This isn't even
the worst side of my arm—but, on this side you can basically see the outline of the dog's mouth, that dog being Val, the foster dog Danielle has at her house right now, and who bit me last night.
I'm fine. Or at least, I will be. To be sure, this was the first time I ever got bitten by a dog like this before—dogs have nipped at me for sure, but I have no memory of a 90-lb dog with a jaw that
could have ripped me to shreds literally biting me with such aggressiveness. And she did draw blood: that's why the bandage on the opposite side of my arm. The many bite marks on this side of my arm were mostly just indentations or slight scratches, with, as you can see, a little blood in one spot there as well. More than anything, it scared the living shit out of me, and that's what took me the most time to recover from. I never told this to Danielle, who felt so, so bad about it all, but for a good ten or fifteen minutes or so I was actually a bit nauseated, I think just from the fright it gave me.
I'm glad it was Danielle's dog and nobody else's, just because Danielle is a nurse and I knew I could trust her recommendations on a clinical level. After I screamed, and Danielle quickly screamed at Val who then ran away in shame, Danielle led me to her kitchen where she had me wash my arm thoroughly. Then she went to get the small bandage to put over the cut that was actually dripping blood. She assured me Val has had her rabies shots, and so the only real, minor concern is bacterial infection, so I need to keep an eye on the cuts and scratches. She also gave me a bottle of three pills of antibiotics that had been a prescription for her for something else but she never used, for me to take over three days just as a precaution. Shobhit is forever trying to get me to take antibiotics he has from India even when it's just for a viral infection and I refuse because that is useless against viral infection (Danielle, of course, agreed with this), but this is a scenario in which taking antibiotics is not the worst idea. I'd honestly rather do this than go in to see a doctor yet again; I've had more than enough doctors, and particularly complications with medical bills, for one year.
There was a point later in the evening as I was hanging out at Danielle's house, when she was sort of joking around, saying something along the lines of, "I just want peace in my life, no crazy daughters, a dog that doesn't bite people..."
I said: "I think you're going to need another dog or that." That made her laugh. The thing is, I'm honestly not sure she
should keep this dog—and not just because Val bit me. I'm the
third person she's bitten, and only the first she's not bitten badly enough to require stitches. Maybe I should be grateful! Aww, Val likes me! Anyway, Val has also bitten both Danielle herself—in
the face—and Danielle's mom, Gail. I can't remember where Gail was bitten, maybe also in the arm. Both of them had to go in and get stitches; all I have needed is a small bandage, and as of today, just a band-aid.
Danielle is actively training this dog, and even learned some valuable stuff from a hired dog trainer, who I
think she saw after the other bites happened. So, I think she's of the mindset that she can still be trained—and as part of her training, Danielle had a stern talk with Val, and made a certain area around me off limits to where she could go. For that, I was grateful, because I was rattled enough not to want to have that dog near me the rest of the time I was there. Val has a huge dog crate in Danielle's bedroom at the end of her bed, and I went to use Danielle's bathroom while Val was in there, and I actually was a little bit scared of the dog coming out after me. I locked the door in the bathroom and had visions, albeit ones not truly being seriously entertained, of some
Cujo-like attack through the door. Danielle told me the shelter where she got Val said they would euthanize Val for her, which was a thought that horrified her:
Whaaat, she told me was how she reacted. And here's where I am with that: Danielle is attached to this dog, really cares about it, and is actively training it. I totally get all that. But if Val keeps biting people, and especially if she winds up hospitalizing someone, whether she should be put down will no longer be up for debate. There are some who might conclude that it already isn't. Three times is a lot of times to have drawn blood biting people.
It's still probably worth noting that in both Danielle's and Gail's biting cases, they had carelessly startled a jumpy foster dog while she was resting or sleeping—being all lovey-dovey in a way Val was not in the mood for. I'm less inclined to take responsibility for what happened with me, though. I was merely moving blankets out of my way to sit on the couch, and Val was standing right next to me. She was not laying down or resting. I was not paying super close attention, because you shouldn't have to be this careful next to a pet dog. I don't know if maybe I lightly stepped on one of her paws—I didn't feel anything on my foot—or maybe I startled her by waving the blanket toward her face? The latter may be more likely, as she bit the arm while I was moving the blanket. This is the best I can do to interrogate the incident, though, because all I can really remember is the terror of the bite itself. In any case, no dog that is considered safe to be around should or would be behaving like this. I do actually feel bad for the dog, to be clear. But I feel more bad for myself. If it's me or Val, I'm fucking choosing me!
Danielle was wildly apologetic. She said she was sorry more times than I could count. She would say "I feel bad," and I just replied, "I know you do." When I once said "It's okay" after she said she was sorry, she said, "No, it's not okay,"—and, okay, that's true. But, I also noted that it could have been
way worse. As I already noted, Val could have ripped my arm to shreds. and she did not. This was an absolutely aggressive, terrifying, and technically injurious act, but there was also actual restraint in it. I'm trying to be diplomatic here!
Anyway. I took the bus down to Renton yesterday afternoon, arriving at 2:40, since Shobhit was already planning to be otherwise engaged with his monthly gathering with
The Olympians. Danielle came to pick me up at the Renton Transit Center in downtown Renton, and we hung out and walked around there for a while, stopping by the library to see if there were any salmon in the Cedar River that runs directly under it (there wasn't); browsing
fun stores, and eventually going to Happy Hour at a pub, where Danielle bought me a surprisingly huge plate of $10 nachos and she had tacos. This would turn out to be my dinner, and was a late lunch for her.
I also made chai that I brought with me, which I barely had time to make before leaving, and had I known we would spend so much time downtown, I'd have brought some cups with me so we could just find a place to stop and drink it there. But, eventually she drove us back to her house and we drank it there, mostly while we sat at her computer and looked at her photos from the Alaskan cruise she went on for her birthday with her friend Gina, her mom, and Gail's friend Deb. Many of the photos were stunningly beautiful, actually.
Eventually we decided I would hang out there long enough for Shobhit to pick me up on his way back from Tacoma, where this month's Olympians event took place. So that was close to 10:00, and to kill some of the time Danielle suggested I find something for us to watch. I went to her Netflix account and we watched the Robby Hoffman special from last year. It was fine. I got a few more laughs out of it than Danielle did and she even laughed pretty hard a couple of times, but it still overall could have been funnier.
We still hung out after the comedy special was done until Shobhit came to pick me up. By that time Danielle was ready to go to bed, so I just went straight out to the car rather than Shobhit coming in. He was having leg cramps so he asked me to drive, and it was a bit of a bitch driving because it was raining unusually hard, making it difficult to see the road at night. But, we made it home. Danielle even called me again this morning while I was watching a movie with Alexia and Shobhit in the condo—I'll get back to that in tomorrow's post—just to check in on how my arm is doing. The muscle in the arm still aches a bit here and there, as it feels sort of like Val chomped down on where there's a nerve or something. But otherwise, it's doing fine.
So now I'll go backward, to yesterday morning, when Alexia came over as well, and I moved Shobhit's car so she could park in our spot and not have to pay for street parking. She and I then walked to Capitol Hill Station, where we caught the train down to Pioneer Square, where we were to take a Seattle Architecture Tour, our first in two years. But first, at my suggestion, we went to Mirabelle by Orphée for breakfast.
It was my first time having breakfast there, and Alexia and I both ordered the goat cheese and leek quiche. And I'm not usually the biggest fan of quiche, but this one was truly phenomenal. It had perfect crust, and the egg filling was perfectly fluffy, making it almost unbelievable how good and delicious it was. But I must say, every single thing I have at this place is delicious. I had hot chocolate with my breakfast: delicious. Even the side salad that came with the quiche was tasty. It was a thoroughly satisfying breakfast, and when I hung out with Alexia again today, she told me about how much she raved about it with some of her other friends.
We had something like forty minutes to kill when we were done, so we just walked around a few blocks in the area for a while. We looked through the windows of a closed art gallery, and I also suggested walking the pedestrian bridge over to the ferry terminal so I could use the bathroom—something I realized later would be returned to while on the tour anyway, as it was called "
The City & Sound: Seattle's Waterfront." Oh well. This way I didn't have to peel off to use the bathroom while on the actual tour.
The tour had a main tour guide, an older woman who was an architect; and a transit planner guy who was in training. I would love to do one with him one day when he's done training, as he was much better at disseminating fascinating details to the group. The woman spent a lot of time reading from printed sheets in a binder. To be fair, it was all still very interesting, and even though we only walked through areas I have already been countless times, I did learn a bunch of new stuff I found very interesting.
I got a
32-shot photo album out of it, and when I find some time I'd really like to finish fleshing out captions on these ones, because I don't really want to forget some of the details I learned on this one. This now makes
16 tours I have taken specifically with the Seattle Architecture Foundation, since I first did a bunch of them between 2007 and 2008; I did eleven those years alone, with another a year later in 2009. I didn't do another until 2023, and I've now done four since then—one in 2023; two in 2024; and now one in 2026. It's usually Alexia who goes with me on them these days, and I always enjoy them.
The tour started at 1st and Marion, and ended on the Overlook Walk, about 15 minutes past the scheduled end time of noon; it started at 10:00, but the tour guide lady took some time to talk about the connections between Seattle and 9/11. I already
created my own photo album about this on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in 2021, and this past Friday was now the 25th anniversary, so there's been a lot of commemorative coverage. (This was the only place I learned about
the awesome drone show that apparently happened in New York City Friday night.) Alexia and I caught a bus back up Capitol Hill, and then I had about an hour before the bus I decided to catch to Renton, the stop for which was down on 9th and Stewart. So this gave me barely enough time to make the chai before walking down the bus stop, which Danielle and I drank while looking at the Alaska photos on her computer. This was well before Val bit me.
As for Friday, Shobhit and I spent almost the entire evening in the U District, thanks to lack of interpersonal communication at the Apple Store. I was supposed to be able to just drop off my phone for repair, since their outage prevented it from being possible on Thursday, but the guy who checked me in insisted I had to be put into the queue for a Genius appointment—that alone was something like a 75-minute wait. Shobhit and I killed time both by splitting a "shroom burger" with fries at Shake Shack, and driving downtown to see if the woman who sells the face scrub I like was at the same spot she was before during Belltown Art Walk, and she was not. (In fact, Danielle and I had talked about her coming up for this Art Walk, and it ended up not working out, both because she fell asleep—exactly as she had when she missed First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square—and because the Apple Store bullshit kept us back in the U District until the store closed at 8:00.
When we came back, and were finally able to get help and drop off the phone for getting the battery replacement, this new woman told us we were supposed to just drop off the phone and didn't need a Genius appointment. This was very irritating, and she told us the guy who had checked me in was very new. Whatever, we just wasted over an hour is all. We were indeed told later that the actual process of taking out the old battery and putting in a new one takes a solid hour, but we got to the store the first time at about 4:30, as I had Shobhit pick me up from work at 4:00; the phone wouldn't even have gotten started on until 7:00 since we didn't get it back until 8:00. One guy even tried to tell me the phone would be ready for pickup this morning at 10:00! That was not going to work, and I said, "We've been told
twice that we'll be able to pick it up tonight."
And, indeed, we were—just, after three and a half hours. We did also have time to go over to the AT&T store so Shobhit could get his discount on a replacement protective cover. And I did have my own silver lining in the end: apparently they damaged my screen when pulling it off, so they replaced it for free. Not only do I now have a battery with a 100% maximum capacity rather than the 78% it was down to until 4:30 on Friday, but it also looks brand new. So I have no complaints about that.
I have plenty more to tell you about
today, but after all I actually did plus writing both a movie review and this post, I need a break. I want to watch
Lanterns and have some dinner! So I'll tell you about Sunday tomorrow.
[posted 6:32pm]
