Prepoceros

Had a crummy night last night and got maybe five or six hours of sleep in small chunks. Woke up at 6:45 . . . and 6:52 . . . and 6:59 . . . and 7:31. Crap. Left at 7:58, 6 hours of school, 2 of LSAT prep, 3.5 of teaching, got home at 10:14 PM. I suddenly feel nauseous for no apparent reason. Yes, I ate. No, I’m not pregnant, but thanks for asking.

Homework? Ha! I’m going to bed. Unless I collapse onto the floor halfway down the hall.

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P.S. The fleas? They live in my mfing carpet. The drops and pills are great for Sam, but they don’t do a damn thing about the carpet. I’m calling the vet tomorrow—perhaps they would like some more of my money. Goshdarn fleas, leave us alone.

Summer semester starts tomorrow, and I’m expecting it to be horribly boring. I know that’s a bad attitude to have before classes have even started, but seriously. I’m taking three core classes: US/TX Government 1 & 2 and US History after 1877.

Everyone in the school must take these specific classes to graduate, so they can’t be very challenging. They’re just low, tedious hurdles I’ll have to jump before UH will give me a degree. Blah.

The “fun” part is that for the next five weeks I’ll have class from 8:00–2:00 MTWR. Which means I’ll have to leave the apartment around 7:15. Which is NOT AT ALL a reasonable time. I can’t believe I survived four years of getting up at 6:00 every morning in high school. No wonder I was always the weird girl stretched out asleep in front of the lockers.

I saw on the PostSecret blog today that FOUND Magazine and PostSecret are coming to Houston in a couple weeks. Eeeee! I’m not sure what sorts of things they’d do at a live event, but whatever it is, I’m there—I adore both sites.

The crummy part is that they’re only here for one night, and of course it would have to be a night that I’m teaching. Frustration.

If I let my class out half an hour early (the class runs 3.5 hours, and this will be the last session, so it’s not inconceivable), I could probably make it across town in time to catch the 10:00 show. Hmmm.

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P.S. Zero fleas today!

These last couple days I’ve actually gotten my ass out of the apartment and DONE THINGS that (1) require shoes and (2) involve seeing and interacting with other real live human beings IN PERSON*. It’s been great fun, but boy howdy, am I exhausted.

Infestation update: We never went back to Petsmart. I called the vet’s office, and her assistant told me the flea stuff I bought at the store was total crap, so I threw that away and emptied my pockets for the expensive prescription meds.

I put the drops on him a week or so ago, and the next morning I woke up to find dead fleas ALL OVER the bed. Good because they’re dead, bad because they’re FLEAS and they’re ON MY BED. Sam sleeps in his doggie bed in the living room now. I thought he’d be pissed when I locked him out, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much. Whatever, dog. I didn’t want your stinky butt in my face anyway.

The fleas never disappeared completely, though their numbers dropped dramatically and the ones that hung on were moving pretty slowly. Each morning we did a ‘flea count.’ The count bottomed out at three** before starting to climb back up a couple days ago, so this afternoon I gave him one of the super flea-bomb pills from the vet. Not sure how that works—the guy said something about it coming out through his skin.

Hopefully the combination of drops, pill, and no-sleeping-on-the-bed will banish those nasty critters for good. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I’m off to bed.

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* It’s been pretty pathetic, y’all. I’ve spent most of my summer so far talking to myself, my dog, the friendly Sonic carhops, and the people who live in my computer.

** A marked improvement over ‘uncountably many.’ Aleph-1, for all you math-types out there.

I rarely comment on politics or current events here because I know relatively little about either*, but this is too precious to pass up. Have you heard about this already? I know it’s a day or two old. . .

Tom DeLay’s defense team has sent out a “fact sheet” railing at the new Michael Moore-style documentary The Big Buy, which tells the story of DeLay’s “purchase” of his seat in Congress. To support their position, DeLay’s defenders enthusiastically point to the fact that STEPHEN COLBERT is on their side.

In fact, they’re so excited about their new champion that they’re currently hosting a clip from the Colbert Report at the top of the Defend Delay website. Eeeeeexcellent.

With geniuses like these running his legal defense fund, how can he lose?

I drive past DeLay’s office** twice a week on my way to teach in Clear Lake, and I always think I should stop and take a picture of the sign. Surely they’ll take it down soon. I’m surprised some joker hasn’t already absconded with it—it would make a nice souvenir.

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* Both? I would say “I know nothing about either” and “I know a lot about both,” but little seems to fall somewhere in between.

** One of his offices? I vaguely remember seeing another sign pointing to his office in a completely different part of town.

His name is Samson, but I only use his full name when he’s in trouble. The rest of the time he usually goes by Sammy, Baby, or Punky.

But on occasion I just make shit up, as you can see in the following list. I’ve tried out a bunch of different nicknames, and these are the ones that have stuck so far.

You may notice that many of them make reference to poo. I blame my mother, whose favorite term of endearment is drolletje (sp?), which means “little pile of poo,” or, more whimsically translated, “turdlet.” Apparently Dutch folks think it’s perfectly normal, even adorable, to go around calling their kids poo-piles.

I’m not going to make this a numbered list because (1) it takes up a stupid amount of space on the page and (2) it requires extra effort. I promise there are really thirty-seven:

Samson, Sam, Sammy, Sammy-son, Sammy-Sam, Sam-Sam, Puppy, Puppydog, Puppy-wuppy, Puppers, Pupperkins, Pup-pup, Pooper, Poopy, Poopsie, Poopydog, Poopybutt, Pumpkin, Punkin, Punky, Pookie, Baby, Bebe (bay-bay), Booboo, Babycakes, Sweetie, Sweetheart, Sweetie-pie, Sweetie-puppy, Shnookums, Munchkin, Honeybuns, Hun-bun, Wuvvy-dovey, (like lovey-dovey, but without the ‘l’), Pookum-pie, Bubbles, Fleabag

And to think, for a while I was tempted to name him Hammurabi. Ok, I guess that wouldn’t have been too different: Hammy, Ham-rab, Ham-ham.

Last night I dreamed that I was going to grad school on the side of Mount St. Helens. The school was holding a spelling bee, and I just barely made it into the televised rounds (I turned my registration form in late, go figure).

This was an “adult” spelling bee, so the format was different. Two contestants went head to head. The moderator (my high-school college counselor—no, I don’t know why) would read a sentence out loud, and the first player to spell the whole sentence correctly would win the round. We were allowed scratch paper, but she would only read it once, though, so you had to write fast.

In some of the earlier rounds, I saw that most of the sentences were written on the Sonic across the street. They’re making this too easy! But no one else seemed to notice.

When my turn came, I gave it my best shot but was out almost immediately. Apparently a “quizzling” is a type of whale harpoon, and it’s spelled with two z’s. Who knew?

We’ve been having a bit of a flea problem lately, and when I say “we” I mean that Sam has been getting bitten, and I’ve been trying in vain to exterminate the nasty critters by various chemical and mechanical* means.

First we tried flea drops, the kind where you break open the little tube and squeeze it down the dog’s back. We’ve used that since Sam came home six months ago, but apparently the fleas have decided they don’t give a shit about drops any more.

Then we got some hippie “natural” chemical spray. Now, this potion *does* kill fleas, but only if it covers them. As far as I can tell, this is the same way that water kills fleas, so it’s a good thing this crap was only five bucks more expensive than a bottle of Ozarka.

At this point Sammy was getting muddy in addition to being flea-bitten and chemical-soaked, so we threw him in the bath. More fleas than I could count “jumped ship” in a shocking display of grossness, but as soon as he hopped out and dried off, their vile progeny crawled out of the carpet and hopped right back on board.

Next we went for a spray that was a little more expensive, i.e., one with actual flea poison in it. The bottle was emblazoned with all-caps warnings that it shouldn’t be used within 30 days of another flea treatment, and that it was a violation of FEDERAL LAW to use this product in a manner discouraged by said warnings, but I figured if the drops and the hippie spray hadn’t even killed the fleas, they probably hadn’t done much to Sam, either. All the same, I kept the label in case he got sick and I had to call the vet.

Of course he didn’t, and neither did the fleas. I drenched the poor puppy with that spray (he HATED it), and the fleas disappeared for maybe 12 hours or so before coming back in full force. Repels fleas and ticks for 30 days, my ass.

(I should mention that in the meantime I’d also been spraying the couch, bed, carpet, etc. with both sorts of sprays. Didn’t help.)

So today we finally went to Petsmart for a flea dip and a haircut. Again, I felt a little guilty checking the box that said “I solemnly swear my dog has received no flea treatments in the past thirty days,” when really he’s had at least two in the last week. But there’s a doggie hospital in Petsmart, like, NEXT DOOR to the grooming place, so he’ll be ok, right? Bottom line, I’m not waiting four more weeks to get rid of these dang fleas.

While Sam was at bathcamp I washed all my bedsheets, blankets, clothes—everything that would fit in the washing machine—picked most of the crap up off the floor, took out the trash, and sprayed the carpet, walls, and everything squishy with the hippie spray AND the poison spray. (I’m surprised we’re both still breathing, honestly.) Those little shits had nowhere to hide.

Yay! Problem solved, right?

Half an hour after we got home, Sam rolled over to ask for a belly rub, and I’ll eat my own foot if there weren’t a dozen motherfucking fleas wriggling their nasty little selves all over his tummy. Aw helllllllll no.

There was lots of foul language (some of which has spilled over into this post, sorry), lots of pinching those mofos to death one by one, and lots of spraying like a madwoman (not on Sammy this time—I really am a little worried about all the poison).

He’s not scratching at the moment, but if he’s still got creepy-crawlies on him tomorrow, I’m calling Petsmart to tell them their flea dip is poo. And then . . . I don’t know. I thought a professional flea treatment would be the nuclear option here, but apparently not so much.

What comes next? Shampoo the carpet? Call the vet? Move to Alaska?

[UPDATE: I called Petsmart, and they’re retreating him today for free. Keep your fingers crossed for us.]

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* Dozens of fleas have personally felt my Fingernails of Death. Totally gross.

It’s not even midnight yet, but as soon as I finish this post I’m going to bed. You have no idea how remarkable this is—scroll down to the bottom of the page and watch the timestamps as you scroll back up to get an idea of how ridiculous my sleep schedule has been over the last two weeks or so. If I keep this up, someday soon I might even be back to (gasp!) blogging DURING THE DAY.

Now, if I could only get myself to do something productive with all the morning-time I’m no longer spending asleep (cleaning the apartment or paying bills, say, instead of sitting around in my pajamas reading blogs and watching videos), that would be “Progress!”

Knocked out another book today, bringing my total so far this year to an impressive THREE.

I’d offer commentary, but I woke up mysteriously at 9:21 this morning (having gone to bed at 2:30) and am consequently very, very sleepy.