pameladean | Breaking your ankle is not the same thing as eating a live toad

It's been an interesting few days. The weekend involved both my family birthday celebration and a date with Eric, one sort of in the interstices of the other. Both party and date were very pleasant indeed. During one of the date parts, I got email from David saying that water was coming up from the floor drain in the basement. I wrote back saying I'd call Roto-Rooter if it were me dealing with it, but he'd maybe liked Ron the Sewer Rat better when we had drain problems. He got a time window from Roto-Rooter of 5 to 9 pm on Sunday evening. It turned out that the water coming up from the drain was quite extensive and it wasn't safe to shower, run dishwashers, flush toilets more than very occasionally, or even wash one's hands vigorously. These restrictions have a very depressing effect on one's ability to do much of anything

The hours crept by and it was 9:30 and there were no plumbers. David called them and they admitted to running late and offered us a Monday window of 10 am to 2 pm. This would fall to me, since David had to work Monday. I thought of calling another emergency plumber that had once come through for us when Roto-Rooter got overwhelmed. However, I got an automated message from them saying that they were experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. While I was considering whether I would stay on hold, I brought up the MNDOT site and looked at the traffic map. It had been snowing pretty hard all afternoon and evening -- Eric and I had agreed that we would not try to go to the St. Paul Trader Joe's or our usual former Rainbow/now Cub in Uptown, and he brought me home early. On the MNDOT map the highways around the Twin Cities were solid orange and spattered liberally with purple squares enclosing exclamation points, When you hovered the mouse over them they said variously, "Crash," "Vehicle spun out" and "Critical Disruption on Highway 52." Okay, no. We had to resign ourselves to a night without drains.

I will not dwell on the situation further. It only lasted about 24 hours, but when nobody can shower, flush anything without consultation about when anybody else has last done so, run the dishwasher as a prelude to cooking, or do any laundry, things devolve rapidly into chaos. I set my alarm for 9:15, which is extremely early for me. Saffron woke me around 8:15 wanting to be fed, so I shut her out of the room, but about half an hour later I got up and used the bathroom and optimistically flushed the upstairs toilet, which is cranky and horrible but only has a tank capacity of 1.6 gallons, and fed the cats. Then I cleaned up with baby wipes and got dressed and put my shoe on my left foot and the Robot Boot of Doom on the right foot. I discovered about twelve hours later that I'd put the front panel on upside down, which meant I spent the whole day adjusting and readjusting the boot because it felt wrong and nothing would stay in place and my heel kept sliding around.

The phone rang twice once the window for plumbers began. The first call hung up on me, so I put it into a search engine and got a lot of very indignant comments about spam callers and being called 20 times a day by a number that never left a message. Okay, probably not the plumber. The second call also hung up on me, but when searched for turned out to be the Minneapolis Snow Emergency Phone Alert number. When I did hear from Roto-Rooter, they called my cellphone. The plumber arrived and sympathized about the walking boot, and we minced down into the basement to find a pool of water covering the floor drain and trying to take over the foot of the stairs. The plumber walked around muttering. "Shit," he said. He poked around, cleared junk from around the plumbing stack in what we'd like to be a basement bathroom one day, and said he could probably get at the problem through that stack. "Only," he said, "I have to bring a really big machine into the house and I'm not sure how to do it." He mimed its size and height. We discussed bringing it around the side of the house, but the snow there hasn't been shovelled. Raphael and I do most of the shovelling unless there's enough snow to break out the snow blower, when David does it; but Raphael is getting over a virus. Lydy has exercise-induced asthma. David had shovelled the last lot of snow in front but has long work hours. And I have a broken ankle.

The plumber finally decided to bring his machine in through the front door and see how it went. I moved a bunch of lightweight objects out of the path he'd have to take, and this sufficed. He bumped his battered Victorian-looking wheeled object down the basement steps. I retired to the living room to put my foot up. There was a protracted banging session. That stack is really old. I wondered if the access cap was stuck. Eventually there was a ringing thump as of a heavy metal object hitting a concrete floor, and then the machine started up. Then it stopped. The plumber came upstairs. "Ma'am? Where's your electrical panel?" I got up and came to show him. "I blew a fuse," he said. I managed to describe the location of the room with the panel in it, and stood at the the top of the stairs while he went in and dealt with the fuse and then walked around turning lights off and talking to himself. I decided he had things in hand and went to put my foot up again. A series of roars, rumbles, thumps, and sounds as if someone were delivering a series of oversized packages of rocks at the front door went on for some time. I'd been nursing the fear that something really dramatic was wrong that wouldn't yield to the usual remedies, and thinking that I knew plenty of people who would let me take a shower, or let all of us take showers, but that clumping around in the snow with the boot was not at all a good idea. When Eric and I had come into the house on Sunday he'd suggested that I brush the snow off my boot. I ended up taking the whole thing off and to some degree apart. It dried fast, but it's really not for wet conditions at all. Anyway, the longer the noises went on the more reassured I felt.

After about an hour, the plumber, looking somewhat the worse for wear, came back upstairs with his machine. It was, he said, tree roots. Lots of tree roots. But he had gotten through and the drain worked now. He also said he needed to get a new access cap out of the truck because he'd had to break the old one. As he maneuvered the wheeled monster that had fixed the drain into the front hall he said, "Oh, the snow's still there." I apologized for its not being shovelled and he said, "No, I didn't mean that. I meant all the snow. It's not spring yet." I said it did seem to be time for spring at this point. When everything was squared away and I'd parted with a large amount of money and we'd arranged for a person with a drain camera to come and check the line and make sure it was as clear as it should be, I locked up and with enormous satisfaction flushed the downstairs toilet, washed my hands extravagantly, and took my book and pillbox back upstairs. Whatever else I may have messed up, I did take my medication at the right time even though I got up three hours early/

Being able to put water down the drain was giddy-making. When I got over that, I realized I was hungry, so I got out some of the leftovers from the birthday dinner -- baby carrots, celery sticks, and vegan sour cream and onion dip. I would have some, put it away, and then realize that I was still hungry, and fetch it back out of the fridge to have some more. Finally I just left the remaining carrots and the container of dip, with the lid firmly in place, on a high part of my desk that cats have never gotten anything down from. Then I took a shower, which was luxurious, and got dressed again, and put my boot back on -- still with the front panel upside down -- and headed back to my office. Cassie was meatloafed in the middle of the sitting room floor. There was no sign of Saffron, but she often spends the afternoon either bothering Raphael or sleeping peacefully in Raphael's extra chair. However, as I sat down and put my foot up, wriggling my errant heel back into place, I heard very odd noises from the space between my desk and the wall. I thought Saffron might be stuck. I craned sideways and looked. She was not stuck. She was standing in the licked-clean dip container, assiduously licking the dip from the underside of the lid.

The carrots were right where I'd left them, untouched.

I took the lid and container away from her and put them with the other dirty dishes. I told Raphael what had happened, mostly thinking there might be digestive issues, but when I saw Raphael's face I thought, Oh, right, onions. Bad for cats. After a bit of discussion, Raphael looked up the effects of onions on cats. There were probably at most three tablespoons of dip left, and it was possible that Cass had gotten some of it, but when we did the numbers as best we could, given that the dip was not composed only of onions, it still sounded less than ideal.

This still left us at a loss, so we decided I should call the emergency vet and see what they thought. The person I talked to said that freeze-dried onions were usually not as bad as fresh, but that they didn't really have the information on hand, and she would give me the number for the ASPCA Veterinary Toxicology line. I called this number and eventually got a very nice woman who asked a bunch of questions about the cats and their ages and whether any OTHER cats might have been involved -- Ninja would have if he could, but he was downstairs -- and then put me on hold while she consulted a veterinarian. We were worried about getting the car out and getting to the emergency vet on the snowy streets, and I was worried about clumping around in lumpy uncertain snow in my boot. You can put a plastic bag on the boot, but that doesn't address any balance issues and in addition removes traction on slippery surfaces.

The conclusion of the veterinary toxicologist, when delivered, was a relief. They didn't expect any difficulties with such young and healthy cats. We should watch for lethargy, weakness, and pale gums over the next five days. The main bad effect of onions on cats is anemia, which can be treated. I also got a long list of protocols to follow in case the vegan sour cream caused digestive problems, and a list of under what circumstances I should call them back, and a case number. The service costs $65.00, but this includes all the callbacks.

Cassie acted just as usual for the rest of the evening. Saffron had a very very deep nap, which led us to think that she had probably gotten most of the dip and needed to sleep it off. She woke up for her supper and they both ate with their usual appetite.

After I fed the cats I sat down to adjust my boot again, and finally realized that I'd been putting the front panel in upside down. I am 99% sure that I only did that yesterday and today. It still immobilized most of my foot quite well, so I trust it will be all right. There's nothing to be done about it, anyway; but this confirms my suspicion that my executive function is all being used up in navigating with the boot, and that resources generally available to make my brain work right are being diverted to the ankle.

I would say that no more exciting things are allowed to happen, but there isn't much point in that.

Pamela