my parasite egg-laden milkshake drives All the cows from the yard

2005-04-18

You know Princess the neighbor cat, who is a boy but meows like a girl? Two things about him: 1) He has established a network of human friends all over the neighborhood, and he seems to visit each of their houses on a daily basis. Based on his increasing fleshiness (and heaviness, when I pick him up), he is receiving treats from many of his human friends; we're not the only ones feeding him. This is one smart cat. 2) He is a ruthless fighting machine. Last night Francisco heard the sounds of pre-cat fight screaming and asked me to go check it out (he was on the phone with his mom at the time). I went out and saw Princess engaged in some verbal sparring (oh yeah? yo' mama!) with the big grey cat who I think is living in the bush under our bedroom window, and they were in Princess's yard. I yelled at them just as they began the fight proper. Big Grey Cat fled after a few seconds of fighting and Princess chased him into our backyard. There was more verbal sparring, plus I was yelling at them to tell them No Fighting In My Yard, and then Princess chased poor grey cat into the woods behind our house: he could still be chasing that cat for all I know. Next time I see him, I'm sure he'll have some wounds, but I won't pity him this time like I did when he first showed up with his wounded ear. I "poor baby"ed him about his ear, but what he'll get from me this time is, "that's what you get for fighting, dumbass. now here are your treats".

This was a pretty good weekend, even though I came to work for about 6 hours on Saturday and did some work from home for about an hour yesterday. The working wasn't fun but getting all that stuff done makes the job feel a lot better and more manageable right now. I also did some things at home this weekend that have been needing to be done, so that was good, and Francisco and I went for a fantastic long hike yesterday. Boy came home on Saturday from his sleep-over, and as is the case 85% of the time he spends the night with friends, he got sick with a cold. We took pity on him today and let him stay home, since he's totally pathetic and sniffling and blowing his nose every 10 minutes, but tomorrow he goes back to school, armed with travel packs of tissues and the de-sniffilating power of DayQuil.

Our office had a walk-in appointment day today, and we were really quite busy this morning. At one point I was seeing a dad and son who both looked really cranky, so I figured they would be Tough Cookies. Consequently, as the three of us were installed my office and I was crouched over my bin of stuff, searching for the kid's information, I felt my shirt gap open and I just let it gap. I thought maybe the sight of some cleavage would soften them up a bit. Isn't that Sick? As it turned out they weren't cranky--they only Looked cranky--so I showed them my cleavage for nothing. Meh; better safe than sorry.

I finally finished Parasite Rex this weekend--I'd read most of it but never quite finished it for some reason--and then did some googling to try and get updated info on the parasite/Crohn's Disease research mentioned in the book. If you haven't read it, what I'm talking about is some doctors at the U of Iowa were doing research on how harmless parasites (harmless to humans--their usual hosts are cows or something) affect the immune systems of people with Crohn's. The research was very promising, because parasites secrete "mellow out" chemicals that make immune systems back off a bit, and most of the Crohn's sufferers in the study went into complete remission. The articles I read indicate the U of Iowa doctors want to do research with other types of autoimmune diseases, so I've been drafting an email to one of the doctors today, to try and get myself some damn parasites already. I could live with the Hashimoto's thing, but recently my immune system has been thugging up other parts of my body as well, and I need to lay my goon hand down. Parasites would show my immune system who's boss, for sure, and though you'd think it would be the parasites, it would actually be me, because I would be willingly ingesting the parasites ON PURPOSE. Take that, immune system. Who's your daddy? That's right, bitch, and don't you forget it. The part of the research that gives me the biggest gross-out is not the ingesting of the parasites, but the apparent need to ingest parasites repeatedly--like, once a week or something (in egg form)--because the parasites can't live very long in humans, since we're not the hosts they are adapted to. I know I could get my nerve up to drink a parasite egg milkshake once, but could I do it every week for however long? I have a fairly delicate gag reflex, but even so, I think I could do it if the researchers would give me the opportunity. I think my chances of being able to participate are very slim, but I'm going to try anyway.

Francisco is making chef salad for dinner, plus crunchy rolls (omg I Love crunchy rolls), and I need to stop hanging around here so I can eat me some dinner. He's been buying romaine lettuce from Costco, and the kind he gets are maybe 6 lettuces packed in one big bag. The lettuces have had their outer leaves removed so they're very sleek, and we've taken to calling them 'loaves', as in, "I'm going to make a one-loaf salad to go with dinner". I suspect tonight's salad will contain two or three loaves of lettuce: Delicious.

Love,
E |

cats-kittens

come over some time & see me - 2011-02-25
let's not say goodbye - 2011-02-23
the Rachel Zoe collection - 2011-02-10
I feel happy today - 2011-02-04
the tiny snow stalker - 2011-01-25

design by simplify