Barium Swallow Test Results; New Crohn’s Medications; College Rejection Letter; Track

34 Replies

The barium swallow test, referred to here and here, didn’t give a clear reason for the symptoms I’m having, so in a couple of weeks I will be writing a post called What It’s Like to Have an Endoscopy. Edward has had one, and he was unconscious for it and woke up feeling happy; I have hopes for same.

Speaking of Edward, we are indeed changing his Crohn’s medications. His new one has to be given by IV, and it takes several hours each time. This makes me feel leveled-up anxiety about the whole medication, that it is administered like this. It makes me think of cancer treatments. I am trying to focus instead on how this hospital is just LOADED with Pokéstops. When I was waiting for him during his MRI, there were two within reach of the waiting room. I will hope that that is the case for wherever we’ll be sitting during the IV. Also, he is going to LOVE this new treatment: each time, he’ll have to miss a whole day of school and play on a phone for several hours, and we’ll probably end up going out for lunch.

Rob got a rejection letter from one of his top two college choices. He seems to be handling it okay: of his top two, it was definitely second choice. But I worry that this doesn’t bode well for the other top-choice college. For ME, I am not worried: he has acceptances to several other colleges that I think might actually be better choices for him than his top choice. But for HIM, I’m worried he’ll be very disappointed. At his age I hadn’t yet gotten the message about how sometimes things you want don’t work out and that ends up being BETTER in the long run.

Elizabeth is trying to decide whether or not to do track. For many reasons, I would rather she didn’t: it is incredibly time-consuming, not just for her but for me, and involves tons of figuring out how I am going to drive her here or there when I also need to be somewhere else with one of the other kids at the same time—not to mention sitting around at endless track meets. And there are other reasons I hope she DOES do it: my kids never want to do sports, and that sometimes gives me a low, humming anxiety about their normality and/or my parenting. Plus, what if she loves it? It’s so fun when a kid finds something they love. And with track, it could mean a life-long running hobby. But I CANNOT BELIEVE how much time a sport takes up and how much parental involvement is expected. And she can’t even run a mile at this point, while the other kids trying out for track have been doing other sports and can run three miles while still breathing casually through their noses. But she’d shape up quickly with the INCREDIBLY HUGE NUMBER OF PRACTICES. And better to join NOW in 6th grade, when there are probably other kids new to it as well. And if she doesn’t like it, it’s only a few months. Buuuuut…she’s only been to three pre-season practices and is already saying she’s getting pretty tired of them, and that seems like a bad sign.

I don’t know what she should do, and I am trying not to influence her one way or the other because I really don’t KNOW, but I suspect my conflicting preferences for her to both DO it and NOT do it exude from me like a clinging mist, making the decision even harder. At this point I guess I hope she DOES do it, since “wondering if I discouraged her from doing something she wanted to do / should have done” would feel worse than “wondering how we are going to fit this COLOSSAL INCONVENIENCE AND TIME-SUCK into our lives.”

A Return to the Joy of Salads

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Nearly spring, when a no-longer-young-per-se woman’s thoughts turn to salads!

I had FORGOTTEN about salads. Literally forgotten. I think it was because last spring I was working: when I’m working, I like meals that are fast and portable. When I am instead staying closer to home base, what I like are meals that take an entire episode of The Good Wife to eat. For breakfast, I like vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, corn, and red bell pepper) mixed with scrambled egg, sriracha, and cheese: I make a nice big plateful, and it’s delicious, and it takes forever to eat. For lunch, though, I was stymied. UNTIL I REMEMBERED SALADS.

I had to look in my archives to remember how to make them. I was standing there at the fridge, thinking “Okay: spinach, dressing, and…I forget.” Thank goodness for archives:

1. the salad-toppings post from the start of my last salad kick, with a comments section that makes me so happy about blogs

2. a salad I make with kielbasa and banana peppers, a post I transferred over from the old blog platform and so now it clearly needs some tweaking but then I’d have to tweak alllll the old posts and I can’t imagine I’ll get to that anytime soon

3. a salad made with shredded bbq chicken, tomatoes, corn, cheese, carrots, sunflower seeds

4. a salad made with buffalo-chicken nuggets, couscous, tomatoes, cheese, carrots, sunflower seeds

5. cheeseburger salad, made with a hamburger, cheese, tomatoes, dill pickles, bacon bits, and crushed-up Doritos

 

Today I had the one made with buffalo-chicken nuggets (#4), minus the couscous, plus some cut-up apple and slivered almonds, and then I ate the rest of the apple on the side. I feel so pleasantly full! It took so pleasantly long to eat!

I think my biggest hurdle with salads is thinking of them as Sad Diet Food. My mental picture of a salad involves someone eating one sullenly as everyone around them has cheeseburgers and fries. It takes effort to think of them as they really are: Giant Bowls of Things I Like to Eat. It can be a cheeseburger-and-fries SALAD.

Interactive Cat Feeders

35 Replies

Elizabeth and I attended a little seminar at the animal shelter about keeping indoor cats happy and active. Today I may or may not be considering buying FOOD PUZZLES for our cats. To satisfy their hunting/predator instincts and reduce their domestic ennui. (Do they make similar devices to reduce domestic ennui in at-home parents? “Not that I’m aware of,” says the animal-shelter employee. “Wine!,” whispers the middle-aged female attendee next to me. We snort. “MOM,” says Elizabeth.)

(image from Amazon.com)

Northmate Catch Interactive Feeder. This is one of the cheaper options, which puts it higher on my list. I am still cranky about the $45 cat watering fountain that the cats loved but was a TERRIBLE PAIN to clean.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Catit Senses 2.0 Food Tree. “I’m particularly drawn to this one,” I said to Elizabeth later, looking at options online after the seminar. “That’s because they used this picture in the PowerPoint,” said Elizabeth.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Trixie Tunnel Feeder. Why am I doing this to you, you wonder. And yet you have not looked away.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Catit Senses 2.0 Digger. This one gives them the sensation of digging for rodents, which makes them happy. Nature is kind of gross.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Trixie 5-in-1 Activity Center. This reminds me of shopping for baby toys: special features to stimulate their little brains. Oh god. Is this my life now? *brief feeling of panic and distress* *soothing automatic psychological self-defense mechanisms kick in* *goes back to shopping for cat feeders*

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Pyrus Hide-and-Seek Puzzle Toy. I am virtually certain my cats are too stupid for this toy. It’s not their fault! They’re perfect the way they are! But too stupid for this toy.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Profcenter IQ Toy. I believe the ferret could figure this out. I have faith in that dog, even though he does not appear to be a particularly bright representative of his species. I’d be willing to give the green checkmark a shot, just to see what it can do. But not my cats, unless all there is to this toy is moving the intelligent-looking circles out of the way so they can eat the food underneath. Then maybe.

What It’s Like to Do a Barium Swallow Test

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First I would like to complain to you that when I went to my barium swallow test, I forgot my cell phone at home. This meant two things:

1. I could not see if there were any Pokéstops at the hospital.

2. I could not proceed with my original plan, which was to stay in the city after the test and go over to the mall and have lunch and browse Target and maybe get a few Pokéstops. (Without my cell phone, I fret about the statistically-small chance that the school will call about a sick kid or something. Also, without my phone I can’t get the Pokéstops.)

On to the test itself. I was partly worried about how long it would take: when Edward gets his MRI, we are at the hospital for hours and hours and hours; last time it was five-and-a-half hours. Part of it is the time the actual prep and test take, but part of it is that hospitals seem to be in a different dimension of time and space, and the hours pass without any particular concern for their passing. And of course sometimes at a hospital there are emergencies that mean routine appointments get bumped, as well they should.

Anyway, when the lady from the scheduling department called to set up my appointment, I asked her how long the whole thing would take, and she said, “Oh, 15-20 minutes.” I thought, “AH HA HA HA HA HA okay, fine, DON’T tell me if you don’t want to!” But from the moment I walked into the hospital (half an hour fretfully early) to the moment I walked out again was 45 minutes total. The time from “changed into johnny and waiting for doctor” to “changing out of johnny” was less than 15 minutes. Most of the time was spent in waiting rooms, because I was half an hour early. So it was not very long between thinking “Soon I will be one of these carefree individuals on their way OUT of this waiting room” to being in fact one of those carefree individuals.

Let’s rewind to where I am walking into the hospital. I’d been told not to eat or drink anything after 10:00 the night before, so I was feeling a bit grim: first Monday of Daylight Saving Time AND no coffee. I’d been told to go straight to Diagnostic Imaging, and so I did. There they checked me in and gave me a hospital bracelet, and instructed me to walk over to X-ray.

At X-ray, they had me undress just from the waist up, and put on two johnnies: one opening in the back and a second one opening in the front. (I didn’t have to remove those johnnies at any point during the exam.) All my stuff went into a little locker. A technician brought me into the x-ray room and showed me basically how things would go: she stood where I’d be standing and described the various things the doctor would ask me to do. She showed me a barium tablet that the doctor would have me swallow to see how a pill went down. I asked if most people did fine with the whole thing and she said, “Oh, yes!” and that hardly anyone had trouble—it was just a bit icky to have to drink the drink, she said. She also told me that “it goes in white, and it comes out white—so don’t be alarmed later!”

The doctor came in and had me stand up on a little step, standing in front of what turned out to be an x-ray table turned up on its end. He moved a machine in front of me, so I was sort of snugged into a little nook. He handed me a plastic cup of the barium and told me to get ready to drink it but not drink it yet. Then he had me turn partly to one side and then partly to the other, each time drinking the barium until he said to stop—maybe 7 or 8 seconds each time? Then I had to face forward and drink again. Then he had me swallow the barium tablet and drink again.

I didn’t find the barium particularly gross, but it helped to go into it EXPECTING it to be fairly gross. It was very bland, and tasted faintly like strawberries. It was about the thickness of…well, the technician said milkshake, but milkshakes are such a different TYPE of thickness: cold and crystally and melty. It reminded me more of yogurt thinned with milk (but with no yogurt flavor). I tried to pretend it WAS yogurt, to help me drink it.

The doctor had me turn to my side, and then he lowered the table, which was how I came to realize it was an x-ray table on-end. (The technician had not mentioned this part.) It was an odd sensation: like you’re standing against a wall, and then the wall just lies down and takes you with it. The technician gave me a pillow. The doctor had me drink more barium, through a straw this time, while lying on my side. This was the worst part for me: something about lying on my side, plus this was my second full cup of the barium. (They weren’t forcing me to drink that much: that was just how much I was naturally going through during the swallowing tests. Possibly I was drinking it too fast—but I wasn’t gulping it down or anything.) In the last few seconds, I gagged—but just once, and then the test was done anyway. I continued pretending it was a nice nutritious smoothie and not at all making me queasy—but I did feel slightly queasy. I think it was more mental than physical.

The doctor left, and the technician brought me back to the changing area—and then it was done. I stopped on the way home and got a large coffee and a sausage-egg-and-cheese bagel sandwich, and felt so much better. The sweet, sweet relief of coffee is well worth the occasional pain of being a little dependent on it.

Overall, I would say that most of the fretting could be assigned to the Newness, as opposed to the actual procedure. If I had to do the same test again, I would be only very mildly anxious about it: maybe a 1 or 2 on a scale of 10, and most of that would be the nervousness that comes from not being sure I’m following directions correctly, combined with worrying about what they’ll find. LESS anxious than, say, a routine physical where I have to step on a scale, take off the johnny, talk about exercise and alcohol, discuss how many years I have left before they start suggesting colonoscopies, etc.

Barium Swallow; School Dance; Daylight Saving Time Printout

27 Replies

I had two letters to write today, and I have written them. I love that moment when they are in the mailbox and out of my hands.

I have been having some weird trouble with tightness in my throat and a light cough. It started in November and felt like symptoms of anxiety, so naturally I thought it was president-related—but it finally persisted to the point where I was having trouble swallowing pills, and I started to imagine being asked later why I hadn’t gone to the doctor, so I went to the doctor. Now I have to have a barium swallow test on Monday. The only thing I know about a barium swallow test is that when Edward was drinking the icky stuff he has to drink before an MRI, the technician said, “Just be glad it’s not barium—that stuff is so much worse!”

Elizabeth is going to a school dance soon, and has been practicing putting glitter on her face and hair. She has also been mentioning a particular boy Quite Often. Very casually—but his name comes up multiple times per day. This is a pretty fun stage.

It’s Daylight Saving Time this weekend, so if you need The Printout that Prevents One Million Discussions of the “Wait, So Normally Right Now it Would Be SEVEN O’Clock…No, FIVE O’Clock…Wait…” variety, it is here: Spring Ahead Printout.

Recent Purchases: Dining Room Curtains, Skirt of Abundant Glitter, More Embroidered Jeans

26 Replies

Recent purchases I wish to discuss:

1. Curtains for the dining room! We converted the porch to a dining room….ten years ago? Or so? And I have never bought curtains, because I couldn’t decide or even really narrow it down. Recently the needing-curtains issue has come to the forefront of our attention, and I have spent quite a bit of time looking at curtains online and in stores and wondering how, HOW, does anyone ever choose? And then not buying anything.

Today at Target there were four curtain panels on the endcap, marked down because they were purchased online and then returned to the store. They happened to be one of the many curtains I had considered online but been unsure of because it’s hard to tell about colors/fabrics online. And they seemed good, I was in a good Buying Mood, so I bought them. And I had William hold one up to the window, and he and I agreed they were good! And so I waited for Paul to come home, in case he wanted to veto them, and he did not want to veto them. And then it was down to the final issue: would I be able to find them on the Target website and order two more panels? And yes! With some struggles (Were they listed on the site by the brand name on the package? No! Did the package contain any other identifying information? No!), I WAS able to find them and order two more, AND they were on sale! Here they are:

(image from Target.com)

Closer shot:

(image from Target.com)

They are basically grey plus a weird greenish yellow. I love a good weird greenish yellow. Online, I was uncertain if it was the kind of greenish yellow I like, but it is indeed within that range. I was also worried the curtains would be too busy, but they are not. My dining room is painted Sea Salt (that post about paint colors was written when it was Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin and we didn’t yet know we’d get Obama), and the wall-art in the room works really well I think with the colors of the curtains. I am pleased.

 

2. A Cat & Jack skirt for Elizabeth. It’s black with gold sparkles. I bought it on clearance, without noticing that it was supposed to be hand-washed in cold water. As if I am going to hand-wash ANYTHING, let alone a child’s garment, let alone in cold water. It went through the washer and dryer before I read the label. We now have gold glitter EVERYWHERE. I’ve run half a dozen loads of laundry since then but am still finding abundant gold glitter in the lint filter. There is gold glitter on the floors of both levels of the house. There is gold glitter stuck to many, many other pieces of clothing. This morning a child noted I had a single gold glitter piece on my cheek. If you walk barefoot in my house, no matter which rooms you walk in, you will have a sheen of gold on the soles of your feet. Please visit us for all your gold-glitter needs: it is the loaves-and-fishes of gold glitter around here.

 

3. More of those embroidered jeans I bought awhile back! When we last spoke on this topic, I’d ordered one pair, and then as soon as I tried them on I rushed to the website to immediately buy more—but since they were a clearance item AND I’d waited a couple of weeks between jeans-arriving and jeans-trying-on, they were sold out in my size. Working on nothing more than hope, I kept the product tab open on my desktop, and every day I checked just in case. I thought maybe someone would return some, or they’d find another box of them in the warehouse or something. And one day, one GLORIOUS day, they were suddenly in stock in my size. I immediately ordered two more pairs. I am so jeans-happy.

Catching Up

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I am so behind on the things I have wanted to write about.

I saw the movie Arrival. If you have not yet seen it, I will say this: I agree with everyone who said not to look into it or read anything about it, just see it cold.

Rob has had another college acceptance, and also a rejection. Maybe I already wrote about this? The rejection was from one of the schools lower on his list, which seems like a very good way to get the first rejection. I can picture THINKING you are prepared for rejection, and then finding upon receipt of actual rejection that you ARE NOT IN FACT PREPARED. We are still waiting to hear from his top two choices, and both of those colleges have low acceptance rates, so this was a good rehearsal. …I feel as if I already wrote all of this. Possibly I did, or perhaps there is a draft somewhere?

Rob has a new job that means he misses dinner five days a week. I am distressed by this. Sometimes I can save him a plate for later, but sometimes we are having something that doesn’t really re-heat, and/or something that gets eaten entirely by others if he is not here to eat his share. Sometimes he makes sandwiches, sometimes he heats something up; and now I have bought some frozen meals, frozen burritos, and cans of hearty soups. I have tried to interest him in learning to make scrambled eggs, fried eggs on toast, tuna-and-Triscuits, egg salad sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other things I consider staples of the Single Dinner, but he doesn’t like the foods that I like. Well. We will figure this out. And in approximately six months, it will not be an issue because he will LIVE AT COLLEGE.

I remember there was something I bought and wanted to recommend. What was it? This is the trouble with waiting. Well, I’ll think of it later.

I continue to be engrossed with political stuff. I decided my first half-hour of Twitter-reading per day had to take place while walking vigorously on the treadmill. This has: (1) decreased my Twitter-reading and (2) increased my treadmill usage and (3) decreased my adrenaline while reading. If you lean liberal and you are panicking, may I recommend skimming this book? It seemed to me to be one of those books where the entire point could have been made in one single article, so most of the book is devoted to giving long, thorough examples to back up the main point and create more pages. As soon as I understood the point and skimmed a couple of examples, I felt I’d extracted the vital essence.

I completely forgot to bring two of the kids to their dentist appointments. The appointments were on the calendar. The dentist office called the day before and reminded me. And then I…didn’t bring them. I realized it about half an hour after the second appointment would have been over. I was completely mortified. This sort of thing makes me feel as if I am losing my mind. The dentist’s office was very cool about it, but I found it very difficult to shake the mortified/horrified mood. Then I accidentally rescheduled one of the appointments for a day when we can’t make it, so I will have to call BACK and reschedule AGAIN.

Edward had his MRI. The worst part was getting him to drink the stuff he has to drink beforehand. This was his third MRI so I’d thought it would be easier to get him to drink it, but this was the hardest time yet. It was bad enough, I’m not even sure it would be possible to do it ever again. Even this time they were very uncertain they’d be able to do it, based on what a small amount of liquid I was able to persuade him to drink over TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS OF CONSTANT EXHAUSTING EFFORT. And then he threw it up. Upside: two Pokéstops within reach of the waiting room.

I have started taking online French lessons using a program available for free through our library. I feel as if almost ANY language would be more practical than French—but French is the only one that appeals to me. I took two years of it in high school and still like it. But I hate, hate, HATE the part where the program wants me to use the microphone to compare my pronunciation to theirs. Not only is it disheartening, but it’s difficult to use and I can’t figure out how to use the feedback to improve my pronunciation. It is enough to make me want to ditch the whole thing. So I think I will skip that part and pretend I don’t even HAVE a microphone. Who’s going to tell them otherwise? For all they know I DON’T have one!

Pillow Protector

33 Replies

I have outwitted one of my children. I am going to tell you how it went down.

Henry will not keep a pillowcase on his pillow. I have explained to him the reasons for pillowcases. I have reprimanded and scolded. I have monitored the situation and required him to put the pillowcase back on each time. But every time I check, the pillowcase is off the pillow and crumpled up on the floor. I had just about given up: I don’t want to add “Put Henry’s pillowcase back on” to my daily chores; nor does this feel like a hill to die on. But it BUGGED me.

Then I had a thought: wouldn’t it be great if there were ZIPPERED pillowcases? Because I think the main issue is that the pillowcase keeps getting scrunched up or halfway falling off the pillow, and then he gets frustrated and flings it.

I could not find zippered pillowcases, but I found THESE:

(image from Amazon.com)

pillow protectors, which are basically the same thing. Target had half a dozen different kinds, all with helpful little circles cut out of the plastic packaging so I could feel the material. The organic one felt the nicest and most like a regular pillowcase to me (the others felt a little more slippery). Naturally it was also the most expensive at $7+. But I was at the paying point, and so I bought one.

I laundered the new pillow protector, and I put it onto his pillow. It zips on, and the zipper is mostly tucked out of the way so it’s quite discreet. But did I leave it at that? Heck no: I then put the pillowcase back on OVER the pillow protector. Henry will take it off as usual, for whatever reason he does so. And then he will feel victorious. But I will be victorious! ME! Because his pillow will still have a case on it! A case I can remove and launder!

Tax Prep

57 Replies

I’ve been using tax-preparation software to do my taxes for years, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I want someone else to do it. Even with the software, I end up intensely frustrated: partly because I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do, and partly because the tax forms every citizen MUST fill out should not be so complicated that a college-educated citizen can’t figure out what to do EVEN WITH helpful guiding software. Plus, we got a follow-up question on our financial aid forms from a college Rob applied to, which brought to light that I may have failed to take a large deduction I could have taken last year and the two years previous.

Anyway, that brings us to now. Here are the two options I’m considering:

1. My friend has just this year made this same decision about having someone else handle it, and she got a recommendation for a local accountant who does tax preparation. My friend says this woman seems very nice and competent. Upside: the personal recommendation; I can picture getting to know her and having her get to know me, and having that make taxes easier. Downsides: her office is in a dark and slightly scary location; I don’t actually know anything more about her; one day she would retire and I would feel stressed starting over with someone new.

2. There’s an H&R Block near me. It says “walk-ins welcome.” Upsides: I can just walk in, I don’t have to make the scary call for an appointment; feels more anonymous; it’s a big company which makes me feel less like I have to personally check their credentials. Downsides: They’d care less about my business, I would guess, but maybe not, I don’t know.

But notice how many of these upsides and downsides are based on guessing. I don’t really know anything about this. I am hoping for input. ANY input: differences you’ve found in costs, differences you’ve found in quality, anything you know about the differences between hiring an accountant and going to H&R Block, and also between those two things and any third or fourth option I haven’t considered.

[By the way, we are having some trouble with posting comments and commenting. I have Paul looking into it, and he is figuring it out, but it is taking time and he still has to get in touch with the website…host…or whatever, and then they have to fix whatever the issue is on their end. So you may notice weirdness for awhile with: new posts not showing up; edits not showing up; comments not showing up; comment fields auto-filling with weird information. The only solution I have right now is to hard-refresh, which on my Mac is done by holding down shift and command and then pressing R.]

Owl

18 Replies

Last night we had a little drama involving an injured owl.

Paul noticed there were two cars pulled over on the road outside our house, and two people in the road who were guiding traffic. At first we thought they were protecting a large cat sitting in the road, but then the cat took brief shallow flight and we realized it was an owl.

Paul went out with a flashlight to see if he could be of any assistance, but one of the people was already on the phone to the police, and the police were contacting Animal Control. The other person kept gently approaching the owl so that it would gradually retreat into our driveway, and this was a successful idea. The children and I watched all of this from the window, rapt. Paul came back in and joined us. “If you’re wondering if you’re visible from out there: yes.”

Two police cars arrived, and two officers got out and joined the gathering. They shone their flashlights on the owl, which gave the window audience a nice view of it. Paul went back out. He came back in, saying the officers had asked if we had anything that would serve as a Temporary Owl Containment Device; everyone was a little worried the owl would suddenly fly back out into the road. I first offered the cat carrier, but looking from cat carrier to owl it was clear we needed something larger and more vertically-oriented, and ideally something that could be sneakily placed over the owl instead of requiring any of us to engage more personally with the wings and talons and beak. Rob found a big plastic bin, but it would have to have air holes put into it and we were trying for speed. Paul thought of using one of our laundry hampers, turned upside down; they look like this:

(image from Amazon.com)

This turned out to be just the thing: the owl had some vertical space and a little wiggle-room, and plenty of air, and could see out—but he could not fly into the road. We put an electric lantern on top, to make the whole thing more visible: we were a little worried that whoever was coming for the owl would try to pull into our driveway, or that someone else might pull into the driveway just to turn around or something.

One of the police officers left at this point, considering the scene secured. The two people who’d originally stopped to help also left. The remaining officer stood vigilant. At one point he crouched down to look at the owl, perhaps offering a comforting word.

You have to picture me weeping gently this ENTIRE TIME, with the children saying “MOM. MOM.” I was so touched by the whole thing. People stopping their cars to help, and then doing the best they could to direct traffic! The police, arriving on the scene! The existence of experts who could be called on a Sunday night to come out and take custody of an injured owl! All these citizens working together to help!

The guy from Animal Rescue arrived with a cat carrier that didn’t look much larger than ours, and then completely impressed me with his smooth and casual owl-handling. It was dark and I was at a distance, but it appeared to me that he lifted up the laundry hamper and extracted the owl in one smooth gentle movement, no flinch or fuss, despite the owl attempting to cling to the inside of the hamper. He held the owl up and examined it a bit with a flashlight, and felt its wings. Paul reported that the guy said there was no blood, and that the wings didn’t seem broken, so he didn’t think it was a serious injury.

This is the part that amazed me. Have you ever tried to get a cat into a cat carrier? It is no easy feat. But this guy got a WILD OWL into the cat carrier, and he did it in one easy swoop: one moment he was holding the carrier in one hand and the owl in the other, and the next moment the twain were one.

He said he would take the owl to an owl rehabilitation center nearby (fresh weeping at the idea of such establishments existing, and people working in them), and most likely bring the owl back to release it into the same neighborhood. He didn’t think it would be more than a few weeks.

We are HUGELY hoping that we will be aware in advance of this homecoming, and can see it happen, and can hear an update on what the injury was. But I am not counting on it. It seems more likely that the animal rescue guy would just show up sometime with no fuss, extracting the owl from the cat carrier in one easy swoop.