The Playful Mutt-&-Swine!

Look at this pig-n-doggie action I purloined from the Cute Overload blog... highly entertaining!!

Tooth Gone ~ Hurrah!!

THE TROUBLESOME TOOTH is troubling me no more. The dentist yanked it out twenty minutes ago!! (I'm writing this around Monday noon.) I am so pleased¬¬!!! For three weeks that thing had been bothering me and I'm pretty sure that site was focus for all the gumzy flare-ups I've been getting. The tooth looked less like a perfect white edifice in pink gum than a volcanic peg jutting from a crater. It was loose. When it hurt most it hurt so much I could barely close my mouth that side, let alone eat. Then all pain faded. Then it crept back but not as bad, y'know, irritating teething "get the tooth out" almost itchy kinda business... The dentist was NOT very impressed by the state of my dental health. Didn't ask how/why/whatever it got like that so I didn't bother explaining it was my MENTAL condition that had got my mouth into such a state. Chainsmoking. The inner front bottoms have gone BLACK. Tartar is everywhere. Some years ago, when I psychotically lost it completely I basically gave up on cleaning my teeth for about a year... they were in SUCH a state... far better now. Believe it or not the "ash tray look" blackening is less than half as bad, after continuous 8-times a day brushing than it was a couple of years ago...
He told me it was the smoking that has caused all this. So I said, "The only thing I can do really is give up, isn't it?" and he said "That's right."
Then he did the extraction, which involved THREE implements. He injected the anaesthetic too quickly so it hurt. I know he did this deliberately. If you don't wanna see bad teeth, why gravitate to DENTISTRY? This I do not comprehend...
The stubborn swine of a tooth took about two minutes of undignified yanking on the dentist's part, to disturbing creaking and cracking sounds that of course resonated right into my ear-'oles... And now it's gone. Not only was it rotten from root to tip, but it had a missing chunk (no wonder it always felt craggy in my mouth). Dr Miserable told me the gum disease from around it had gone right to the root, hence pain on biting down.
I know he COULD, if he could be bothered, have provided a false permanently plugged in one, but not everything is free on the NHS and I suspect that wouldn't be. Receptionist told me hygienist appointments aren't NHS either and they cost £40.
(And I need one really badly.) I think I'm going to shop around.
A few years ago the government altered the dentists' charter, or whatever you call it ~ the system whereby they get paid. So they no longer get paid per job but per patient, which means someone like me is barely worth bothering with because I'm lots of work for same money as a five year-old needing a minifilling... know what I mean. Apparently nothing's to stop me from going to separate dentists for every individual job, so maybe I'll do that. I was well up for being treated as four or five mystery patients but Mr Misery didn't deserve that kind of Brucie Bonus, so I never suggested it...
... So I'm sat here, half my face packed out with blood clots, anaesthetic still killing my palate stone dead... And I'm happy as larry.

THE TOOTH IS GONE:~ HURRAH! HURRAH!! HURRAH!!!

Photos: not my mouth, but you get the drift...

Chinchillas and Teeth!

MY POOR Shreddie-muncher on Saturday got cancelled, so here's another cutie. I don't know if I'm going to have any "chins" in the near future. They're a bit big and the cage they need (which must be chew-proof, not just a rabbit-hutch) is enormous and very expensive too. Also they're social animals, so I'd need at least two. Having kept social hammies in groups, the group interaction entertainment is too much to miss. Also I think it's cruel to keep furry animals in solitary confinement. If you're going to make a South American Mars Rabbit who naturally sleeps most of the daytimes and spends evenings hoppetting and pinging about the stern crags of the High Andes reside in a metal dog-carrier-looking cage, the very least you can do is make the cage as spacious as possible, with toys like exercise wheels, which all rodents love (so much so that some species of hammy will neglect their babies in order to trundle away) and buy your pets company. In London, baby chinchillas are about £25 each and the 4ft x 3ft x 3ft cage would be about £100. Which is quite a lot of money. And not very practical when it's technically "no pets" and my robbies used to hide from the landlord by day in an aquarium stashed in a closet! At night they rambled in a furry pingpong balls donkey derby, all three scurrying on the wheel at once. Poor Baby Itchy, who was smallest and lightest couldn't always fit on and frequently ended up hanging on the side for dear life as her tubby Sister Spherical thundered obliviously onwards, on that big wheel in the dark.
Roborovski hamsters are extremely flighty by nature and startle easily, which doesn't really make them good pets for children, who of course will want to pick them up. Of my three, Itchy was the only one I managed to hand-tame, and even she was prone to unexpected panic, when she would bunny-hop on the floor. And sometimes escape this way. And go missing for three or four days at a time. Which had me absolutely fraught.
I couldn't believe it when she died. I actually cried. Then Bashful went. Spherical lived a further three months alone with all the seeds to herself, then she trundled on to that big wheel in the sky...
Small rodents like that have a typical life-span of only two months in the wild and mine lived just over two years. So I think they had a decent innings...
I'm still zigzagging about whether/when/how to get new ones. Robos aren't the easiest of pets to source. Lots of shops told me they wouldn't sell them because they're "too small, too fast and not suitable for children".
But if you think of them as furry tropical fish ~ it something you watch in the tank and don't expect to take out. Their antics were exceedingly amusing. They were my sole furry ray of light in some of the darkest months of my life, when I was in that crackhouse with Matran the Rat Man and prostitute girlfriend Laundretta. Nasty times!
I'm off to the dentist later this morning, hoping for an extraction. If he does yank the bad tooth, this will be my fourth, if an impacted wisdom tooth is counted as well.
My first extraction was pretty much an emergency. A tooth that had always twinged and annoyed me and I knew wasn't right but no dentist ever did anything for it, though they must have seen its rotten profile on x-ray exploded in a fairground crash on "dodgems". The top fell out. When he kindly pulled the base, what was left looked like a china toilet fitting full of rotten apple pulp. It was nasty. Then another dentist noticed the gap left by this and thought it would be cool to even out both sides. So he pulled a perfectly healthy tooth. It is this that has left me of a cynical view of dentists, who up till recently. got paid per filling/etc. (Now they're paid by patient, no matter how much work is required, making someone like me economically unviable). Anyway the NEXT dentist said whoever did that second extraction ought to be shot. Then I had constant wisdom tooth pains. I bit down deliberately on the gum, even though it hurt, thinking I was doing good. Until my next dentist showed me an x-ray of said tooth, still completely under the gum, shunting all the rest sideways... this, apparently, is what "impacted" means.
To treat it, he had to cut open my gum in a Y-shape, use a drill to destroy some of the top of the tooth, leaving space to grip and yank it out. Then he pulled really hard. I actually like extractions far more than fillings. Of course my mouth is frozen to liquid methane type temperatures so it's not as if I feel it. But fillings I detest. Anyway he pulled it out and all was fine. Until I tried to eat... and thought I would never eat again! For months I had a cavern there at the back. Ten years later it's nicely healed. And now this wobbler, that, so the internet tells me, either needs a root canal job, or pulling out and replacing with a falsie (which is my preferred option). Theoretically both treatments are free on the NHS...
I'm not quivering inwardly. I'm not in panic. But I'm not exactly looking forward to any of this and this teeth-talk's putting me off. So I'd better go. I'll let y'all know how I got on.
Have a nice day everyone!

Shreddy-munching chin says:

"Have a cheery weekend, y'all!"













Back by Monday!! (By which time my nasty root-canal tooth shoulda been YANKED!!

At the Dentist... At last!!

FINALLY! I got to book a dentist appointment for Monday!

My rotten teeth shall be no more!

I can barely eat at the moment because the putrescence hurts so much.

There's a particularly nasty one at the back on one side that wobbles and makes me practically hit the ceiling if ever I (accidentally) bite down on the rotter!

And on Monday all these problems shall be gone!!

Is this too good to be true?

Read what I have to say on Monday, and see!!

Vegetarian Vomit

ME MUM had high tea but I was starving so I had vegetable lasagne. I don't usually go for vegetarian options these days but used to when I was younger. I have found in general that vegetarian cooking is of a higher standard that non-veggie ~ and with a less-inspiring ingredients-list, let's face it, it has to be!

The lasagna was OK. I'm no expert on cooking but if I'd made that myself I'd have labelled the flavour "empty" and poured far more tomatoes and seasoning into it. I don't know whether this place was having boiler trouble but oh my days! It was Vesuvian in there!! Conkers of sweat dripping off patrons and increasingly bedraggled waiting staff alike. (OK slight exaggeration but I was feeling increasingly queasy.)

Then when I got outside I was sick EVERYWHERE... thankfully Mumzy and I had gone separate ways by then.

These are the Siberian hamsters I was talking about yesterday. I had two about six years ago, but one died after about three months ~ and I suspect through old age. The other ESCAPED and never came back ~ the only one of seven hamsters I have ever lost that way.

If you look closely at the weary swine here, you might just be able to see the furry soles to his feet.

On a lighter note the vomiting had gone by just three outbursts (next to but sadly unable to aim IN the tiny opening on London's bomb-proof rubbish-bins)... And by this morning my appetite had come back with great avengance. I trotted down to Sainsbury's where I got a huge selection of own brand falvoured whip-ip-up desserts. Chocolate and strawberry are just 8p each. Butterscotch is always the best and costs 30p against Angel Delight (the market leader)'s 38p. I shake it up in a special disused coffee jar. My top tip to avoid lumps is add powder a bit at a time...

And I can't believe this, but having start-stopped "learning" Japanese several times (for learning, read glancing idly over books and dictionaries, thinking, "I wonder how you say such-&-such" and brainlessly transcribing roman-lettered Japanese sentences into proper script, which is a by no means straightforward occupation... I actually seem to be getting somewhere!

When I was irritatedly waiting for a bus the other day I went through the list of Japanese animals I know in my mind and it's more than ten. Including the words for bee, wasp and hornet. That's not bad for a beginner.

The rate I'm going I might be semi-fluent by 2026!

Here is a really good Japanese "cultural link" www.japandemic.com (it's not academic at all)...

High T

I'M SPOSED to be meeting up with my Mumzy in town for high tea (or something). I'm sure scones will be involved. In some olde tea shoppe place somewhere obscure... somewhere I don't know... help me I'm falling down a black hole!!!!! Never to escape. Argh.

But I look really presentable. For once.

PS: though they look extraordinarily cute, I might have to give the chinchillas a miss for now. They are too big and need too much care. And don't like muggy English summers. My former Russian hamsters of yore looked literally about to expire on our hottest July and August days and I had to give them ice packs, which these creatures, native to Siberia, walked upon quite happily with their fur-lined paws... chinchillas have similar heat sensitivity... and apart from providing stone cladding and marble blocks (and ice packs) what else could I do... when we hit 100 degrees!??

PPS: just like chinchillas, Siberian hamsters also require regular dustbathing to keep their extraordinarily thick fur in best condition...

Chinchilla ii

I CAN'T really have an 秋田犬 Akita-inu where I am now (nor in most rented accommodation). Plus the cost of jabs and microchipping, bowls and leads or leashes and other incidentals mounts up exceedingly high (though I would really love one) ... so I've set my sights on chinchillas instead. These only cost £25 or so each. Maybe £50. But I don't want a fancy one I want a grey one... The cage is the biggest expense as to house a rabbit-sized creature it has to be massive, with a huge ratty-style wheel for them to ramble on plus dustbath to play in. Chinchillas (so the books say) require a certain type of obscure volcanic sand from the high Andes to brush their fur on... otherwise it will go all sweaty-looking and greasy...



Chinchilla dustbath ~ isn't this entertaining? Look how he gets right in..!



And don't they have South American alpaca/emu/llama-style faces..?

... And don't they look sweet!!

As for the "mental health" comments yesterday:

Thank you y'all!

I tried pretending nothing was wrong for so long and it never worked, so does it mean "embracing" a label?... or just ploughing through therapy to get the hell out as quickly as possible..?

All I know about therapy and counselling is that the more you put into these things, the more you get out. You can (and I'm sure lots of people do) use these sessions merely as an outlet to complain about people, things and circumstances that have occurred during the week. You sound off in the session and do nothing about anything between sessions and the time in the room becomes an emotional outlet. You can also look deep within yourself, like the character described yesterday staring into his own eyes saying "aren't I amazing" (and in counselling ~ complexicated ~ and contradictory and deep and fascinating. (But so is everyone else!!) OR you can use such sessions as a means to throw up insights you can hold on to and use as a means of change. And though it might sound a bit snotty-nosed, that's what I would hope I might do with these "therapeutic" experiences.

I hate counselling, in a way. Because it is an inherently one-sided relationship. They know all these things about you, yet you are talking to a human whitewashed wall. What's "healthy" about that?

The blankness of such a relationship is its freedom, because you should be able to say anything you like without fear of emotional fallout (as might happen if you confided in a family member, who is inextricably tied to the same web of interconnected conflicts as you are)... so it all gets deep and meaningful and whatever. But every time I turn up I look at the watch and see 50 minutes of blank time ... and wish I could somehow fast forward it over!

And every time, somehow the minutes go too quickly!!

Right I gotta go find me a chinchilla. Have a nice day, y'all...

Borderline Personality Phone Call

I GOT a phone call from a psychotic nutter friend of mine (with 3 concurrent diagnoses) ~ at first she pretended to be from the kebab shop. I knew it was someone mucking around but couldn't work out who, so I hung up.

She was quite a good friend of Mr Man ~ Mr Mephedrone, who chucked himself in front of the tube train and died early this new year. I told her that even though i didn't know him very well, I think about him every single day. (Which is true.) She said yeah, and she has nightmares of his mangled body every single night.

This woman has the very worst personal history I have ever heard. Abuse, neglect, horror. Psychosis in adulthood. A lifetime of major depressions. Plus a personality disorder to boot. I don't know how she survived. I just don't get it.

Anyway when I told her I hope to get counselling at this psychiatric centre ~ where it's not time-limited to periods of 12 sessions, I mean what can you achieve in 12 sessions?? I only STARTED making any sort of progress last time on two years plus a 6-month extension. This stuff has to be longterm. And I think about Woody Allen and think, does counselling or therapy help anyone at all? Or is it just a tail-chasing exercise..? Or a psychological version of staring at one's own eyes in the mirror and saying "you're so beautiful". I have grave doubts about counselling's effectiveness and what it's used for. And I used to get peeved immensely when my old psychodynamic therapist used to ask me how I felt about her ~ ie of "transference". Something weird happened in our relationship and I confronted this distant (yet close) and clinical (yet warm) woman and got totally under her skin. I know I did. She said one week I turned up, after the 4-week August recess and was crying in the foetal position, yet I can't remember any of it. She kept saying "I think you need more help than I can give you" ~ meaning a psychiatrist. But I had deep distrust of those note-takers who, I believed, would only hold up what I'd told them against me.

Anyway I told her my new nutnut doctor said to me he would have a word with the guy in charge of the Deep Psychiatric Counselling Centre about me becoming a patient there. And she told me "that's where you go when you've got a borderline personality disorder. And I shivered, because that label has risen its ugly head yet again. She also told me she thought I had clinical depression. Of course she isn't a trained mental health professional, but this woman has spent enough years of her life in psychiatric institutions to know a profile when she sees one.

In a way I don't care WHAT name anything I have or am might be. In the past I have tried to avoid any sense of labelling and pretended to be fine when I wasn't fine at all. But this approach never worked, never got me anywhere.

Many nutters wear their diagnosis round their neck like a gold medal ~ and THAT I find disconcerting. So I don't know what to do.

I have another nuttydoctor's appointment in a month's time... so THEN... we might see...!

It's the most wondrous springtime weather and I'm off to get a Mauritian Vanilla cheesecake from the Morrisons best range (£4 if I remember right) ~ I've been craving it all weekend...

The cherries have yet to blossom... I can't wait till they do. They are the Japanese symbol for the passing nature of life and death... our old dog died, fading slowly away under a profusion of pink blossoms. I never wanted her to go. She was grey like a seal and used to open her boze and say "HELLO!" in the squealiest posh accent. You could poke her sides of her mouth and she would "BO" this way on demand...

HAVE A NICE DAY EVERYONE :-)


borderline personality disorder

The Family Crest

I WAS browsing through Debretts Peerage the other day (as you do) ~ I bought it for 20p in a library sale ~ gawping at the odd, ridiculous and strange family crests of the honoured and "noble"... And thought I'd have a go at making my own.



So here we go.

Animals are very important in heraldry so we'll start with them.

The main feature will be a wise looking Akita dog, head cocked, one ear up, the other lopsing down:



At the sides I will have four chinchillas, two each side:



And this will be underlined by seven tiny roborovski pygmy hamsters all in a row:







Weapons are very important on family crests, so I'll have the chinchillas brandishing AK47s:



Obviously the Gledwoods will want to outdo other families' inferior arms, so I might well add a thermonuclear blast to mine:



O yeah. And last but not least, every family crest must have a logo or strapline thing in Latin (or more recently in English). If I don't have this in English, I will get it translated into Chinese (because it looks funkier)

... and it goes like this ~

"FIRST IN HONOUR; LAST IN THE DONKEY DERBY!"



Which looks like this in Chinese:

第一榮譽，最後在驢德比

And this in Japanese:

名誉では、ロバのダービーの最後の最初の

an unfortunate mistranslation ~ thanks very much, Google ~

The honor is the first end of the donkey derby ~!!



Have a cheery weekend!

Nuts

I SAW A NUTNUT DOCTOR. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

He read the long, convoluted (& contradictory) history of all the things that have happened to me, all the things I have done...

He said giving out meds is probably not going to be the best line of treatment (hurrah! because I wouldn't take them anyway!!)

Then he said all these problems are probably down to some personality warping of mine (of course he didn't use the word warping)... I was wondering what on earth he meant....

Then my mind turned to Mr Man (the one who gave me the mephedrone) who chucked himself in front of a tube train some months ago. This man, I suspect, probably "presented" (as they like to say) in quite a similar way to me. Ie he was able to put on a convincing act of happiness, or at least personability (he was very personable and likeable) ~ while at the same time taking meds (in the end) for bipolar disorder.

Now his diagnosis was not "bipolar" at all, but borderline personality disorder and what did stick in my mind was that he said that he thought I had this thing as well.

The "borderline" of borderline personality disorder refers to a supposed border (in 1950s thinking) between "neurosis" and "psychosis". People who have this condition tend to be very neurotic, but are apt to flip over into (usually brief) psychotic states in times of extreme stress or crisis...

So I wonder, in trepidational fear, whether this is what the nutnut doctor had in mind.

I certainly hope not!

If anyone wants to read so-called diagnostic criteria of this "condition" you can click on the wikipedia link I gave earlier... I couldn't help but notice "impulsivity" was given as a hallmark feature ~ I would say no I'm not impulsive at all. Quite the opposite. But substance abuse counts as one mark against and binge eating/starving as another 2 marks and I've done all 3. And I never told Dr Nutnut (or the nurse who wrote the report) anything about the food...

Also this condition/diagnosis is not mutually exclusive ~ ie you can have it and 1, 2 3 or more other nutty conditions... isn't life wonderful??!?

Counselling Directory's borderline symptoms roundup

I want one!

A chinchillafurred akita-inu 秋田犬 like the nuzzlybozed wisefaced kindly brindly one who silently came to me and said doggie hello on Monday morning. On thinking about it, I realized they are my ideal type of dog with 1: incredibly beautiful fur and 2: nice looks and 3: unlike most pretty dogs these are renowned as guard dogs and protectors. You need protection these days in a horrible place like London.



I'd especially like one with ultrafluffy fur like this one:



Awww:
O you are joking, I looked it up and this one's from North London and going FREE...



Now I've got to go before I pine to death!!

Spring's A-sprung!

THE WEATHER here in London is beautiful, but I haven't got a camera. So here instead is the 日本の春 Japanese springtime!

Mount Fuji 富士山 through the famous cherry blossom...



Japan's interior images are serene and beautiful.
Taishō Pond 大正池 in Kamikōchi Valley 上高地の谷, central Honshu 本州. Mount Hotaka 穂高岳, highest in the Hida Range 飛騨山脈, also known as the Northern Japanese Alps 日本の北部のアルプス, is in the centre background.



Sublime cherry blossoms 吉野の桜, Mount Yoshino 吉野山 near Nara 奈良市, Japan's ancient capital AD 710-784:



Isn't this amazing!!