Uranium J and Her (Nonexistent) Microscope of Wonder

My entire house reeks of stale dog urine. 

It has crept under the laminate flooring and I have yet to have an opportunity to address this with the industrial strength dog odor remover I bought at PetsMart on Tuesday. Or Wednesday - the days have begun to bleed into one another. 

Now, the dog is vomiting water all over the house and I am fairly certain that I have inadvertently given him salmonella poisoning. That's really great, what with him already being sick and all. 

So, on a daily basis, I am surrounded with all sorts of bodily fluids and wastes. I'm beginning to feel like I should be on prime time. This is not including the veritable cavalcade of perversions that is the contents of my child's diapers. Oh, and the weird shit that's coming out of my sinuses. Can't forget that. I have pictures, if anyone's interested.

It's a really good thing that I don't have the money for one of those super high powered microscopes. With all of the biological waste that is currently filling my life on a daily basis, I don't think I could help wanting to look at slides of the stuff. 

I'm like that. I want to know all about it, but not for any real purpose. Just for the joy of knowing. If I had one of those microscopes, I would probably make a morning ritual of getting up, blowing my nose (or, if I were sick, as I am now, otherwise evacuating my nasal cavities), putting a sample of the contents on a slide, and spending a good ten minutes looking at it. Probably while having a cup of tea. Why? Just to see what's there. 

I know, I'm disgusting - but don't tell me you don't sometimes look at something gross and think "gee, I wonder what that would look like real close up".  

I'm that person who looks at something gross, and then totally has the possession to smell it. Oh wow! Looks like vomit! *sniff* Yup! Sure is! I will also eat "mystery crumbs" without first considering that they are, in fact "mystery crumbs". These are usually found on the kitchen counter or the dining room table, and they are usually assumed to have once been part of a pastry or a piece of toast. More than once, these turned out to be errant grains of kitty litter, back when I had a cat. Yeah, I know. At least I don't lick the things I smell. I do have standards.

I'm a curious type of person. I like to learn new things for the sake of learning them. I'm not so good at the practical application part. This is why, in hindsight, I found college to be an utter waste of time. I became an English major thinking I was going to learn all about books and the people who wrote the books and the symbolism in those books. Period. Then, I got to class and was bombarded with Critical Theory and Literary Theory andAnalysis and Freudian/Feminist/Modernist/Post-Modernist/Post-Colonialist/BlahBlahBlah reading of these books . . . and I didn't get it. I couldn't be bothered. I don't want to put all this book learning to "practical" use. (I question the practicality of the critical analysis of literature in that I have yet to see what doing so has done for the common man or the plight of the proletariat at large, but that's another matter.) I just wanted to read the books and learn how to make some inner city kid give a shit about reading them. I don't mind thinking about the books, but it gets to a point with the theory and whatnot that, for me, it sucked all the joy right out of it. Marxist theory? It's interesting, but really who needs it?

Sometimes I think I should have pursued science, what with my curiosity. I imagine it would have ended the same. though. I could learn about science all the live long day. Then, someone would say to me, "Cure cancer!" and I couldn't be bothered. "I just want to look at the cancer on a slide, guys. I might even help you cut it out of a guy, but since I've got a lousy hand for that sort of thing, I'll just hand y'all the scalpel and watch." 

If I had my microscope of wonder right now, not only would I be able to examine "mystery crumbs" before ingesting them (which would do me no good as I would just be looking for looking's sake, not to identify the origin of said crumb), I would also be able to analyze my dog's stool sample. It would do me no good, of course, since I only want to look at it. Identifying it would be someone else's job. I could bring the vet  on a real nice slide though. That would be helpful. Of course, in my present state of mind, perhaps it’s better that I can't diagnose him myself. It's a long time till morning and I would have to deal with the guilt all that time. I could go crazy between now and then . . . well, crazier.

Note: The Cody did not have salmonella. He did have an infection, and he spent the weekend in the hospital. I hope to be able to bring him home this afternoon. I will keep you all updated. 

Cody Corneilius, in better times.