Olga Update and Fish Bowl

The hollyhocks are still going at it, having decided late in the season that they wanted to bloom after all. We've had four flowers now, with more potentially on the way!

I'm happy to report that Olga has rallied. She seemed a little better yesterday morning, and Dave and I went to work as usual. Dave intended to come home early and I called the vet to ask about an afternoon appointment. But when the vet's office heard she was shivering, they asked to see her right away -- I'm sure they were concerned about the potential for infection after her surgery. I was pretty sure she didn't have a fever but I said OK, got back on the tube and came home, and took her in.

Sure enough, the vet examined her and said nothing was obviously wrong. Her heart sounded strong, her temperature was normal and her teeth and gums looked fine. She theorized Olga had an upset stomach, which is certainly probable given that she chews up sticks on her walks, drinks out of the birdbath and snatches food off the street before I can stop her.

She took some treats at the vet's, and had another one before I went back to work. We canceled her walk yesterday, so she stayed home for a long nap, and when we came home yesterday afternoon we could see she'd eaten. She also ate as usual last night. So she seems on the mend.

My first trip to work wasn't entirely wasted, though, because on the way I found these amazing bowls set out with someone's trash. They were covered with lime scale -- white hard water deposits -- but I figured I could clean that up, so I grabbed them. Before I took Olga to the vet, I put them in a bucket with some de-scaler, and by the time I came home in the afternoon they were in great shape. I ran them through the dishwasher and voila! More dishes we don't need!

I especially like the bowl on the right, which has three fish on it. It's pretty big -- it could hold half a dozen apples easy.

I'm hoping to plow through more of Barbra Streisand's book this weekend. Remember how I mentioned her casual references that betray her privilege? Well, in one section she writes about a brand of coffee ice cream she loves that's only available from a shop in Santa Barbara. She drops in this sentence: "Sometimes in an emergency situation, I may call Dan, my rose expert who lives in Santa Barbara, and ask him to bring me a couple of pints when he comes down to check on my garden once a week." So, a) she has a rose expert, who b) comes weekly from another city, and c) also acts as ice cream courier?

A few pages later she writes about going with Donna Karan to Deepak Chopra's retreat center in Massachusetts. When she gets back to New York she's disappointed to find that the flowers she'd ordered for the window boxes at her apartment are the wrong color. She calls the plant place to complain, but then decides, "what the hell. It was such an ordeal just to get flowers and potting soil up to the 22nd floor. Besides, I didn't want to kill the poor things by throwing them out. So I simply closed my lace curtains so I didn't have to look at them."

A couple of weeks later, a friend comes over and points out that the flowers are now the correct color. Streisand, astonished, calls the plant place to find out if the blossoms could change color on their own. She's told no, and when she asks Deepak Chopra about it, he gives her some line about how desire can manifest change. But don't you think it's far more likely that the people at the plant place panicked when she wasn't happy and swapped the flowers when she was out? They probably said, "We have to make this right! She's BARBRA STREISAND!"