quick update

serafina's still with us. she made it through the weekend like a little trooper. thank you all for all your thoughts and wishes and prayers. it really means so much. serafina is one lucky little birdie to have so much love coming at her from all over the country. thank you. :)

when i left the apartment this afternoon, the wogdog was preening serafina's head very sweetly and carefully and they were both making the cutest little tweeting sounds. it was so beautiful and so touching.... and broke my freaking heart all at the same time.

made it through another fiscal year here at the dayjob. need a nap. rode the paradise loop (42 miles) with dave, jim and elizabeth yesterday (more on my new road biking experiences later....) tried to do some push ups at home and my body said, uh, NO. ok. i will listen. i'm off to rehearsal now. new theatre gig is called "Midsummer 4" with a group called Central Works in Berkeley. We open in July. More info here: Central Works

ok. off to BART.

serafina update

Oh boy. Um. I dropped little Serafina off at the vet this morning for her x-ray. I hate taking her in the truck. It must be so stressful and confusing for her. We have been feeling somewhat hopeful as a) she is still alive; and b) her blood tests came back negative for a bunch of bad stuff. The x-ray is the next step. Well. Dave just got a call from the doctor. It was bad news. :( She has a large mass in her abdomen and it's squashing against her lungs as well as her digestive track. It is actually taking up most of her lung capacity and that's why she's having breathing problems. They are not sure what the mass is, but it's most likely a tumor. On a bird as small as Serafina, they cannot operate to remove such a thing. It would kill her. So our options are: a) do a biopsy to find out if it is indeed a tumor. The actual process of the biopsy has a 75% chance of killing her on the spot. (so, um, NO biopsy.); b) give her a cortisone shot that *might* do something helpful or *might* not. However, you can only give a cortisone shot to a bird with a healthy immune system as the cortisone tends to have a negative impact on the immune system. So that would mean more blood work to find out if her immune system is looking strong and then seeing if the cortisone has any effect; and c) they offered to put her down. (um, again, as she has been eating and flying and playing and tweeting, which for some reason dave said the doctor cannot believe, this is a, um, NO.)

So our options are extremely limited… and possibly exhausted. It feels very, very sad. Thankfully, we are both in agreement that we want her to live out whatever life she has left at home with her flock. The Wogdog (and Terfle, who has been sitting and guarding her on the top of her cage) will be inconsolable if Serafina just disappears one day and so I'm hoping that if she happens to die in the cage with the other birdies, perhaps on some level they will at least understand why she is gone. Oh my. Ok. this is getting way too sad and I'm at work and starting to cry, so time to move on…

serafina pekkala is a trooper

serafina had a very harrowing visit at the birdie doctor yesterday. turns out she was acting funny, shaking, breathing heavily and scratching weirdly at herself, because she has a big, yucky, swollen sac filled with liquid on her lower tummy. When the vet went in to relieve some of the fluid, it came out bloody. :( this is bad sign. :( we were told that since it is impossible to tell what is going on without more tests, we should be prepared to know that she may not make it through the night. That was, um, hard to hear. But, we ordered the tests, got her some antibiotics and some pain medication, took her home and kept her quarantined from the other (very confused) birdies.... and then I noticed that she was bleeding all over her swing. This was distressing, as we had always heard that even the slightest blood loss is potentially fatal to parakeets. Called the vet - she said twas normal response to the things she had done... and oops sorry she forgot to tell us. :( so, poor serafina just sat there on her bloody swing all night long with her eyes mostly closed and not chirping at all. Very sad.

But this morning she was alive... and improved. She ate. She did some stretching, some preening and some chirping.... :) we'll just have to see how it goes from here. Terfle is greatly vexed. Even more so than the Wogdog.

overwhelmtion

i think catch up is, um.... rather daunting at this point. so.....

back from hawaii. back to work. about to start rehearsals for a new show. the huge task that is 'catching back up with life post trips' seems rather insurmountable right now... especially since I can't seem to shake 'vacation mode' mind-set. I feel like there are SO many things to do and fix and clean and take care of and prepare for and finish and blah blah blah and as much as they all stress me out, I have an equally strong inclination to want to do nothing. heh. incompatible this is. :)

so I think I'll start from now and slowly work my way backwards as there are a lot (i think) of fairly cool (and not) things that have happened over the last month.

1) It's like 81 degrees here today. I got to bike downtown in my polka dot dress. so pleasing (not the going downtown part, but I do love dress-biking). :)

2) Work just got more bearable as they have opened a Yogen Fruz here in Embarcadero 3. Not quite as good and fresh and healthy as the Jubili right down the street from home, BUT - it does mean that I have access to healthy type tart-yogurty flavored frozen yogurt with fresh fruity toppings at work and at home and that totally rules. You should try both if you live here.

3) Tomorrow, Dave, Lisa (from BBI) and I are going to meet Josh and Becky Sladek-Nowlis and their 2 kids down in Monterey to do some diving. I am going to baby-sit the kids whilst the 4 adults do a dive and then Josh (who is a dive master) is going to give me a scuba skills refresher, cause, um, it's been awhile. Dave went once while we were in Hawaii and I considered going with him but I was having terrible ear problems while I was there. I would try to dive down while snorkeling and I couldn't go past about 6-8 feet down because my left ear would NOT pop. ouch. but they seem better now, so I'm hopeful for tomorrow. plus - I haven't had any weird water/ocean/deep dark pit/shark/whale dreams, so maybe some of my fears of monterey diving have subsided. (when dave and I were certified down there, we had about 5 foot visibility the first day and 2 foot visibility the second and I got all tangled up in kelp and attacked by a giant crab and all kinds of other stuff on top of the fact that I was freezing and suffocating in my 7mm wetsuit and hood.) *fingers crossed* wish me luck. :)

4) our poor little birdie Serafina Pekkala is sick again. she was shaking this morning and not flying and it looked like she was having difficulty breathing. :( off to the vet today. :(

5) Day job is kicking my ass. June is our year end, so this next week will be even more insane than this week has been. :( poo.

6) went to the circus center showcase last night with the AMD. no tissu act. the kids are amazing. and soooooooooooooooo freaking energetic. it's inspiring to see them... but, alas, the adult acts were not as strong as last year. ah well. still a whole lot of fun if any of you have time this weekend to check it out. :)

ok. that is a start.

vog ist nicht so gut

I have never tried to blog from my iPhone before, so this will have to be quick... The west coast and east coast CLL's are all over (details later) and now we are in Hawaii... On the big island... Which happens to be completely covered in a thick cloud of vog. :( We've heard that two vents are currently emitting fun stuff, something that has not happened in over 200 years. Timing is everything, eh? ;) we did snorkel today with sea turtles and that was rather awesome. We're going to attempt to locate dolphins tomorrow morning before heading off to Volcanoes. We've been pretty underwhelmed with the Kona side of the island thus far and are hoping that Volcanoes and the Hilo side will be more our thing.

There are Pygmy ponies, goats, a pot-bellied pig and every bird from chickens to parrots at our B & B... You should hear it in the morning... ;)