Most of my appointments this week have been medical. I've been on a fairly-involuntary tour of the medical infrastructure in Athens since we moved here. The care has been really excellent, though I realize that I'm extremely fortunate to be able to access the private system. The public system is not bad, it just tends to be outdated, and takes longer to provide complete treatment to patients. Sometime, I want to go into more depth about the system I've experienced...but not today.
Anyway, most of this week's medical crap has been gestationally-related, or tangentially-gestationally-related. I don't think the dog has any clue of what's coming, but I do think she started to feel left out of the medical appointments. Yesterday, I noticed she was having problems with one of her eyes. It wasn't much better this morning, so we went to the vet. Our veterinarian here is completely fabulous, and so, so cheap. For $30, she examined Bella, applied some antibiotic eye goo, drew blood for testing, and sent us home with a prescription.
We're still not sure what the issue is. Bella, bless her, is such a neurotic, anxious creature, that by the time she was sitting (read: being restrained) on the exam table, both of her eyes were bulging out of her head, and her heartbeat was impossible for the vet to track. Have you ever pulled a hamster out of its wheel in the middle of the night and seen what those suckers look like when they're wired? They look like they're on uppers. That's what happens to Bella at the vet. So, I think her bulgy-eyed weirdo heartbeat prompted the vet to run some heart/liver/kidney tests with Bella's blood to rule out all the expensive, fatal disorders. I sound pretty cavalier about this, but believe me, if this turns out to be something horrible, you will all be put into a support network to pull me through my crisis, even if you're a complete stranger who just stumbled onto this page by accident. It's probably just an eye infection, though.
Now that I've whined, it's time for me to brag. Man, this blog is like a good, solid therapy session, and you're just stuck there with whatever I make you read. I guess you could stop and click on something else, but I'm sure I'm too captivating for you to do that. Here are a few photos from our early spring. I don't know if this is typical for this time of year, but everything is starting to bloom. This has been the shortest winter I've ever experienced in my life. I saw a million blossoms on my way to and from laiki this morning. I wish I'd had my camera then, but now I know for the next time I'm out. I took these photos an hour ago on our balconies.
The balcony plants are blooming! I've missed the flowers. |
Between the time I wrote the caption for that last photo, and the time I wrote this sentence, I watched ten different "One of These Things" Sesame Street clips on YouTube.
There is something going on at the elementary school near us today. I don't know what it is. I saw a bunch of kids marching down the street chanting things. I can hear music from a distance, and every once in a while, the kids scream excitedly in unison. Maybe they're just teaching the kids how to demonstrate. I never went to a demonstration, or participated in a "hey, hey, ho, ho" chant until I moved to D.C. as an adult, but it's such a large part of Greek culture that maybe they teach it here from infancy. Nah, it's probably something more fun than that. I want to go.
With every post, you make me bound and determined to drag my husband back there for a vacation. Those strawberries look great!
ReplyDeleteThey're delicious! I think produce must go through a different process here. It doesn't get the U.S. grocery store treatment. Well, I mean, especially not at the outdoor markets. The watermelon in the summer is fabulous.
DeleteI am reading your blog in the middle of the night. When I lived in Brazil, we lived across the street from an elementary school where they were always chanting loudly in unison. I mentioned it to my brother, who was lives in Thailand, and he said he always heard loud chanting from the elementary school. So maybe Americans are the weird ones?
ReplyDeleteI was like, "Who the **** is Lindsay?!" and then I got really excited. I fiercely miss you. Should we bring chanting to American elementary schools? I'm game.
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