Timothy Birdnow

I had a STRANGE day yesterday.

In the morning I had to take my wife to the retina specialist. She has a number of issues that require watching and and I had to get her to St. Louis University hospital in the morning.

This was largely uneventful, and I dropped her at home and went to drop off my taxes at the post-office and then went to Southwest Market to get us a couple of deli sandwiches. (Southwest is terrific; an old Italian deli with super service and big sandiches piled high with mean.)  I wanted Cathy to have a nice lunch since she had kind of a rough morning.

So I bring home the sandwiches and we stick in the movie Mr. Bean's Holiday. After eating I went to take my mid-day medication.

But somehow the pill bottles got mixed around.

Since I had to switch to Walgreens I've had trouble; the bottles are poorly printed and it's tough to read them. I took two of what I thought was another medication but turned out to be Farxiga. I had already taken the maximum daily allowable dosage that morning.

Uhg.  I went online and couldn't find out if I needed to go to the hospital or not, so I called my doctor's office and spoke with a nurse. She thought I'd be o.k. as long as my blood sugar didn't rise too high or drop too low; in both instances I was going to be in trouble, she said.

She also had me call poison control. They were wonderful, and the woman there told me I would probably be o.k. She called back after an hour to make sure I was doing well; I really thought that was nice.

At any rate I survived my overdosing.  But I had to skip an afternoon nap lest I suddenly bottom out and go into a coma. And I had to drinka  lot of extra water to avoid dehydration; Farxiga dries you out, a condition normally desirable for me as I like my water and am always retaining it. Makes breathing tough sometimes.

So I spent the afternoon trying to stay awake and drinking water and checking my blood sugar.

Oddly enough, my blood sugar rose - quite high. That is, apparently, a possible side effect of the overdose. The liver thinks it's in trouble and dumps sugar into the bloodstream. But it never got to really dangerous levels so I was fine.

And then came the mice.

Now, I had a mouse problem last year, and had pretty much resolved it. I had a long period with zero activity and was under the impression I had won the war. Then about a month or so ago I was in the basement doing laundry and saw a beam of light coming from the wall next to the basement door. The little love children had tunneled right through the cement holding the limestone blocks in place!  And it was a BIG hole, big enough to fit my whole hand through!  Rats could have gotten in through it. (I know they didn't or I wouldn't be having a mouse problem; rats hate mice and kill them when they find them.) So I plugged the hole and hoped that was the end of it.

It wasn't; I'd been catching mice since. But last night they went bananas. I guess the sudden onset of cold weather after the warm spring temperatures stirred 'em up. Suddenly my traps were going off everywhere. I must have about three pounds of mouse meat in the trash can in back!  It was SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!  all night long! 

But the worst was that a mouse or two decided to colonize the piano. Every outbreak of mice has seen some of them do that. They get inside the piano and scratch, scratch, scratch, hollowing the piano out. I sweep up "pencil shavings" in large numbers as these little monsters whittle down the piano to sawdust!

I don't blame them; the piano is a veritable fortress from their perspecitve, a wonderful place to live.

I always keep a bowl of poison by the piano, as well as mulitiple glue traps and snap traps. That is the citadel. I guard that with everything.

Not that it has helped much; a bunch of the keys are dead since they chewed through the wires, and they also urinated on the keys so theya re all stained brown. It breaks my heart; they destroyed the piano, which belonged to my wife's mother and was a family heirloom. Oh, and it gave Cathy joy to play it (at least when I wasn't home; she was always shy about her piano playing.)

So anyway I had one in there hard at work last night, and I did the things I could; moved the piano out, shook it repeatedly, whacked it with a broom-handle, and pulled the keyboard cover out andin repeatedly. The little monster would stop just long enough for me to go sit down then resume his evil labors.

This went on for a couple of hours. So I sat in my chair, checking my blood sugar, drinking water, and popped up every few minutes to shake the piano.

Good times!

Eventually the little monster tired and quit. Maybe he ate some of the poison I thoughtfully provided for him and went to meet his maker. (Actually, as bad as this one was I suspect he went to meet that other fellow.)  I hope so; I don't want another night of piano-shaking. It's exhausting.

At any rate I stayed up until midnight, dozing in my chair between piano shakes. Finally went to bed about midnight.

Now, Farxiga is known to give bad dreams, and I started having night terrors again, something that has not plagued me since I was a child. I know it's the drug. I didn't have a night terror or a nightmare last night, but a most unusual dream, certainly.

I was in a country valley with some people who were obviously moonshiners. A middle aged man and some twenty-somethings were there. I didn't know them but they were friendly with me and seemed to know me. At any rate, there was a police raid and my friends took to the hills - literally, climbing up the hill to the top of the ridge to flee in the opposite direction. I went with them.

The other side was a big valley that was largely grassland with a quarry in it. We began going down and saw cops stopping people on the road ahead. Switched direction and began walking down the gravel quarry road. The road kept getting narrower and narrower and eventually it was just a small ledge a couple of inches across. We were hanging on the edge of a cliff, a very crumbly edge. I realized there was no way to got off this.

At that moment one policeman arrived. It was Sean Hayes, the actir from the old t.v. show Will and Grace, who apparently moonlighted as a police officer raiding moonshiners. I appealed to him to get me out of the predicament I was in. He told me he would - but only provided I sing a Stevie Wonder song. My mind went blank; I couldn't think of a single Stevie Wonder song. He told me that until I sang one we were going to stay right where we were!

At that moment a mousetrap snapped and woke me from my musical predicament.

Don't ask me; I haven't the foggiest idea of what spurred so bizarre a dream.

At any rate it was a fitting end to a rather strange day. I was glad to wake up this morning. They told me that I would be fine by the end of last night, so hopefully things will get back to normal.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:02 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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