mojosmom

I went to dinner at Sal e Carvao with my Italian instructor, two of her friends from Italy who speak very little English but do speak Spanish and French, another Italian instructor who is of Italian descent but was born in Brazil (and who speaks seven languages) and a Brazilian friend of his, and a couple of other students, one of whom is from Cuba and speaks Spanish, some French and Catalan in addition to English. As a result, the conversation around the table was quite a polyglot! I was introduced to an incredibly delicious Brazilian cocktail, a caipirinha, consisting of cachaça (a sugar cane alcohol), lime and sugar. The food at Sal e Carvao was excellent, but it's very expensive and I'm stuffed. It's the kind of place it's fun to go to once, but I wouldn't make it a regular stop.

Now for the cat news. I spoke to the surgeon and she said the biopsy showed nothing chronic. She thinks the stricture may have been caused by some sort of trauma, though we can't quite figure out what that might have been. However, she says the problem is unlikely to recur, which is excellent news. Of course, from now on, I will probably panic every time Mojo decides he's not interested in eating for whatever reason. I'll be taking him to his regular vet in a few days to get the sutures out (sparing both Mojo and myself the trauma of a forty-five minute drive to the surgeon), and I'll see what he thinks.

Mojo ate on Tuesday and Wednesday. And Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, his food came back out after a couple of hours. Friday the vet did a barium study, which showed that something is preventing the food from going down. The vet said surgery was necessary and that he could do it himself, but if it was anything more complex than a foreign object, he'd have to send Mojo to a surgery specialist, and suggested I think about sending him to one right away. I decided to do that, since I didn't want to risk Mojo having to go through the trauma of surgery twice! So today I took him for one more x-ray, and then up to Buffalo Grove to the specialist. He has had the surgery. Unfortunately, it was not a foreign object (which could have been removed and that would have been that). The surgeon found what she called a distention and stricture of the stomach with no obvious cause, and did a resection and a biopsy. It will be 3 -5 days before we get the results of the biopsy.

I don't yet know what's wrong. He has stopped eating, has lost a lot of weight, and is vomiting (not hairball vomiting, but watery, almost projectile, vomiting). We've just been to the vet, who took blood and urine and gave him IV fluids. He (the vet) is going to call me tomorrow to let me know what, if anything, the tests show. He says Mojo isn't yellow, so from that and other things he doesn't think it's kidney failure, but can't be 100% certain. And he didn't feel any masses. If the tests don't show anything, Mojo will go in Monday for x-rays.

I'm very worried.

Lilith went to the vet this morning for her annual checkup. I knew she had put on weight, but jeez, she's seventeen pounds! However, the vet says that she is otherwise quite healthy and I don't need to worry about it, but to be careful she doesn't put on much more weight. Anyone know where I can get a kitty treadmill?

I've been a bit cultural the last day or so. Yesterday, I went to the Center for Book and Paper Arts for the opening of the 4th International Book & Paper Triennial. There was some very good work, but it was curious that there were only two "traditional" books, that is, a text chosen, but not composed, by the binder and bound as a codex. Whether that was a curatorial choice, or a function of what was submitted, I don't know, but I'm not the only one who commented on that.

Today, having realized that it was my last chance, I went to the Newberry Library to see their exhibit, Disbound and Dispersed: The Leaf Book Considered. Very intriguing, and it raised the question of whether and when it is appropriate to disbind books and incorporate their leaves into other books. I think I come down on the side of "it depends". There is certainly something to be said for the necessity of having an actual example present when discussing printing and typography; any reproduction is bound to be misleading. And where a book is already disbound, as was the situation with many of the examples here presented, one may actually be assisting in its preservation. However, there were some examples of leaf books that were simply collections of leaves of important books, with no overarching concept, and that I found disturbing. Fortunately, that sort of thing isn't really done anymore.

I took advantage of my visit to stop into the bookstore, but was somewhat restrained, just picking up a couple of books from the sale rack and a few cards. Besides, I have to save my pennies for their Book Sale, which starts on the 28th. It's one of the big book sales of the year in Chicago, and I always buy way too many books, particularly if I go on the last day, when all the prices are slashed.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I went by the Tree Studios building and stopped in at Epoch. Mikel was in, and told me that they are opening an event space in the renovated Montgomery Ward catalog building. He also showed me the garden area, which I hadn't seen since it's been planted. Unfortunately, like the whole area, it's suffering from the drought. I also went into P.O.S.H. , and then the Arthur Feldman Gallery where I had a chat with the owner about smoking accessories (the only thing I miss about smoking!).

Later in the afternoon, I got my hair cut, and that always means a visit to a couple of used bookstores. I got a copy of Da Ponte's memoirs (Mozart's librettist, and his life could have been an opera!), and another Bible, a facsimile of the Pennyroyal Caxton edition illustrated by Barry Moser (which was why I bought it). This last purchase got me thinking. Here I am, an atheist, with a couple of copies of the Hebrew Bible, a couple of the Christian Bible, not to mention numerous commentaries thereon. Every so often, there will be a thread on Bookcrossing about whether people have read the Bible, own a copy, what version they like, etc., and there are always a couple of people who proudly post that they don't own one, never read it, and have no intention of doing so. Just what are they bragging about? Wilful ignorance of a major work of the western canon of literature? A work that informs our understanding of much else of western literature? Very odd.

Odd in the other direction are some of the Harry Potter fans on BC. They really need to get a grip. Not thinking that Rowling's books are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and being bored by all the hype surrounding them, does not make you an enemy of children's literature. These people seem to take the fact that not everyone shares their enthusiasm as a personal affront. Why do they need my approbation? Have they so little confidence in their own taste that they must insist that everyone get as excited as they do about it? Jeez, people, go read your book and leave me in peace to read mine.


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