Tag Archives: Atomic Junkshop

As I’ve observed many times before, average weeks exist because some weeks are much better, some worse. As far as writing went, this was “worse.”

First, to tackle the stuff you’re really curious about, Plushie is adapting better than we hoped to his current disabled status. The new harness we bought lets him enjoy his short walks, and we can lift him out of the car when we visit the vet relatively easily. Okay, TYG lifts him; while my bursitis is much improved, 20lbs of floof dog is not something I should be hauling around whereas her workouts have given her some muscle.

He barks with surprising vigor at times but he’ll calm down once I sit in the cage with him (the advantages of a laptop and lap desk!). Then he drifts off into sleep and I go back to the couch.

Plush Dudley aside, I felt very off this week. TYG did too, a little — as we both got our vaccines for the fall last week (covid and flu) we wondered if the shots hit us worse than usual. Wednesday, for me, was execrable. My relatively simple Local Reporter article (on Carrboro’s Green Neighborhood grants) was a slog and I didn’t get much writing accomplished after that. Happily I woke Thursday feeling back to normal. However I still had a bunch more crap getting in the way of writing.

Getting Plushie’s CCL tear covered by insurance, which required talking to our vet (who was awesome) and having them talk to the insurer (the dialog is ongoing). Going to the glaucoma specialist and discovering that the fluid circulation in my eye is a problem (the channel for flushing fluid out is way narrow) that she recommends laser surgery. Then double-checking our insurance will cover it. The first “advocate” didn’t call back, the second sent me to someone else (and the wrong someone else), the third was actually helpful.

Due to changes to our federal tax return, I have to file an amended state tax return, as the IRS recalculated our adjusted gross income (it works out in our favor). There were a bunch of other, less important paperwork chores I caught up on this week, mostly on Wednesday. Annoyingly, one or two tasks such as going to the dealer for a minor car malfunction will have to wait until next week — it would have been much smoother to deal with them all and start next week fresh.

So not much writing to talk about. I did some work on Jekyll and Hyde but not as much as I anticipated.

I did get a couple of Atomic Junkshop posts up, one on Satanism in Bronze Age comics, one on the Silver Age debut of The Phantom Stranger. Above, the Neal Adams cover from the second post; below, Mike Sekowsky’s killer splash page from a Supergirl story.

I also spent part of today on a rush article for The Local Reporter covering the possibility of Hurricane Imelda hitting here — even heavy rain would be disastrous, it’s a very floodable area. But neither story is up yet.

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Ever since Plushie developed glaucoma, TYG and I always have one person staying at home if the other is out of town. She’s worried (with reason) that a dogsitter wouldn’t be as conscientious about the drops and other meds, or could even keep track of them, or that some health problem will strike while we’re gone and there’ll be nobody here who makes “get him to the vet!” their priority.

And lo and behold, Sunday afternoon Plushie was running across the floor after coming in from lunch walk when he let out a help and began limping with his back left leg. When he didn’t put it back down it was obvious he hadn’t stepped on a piece of stabby cat litter or something so off we went to the emergency vet for 2.5 hours.

The bad news: CCL tear at the knee joint which is very common in older dogs (Trixie had one several years ago). Not going to heal. Vet seemed dubious about surgery, though not ruling it out. We went home, upped his pain meds and set up his cage again to keep him from running. And then off to our regular vet for their take.

TYG then had to read every worst-case scenario for this sort of thing and they were very worst-case. Monday though our regular vet called back after talking to the surgeons and said yes, surgery was feasible, recovery time probably wouldn’t be as bad as TYG feared. Plus Plushie’s starting to adapt. Plus we bought a harness that makes it possible to support his rear end while he walks outside to go potty.

It’s still a lot of added work caring for him; I spend a lot of time in the cage with him so he’s not miserable (Trixie, outside and alone, does not like this so there’s more time making it up to her). And our insurer doesn’t think this is covered; I’ll be appealing because while we could manage the cost of the surgery, we’d rather not.

So that was a week. Plus we had the housecleaners in and I don’t get much work done with four pets to watch over. We do not take any chances the cats freak out and bolt while the cleaners have the door open. However the cats have recently begun spending their days in the spare bedroom so instead of having to freak Snowdrop out by chasing him up there or carrying him, we simply walked up and shut the door. Woot! Hopefully he’ll be less traumatized this way. Working a caged dog around the cleaners was more of a challenge, but we managed it.

Plus I had an optometrist appointment Tuesday. New doctor — my old one retired — so even though my eye pressure is still low (I’ve been taking some of the same drops as Plushie for years), he’s sending me off to a glaucoma specialist to double check Possibly Maybe Troubling Signs (it’s also possible I’m doing so well I can lay off the glaucoma eye drops). I’m less worried at this point than annoyed at taking more time out of my work week for an appointment (but I’m not an idiot, so I’m taking the time). And because I had dilated eyes afterwards, it was a couple of hours before I could work on my computer comfortably.

Despite all of which, I got a full week of good work done. I rewrote the first two chapters of Jekyll and Hyde based on reading Victorian Demons. I added the 2007 Jekyll (covered at the same link) to my Descendants of Jekyll chapter and would have gone further but I may need to reconsider my chapter structure first. My original chapter breakdown doesn’t look adequate for figuring where some of these movies go. Oh, I also began watching Dark Shadows — the parallel-time arc includes a Jekyll/Hyde doctor (this came shortly after Dan Curtis produced the Jack Palance adaptation) so I watched the beginning of that storyline, right up to the moment the doctor appears. I’ll post a detailed review after I’ve seen the whole thing.

I wound up getting in three stories for The Local Reporter, which took up a lot of my time. One was on Carrboro’s poet laureate and the tradition of reading a poem rather than a prayer to start council meetings; another was on Carrboro’s Rec Department fall offerings (learn Italian cooking, pickleball or QiGong, go hiking …); the third was on the police department sending mental-health experts to some emergency calls rather than cops.

At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about women superheroes getting costume changes (cover by Mike Sekowsky) and whether some older characters my generation loved are Dad heroes to Kids These Days (if they’ve heard of them at all).

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