Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I’m happy to say that after a week or two of being cared for by Caitlin and I — not that we did much, we just made him a “bird sanatorium” in a giant cardboard box with some fresh water and birdseed — that our sparrow seems to be completely healed and back to normal. When I brought him in, he had a severely damaged wing and leg and couldn’t stand, fly, walk, or even hold his head up straight. We were pretty sure that he was not only fatally wounded but also brain damaged. But I’m able to report that he’s walking normally and quite able to fly and can hold his head normally and seems to have typical bird behavior. It was still “fall weather” when we brought him in, and since then it’s a lot colder and there’s snow on the ground. The weather is supposed to be much warmer tomorrow, so we’re going to let him go in the morning. Figure that will lessen the shock since he’s been in a warm space for a while — and tonight we’re putting him near the garage door so he’ll start cooling down. Definitely nice news though, we did not have our hopes high that this would be a successful rescue, but it seems to have been.

Other than that I have just started remaking the mold for the two women’s size skull rings a few minutes ago, and while I was at it I also cast a lego guy for fun (the head is double-sided if you’re wondering why it looks backwards). Not sure what my plan is with that, but now I can cast metal lego guys if I want. I did some clay pre-work on the mounting holes so he should actually mate to plastic lego normally. I might also take the product of this mold and carve it a bit and then re-mold the result. We’ll see. It was mostly so that any excess silicone from making the ring molds wouldn’t go to waste. It’s not cheap stuff so I hate having it go to waste.

We have been watching season two of the special effects make-up show Face-Off so I think perhaps now I may make myself some acrylic teeth for fun since Caitlin is off at a friend’s baby’s first birthday party. I’ve been meaning to do that for a long time, and my jaw keeps falling off my head which is shockingly and acutely painful for hours until it settles back into the joint, so I need something to distract me from that. I have always been able to dislocate my jaw at will (which makes a quite horrible noise that seems to deeply disturb those that hear it) and it’s never been painful, but since the muscles in the area started dying they don’t seem to be able to hold the joint together properly any more, mostly on the right side of my face. The same thing happens with my hip, ankle, and knee joints — if I stay in one position for long (if I’m reading or sleeping for example), the joint seems to loosen and separate, which hurts like crazy and is quite a sharp pain as well (whereas I’d describe the muscle pain as “dull”). I imagine from a diagnostic or treatment point of view it falls into the TMJ category of disorder, even though I’m quite certain it’s cause is the main genetic muscle disease. Either way in some ways it’s the worst pain yet because it’s so acute and because it’s so conceptually close to my mind I think.

By the way, the main reason that I bother writing this stuff down is not to share it or to complain, and I’m definitely not looking for feedback — it’s actually been a very useful diagnostic tool in tracking the progress of my issues. I’d actually urge anyone with a progressive disease to keep some sort of a journal, public or not. It’s quite hard to answer questions like “when did this problem start” precisely, especially years after the fact, so having a written and dated record gives your doctors a level of precision that can be extremely helpful. Memory is not as objective as one would like, whereas my blog posts don’t automatically edit themselves retroactively based on my current emotion. Although when I look at some of the embarrassing things I’ve written from time to time, sometimes I wish they would, hahaha!