello Mushrooms
Babybel Cheese Rounds
Chicken Sausages
Cocoa-dusted Almonds
Toasted Salted Almonds (outside of mixed nuts)
Hazelnut Flour
Almond Flour
Soy Flour
Stevia in the Raw

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I woke to a thudding noise that filled me with horror. Max was repeatedly standing up, walking a few steps, and then falling over. His incontinence had continued and after a few falls he laid back down on his sleeping mat. My father and I took him to the Langhorne Animal Hospital and in his weakened state I had to to lift him into the car, then into the hospital, then into the examination room. Some initial diagnostics suggested that he had a case of Lyme Disease that had blown out under his prednisone-weakened immune system. When done and while my father was attending to paperwork, I saw a family with a small girl walk into the hospital. The girl held a drawing in her hand that said “GET WELL SOON” and she said to her parents “I made Mittens a picture”.

My father was shaken by Max’s time in the hospital. He couldn’t physically move Max in the same way I could and I was also keeping track of Max’s medication. This has reminded my dad of his own limits but also reminded him that there are others. I’ve found the compassion required to care for this 82 lb dumb mass of incontinent, quivering, yet loving fur to be effortless and to tap into my “this is right” well that rarely gets touched. I hope I am equally able to draw from this well should the people around me one day need me to clean up after then, take care of their medication, and lead them through a medical structure where they have no idea what’s going on.

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A side effect of a ketogenic diet has been a nose-dive in my ability to do distance running. Once a week, I try to run 10 or more miles in a single stretch and this week and last I’ve simply not been able to go more than about 8 before I reach a level of discomfort where I don’t want to continue. This isn’t exhaustion or muscle failure but simply not wanting to run any more. So I suppose the alternate explanation is that keto has not reduced my stamina, but turned me into a bitch, albeit a lighter one.

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A byproduct of Max’s medication is that he drinks a lot more. He’s not quite fast enough to go outside when he needs to pee so our kitchen has been graced with various patches of doggy tinkle. Sometimes the patches were in the living room or dining room but never on a portion with a rug or carpet. Good dog.

I took today to pound out Chris Sollars’ nee Lutz’s wedding photos and experienced a rare drive to finish them. I did three passes and realized I didn’t know who some people were. I called Chris, not there. I called Stephen, not there. I cried a little. I very strongly wanting this chore off my to do list. Stephen called back, hooray! During his lunch break, he walked me through who each person was. This doesn’t seem too impressive until I realized he was doing this over the phone as follows:

Me: Stephen, who’s the person next to your aunt in this picture?
Him: Is she wearing purple?
Me: Yes.
Him: That’s my aunt Gene.
Me: And on the other side.
Him: Is he making a stupid face?
Me: Yes.
Him: That’s Mark.

HIs memories of his wedding were clear enough to remember the order that people were standing during seven person group shots.

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Max has had some itching problem for a bit that wasn’t responding to standard flea treatments so I took him to the vet. The vet was wearing rain boots and I wonder if this is experience or forethought. Max was diagnosed with Mange, which is like finding out that your kid has lice. He insisted it wasn’t something I did wrong but I felt a little responsible even though the red foxes around my house were probably to blame.

The vet put Max on a parasite treatment and gave him a shot of steroids followed by two prescriptions to help with the itching. Max didn’t flinch at the shot. Sometimes our pets are better people that we are.

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Joe, Carl, Everett and I got together for dinner this evening. I cooked and the food cost was covered by everyone else, an arrangement I enjoy. We had pork tenderloin, a reduced spinach side, and some golden cake and caught up on what we each had done since the diaspora. Carl continued on at my previous firm and spoke of his work load. Joe mentioned how easy his job was. Everett and I told tales of unemployment. At one point we were bullshitting about dogs and Everett said “Yeah this is kind of like being in the lab again, except we were paid there”.

He’s right, we were paid there, somehow. We were paid to advance the frontier of knowledge in our particular domain and enjoy each other’s company. I hope I can’t believe I’m getting paid at my next job.

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I helped Randy and Kelly move today and I was glad to do so.  I did 38 trips up and down the steps of their old apartment and my Fitbit counted every one of them.  Today I was firing on all cylinders even to the point where I did a really good job of backing up father’s truck with a trailer attached.  I picked up box after box of life lived and moved it either from an apartment to a truck or trailer and then from said truck or trailer into a house.  The recipe for moving is simply doing that until you’re done.  I was a satisfied kind of exhausted at the end of the day and Randy had bought me a keto cheesesteak which is simply a pile of meat and cheese in a bowl.

There was a slight nag to the notion that I was helping someone move on with their life.  Randy and Kelly were going from apartment to house and had called in their collective families to do it.  My amazing back-up was enabled by Randy’s sister’s husband and that is a network of relationships alien to me.  I try not to inconvenience others and would feel like I were calling in favors when I next move.  I feel I’ll do most of the work with either a flatbed or a book of matches.

 

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I saw The Dark Knight Rises today with someone that I had seen a bunch of movies with. We had never sat through a movie we both enjoyed together and this was no exception. She doesn’t bring out the worst in me so much as is good at bringing out the critical in me. That’s wonderful when there’s a shared object of resentment. I think it’s the last movie we’ll see in each other’s company at least for a good long while. Another chapter closed.

Kelly asked to borrow my carpet shampooer to work out some…stains in the carpet of her new place. I was glad to have her over and I showed her how it worked. I then unloaded a few pounds of superfluous carbohydrates on her including blueberries, prunes, and raisins. She’s a good friend.

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With so many people having been removed from my previous work place there was a strange freedom to everything I did.  If I needed a stapler I could just grab it from the cube of someone who had been dismissed.  If I had a question or a concern, most of the people I could ask were too busy to reasonably answer it so I simply went with my gut and checked back when I had an answer even if I had wasted a chemical or material.

I haven’t had that kind of freedom since I was an intern.  I missed it.  That was back when science as a career was still in the cards.  After eight hours or so cowboy science I had to fill out a lab report to describe what I had done.  Immediately I remembered why science as a career was no longer in the cards.