The dog days of winter

I didn’t get to sleep last night until sometime after two in the morning.

Before that, I’d watched A View to a Kill, which proved to be a little longer than I expected, and which really didn’t reward my patience with it. It’s the last of the Roger Moore James Bond films, and while it’s not the worst of that bunch, I think that says more about the series at that time as a whole than it does about the relative merits of this movie. I like Roger Moore a lot, even today, but the simple truth is, he was just too old to be playing James Bond. His last outing isn’t his worst, but it’s a far cry from his (much less the series’) best.

After that, there was a whole bunch of wrapping of presents and stuff like that. And I thought, well okay, this is later than I wanted to go to bed tonight, but I can always sleep a little late in the morning.

Around 4:30, my father woke me up to tell me that he and my father were taking our dog, Tucker, to the emergency vet.

Tucker had been listless and moaning and not at all hungry, not at all himself, and my parents just wanted to rule anything serious out. I didn’t go with them, just stayed home, and awake, for the next two and half to three hours.

The vet gave Tucker something for pain and discomfort — which we later found out, with some surprise, was a shot of methadone — and ran some tests. He was running a fever, then and later still, when we went to his regular doctor this evening. I thought 105 seemed unfathomably high, but it turns out the normal body temperature for dogs is around 101 and 102.5°F. (So you learn something new every day.) The vet gave him another shot, this time of antibiotics, plus some to take orally. He said it’s more likely a virus, and will hopefully pass, but the medicine’s to try and cover all bases. We’ll keep an eye on him overnight. He seems better, still a little slow and hesitant, a little more tired than even his usual, but better than this morning. He has some appetite, and we’re hoping this is just a stomach bug that’s hit him a little harder than usual.

I got a little sleep after my parents and Tucker came back home around 7 am, by which I mean maybe two and a half hours. That’s when Tucker’s barking to go outside woke me up, followed by the phone ringing, and the phone repairman showing up to put us on the fiber-optic system. (Verizon is apparently committed to not repairing the existing copper line, so I guess my parents finally relented.)

Then it was just a trip to the post office, setting up Christmas lights outside, furniture repairmen come to fix a broken living room chair, watching over the sick dog, watching an episode of Quantum Leap, listening to music, thinking about taking a nap, ultimately not doing so, and generally just puttering around. And that was my whatever this day is. Wednesday? Frankly, I was just glad, as I fell back asleep at 7:30, that I didn’t have to be at work in an hour.