Bibliomama

 Lucy is doing really well. She's still mostly hopping around on three legs, and it's a little demoralizing to see her poor naked leg just hanging there. I keep looking at the posts on the Facebook group I joined to be reassured that sometimes it can take weeks for them to trust the leg again. We've started doing a daily walk around the block which she loves, and our new strange bargain seems to be that if I let her eat grass by the mailbox she will put the foot down and take a few steps. Sometimes she stops because she wants to go towards our longer route, which I understand but it's too soon. The good part about the standoff is that the longer she stands there the more likely she is to get tired of balancing on three legs, and she puts down the fourth. After I massage it and lift her up and set her on her feet she will put it down, but then hops away again. It's probably going to be a bit of a long haul, but we're moving in the right direction. Apparently the

 Lucy's surgery was on Wednesday, which was (counts on fingers) six days ago (probably seven by the time I get this posted). It was a TPLO (Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy) - when dogs rupture their ACL they don't repair the ligament, they shave a piece of bone from the tibia and flip it over to reconfigure the knee joint and put in an implant to stabilize everything. I think. Don't quote me.  We had debated whether we should wait for the surgery until Matt was back from Asia, but once we knew we were doing it I really just wanted to get it over with and start moving towards things getting better. I knew it was going to be grueling and I knew I wouldn't really have a right to complain since it was my decision. And I really love complaining, you guys.  In a lot of ways it's been better than I expected. My house is destroyed and my back and neck and hands are toast, and in some ways it's been like bringing home a newborn. But babies only have two legs that they

 Okay, Crisis One addressed and diverted: Eve did vocal rest and gargled an ocean's worth of salt water and drank hot honey water ("honey is not good and I want to know who is generating this worldwide deception that it is", and also "I had a whole thermos of warm water and I drank it all during rehearsal. I was still thirsty") and absolutely killed it in the musical. I sort of knew she was a lead, and that she could sing, but she had a big solo right before intermission and had the last line in the play and came out for the curtain call in the middle of the three leads and it was kind of insane and magical. She has two high school friends who are really good actors/singers and they would likely have had leads in the musical in grade twelve, but Covid, so the fact that this happened was just... I don't even have the word. The musical itself was bonkers and sometimes incomprehensible but a huge amount of fun. Every year, arts and science students write a musi

 There's a cluster of things that are making me feel a little doomy and unstable at the moment. Lucy hurt her leg and probably needs a super-expensive surgery. Or Lucy hurt her leg and we're being dumb doing the super-expensive surgery and should just try and wait-and-see approach. But then that might go not well and then we'll still need the super-expensive surgery and I will already have spent a few weeks lifting her up on the couch and having to restrict her movement. And if I DO the super-expensive surgery in the next few days, Matt will be away for the first two weeks of her recovery, which will likely be the worst. Also, Eve's musical is on Friday and she woke up sick yesterday and is losing her voice. Also, at my morning school today one kindergarten child screamed at the top of his lungs for a good five minutes. I felt worse for him than for me, but only just. At my afternoon school a class had to be evacuated and came to the library during two other classes'