The rains came down

Things have been a bit dull lately, so I’m tempted to be glad anytime Something Happens, whether it is actually interesting or not. Yesterday was a different story, though.

I managed to make it out of bed in time for a shower before work, but for whatever reason I felt compelled to dry my hair thoroughly after it had been washed – which ate up a significant portion of my 40 minutes to get ready. Near the end I realized how late it was and rushed through the rest of my preparations. We did make it to work on time (early even, since I set our clocks ahead a few minutes), and somehow survived the day.

When we got home and were walking back to the stairs to our apartment, our downstairs neighbor came quickly out of her apartment and let us know that her bathroom ceiling had been leaking all day, creating huge puddles of water and possibly making the apartment unliveable. The Romgi, at this point, recalled that as we were signing the contract back in March, the owner mentioned that the woman below us was a high-maintenance sort who was constantly finding small imperfections and declaring the apartment to be a safety hazard. Thus as I anxiously went upstairs to see why I was ruining the neighbor’s life, the Romgi reserved judgment on the situation until he had more information.

Well…our bathroom floor was covered in water, and the sink – which has been leaky since before we moved in – was dripping slightly more than usual. In my hurry to leave I hadn’t tightened the knob as much as I needed to, so the dripping, I admit, was probably my fault. The second problem was that in my hurry I also left the hair dryer sitting on the top shelf to the right of the sink, and the cord (unplugged) was hanging down across the leaky faucet. Of course, the result was that the water dripped onto the cord and then down onto our floor, and from there, directly into our neighbor’s bathroom.

She had been calling the owners all day, and they sent over a plumber around 3:30. By then the Romgi had cleaned up most of the mess in the bathroom and I had shoved our laundry into a good hiding spot. The plumber spent about an hour and a half making sure that there was no life-threatening leak from anything in our bathroom; he also told us that despite what the neighbor said, the building was definitely not any more structurally unsound than usual, and she would just need a new coat of paint on her bathroom ceiling. (Regardless, she had already given the owners 30 days’ notice, she said, and now she was thinking of vacating completely.) So the plumber tightened the knobs on our sink, put caulking around the toilet, and did everything he could to make his trip worth the effort.

By the time he left I had calmed down a lot. Fatalistic as I am, when I first saw what had happened I was afraid that we’d be charged for the repairs or even kicked out of the apartment. (The realtor was incredibly reluctant to let us have the contract in the first place.) But, nothing of the sort seems to be happening, and I think I’m fine for a few days of Nothing Happening.

Something else happened!

Only this time, it didn’t involve Mu or car keys.

It involved an ultrasound.

No, no, not that ultrasound. I’ve been having a really sharp pain in my calf for a few days and the doctor at the BYU Health Center was worried that it might be a blood clot. So he sent me over to UVRMC where the radiologist was kind enough to jab me repeatedly in the exact spot I said hurt. Wasn’t that nice?

Anyway, I don’t have a blood clot, but I do have phlebitis: which is an inflamed vein that often leads to a blood clot. I did get the day off work yesterday without it counting against me, because I brought a note from the doctor and the hospital. And I’ve been instructed to stand up and stretch often – because it sounds like the whole thing is caused from sitting at a desk all day and not moving around much. Oh, and from sitting on my leg while I’m at my desk. That too.

Well, at least something happened, eh?

Something happened!

I’m sure you will all be delighted to know that yesterday things actually happened besides work! Isn’t that great?

That’s very optimistic, by the way. The Things were not quite so great.

As we were leaving our first job to go tutor, the Romgi discovered that his keys were not in his pocket, nor in his cubicle. After half an hour of searching we called up Krista to come rescue us. Lately I haven’t been bringing my keys with me because I tend to not carry a purse at all, so unfortunately I wasn’t much help in the situation. Krista took us back to our apartment, where the Romgi climbed up the fence onto the 1st floor roof and from there made it onto our balcony, where we had conveniently not locked the sliding glass door into the bedroom. Then it was easy to just let me in the front door to get my keys, have Krista drive us back to Orem to pick up the car, and find the Romgi’s keys dangling from the coat hanger behind the driver’s seat. (We both took a nap during lunch, and suspect that the Romgi put them there while he was stretching in his sleep.)

Yesterday was also Mu’s vet appointment, which, luckily, we were able to make it to. His mouth has been worse than usual for the past few weeks, and after reading up on common problems with Chinese water dragons we suspected that Mu had a case of mouth rot. It’s kind of like the lizard equivalent of a canker sore, except it can spread to a lizard’s jaw bone and even to its eye. We first noticed a yellowish fang-looking object sticking just out of the corner of Mu’s mouth – if he still had a whole mouth, we never would have seen it. His lip was also starting to swell some and portrude from the nice line his jaw should have made.

So, we took him to the only vet in the Provo-Orem area that handles lizards. The assistant was really friendly and obviously knew a lot about water dragons, which was reassuring. Then the doctor came in. I had seen her once before, when Mu had a bad eye infection; and like at my previous visit, she had rather long fake nails. That makes me a bit nervous when I know she’s going to be holding a small animal with sensitive organs. But, she seemed to know what she was doing. While the assistant held Mu firmly in both hands, the doctor swabbed some anaesthetic on Mu’s lip and then forced his mouth open with a tongue depressor.

“Oh…look at that…let’s just get that huge chunk out of there, ok?” she said. I think she was talking to Mu. She began hacking away at something with a q-tip, and I assumed it was a piece of mealworm parts that had become lodged in his teeth.

No, it wasn’t. It was part of Mu’s jaw. She ripped out half of his upper right jaw. Teeth and all.

Jarom and I just sort of sat there, horrified. I completely understand that the jaw had rotted and needed to come out, but to do it so casually! So suddenly! I felt so bad for Mu. He’s very angry with us now. On the bright side, the two medicines that they told us to give him are ones that he likes the taste of. It’s almost like getting a treat. Sort of like getting ice cream when you have your tonsils taken out.

The doctor also gave Mu a single-dose medicine designed to de-worm him, which I suppose is removing the parasites that he may have gotten from eating crickets. Huh. And she sent us home with a fecal sample packet and the two medicines. With the exam, de-worming, fecal sample packet, and medicines, it all came to $100. Better than I was expecting, but still…

And that is what Happened yesterday.

Maybe it’s better if today is Quiet.