Archive for February, 2007

His Dogness at the Pink Mink


After I found out that I stopped breathing 77 times an hour, the doctor prescribed a sleep mask.

The idea was to put the mask over my face, hook it to a machine that blows air via a flexible tube and to breathe through the apparatus all night.

Although I wasn’t excited about wearing the contraption on my face, I was excited about the prospect of sleeping better. And I started imagining how much more productive I would become once I was well-rested. I would arise at 5 a.m. fully refreshed and, for couple of hours before it was time to get to work, I would work on that chapter book with Sparkle Girl, Doobins, Mr. Whitfield, magic ice, Lucy Lightheart and the blue heart that, so far, I have been working on only in my imagination.

I eagerly await that development. At the moment, I’m still in the “no one is supposed to be allergic to these masks but every now and then someone is and it turns out that you’re one of them” phase. My face’s response to the mask was to swell up and turn red. My skin felt as if it had been badly sunburned. One day, Garnet announced that she thought I was starting to look purple. I said that I preferred to think of it as deep red.

What with taking a while to figure out that it was a true allergic reaction and not just a matter of adjusting to the mask, taking days off for my face to deflate, trying a new mask and my face reinflating and deflating and such, the process has been going on for about three weeks.

I have gotten maximum value from my misery by making people listen to my story.

Someone will innocently say, “How are you?” and the next thing they know I am filling them in. Before I can tell them the latest development, they need the background, of course. So, as the saga has continued, the story has become quite lengthy.

Some people have even had to listen to it as I casually scraped off bits of the damaged skin that started flaking after it dried. And I have forced close friends to look at the new wrinkles that appeared after my face deflated the first time.

Garnet could make a strong case for having suffered more than I have. She has had to listen to every thought that I have had on the matter – and I have had many of them – at least seven times. And, if she happened to be there when I took it upon myself to bring someone up-to-date, she had to listen yet again.

On Saturday, we took His Dogness to the PiNkMiNk for a dog scritching and book signing. Beforehand, I asked her how she was feeling about going.

“I’m just worried that I might have to listen to your damn story 85 times,” she said.

It made me laugh but it’s probably a good thing she said it. With that in mind, I looked around to see where Garnet was and took someone aside before I forced them to look at my wrinkles and residual puffiness from the latest mask.