Dee's Nuts

Today's a busy day, my day off from the store and my day to cram everything I can't normally get done in my waking hours for the rest of the week. The day has begun with a 4 hour wait window for the Gas Company to come and turn on my wall furnace. As soon as that wait is over I'm heading out to GR Silverlake and then I'm going to go hunt down some vegan donuts, cinnamon rolls and cookies from Dee's Bakery.



I'm not sure if I can afford large quantities of these things, but pay day is coming up, so I'm going to get a little of everything. Thanks Daily Candy for inspiring a diabetic coma today... Feel fre ro send me flowers in the hospital, preferably from some hip florist who used to be a sucessful graphic designer, but is now following their lifelong dream of arranging orchids for people in Los Feliz.

I'm a huge fan of vegan junk food. When I became vegan, after a short lived stint of avoiding all things white (flour, sugar, and... I can't believe I ever did this... rice) I learned that I could subsist just fine in the regular grocery store by buying generic versions of junk food favorites. Now I'm a little wiser about what I eat, my aging metabolism has forced such consideration on me, but I still do some shopping at the 99 Cents Only store for cookies, salty snacks and random caloric black holes.

The maple cookies that cost me 99 cents in Lincoln Heights are a decent substitute for the vegan glazed donuts I used to chow down on in St. Paul, MN, but aren't as exciting as the Maple and Baco-Bit donuts from Voo Doo Donuts in Portland, OR. We'll see how Dee's Donuts stack up. I'm going to be bummed if they're expensive AND healthy tasting.

Okay, time to stay optimistic and more importantly, hungry. Despite the warnings on Oprah yesterday, about skipping a high protein breakfast, I'm going to have a lunch of sticky sweetness from Downtown LA.

Gene Therapy

I had a strange daydream today, while I was doing dishes. I was thinking about how I need to protect Spero's chastity for another month before she gets spayed, and how I need to let Jenny know too since she'll be watching her this weekend. I'd hate to get her knocked up... repeating her mother's mistakes.

Then I went on to realize that I had this fertile dog on my hands, with a pristine womb... just what I would need to produce a Praxis clone!! I wondered about whether or not there's a way to cultivate enough genetic material to make up some sort of Frankenstein Praxis sperm and then artificially inseminate Spero eggs with them to create the world's most perfect dog.


(photo from the show "In the Womb:Dogs")

I'm not sure it would work. I watched a thing on the National Geographic Channel on Friday, while I was laid up from a bad fall. After being injured in an accident that involved a large animal, I was compelled to watch television about animals for the next couple of hours to avoid falling asleep with a possible concussion. More on this later, back to Praxis' Frankenstein sperm!

So, if you watched the show, you'll remember all the weird stuff about dog's penises becoming engorged and getting stuck in lady dog's vaginas, and that it's because dog sperm has to fight a lot harder to get a dog knocked up than a primate. The eggs hang back and aren't ready for fertilization, a bunch of the sperm are defective (on the cat version of this show they showed lion sperm that had three heads and tails that didn't know how to swim) and in general it's a process that takes a lot of time and having a penis stuck in a dog's vagina helps that along, as well as preventing the insertion of other penises into the same vagina.

Somehow this has turned into me saying penis and vagina a lot...

Remembering what I learned from cable television I thought about just implanting eggs fertilized with Praxis clones, and maybe keeping his genetic legacy pure, but then that started to get more complicated than the in-vitro babies I was imagining.

(I had a lot of dishes to do.)

I pondered the pros and cons of cloning, as we all must do in this modern age.

Con: Cloning is expensive, and I'm still broke from vet bills 6 months ago.
Con: I'd be super bummed if with Spero's body wasn't able to handle a pregnancy - her hind legs are too uncoordinated to jump up on the couch, so how's she going to handle labor and running around taking care of her brood of perfect puppies. It's a lot of pressure to put on one dog.
Con: There was this episode of This American Life about a guy who cloned his favorite, most gentle, and affectionate bull, and the evil clone tried to kill him. More than once I think.

Pro: Having a whole pack of mini Praxis' to last me another lifetime.

Pro with a hidden Con: Being reminded that there's only one Praxis, and he's irreplaceable.

Right around that crucial weighing of checks and balances in my mind, Praxis and Spero came tearing into the kitchen, fresh from a round of wrasslin' they started in the living room. Spero's ears were covered in Praxis slobber, and Praxis was panting and winded trying to keep up with Spero's relentless quest for his attention.

I'm still working really hard on appreciating the time I have with Praxis, and just going moment by moment and day by day, but it's hard not to want something more now that things are winding down. The cancer isn't going to go away. His lymph nodes are prominent. They feel like two hard grapes stuck on either side of his throat. I try to avoid them when I pet him. It doesn't hurt him when I touch them, but it hurts me. We're in the bailout leg of the chemotherapy now. Trying to buy him a couple more months, but not at the expense of his comfort. These final treatments will help him fight the negative affects of the cancer - hopefully give him some more energy so he can keep up as normal a life as he feels inclined to, and keep those lymph nodes from growing to the size of walnuts instead of grapes.

I'm happy with a few more months. Happier now that I've had since May to keep him with me. Happy that he's taking to Spero and gets to nurture her as well as me with his kindness and his patience. I'm happy I get to witness moments like these...



I just want more of them.