Last week Bridesmaid Black Mamba stopped by for a few days of low-key bacchanalia. We managed to squeeze her dress fitting in between staying home and watching television and staying home and doing a puzzle. Unfortunately, this is when we discovered that Black Mamba had been secretly replaced with a piece of cooked ziti!


I have it on good authority that she will soon escape from her air-tight holding cell to wreck havoc on an unsuspecting pasta.

You may remember a few days ago when I mentioned covering the world with stickers? Well, Bridesmaid Icepop certainly did. The following took place between 1952 and 1954 on the 29th of June, 2011:

Icepop: i just had a conversation with someone about how i use terminology such as "my computer lives on the desk, this bag lives on this area of the floor," etc

Icepop: and the person commented that i give inanimate objects ... life

Icepop: and i had to think about where i picked that up from

Icepop: and i named you. This was days ago, before your latest blog :)

me: I WIN!

This message will self-destruct in five (5) seconds.

During round four, Matt came home with two packs of InAnimate Stickers. Gee, what on earth could *I* do with these? It's not like I constantly anthropomorphize or tag everything with a reasonably flat surface. His only request was that I not plaster everything in the house. So I took them to work to share with the equally easily amused masses.


For those of you wondering, yes, that is a blue Android, post-makeover.

In other news, Friday was Take Your Dog to Work Day. It's the slightly furrier equivalent of Take Your Kids to Work Day, except with better behavior and fewer NDAs. Of course, I brought Zero, who was more than willing to spend the day eating treats and sniffing other dogs.

The first mutt-type activity was pet portraits, taken by professional pet photographers. Google paid for the photographers to come and for everyone to get digital copies of their pets' photos, but not for printed copies. Pay for something? Ourselves? The nerve!


You'll note the chicken strip, Zero's favorite treat, dangling above the camera. It was impressive how long he sat there, patiently staring down that chicken strip, until it was close enough to eat. The photographer's assistant even commented on how long he sat on the cushion stool thing. Clearly she wasn't aware that he's the Golden Dog.

You can safely assume that when the photos come later this week, they will be shared.

Next came a professional dog trainer, who told everyone what they were doing wrong. Once again, Zero shone as the only dog who already knew "down" and "off". Did I mention Golden Dog?

The final event of the day was Yappy Hour, with more doggy snacks and (finally) human snacks, served in the kitchen. Of course, Zero took the opportunity to poop next to the buffet. He was quickly demoted from Golden Dog to object in need of a good punt off the third-story balcony.

After his not-really-an-accident was cleaned up and we were far away from the contaminated area, I had to admit it was a bit amusing. For everyone else, I mean. Everyone knew that some dog was going to do that, and they were glad it wasn't their dog. At least he's too pathetic to be mad at for long.

Now that I am back at work, I declare round four of chemo to be over, despite some residual leg pain. Speaking of leg pain, it is caused by the evil Neulasta and its tendency to cause white blood cell production. Before each dose of chemo, my white blood cell count, along with sixty-two other things, is tested. Since I have had a good count each time, Matt asked if it would be possible for me to get a lower dose of Neulasta, and hopefully a corresponding decrease in pain. Dr. Oncologist thought it was a good idea, and I received a mere 4mg instead of the standard 6mg.

For all the usual reasons, I don't really remember the exact timeline. According to Matt, I exhibited fewer signs of pain than normal. In fact, for the first day, I didn't require my happy pills. However, with less pain comes a greater realization of nausea. In other words, I experienced prolonged, acute nausea. And by acute, I mean barfing all over the floor because I wasn't able to get out of bed with any speed.

Of course, Matt had an out of town interview during the middle of this disaster, leaving me alone with Mom to defend me from the puke. Unfortunately, just taking pills was enough to make me barf, which is a particularly annoying problem when you are trying to take anti-nausea pills. Let's just say Mom had to call Matt, the doler of medicine, quite a few times.

Apparently she wasn't destined to get more than one consecutive hour of sleep as I woke up screaming due to a particularly bad nightmare that night. I vaguely remember crying and apologizing, and Mom saying something about it not being my fault and I didn't do it on purpose.

The nausea seemed to last forever, also known as way longer than on any previous occasion. And after it finally went away, it came back. Just to make me miserable. Yesterday I planned on going to work, but I decided to back to bed and try not to barf instead. Not fun.

I'm not sure what will dose I'll receive for round five, but I'm not looking forward to it regardless.

Along with every other birthday this year, I completely missed Zero's. At least he was also completely unaware that we were supposed to be celebrating, so he didn't complain audibly about the lack of hamburgers. And he certainly didn't complain when we remedied the situation today with a trip to In-n-Out.

Zero inhaled a double with his usual lack of chewing, then assumed his GIVE ME MORE FRIES YOU HUMANS assault. Unable to resist, Matt and I alternated fry feeding duty. Then Matt decided to try an experiment. Fry? CHOMP. Fry? CHOMP. Fry with ketchup? CHO-what? The mutt actually paused, teeth about to close around the fry, then backed away to sniff. And then he didn't eat the fry!

The next fry did not have ketchup, which Zero paused to confirm. At least he is still willing to eat French fries. And eat he did, until he was fully sated.

We briefly considered evicting Zero from the family due his ketchup aversion, but my mom pointed out that I wasn't put up for adoption after admitting to not liking chocolate. A valid, if not inconvenient, point. I guess he can stay.

I have been using livejournal since forever. In fact, my old username, sbp2001, was created back in the days when livejournal required a form of payment in order to create an account. However, livejournal has stagnated over the years and I am thoroughly sick of it. For the record, my main complaints are:

• The incredibly annoying full-page video ads that fail to load and like to crash browsers. I don't mind tactful advertising, especially for a free service, but this is beyond painful.
• Absolutely no improvement in image posting. The integration with photobucket from years ago looked like it was going to be awesome, but then they never went anywhere with it.
• Only just now is there a usable method of posting from my phone, but forget about posting pictures without serious pain.

Both of my parents arrived today. Daddy will only be here through Monday, while Mom will be staying through the end of next week, as it's her turn to play nursemaid. As nice as it to see various family members, I can't help but notice that lately, every time one of them arrives, I promptly fall quite ill and remain miserable and in pain for the next week and a half. There is only one logical conclusion: they are the cause of all my ailments.

As a side note, today I am exactly halfway through the six rounds of agony, not including the year of Herceptin I am doomed to endure.

As another side note, my hair has already started growing back, though there wasn't enough time for much progress. However, during round three, the little stubs of hair that remained after Mr. Wigmaker was done practically rained down from my head. A million tiny little hairs dripping down my shirt, each one a giant itch. Not wanting to endure such itchiness while unable to move, I recruited Matt to shave my head. As happy as I was to have my hair returning, I had to admit that it was transitory. And so it was duly removed.

The chemotherapy and myriad of secondary drugs like to wreck havoc on my physical and mental facilities. Aside from a loss of stamina, the physical problems are mostly gone at this point, eighteen days after the last dose. The mental problems, well, those just get worse. I'm constantly having problems remembering things, such as the names of coworkers and conversations that just took place. Then there are the events that I clearly remember, but never occurred. Thankfully, the people around me are very understanding, yet I still often feel embarrassed.

On top of the memory problems, I'm the proud recipient of hallucinations. Aside from the pedestrian auditory and visual varieties, I also experience vertigo and other movements that clearly couldn't be happening. My favorite, so far, was the time I was convinced that I was rotating about my z-axis. The only problem was that I was lying on the couch, too scared to move.

Then there are the nightmares. Under normal circumstances, I rarely have nightmares, or at least I don't remember them. Lately, my brain has been chock full of the stupid things. I can't always recall what they were about, but I do remember the terror.

Last night, while I was lying in bed, everything started shaking. I looked over at Zero, who was calming staring at me from his bed. His normal response to an earthquake is to run away and hide. Then Matt yelled to find out if I was okay. I asked if there was an earthquake, which he confirmed. Okay then, back to Star Trek and falling asleep.

This morning, I woke up wondering if I imagined the whole thing. Zero never fails to panic when presented with an opportunity, not to mention my recent pile of delusions, so thinking the earthquake was a figment of my imagination, or perhaps just a plain old nightmare, was perfectly logical. But Matt confirmed that it was real. Needing a new conclusion, I determined that the universe is conspiring to rid me of my remaining sanity by further blurring the line between real and fantasy.