First, on Monday:

Seriously, Boston. Quit trying to kill me. #FourLitersOfIVSolutionLater

June 27, 2011 8:54 PM via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@novysan

Dan Novy

And then today:

Just talked to my dad. He sounds pretty good for a guy who had his head taken apart earlier this week.

July 2, 2011 8:13 PM via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChiaLynn

Chia Evers

So, Monday morning, well before sunrise, NovySan got sick. Really, really sick. Sick like I’ve never seen him sick. I was worried enough to make him go to Urgent Care, and they were worried enough to make him go to the ER – where they stared at him for a couple of hours and finally sent us home. He got two liters of fluid in Urgent Care, two more at the hospital, and still has adhesive residue on his arms and chest from the IVs and EKG.

He was almost back to normal on Tuesday, and sitting next to me working when my phone rang. “Hi, Chia,” said the voice on the other end. “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of your Dad’s.”

“Oh, shit,” I thought.

If I were to tell you that my Dad is a semi-retired college professor who keeps horses, you might have an image of him, but I can assure you it wouldn’t be correct. If I told you he finished the Tevis Cup, a famously brutal 100-mile horse race, last year, you might come closer. If I told you that NovySan describes him as being made of rebar and beef jerky, you’d come closer still.

And if you’re thinking that what I’m about to describe is a horse-related injury – you’d be right on the nose.

About a month ago, his horse spooked (probably at nothing at all), and he lost his seat. He clonked his head pretty good, but he wearing a helmet and didn’t think too much of it, even when the headaches started later. By the time one of the doctors he rides with brought him in for an exam, his brain had been bleeding for weeks. This was, I’ve been told, a good thing. Had he lost that much blood all at once, he wouldn’t have survived it.

He went in for surgery on Thursday. My brother and a bunch of his friends were at the hospital with him. I was at @voltagecoffee with @omgjulia, who very sweetly converted our impromptu writing date into an all-day distraction mission (and expanded it to include NovySan when he realized his daughter was graduating high school that same day, and he couldn’t be there). Voltage gave way to @muddycharlespub, and then to @CambridgeBrewer, by which time her partner @moss had joined us. As we started dinner, a text came in.

“They are closing up now… all is good.”

I’m so grateful to everyone who helped take care of us this week. We’ve been blessed with very good friends.

And I do not ever need such a dramatic reminder of that, ever, ever again.

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Callie Mae Meads was my mom’s Catahoula. She was a marvelous dog – brave and silly and clever and kind. She got my nephew over his fear of dogs, and when my mother broke her ankle, Callie Mae was there to take care of her. She kept my step-grandmother company in the last years of her life, too.

Big dogs, as anyone who’s ever had one knows, just don’t live as long as smaller animals. But Callie was bucking the trend. She blew out a knee a few years back, and she’d gained quite a bit of weight, with the reduced mobility. When NovySan and I went to Wyoming last Thanksgiving, though, she’d slimmed down, and she came bounding across Mom’s lawn to greet us. I hadn’t seen her move like that in years.

It didn’t last long, though. In the past few weeks, she’d stopped eating, and then she stopped drinking, too. Today, Mom fed her a last few spoonfuls of whipped cream, and my stepfather, Sam, took her to the vet for the final time. The vet said she was in pretty good shape for a 94-year-old lady, but her organs were shutting down, and it was time.

I’ll miss you, Callie Mae.

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Mine never was.

As far as I know, I only lost one tooth at school, and I’m not quite sure what happened to it. I can’t remember now if it came out, I put it in a pocket and dropped it, or if it came out on the playground and I didn’t notice that it had happened. I do remember, though, that I spent what felt like hours looking for it. I combed the playground methodically, walking slowly across the width of it, then turning at the end and walking back a few inches to the right. When my mother came to get me, I tried to convince her that I had to find my tooth before we could go home. She made me get in the car.

I was half-hysterical and sobbing. I’m sure I had plans for that tooth money. (I got a dollar. Eventually, it occurred to me that most of my friends got considerably less, and I began to question whether a real tooth fairy would pay differing ransoms for different children’s teeth.) We had some elk teeth, though, and a human tooth with a gold filling in it (which I believe had been my grandfather’s). “I’ll put one of these under the pillow!” I thought. “She’ll never know the difference!”

Mom didn’t think that was such a great idea.

Eventually, I settled for putting a note under my pillow, explaining the lost tooth.

In the morning, I got a dollar.

And I thought, “Hey, maybe I could just put a note like that under my pillow every night.”

Mom didn’t think that was a great idea, either.

Damn her, always being right.

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My stepfather, who “doesn’t like sweets,” does in fact like Angel Food Cake and Marshmallow Peeps.

He doesn’t like cats, either.

I think he’d like this one.

(Pimp and the Peep discovered via Wall o’ Fluff.)

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