My poor Max!

I got home tonight to discover that The Best Boy had a bloody head. Not specks or splotches of blood, but patches of bright red rubbed-off blood that had come from somewhere else. When I looked closely at his ears, I discovered that they were covered with the awful, horrible, nasty, icky biting flies that drink blood and come around in the spring.

Vampire flies. On my boy.

So I brushed them off and let him in and anointed him with antibiotic ointment. Then Flashes sat down and groomed his head, so that the blood wouldn't make him any less handsome. You could see where he'd shaken, hard, trying to get the flies off, and where he'd rubbed his face with his paws to discourage them.

Poor guy. I have no idea where the flies came from. It's war, though: tomorrow, rain or shine, I am putting out freaking fly traps and laying down cedar granules and nematodes.

And I have a cold. This is the first time I've been head-sick (as opposed to tummy-sick) since surgery. Eighteen months and no clinging head cold; this one could not be dislodged with zinc and Emergen-C. It is, of course, the Worst Cold Ever, and I Need My Mommy. I have completely utterly totally lost my voice and there are interesting poppings going on in the neighborhood of my right ear.

But I'm much more worried about Max. I, after all, have bourbon. Max only has ointment. He's sprawled out on his bed right now, sound asleep. I wish I could give him some Maker's.

I also wish I had a toaster that didn't have two settings: Raw and Burnt.

I also wish I had a gallon of Mom's Mexican chicken soup.

I guess this is what those damned swollen nodes in my chest were trying to tell me.