Corner of Bourbon & Division

My doctor has given me two weeks off work, with an appointment to reassess at that time, to see where we're at. She and I agreed that my work has put too many demands on me at once, and that I definitely need time off to recharge and reboot, as she put it, but that I also need to make sure that they accommodate me more upon my return. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Accommodation is all well and good, but part of our problem is that there is literally no one to do the job except the few of us who are there. Still, that doesn't mean it's a good idea for me to burn myself out trying to keep the place afloat. They can manage without me for a while.

She also will be setting me up with an ear/nose/throat specialist for testing, so we can determine the extent of my hearing loss in my right ear. Because yay Menière's Disease! Ugh.

I've spent the last two days in waiting rooms. After a nice week off last week, this week has been kind of stressful. Sergent came back from the kennel (I was in Montreal for the weekend) with no appetite, and after he'd refused any kind of food for three days, threw up what little I got him to eat, and developed diarrhea, I got worried. By the time we were ready to go to the emergency vet he was so wobbly that I had to lift him into the car. $800 later, and we're not sure what's wrong with him. It's nothing visibly serious: no obstructions in his digestive tract, no tumours, and his blood work came back squeaky clean except for one liver value that always tends to read high on him (ALP, if memory serves). In fact, he has the x-rays and the blood work of a really young dog, except for how he can't walk well and has no energy. So he got an antiemetic, an antibiotic, a new painkiller in case the old painkiller for his arthritis was irritating his stomach, an injection of something to reduce his stomach acidity, and an unofficial prescription for me to feed him ground beef and rice for a few days to keep his stomach settled. I'm still worried about him, because he's still super wobbly today, and seems to be having trouble walking well (one hind leg keeps slipping around, as if he can't quite move it the way it's supposed to go). I've been watching him like a paranoid mother hen, trying to figure out if his breathing seems more laboured than usual or if I'm imagining it.

So much has happened in the past few weeks, I feel hard-pressed to try to address it all. There was the Orlando shooting (which I did  talk about in a previous entry), and then there was the Brexit vote, not to mention several other mass shootings, and ISIL suicide bombers targeting people in Istanbul during Ramadan, of all times (not that there's a good time to be a suicide bomber, but Ramadan seems particularly egregious in  terms of timing). It feels like the whole world is swinging to extremes again, and with the threat of the European Union slowly coming apart at the seams, I can't help but see shadows of the first half of the 20th century, which almost all of humanity spent at war with one another. There is so much fear, so much hatred, being spewed about, that it's really hard to push through it to see the good in humanity as well. The bad news rises to the top, and is always accessible. Finding the good is always a lot more work, and there are days when it's hard to remember to even look for it.

According to a topic trending on Twitter, today is Heterosexual Pride Day, which... wow. Just wow. I don't know who came up with that, but that is pretty terrible. The LGBT community has a pride day/month that was "not born out of a need to celebrate being gay, but instead our right to live without prosecution. [...] So maybe instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride month or movement, straight people should be thankful they don't need one." (Quote by L.Z. Granderson)

I'll try to come up with some nice things to post about after this very depressing entry. I had a good time last week, overall: I saw my parents, I went to a friend's birthday party, I ran a D&D game, and it was all really nice. The world around me seems to have gone to shit, though, and it's hard to reconcile good things on a small scale with terrible things on a large scale.

I promised I would update on all the things, and then never did so. So, uh, I'm going to try to do this succinctly. I will very likely fail at that too. Succinctness (succinctitude?) has never been my forte, as you all know. ;)

( Update behind the cut! )
I think that's it for now. Thank you for bearing with me if you made it past that wall of text. ;)