Wow, it rarely snows here in Houston, but all day we've been getting little flurries that seem to finally be sticking to the ground a bit now that it's back down to freezing again. It's very pretty but I'm glad we're staying in tonight, ice on the ground is one of my least favorite things.
Here's a couple of pics I managed to snap in the dark tonight as it came down. As you can see, the kitty is fascinated, she's never seen snow before. And to all a good night...
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OK, I've always spoiled my pets but this cracked me up:
I actually think this would scare the crap out of most dogs...
Unconscious Mutterings for this week (couldn't pass this one up!):
Birthday wishes to my mom, who is 75 today! We're at that place where she doesn't really NEED anything, doesn't use perfume, etc. so for Mother's Day and birthday she usually gets a book store gift card from me. Other than cash, it's my personal favorite gift, you can never have too many books or too much music :-)
Actually she's easier to buy for than my father. I don't like to pick books for other people unless I know they actually want something or really like an author. It must run in the family, I'm hard to buy for also. My husband just asks me what I want and gives me the money for it pretty much. My dad and I also share that guilt gene where we obsess whether we're getting the right thing, right size, color, etc. And I grew up in a retail family, so we always get way too carried away at Christmas. It would actually be fine with me if we just got together and ate dinner, we stopped exchanging gifts with most of our friends years ago, it just got too crazy. Christmas always gave me headaches. I don't mind sending cards, that's actually kind of fun, but when stores put out Christmas decorations in August (before Halloween even), it just really takes a lot of fun out of the holiday...
My best friend Mary's birthday is this Wednesday, she's in New Orleans or I'd get together with her also. I travel so infrequently now, originally because of lack of money and lack of reliable transportation, then because we had an elderly dog. But now I have a decent car, about the same amount of money, but now we have a codependant cat. We haven't spent more than a few hours away from the house since we adopted her last March. My husband says she sits at the door and cries when I go to the grocery store until I get back.
About the only place I'd like to go is to NOLA, I don't mind the 7 hour drive, if I could take the kitty I would, but I don't think my friend's three cats would appreciate it. Plus Phoebe hates to ride in cars, she cries the whole way to the vet, which is about 2 miles away. But I'm so paranoid, even taking her to the vet makes me nervous, hell, opening the garage door makes me nervous. I could never have kids (sigh).
Ramble, ramble... but anyway, happy Birthday to my two favorite Virgos!
Homework: A Household Meme current questions...
Pets: are they worth the added housework? How much extra work around the house (besides the work required for their regular care) do your pets create for you? Do, or did, you factor in housework when deciding to get a pet? Do the benefits outweigh the headaches, at least on most days?
They do create more housework, especially dogs, but the rest of the physical upkeep is one of the things that's making us really think hard about getting another dog. My health is unstable and my husband wants another big dog, we had two dogs (9 years and 16 years) and are kind of taking a break right now. I worry that I won't be able to keep up with a dog and a cat, because we spoil our pets rotten and proper care of a large dog is a lot of work. Our cat sheds amazingly little (she's a short-haired Burmese) and the main effort required with her is keeping her occupied and exercised, she's as hyper as a Border Collie and wants to play 24/7, she brings toys into the bedroom while I sleep in hope.
We had two outdoor dogs for nine years till one passed and the other (a black Lab) gradually became an indoor dog. She shed like crazy and we had another cat at the time also who also shed, so black & white hairs were floating around the house and my husband was vacuuming daily (he's a vacuuming fanatic so I let him). As our dog got older and it was harder for her to get up and down we had a LOT more housework for the last year or two (and were constantly worried about leaving the house even to go eat dinner) so it was a lot of stress but of course it was worth it. (See Furry Family Members for more info and photos of our pets)
I actually read on the internet that Labs are very heavy shedders and silkier haired Golden Retrievers shed less. My parents had Goldens, but they were always outside so I don't know it that's true or not. But Labs shed a lot more than you'd imagine.
us other pets that come and go so compared to her I've got it really easy.
The kitty knocks some of the litter out of her box, and occasionally throws up somewhere but is not bad at all compared to our last cat who we sometimes referred to as Exorcist Kitty and had a preference for sofas and beds. She is the first cat we've had that has her claws but she's very good about using her post except when she gets bored and wants attention. We keep a throw on the sofa for her to climb and to catch any hair.
The handiest tool I've found is a battery-operated kitty scoop that makes cleaning the litterbox much faster (it vibrates and shakes itself). I know it sounds weird, but it really works.
And then there's always the pest-control advantage of having a cat, especially in the swampy South.
But the main stress of owning a pet for me has always been the fact that I worry about them constantly. Yes, even the cat. I could never have children, I'd never let them leave the house...
Another part of our weekend was attending the wedding of a good friend of ours. I was a little worried because it was billed as an outdoors wedding and "summer casual" dress, which I don't really own, but the groom OK'd nice jeans and I was not the only one wearing them, thank goodness. And we (at least Sparky and I) got to spend most of the evening indoors. The back yard and pool were really beautiful, but it's too hot here!
We were almost too late, he had told us to arrive a little after the time on the invite, and it was across town from our home, so we ended up actually walking into the backyard just before the ceremony started. Very lovely, very informal ceremony (the bride & groom have been there before, as have a lot of our friends including me & Sparky). The home was really beautiful, and instead of photos of kids there were photos of the owners two Labs all around. When Sparky found out they were actually there on the premises he went nuts. He's been having Lab withdrawal since out 16 year old baby passed away. I have also, though Phoebe keeps us both so busy we're still very undecided about getting another dog.
The dogs were caged in the back of the house and when we went back to see them they were so excited. Our dog had been very calm and quiet in her last years (though her mate, a lab/sheperd mix had been very hyper) and it was strange to have two enormous full bred very happy male Labs rushing at me. They are so lovable, but SO big and so active. We pet them and Sparky drooled over them, and then they went back in their cages for the majority of the evening. Very well-behaved and well-trained dogs, just a bandanna on their necks, not that a collar and leash could have controlled them if they wanted their way.
In my first marriage we had gotten a dog (my beautiful male mix breed) who had been my baby. He was very hyper & active, though, and after a year we thought he could use some company, and went and got another black Lab mix female. I was actually planning on getting another male, but Tala picked me out. Together they were an enormous handful, especially after I got divorced. Having two large dogs meant I always had to have a house with a yard, couldn't travel, and just a lot of responsibility. We'd always had dogs growing up, but my dad did most of the work. My dogs were barely trained (they could sit and shake paws for treats), the male could jump 5 and 6 foot fences and the female could climb chain link fences, so I was on constant worry mode. They both made it out of the yard several times each, the female just walked around to front of the house and scratched on the door (smart dog). The male went running out into traffic, once I had to chase him down still wearing a motorcycle helmet and full leathers.
Near the end of the party, someone (not us, we were across the house with the hosts fortunately) let the dogs out of their cages and into the main house. Which delighted my husband but caused a panic with the hostess, who had to run around closing off rooms and transferring food out of reach. One of the dogs plunged head first into a bag of garbage, bringing back more memories (the reason I originally bought my kitchen trash can with the step-on lid). We rubbed and petted them both till we got "doggy hands" (more memories, constantly washing our hands, Labs have very oily coats).
Most of the people we spoke with at the party (mostly 30-50 range) had either kids or cats. And one woman said as soon as her kid went off to college whe wasn't having anything at all, not a cat, dog, fish or even houseplant. I can sympathize. I never wanted kids, I actually always wanted a cat but didn't grow up with them so I ended up with two high-maintenance dogs instead. Now that I'm a kitty mama, I really am happy, she's not low-maintenance, though, she's Burmese. Sort of like having a tiny Border Collie. But, she's an indoor pet, I don't have to go out in the heat, the rain or the cold in the middle of the night anymore. I do have to be careful what I leave out because she has managed to reach just about every square inch of the house (up to the ceiling itself) which is a new experience. But for now, we're still on the fence, and enjoying the air conditioning...
Lots of rain, hail and lightning today, and the power actually stayed on!
Fearless Phoebe enjoys watching the storm rage in nice, dry air-conditioned comfort.
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Well, I finally got around to going back to get my hair cut and the color redone (it only took me 4 1/2 months, that's actually pretty good for me, last time it was like five years). I knew I wanted some red in it and I knew I wanted it shorter for the summer. I haven't had it cut above shoulder level since I was in elementary school (first grade?) and got sort of a pixie cut, which was actually one of my favorite haircuts of all time.
I've made it all sorts of different colors before, usually on my own (except for my purple cellophane phase, a pro had to do that). I showed my stylist a picture of a girl who (to me at least) looked like she had really dark auburn hair, and he went and mixed the color and then let it set, but I could see in the mirror it was looking really red. Which wouldn't be a problem, but I wanted a dark red because the bottom half of my head is still pretty much black. So he rinsed it off, and I ran to the bathroom before returning to the station, and saw in the mirror it was REALLY red, my natural color had just soaked it up (gulp).
When I sat back down, I told him I was afraid it was a little too punky (which is not necessarily a bad thing) but the dark bottoms and lighter roots made my fine hair look too thin. He cut it some, dried it, we went and walked around with a mirror outside, and yep, it was too bright and too light.
So he trots out more color, semi-perm this time, a dark brown with a bit of red, and I sit under the dryer while it penetrates and second try, much darker. Then I let him go to town on trimming, my hair grows fast so by August I know it will be back where I started again, and he trimmed it almost into a long shag. I wasn't allowed to look while he styled it, he sprayed a styling aid on it to straighten it first and then he went to work with the straightening iron (I actually happen to own one myself, yea me!) and when he finished it was super straight and shiny.
I was naughty and made him trim it back from my face some, even though it looked really pretty all feathered, I wish I could have taken a photo before he trimmed it back but I knew it would have bugged me. It's so hot here in the summer I really wanted to get as much hair away from my face as possible.
Then I spent more money shopping in their candy store full of hair products, got the spray he used, and another bottle of my favorite MOP conditioner (really good for fine hair), and a heavy duty weekly-type conditioner just because I think I need one. I've been using their MOP products since my last haircut in January and he said my hair looked like it was in really good condition today, last time the stylist told me it was very dry, so apparently organic really is better than my normal Pantene stuff ;-) I have a basket full of hair care products under my sink, probably because I'm never happy with it. I really like the last two cuts I've gotten from Pope Hair, though, which is amazing because I've spent up to $75 for a cut at some of the trendy salons here in town (with pictures of the local new people up on the wall even, ooh...) and been disappointed (especially after I washed all the gunk they put in it out). If you can't get a decent cut for that much money it's kind of depressing. I'm not big on styling products, I don't like hairspray and gel (and I wash my hair at night), all I want in life is a decent cut to tame my poor fine, frizzy hair. I am trying to make myself use something to keep the frizz down on a regular basis because I live in windy humid town.
So here are the new pics, for some reason Sparky can't take a picture of me that doesn't look like a police lineup shot, which is partly my fault for having no makeup on, but I really do like the all red pic of me and Phoebe (he had his thumb over the flash).
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OK, this is exactly how I have felt lately:
Turn your sound on, it's long but very cute (warning - language)
And when you're done with that mindless fun, take the He-Cat or She-Cat? quiz
Why is my current mood displayed as "pained" you might ask? Well, Sunday when I was over visiting my mom the right side of my lower back kept giving me those little weird twinges that hint that something's about to go terribly wrong and last night it did. Out of nowhere the entire right side of my body from the waist down just sort of gave out. I could barely sit up in a chair, I couldn't walk at all, and even laying down to sleep hurt. I don't know if it has to do with my MS, the fact that I'm double jointed and my hip does go out from time to time (but usually doesn't hurt like this), or a number of stupid things I've done lately. Carrying laundry on my hip, reaching up in the closet to get a box down. And, oh yes, jumping up and down at the grocery store Saturday trying to knock things off the top shelf so I could actually purchase them. (I'm 5'1") I don't know who the tall, sadistic bastard is that designed my grocery store, but he made the three foot deep shelves over 6' high, and he always puts the last couple of bottles of Evian at the very back of the shelf. If I ever meet him I'm going to kick him in the shins...
So I'm suffering like hell now. Could be totally unrelated to my high jumping attempts, but that couldn't have helped. I need to buy one of those little reacher thingies to take grocery shopping. Or just a long stick. And to add insult to injury, I had to go in for my mammogram today and it rained the entire day, actually even flooded. I was a few miles away, on a road that parallels a huge bayou and the rain started sheeting. So when I got to the clinic I got drenched and stepped in about four inches of water in my good shoes. And then got to sit around with a hospital gown that wouldn't stay closed in wet jeans. Oh, and then got my boobs put in a cold metal clamp while I tried to keep standing in one place with throbbing back for way too long while the technician reset the machine because the power had gone out just before I arrived. The only good thing that happened was because the power had blinked the clinic's computers were offline so they're going to have to bill us for the test. We just got the bills in the mail for the labwork from our physicals in today, for a change his exam was more expensive, being an over 40 white male they seem to be taking his health and extra weight more seriously than they do mine.
Speaking of, Sparky's back went out this weekend and I gave him a couple of Soma and now he's fine. I hope I'm fine in two days. My Fiorinal is doing nothing for the pain and the Soma just made me kind of woozy but I may take one anyway before bed. The kitty came down with an upper respiratory infection last week (sneezing, sluggish cat!) and we've been squirting antibiotics in her mouth twice a day. She doesn't like it, but she's smart enough to get over it in a few minutes. And I've been hand feeding her turkey baby food afterwards which helps the proverbial medicine go down. She wasn't eating properly for about a week after her physical, but until she started sneezing we weren't quite sure what to make of her lethargy since she'd also received two shots at the same time. But she seems to have her appetite back now, and is murring and running though the house again.
Busy week, too much drama, but I'll not go into that... We took Phoebe in for her annual physical this week and because she was so itchy. The vet didn't find anything wrong with her skin, decided it was probably food allergies and switched her to an allergen free diet, IV Green Peas and Duck, which is what she was on when we got her. But she doesn't really like it, though, so I'm still mixing the old food in with it. And the bag of Hill's Sensitive Skin food that I'd ordered a week ago still hadn't arrived so I emailed them to see if I could return it and they hadn't even sent it out yet (!). Geez, they charged my card the day I ordered it, but now they're supposed to be crediting me for the whole order, which included some feather toys too.
I'm afraid I've been giving her too much people food lately, letting her lick the bottle of my yoghurt, etc., which is like her favorite thing to do. And I give her too many treats. The vet gave her a steroid shot for the allergies, he had suggested we give her oral steroids for a week instead and now I kind of wish we'd taken done that instead of the shot. She's been so mellow and calm all week, poor thing, not herself at all. She's hardly played at all and has mostly been sitting on the floor watching us and purring quietly. She seems to slowly be getting some of her energy back, we played a little tonight. But she's not itching and her skin is healing nicely.
And the last couple of days I've been feeling really uncomfortable in my skin for some unknown reason. Wednesday night we went out and I ate pasta for the first time in like a month, maybe it's some side effect of that. I just feel really jumpy and sort of PMSy, though I shouldn't be yet. I read an article saying that the low carb diet worked better if you took a day off once or twice a month and ate semi-normal so I rationalized it that way. I also had a migraine coming on Wednesday morning and took a Maxalt, which for some reason made me really druggy feeling all day to the point where I couldn't even drive. I don't know if it's the change in diet, birth control pills, or Prozac but medicines seem to be affecting me really adversely lately. I've just been a lump. I hate this feeling and I not knowing what's causing it pisses me off. Part of it is my mitral valve prolapse, which causes my heart to beat irregularly sometimes out of nowhere, which it's doing now, but I still have that creepy crawly feeling. And I dreamed about being invaded by bugs last night, which doesn't help at all.
My attempt at running errands Friday was just an exercise in aggravation. I made it through the post office quickly, but then needed to make a deposit at my bank with a real person instead of the ATM and had to wait like 15 minutes just to get through the line of cars. Then I stupidly went out on Braeswood, enroute to Sam's Club by the Dome, straight shot, eh? Made it through Hillcroft, no problem, than bam, all the traffic stops about a block before Chimney Rock. And goes nowhere... OK, I know afternoon traffic is bad but something was definitely wrong here. Is a car broken down, what?
Oh! I get close enough to the light that I can see through the SUV in front of me's window, and the light seems to be cycling funny. Oh crap, not funny at all, the two lights that are like 100 feet apart are out of sync. First light turns green just as the second light is turning red. So three cars get to scoot up each time, hanging out into the intersection, aaagghh! Luckily I was in the first slot when it was my turn and I shot all the way through. In any kind of race I've always been able to get the "out the gate" advantage, I have to make myself stop and wait until I'm sure no one is running a light coming at me because I have had the front end of my car knocked off by an idiot doing just that. But after that it was easy, even the loop didn't back up until I got off just after Fannin. Then I got to stand in line to get my prescription at Sam's, by that time I was pretty much a zombie.
And I was starting to get really hungry, it was dinner time. A lady was giving out samples of something that smelled really good and turned out to be a chimichanga. "It's very hot", she warned, "hold it a little while". It was hot, but after about four minutes of trying to steer a giant shopping cart with one hand while my stomach grumbled out loud, I succumbed. And burnt the crap out of the roof of my mouth. I have an overbite so I'm used to having injured gums, but burned and injured, oww... But it was tasty.
Late as usual, so I'm postdating this one by a few hours to be on the right day...
Sparky and I had our 14th anniversary today, or our 7th in my parents and the state of Texas eyes. We got married on the same date we met so we could keep it simple in our mind. We went to the same seafood restaurant that we did last year, and I ate the same thing, broiled shrimp, scallops, oysters and a stuffed crab. And I broke my diet a bit for a piece of their key lime pie ;-) My parents gave us a "universal gift certificate" (cash) to eat at Macaroni Grill also, but I think we'll do that next week because farfalle alfredo con pollo is really off my diet. So we've officially been married now longer than we lived together, which was already the longest relationship either of us had survived. It's a nice feeling, we've got the house, no kids, and can work from home without too many worries (knock on wood). We exchanged cute cards, and he proudly wrote on mine the first thing I said to him this morning, 14 years later, and her only request is "Don't fart on me". OK,I did say that, but I prefaced it with "please".
Then we drove around the Westheimer area, which we hardly ever go to anymore because of all the traffic and construction, and went to a new & used DVD store that some of Sparky's friends had been telling him about. He ended up buying one DVD and I bought three CDs. I have a "look for cheap" list for when we go shopping to replace some of my old cassettes and things and managed to get two of my Pixies CDs new for $10.99 each (Surfer Rosa and Trompe le Monde) and the latest David Bowie CD Reality, which is playing now and sounds very much like Heathen, which is next up on the CD changer. Hmm, Amazon has the same price on the two Pixies CDs and the Bowie CD for a buck less, oh well. I have a huge Amazon wishlist, lots of things to get when I get a windfall, or business gets better. I'm glad they let you rate the items now, because I have lots of "maybes" on my list and it's nice to be able to see the "must haves" first... Damn, Amazon's selling diamond jewelry now?
Time to take Phoebe in for her annual checkup, she's got some itchy spots that don't look like fleas, poor thing. I changed her food last time from the Hill's Science Diet for Sensitive Skin to the new one they just came out with the Advanced Protection one, but I'm going to switch her back. We killed another feather toy last night and they're hard to find in stock at Petsmart so I looked them up online and found them at a place called PetfoodDirect.com. Shipping was like $6.99 for just a couple of them or a lot, so I picked four and then wondered how much more it would be to order her food and it was only another dollar so I added it on also. And got an extra 5% off (and after I checked out got a pop-up for 20% off, dammit!). I've never bought pet food online before, this is a new experience. I really like that brand of feather toy, though, it has the nicest wand (doesn't hurt my hand) and the feather swivels nicely and makes little swooshing sounds.
Oh yes, bad news, turns out my mother does have a small fracture in her hip but the doctor says it's already mending and won't need surgery. I've been trying to figure out what I can do to help them the next month or two while my mom has to rest and stay off her feet. I've looked into meal home delivery for them, I know when I worked downtown a lot of people would have their lunches delivered daily. She didn't sound too enthusiastic when I mentioned it, but two months is along time for my dad to have pick up their dinner daily and I'm not much of a cook at all. I'm still trying to figure out what we can eat regularly to substitute for the pasta I'm not supposed to have anymore. I love beef, but chicken bores me and I'm not a fish fan. I'd eat shrimp every day if I could but we'd go broke ;-)
The next huge event I didn't get up on time also occurred on March 17, and it was our one year anniversary of adopting our kitty, Princess Phoebe. It doesn't seem like a year, she's as crazy and hyper as the day we got her (she was 6 months old at the time), but I can't imagine spending even a day away from her. She's my constant companion, familiar and amazes us each day with how smart she is. (Sometimes a bit too smart) She's also spoiled rotten and runs the household (hence the "Princess").
Even with all her frenetic energy, over the last year she's only actually broken three things in the house, knocked from shelves by accident. She's a Burmese cat, which is basically the equivalent of a Border Collie, and Burmese are called "dog cats" because of all of their dog-like qualities. She retrieves mice, performs tricks for our amusement, likes to play with water, begs for ice cubes to bat around, has to know what we're doing at all times, eats some of the strangest things I've ever seen a cat eat, and talks up a storm.
Other stuff I need to get out of my head before I go to sleep...
We've been fighting fleas the last few weeks. I was so dense I didn't realize we had them till the cat started really itching, I thought I was getting hives. I still haven't seen one fo the little bastards yet, but I feel them and Phoebe and I have the scars to prove it. They've barely touched Sparky, as usual. We've gone through one round of spraying and Advantage, going to have to do another round this weekend I think, should have put that on my list below. My sinuses are just recovering from the last spraying, though.
Been watching lots of TV lately, which is weird for me. Somehow this week I've managed to sit through three complete episodes of Queer Eye (which I always seem to miss) and I finally caught the complete first episode of Mad Mad House tonight along with the second episode. I stumbled into the end of the first episode last week, and then the last 20 minutes, and then decided to actually look at the TV guide and made myself sit through two tonight. I'm so out of it, and haven't watched the Sci Fi Channel regularly since MST3K went off the air (too many commercials!!) so this show caught me by surprise. I thought it was going to be a spoof, and then I recognized Fiona Horne. I rarely watch reality TV, but a show with a Wiccan, Voudon and an actual blood drinking vampire seemed to at least merit a chance. Lots of born again Christians and Republicans being tortured, what's not to like?
Went to a post card show last weekend and blew all my money, but found some great stuff. We only get like two postcard shows a year here, so I figured it was worth the investment. I had meant to buy more for resale, but ended up getting like 3 for me, 1 to sell... The show has moved to a new location that's actually near my house, in the brand new Stafford Centre, and it was having it's grand opening the first night I went, which I didn't know. I drove up and there were spotlights outside and people in black tie and was very confused. After the ceremony some of the well-to-do wandered into the room where the show was, champagne in hand, which really freaked out the dealers. And of course, they didn't pay admission.
I lost a hubcap on the way home the first night, but found it intact on the grass the next day waiting for me, so I still have three at least. Lost the other one on the freeway sitting in rush hour traffic in Baton Rouge a year or so ago, usually I jump out and fetch them when they roll off but I didn't realize what that strange noise was until I got to New Orleans.
OK, I look up my weblog in Google and here's what they have currently:
That's not very good... So I'm wondering, did I not put any Meta Tags in my home page when I guild this thing last year? Go and check... yes, I have a very nice description and a bunch of relavent keywords. I'm still not very good with the mechanics of XHTML, etc., still. I look at people's websites and blogs with three columns and all the bells and whistles, microscopic type, and I wish I had that much control over the appearance of my site (sigh).
I have GoLive and I'm still re-learning the new version of it, every time I seem to get proficient at an HTML program they go in and redesign the whole thing. I'm still learning Cascading Style Sheets (I know, it's sad). I have many expensive books on website design and I never seem to have time to even glance at them until I need something desperately. My own main website has been under "new construction" for like a year now with a new design sitting on my hard drive but not uploaded... Lately it seems all I do is sell and buy things on eBay, I think my OCD is out of control. I've been buying little glass kitties, getting a really nice collection, lots of Siamese, Burmese figurines are almost impossible to find. However I had to move most of them off my desk because my own kitty thinks they're toys to bat around. Not that they're safe on my bookshelves from the incredible jumping cat, but perhaps out of sight, out of mind...
Got almost everything upgraded to OSX compatible now. The whole system still feels funny but I'm finding little things each day that make me go "Doh!" which is actually a good thing. I love having the little "light bulb moments", as long as I can remember what I did to get there, then it just pisses me off.
I've got to say, OSX is so far much more stable than System 9, of course it took me years to corrupt my old files, it used to be fairly stable at first too.
Got an email from Apple today advertising their new Power Mac G5, the bastards... I got a dual CPU G4 when they were brand new, with a stunning memory capacity of like 1.5 GB, and now they have a damn Mac that can use up to 8 gig of memory, and is like 10 times as fast as mine. If I won the damn lottery I wouldn't even want to try and keep up with all the upgrades, you'd spend all your time doing nothing but reinstalling and updating things, jeez. My best friend spent a fortune on a brand new G3 setup like a year before they came out with the G4's and she can't even get her new printer to work correctly with her "outdated" (maybe 4 year old?) setup.
Speaking of, my printer is still freaking out with OSX. I did manage to upgrade from ClarisWorks to AppleWorks and found, to my delight, that it's pretty much identical and not just another form of MS Word (which I have and don't like). I know it sounds lazy, but I really like the Apple Word processor better. I don't want hyperlinks and crap popping up at me while I'm typing, I don't even want it to spell check me till I ask it... I also don't like the new version of SimpleText... what's it called (pull up the menu bar, go to applications...) oh yes, TextEdit. It brings things by default up in HTML format, which kinds of defeats the purpose of trying to edit HTML and break down code. I was trying to reformat a template on my finicky auction listing program last night and even manually opening it in TextEdit it wouldn't save it in normal text, it kept wanting to save it in RTF (rich text format), which won't work with my program (which is OSX compatible, ironically). So I've put my old SimpleText icon on the wavery little dock, I think it's the only Classic app on there now...
Damn, my heart is racing still and I have to take two more steroids at bedtime, which is like now... I've been doing pretty good till today, I was itching all over most of the day but no hives yet (knock on wood).
Got the kitty a new toy, she's completely shed her little pink safety nail caps on one paw and I didn't want my husband to get scratched so I got her a catnip Kitty Hoots toy with a really long tail so he can play with her. She did get her picture featured on the SoftPaws page, she's on page one right now of the photo gallery (Phoebe) chasing a blue string . And no complaints about the nail caps, they're awesome, she's just such a gentle cat and she keeps getting them caught on things, she has very small nails but the next size down was kitten size. And having the nail caps on for awhile dissuaded my husband from having her declawed, which neither me or the cat could have done. But I can tell she's so relieved to have one paw naked now, the other one still has several caps on it. She's been doing somersaults on the sofa and latching onto all her toys with her newly rediscovered claws (which have been trimmed, BTW). She was a bottlefed baby and she's hyperintelligent as a Burmese so she knows not to scratch things she shouldn't.
It's awfully quiet in here, I'd better go find her and put the both of us to bed.
After much contemplation and temptation, I've registered a domain name for my cat Phoebe. Her nickname is Gothic Kitty, so she'll be at GothicKitty.com in a day or so. I've been wanting to make a little website just for fun, and I can't help but take pictures of her almost daily so there you have it. She's actually earned quite a few nicknames, but when we call her Gothic Kitty she chirps and tears through the house, so that's our favorite of all.
Sparky says she doesn't know her own name, but she does. Being a cat, she just doesn't always choose to respond to being called. Since we've had her a number of names have occurred to me which would all be appropriate also:
Gothic Kitty - because she's such a Gothic novel, sandwich stealing, mischievious kitty
Cheshire - because a lot of times all I can see are her eyes
Banshee - because she chirps and mews and runs through the house so much
Shadow - because she follows me everywhere I go
Jazzie - because she likes my jazz music so much
Mouser - because her sweet little face looks like a mouse and she loves to chase her mice
Batcat - because of her big pink bat ears and big black eyes
Dogcat - because she retrieves like a dog and is very un-catlike
Kitka - Sparky likes this name because it was Catwoman's name in the '66 Batman movie
Tiger and Huntress - because she's so fierce and relentless
Psycho Kitty and Schitzy Kitty - because sometimes she's just plain nuts ;-)
Also I can put some of the tons of cat links I've found in the last few months up and hopefully, pictures of friend's kitties so that should be fun.
3am and Gothic Kitty's beginning her nightly bath so that's my signal to go to bed.
I went to our neighborhood Petsmart and bought two more of Phoebe's favorite catnip Eeeks mice after the other two mysteriously disappeared. We've looked under every piece of furniture in the house and in the closet where they've been found twice before and nada. Then this evening one of the missing ones turns up in a place I've looked at least half a dozen times. So now she has a grey one, a brown one, and two pink ones (one is MIA and the other is in the drawer as an emergency mouse). It's such a cute mouse, though, really ;-)
Also found yet another interactive cat toy that she just went bonkers for, a mouse on a wand with a little computer chip in it that makes it squeak when it moves. The noise drove Sparky nuts, but the kitty couldn't get enough of it. I got her some more catnip also, I'm guessing the packet that came with her scratching post is probably a little stale. From her reaction the the new batch, I was right. Do you think whe's just a little bit spoiled maybe...
So far the best homemade toys have been - a drinking straw, sheets of packing paper that are good for hide and seek, anything fished out of the trash (wadded up napkins are very popular), a fresh green bean (I think she thought it was a lizard), and the number one - ice cubes. Yes, she's one of those odd cats that begs for ice cubes whenever Sparky opens the freezer and then she chases it around till it melts or ends up beneath the stove.
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We had to take the kitty back to the vet yesterday, she had developed more itchy raw spots around her neck and they weren't healing properly like the first round of hot spots she had. Turns out even though we'd treated her with Advantage she still a few fleas left (even the vet had a hard time finding them but he found two live ones) and she's very allergic to their bites. So we got more Advantage with instructions to give her another dose in two weeks instead of the normal four, and she got a steroid shot for her allergies.
Then I went out later in the day and bought her another mouse (one is MIA), more treats and a new scratching post from Petsmart to put under my desk. Of course, after I bought it I realized it too short, but my husband's opposed to having cat furniture all over the house and with her elevated cardboard scratcher I think it will work for now. They didn’t really have a very good selection of sisal posts, mostly a bunch of huge carpeted furniture. Here’s a really good looking scratching post I’d like to work up to ;-) She has the little Softpaws nail caps but I'd like for her to go au natural eventually, I think it would be healthier for her. She's been getting her little vinyl claws caught in things lately, too, poor baby. She's so gentle, even when she's in her schizoid running through the house mood, she's not at all destructive. I think the first anti-declawing law just passed in California this week, more related links below.
Today she's been very calm and very sleepy with some bouts of playfulness mixed in. I think the steroid shot is making her feel a lot better but it's also making her somewhat tired. I put a piece of cardboard covered in double-sided tape beneath the offensive recliner that she likes to hide under, so far she's stayed away from it, thank goodness, and is sleeping in safer places. Besides being a dangerous place to hang out, it's nasty and dusty under there and she has inhalant allergies as well.
I think the fleas are officially dead for now, luckily we only have one and a half carpeted rooms in our house so the vet didn't think spraying was warranted. I think I'm going to check into some online places to get her Advantage, it was like $75 from the vet
I’ve been reading Pam Johnson-Bennett’s Think Like a Cat - How to Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat -- Not a Sour Puss and it’s really interesting and so far useful. Phoebe is such a little personality I feel like I need all the insight I can get into understanding her. Sparky thinks I’m nuts for doing all this researching and obsessing but I’m actually enjoying it and learning a lot.
Since we got her I did some research and found out she's not a mutt at all, but an actual real Burmese color variation, she's a Black Smoke Asian. So technically we have our black cat ;-) There's a photo hanging on the wall at our vet's office looks exactly like her that I thought was like stock art but turns out to be a past patient. She has the most beautiful silky coat, it’s black over a white undercoat.
More kitty links:
Declawing - What You Need To Know
The Paw Project - Declawing FAQ
De-Clawing.com Directory Listing
Why Cats Need Claws from the Whole Cat Journal
Cats International.org - Cat Behavior Articles
Burmese Cat Club
P.S. I just noticed this is my 100th entry in this weblog :-)
Happy Beltane to everyone, today has been a day for getting rid of the old, which is always nice. Sparky and I tossed a full recycling bin plus two grocery bags of old magazines today. Somehow I still have an entire shelf full of ones I haven't even opened. Plus tons of Oprah magazines that I'm debating whether to keep or cannibalize. I got rid of like half a dozen issues of Allure, it's so cheap I haven't been able to discontinue my subscription but since I never go anywhere anymore that requires makeup it does seem like a bit of a waste... I tossed most of my 2001 and older Mac magazines, a few were relevant to the time I bought my G4, though, so I felt obliged to keep them for awhile longer. I've installed OS X but I'm still using Sytem 9, I really dislike the entire OS X interface.
I went cat shopping the other day (without Sparky who's a party pooper) and bought Phoebe new ceramic bowls (in case the plastic ones are what's causing the rash on her neck), new food (Science Diet for Sensitive skin instead of the Iams Hairball she's been eating, she doesn't shed!), one of those feather toys on a stick, some medicated wipes for her neck, cat shampoo (more on that below) and something that seemed totally whimsical at the time but has proven to be incredibly useful - a battery powered vibrating "Power Scoop" for the litter box! I was afraid to show it to Sparky until I tried it, and it makes cleaning the box like twice as fast, which is great because bending over for too long is tough on me. I was looking for a longer handled metal scoop like they have online at Petsmart.com, but this works even better.
We gave Phoebe her first bath the other night, we figured since she was a foster kitty and young she'd probably never had one before. She's also been itching some and has some raw spots around her neck that come and go and I'm afraid are going to require another vet visit. She didn't have any last time we went. She's fascinated by water and figured she'd do pretty well, which she did, no real hysterics, just some loud meows. But after we finished she lay wrapped in the towel like she was in shock, poor baby, shivering and shaking. We were both really worried, but then she snapped out of it. I think it was just that she'd never been bathed before. But she's nice and clean and fluffy now, still a little itchy, though. If you want a cat that doesn't shed, get a Burmese. We towel dried her and there was hardly any hair on the towel afterwards. She's been really easy on my allergies too :-)
More kitty photos to come!
Omigosh, the last few weeks have been so hectic I haven’t posted anything :-( Just before the war began we adopted two kitties (see entry below) and the first week was an odd mixture of happiness, chaos, depression, no sleep, and frazzled nerves. Sparky decided that neither cat liked him (he believed it was because they had been “raised by lesbians”), and he got very depressed and defensive because every time he walked in a room they ran away from him. He didn’t have a clue as to how his defensiveness could possibly freak out a kitten, especially having recently gone through the loss of our dog who just doted on him. During the day both cats would sleep with me, and they did tend to avoid him when I was awake. So after a week of him being depressed and me being almost psychotically happy but also very nervous (I’ve never had a kitten let alone two really hyper & curious ones at once) we decided it would be best to give the big black male back to his foster mother and just have one. Also we’ll be getting another dog sometime this year. The female cat, Phoebe, a Burmese mix, bonded with me instantly from first meeting, and while the male was sweet enough, he was rather distant and uninterested in what anyone else in the house was up to so we didn’t think it would be particularly traumatic for either cat since it had only been a week and both had come from foster homes with multiple kitties.
Sooo... to make a long harrowing story as short as possible, we called the foster mother and arranged to meet her to give the other cat back. Stupidly we also decided that Sparky would be the one to put him back in his carrier while I kept Phoebe in another room so as not to upset her. Well, it came time to leave and I took Phoebe in the bedroom and Sparky went and picked up Salem and put him back in his carrier, he immediately leaped back out and began tearing through the house. And the race was on...
My husband temporarily lost his mind and decided to chase the poor cat through the house several times until he got him cornered in one of the bedrooms, tried to grab him again at which point the cat bit the living crap out of his hand. Did I mention that this is an 11 pound cat that hasn’t been declawed? So Sparky’s screaming, the cat is hissing, and still he keeps after the poor thing. It had become a matter of principle now, I think. It all happened so fast I didn’t have time to intervene until he’d been bit and scratched several more times. I’ve gotta say, if he’d been chasing me through the house and swearing I’d probably have bit him also. But together we got the cat back in his carrier and while Sparky was standing over the sink trying to stop the bleeding I gave him a Vicodin and a Xanax and drove to Stafford to return the cat to it’s foster mother. The cardboard carrier was covered in blood, so I explained to the poor lady what had happened. She called later in the evening to see how Sparky was doing and when I asked her how the cat was, she said “Oh, he’s fine, he’s sitting in my lap purring”. So maybe his theory about the cats preferring women has some validity, I dunno. I’m just glad the cat wasn’t traumatized by the whole thing.
When I got back, I was afraid my poor little baby Phoebe had been traumatized by all the racket, but she came right out and sniffed around for awhile and seemed quite pleased when she realized Salem was gone. From what I’ve read, Burmese cats tend to be more oriented towards people than other cats and she’s quite happy to be the queen of the house. Feeling guilty over the whole bizarre incident, I ran around the house dusting and lint rollering everything, then washed all the bed linens including the comforter. I was so tired by that evening, when it finally came time to go to bed I have no memory of what happened after that. From the evidence I reconstructed, apparently I took all my bedtime meds (including my Ambien which usually takes about an hour to kick in on me) and then ran water in the shower and got in long enough to get my hair wet, dried off and lay down on top of the sheets with wet hair and passed out from exhaustion & Ambien. I remember waking up after the sun had risen, and realizing a) I was naked, b) I was laying on the foot of the bed, and c) my hair had air dried, which is never a good thing for me. Phoebe was laying right next to me when I woke up. I got up and walked into the bathroom and found the lamp still on, and the bathmat and tub were all wet.
So, that was the saga of the cats. I don’t want any more drama for awhile. Phoebe, Sparky and I are happily co-existing. She’s gotten used to him, even though she’s still a spazz and runs through the house like crazy at times. He’s decided she does like him, she’s just nuts, it’s nothing personal. After much debate instead of declawing her to protect his precious furniture from even the chance of something happening to it I put little pink nail caps on her instead and they’ve been working quite well. They’re also very cute (pics to come!). She’s very gentle about using her claws and she really doesn’t need them, but they make him feel more secure.
Until last night I haven’t slept worth a damn for about the last three weeks. I’ve been dreaming of cats almost every night it seems, I did the same thing when my dogs were puppies. My first dog, Wolf, half German Sheperd and half Lab, was the most active, overly intelligent puppy you’ve ever seen. He jumped out of a huge TV box the first couple of nights we had him home (at like 6 weeks!) and even with a baby gate he was a challenge to keep in. I worried for years about my dogs, but especially Wolf. The few times his mate Tala got out of the yard, she walked around to the front door and scratched to be let in. Wolf on the other hand would dash right out into the middle of a busy street. The worst time was when I lived on a main street in a small central Texas town and was trying to walk my motorcycle in through the chain-link gate and he zipped right past me into traffic. So there I am, in a leather jacket and full face helmet, trying to catch a dog in morning traffic while the idiots driving past aren’t even slowing down. I remember actually being so pissed I kicked a couple of the cars as they whizzed by.
Sparky says I have my Wolfie back now in the form of Phoebe and I really think he’s right. I’m obsessed with her safety, happiness and health. She’s my constant companion, she follows me from room to room, chirping at me constantly (which I love, BTW), and she’s a very sweet but very odd cat. She’ll wake up out of a dead sleep and run into the kitchen to beg for ice when she hears anyone in the freezer, she jump into my bathtub when the water’s running and tries to attack it... Her online profile on Petfinder said “and most of all she likes to play” and that she does :-)
Quick note, much more to come. St. Patrick's evening Sparky and I adopted two beautiful playful kitties from our local chapter of HOPE :-) We'd been looking and narrowly missed adopting two other kitties, we were originally planning on just getting one but we fell in love with two and fortunately they were already used to being around each other.
So the last 24 hours or so have been pleasantly chaotic. We had originally gone to visit the smaller smoke colored kitty on the right, which we named Phoebe. She was going to be Selina (aka Catwoman, goddess of the moon...) but she's such a brave little fireball Phoebe seemed more appropriate. We ended up bringing home a medium black domestic short hair also, which we named Salem. The little girl is the fearless, dominant one strangely enough. My husband had wanted a black male kitty, and I had picked the name Salem. He's very much the Halloween kitty also.
I have worked pile on my desk from this weekend... As I'm typing this Phoebe is standing on my keyboard chasing the cursor across the screen :-) But we're both very happy. Sparky is a little overwhelmed at having two at once and weirdly enough, they both have been hanging out mostly with me. Our last cat and dog (which was my dog) both followed him around 24/7 so it's wonderful to have two babies that think I hung the moon. Of course, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night from all the kitty love :-)
We still want to get another dog in the future, so I think my husband's dreams of a spotless house are pretty much shot. This is the best photo I've gotten of them together, they're 7 and 8 months respectively, so there's lots of kitten energy still. More to come!
Had a dreary day, the grey skies and chilly drizzle matched my mood. Our cat died a few years ago and though both my husband and I wanted to adopt another, we decided to devote all of our attention to our dog. And she passed away last weekend...
So I've been in a "got to do stuff to keep busy" mood all week. I'm obsessive-compulsive to an annoying degree, and when I get on a roll I can be a real terror. I've dusted, cleaned the bathroom, cleaned my closets, sewed buttons on things, filed, organized, you name it. And I've looked at cats and kittens on the internet.
It started out as an "I wonder if..." curiousity and has turned into an obsession. It turns out you actually can search for all sorts of pets on the internet, there are thousands of photos and descriptions to look at, and that's just on homeless & rescue pets. Nothing against breeders, etc., we'll probably have to end up getting another dog from one, but at least for cats, there are plenty that need a loving home. So I've been looking at hundreds of photos, which isn't easy because they're ALL cute. My husband and I agree we want another black cat, he wants a male, so I'll concede that point. He had a bad experience with a female tortoiseshell (someone gave it to him as a present, never give live animals unsolicited, please?), so he's against tortoiseshells, calicos and female cats. I've known many sweet female cats that fit that description, but he says no.
Then, with my usual bad luck, I've fallen in love with a black cat that has medium to long hair. So he freaked out about that, too much shedding, etc. But we had still decided to go and visit him and some other kitties today and then when I woke up this morning he decided he didn't want to go. Why? Because he wants to declaw the cat and he's spent too much money this week (on my garage door opened, which he uses, and his car stereo). So I just went back to sleep after our brief argument. And dreamed about looking at cats, no rest even in sleep.
Got up, mindlessly sat and watched the Osbournes on TV, for some reason their dysfunctional family is really growing on me. Read for awhile, them got really sleepy again. I had to search the house for caffeine, I've done such an efficient job at eliminating it from my diet. Cops wasn't on tonight (damn, I just realized we missed the clips special that was on a few days ago), football on Fox instead so we watched the last episode of Charmed we had taped. After dinner I finally got the incentive up to turn on my computer, I've been having email problems with my internet service the last few days, so there hasn't been much to read.
A collector friend of my husband's sent him an email about a 16mm film that's up for auction on eBay, he hasn't been buying many films lately, he's trying to cut back on a hobby which tends to rot and turn color as it ages. But he decided he really wants to get this one... It's starting price is $300 and he says he'd be willing to pay much more. He'll show it once at a party and probably never watch it again. Granted, it's a very good film (which he has on DVD), but I can't help wandering why he'd pay twice as much for a film as he would on a pet... Hence the title of this entry.
1/13 Update - my husband backed out on buying the film, and cursed himself because it only went for like $330. Easy come, easy go...
Now that it's been almost a week, I can sit down and write again. Last Saturday, our elderly Lab mix stopped eating and drinking and we could tell she'd taken a turn for the worse. She was 16 in November and we have had a lot of false alarms with her over the past few years, neither of us has ever had a pet live this long, but we realized that this was the real thing after an entire day went by without her letting us feed her anything at all. The photo above was taken in early December, we always said she could be a poster dog for Iams, her favorite food & favorite treats.
She's been an indoor dog for many years now, terribly spoiled and has always had better health care than me or my husband. I adopted her as a puppy and never knew anything about her other than she was "mostly" Lab, she was shorter and more muscular than your standard AKC Lab, which probably helped her health. She never fell prey to the hip or eye problems common in Labs, though the last few years of her life she had a great deal of trouble with her back legs because of a circulation problem in her lower spine. I originally adopted her as a companion for my Lab/Shepard mix male, but he ended up only living about 7 years and after he passed away, she got to move into the house and live with our male tuxedo kitty (who also passed away a few years ago, we're currently pet-less). I named her Tala because it was the American Indian name for "wolf", which was the name of my male dog. Both dogs were jet black except for a few white stars, but as Tala aged she developed a lot of white and was a beautiful old girl.
I don't know if it was the Lab temperment or just her personality, but she was a very loving, calm and well-behaved dog to the end. Our main concern was that she not be in pain, she had a lot of trouble walking in her last years but the doctor believed it to just be weakness and not pain. He said she was a very "stoic" dog, and was always patient and polite to the vets, even when she had to have surgery for a ruptured spleen four years ago. At that time the vet told us we'd probably have her for another year, but she proved him wrong. We knew her time was approaching, though, because she had begun to lose weight despite still having a pretty good appetite. She lost about 15 pounds this winter, so when she refused to eat we knew she was telling us it was her time. Our male dog had been very sick and in obvious pain, and our cat had broken his leg (which turned out to be cancerous), so choosing to put them to sleep had not been quite as hard a decision, though it's always a difficult thing. But we worried the entire day Saturday if we were making the right decision, because Tala has had bad days before and managed to bounce back afterwards. Well, as bouncy as a 100+ year dog could be.
So we agonized and called our vet to see which doctor was on call for the weekend, and were planning on taking her Sunday morning, but we couldn't let her suffer, she just looked too miserable. So at about one in the morning Saturday night, we called the animal hospital back and had them call the doctor on duty in. Poor guy, he was the one who had to put our cat asleep also. But when he saw her, he agreed with our choice. Between us we guessed whe must have had some sort of heart problem, probably congestive heart failure, Friday night because she had coughed some and could not lie down comfortably. We'd been giving her heart medicine for a murmur for years, so that makes sense.
Neither of us had been present when our other pets were put to sleep due to their conditions, but we stayed with Tala till the end. Our house is very quiet now, neither of us has been sleeping well because of the 24/7 hospice care we'd been giving her the last year or so because of her mobility problems, luckily we both work at home. It's been strange this week going out to eat, to the book store and not having to rush home to make sure the dog is OK, she would often try and get up and walk the house, only to fall and be stuck there till we returned.
We'll be getting another dog, most probably another Lab, and another cat. We'll get the kitty first so he can feel confidant as the king of the house (as our last cat was) before we introduce a big bouncing puppy. My entire life my family always kept their dogs outside year round, so I did also (except during extremely cold spells), and so my dogs were never properly housebroken, though Tala learned very quickly. Now I can't imagine making a dog sit outside and stare at us through the glass door. Our next dog will be very spoiled, needless to say.
It's my birthday, I'm trying as hard as I can to take it easy and relax, I'd like to do some reading before bed... but the dog is wired as hell tonight and just spazzing out for some reason. Which means I have to keep going in the den to check on her every 15 minutes to see why she thinks she needs to get up and walk around in the middle of the night
Unfortunately, falling this close to Christmas, and with 4/5 of my immediate family also having birthday's within less than 2 weeks of Christmas, the actual day of my birthday has never really been a huge event. Growing up I usually had to go back to school about that time, and in my adult life have rarely had the day off. The last year I worked I begged my boss to have the day off, and she wouldn't give it to me. Joke on her, I went on medical leave a few weeks after that and never came back :-) So I'm determined to have a decent day despite my injured finger� (the damn thing still hurts like hell!) and raging PMS and whatever other crises may rear their ugly heads. Needless to say, I'm hoping for a garage door opener ;-) My 40th birthday was ruined last year by a bizarre argument instigated by a "friend" of my husband's, horrible affair where his friend turned out to be wrong and I was right but the damage was done. We're going to make an attempt to go out and eat dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant� this evening, we can't be gone from the house for too long because the poor dog always seems to get into trouble when we're gone. I have several really cool gift certificates I got for Christmas and still haven't had a chance to use them yet...
I've taken a semi-break from eBay� this week. Trying to restore both my sanity and prevent any further damage to my finger. I was cutting the seal off some steak sauce the other night and managed to cut it, but since it's still pretty much numb it wasn't really a big problem. I've actually had the luxury of being able to sit on the couch and relax after dinner this week, for some reason we've ended up watching two different lesbian love stories, But I'm a Cheerleader the other night and Kissing Jessica Stein tonight. Both good movies, I think I liked Jessica Stein better. Cheerleader was sort of Jon Waters meets Tim Burton, very bizarre and visually stunning (my husband liked it better). Kissing Jessica Stein was a Woody Allen-esque New York comedy, with everyone talking 100 mph. Not that I'm a Woody Allen fan, but I think I could relate more to the characters.
More later today, I've got more to say, but the dog seems to have quieted down and I'd to go lay in bed and read a bit while I have the chance.
The full moon tonight is the "Mourning Moon", appropriately named with all the weird things happening today. I jinxed myself by saying I was looking forward to another day of tossing and turning, I got what I asked for. After about 4-5 hours of sleep my husband wakes me up to tell me he's going out to run errands and to "watch the dog". We have an elderly Lab mix who's finally showing her age now at 16, trouble walking, some cognitive problems. Very sweet dog, though.
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I spend every night watching her (he gets the day shift), and of course as soon as he left the house, she got up and started wandering around so out of bed I came to follow the dog around. Watched a bit of MSNBC with the sound off ("oil spill in Spain is predicted to be worse than the Valdez spill", that's nice), and after the dog settled down again and I crawled back in bed and am finally dozing off, the phone rings, then they person hangs up, and calls right back. That'll guilt you into getting back up, what if it's my husband, what if his car broke down, what if....
It's the vet, calling to leave a vague message about the dog's bloodwork, she needs more tests, OK, no problem. Poor dog's on as more medicine than I am.
Just dozing off again, husband comes home, overreacts to the fact that the vet called, back on the phone (I'm the official medical/legal/etc. translator around our house, even when I'm half asleep), bring her back Thursday (morning! ugghh) for the tests. TV blasting in the other room, talking heads on one of the news stations (doesn't he get tired of non-stop news, I have to watch something just for fun occasionally, my favorite mindless choice is the Home & Garden Channel), fall back asleep...
I have the recurring dream again, I've been having it almost nightly in one form or another for months. My husband and I are moving into a huge old house where the other people are still there and I'm trying to get their tons of junk packed up and get them out of the house while moving our stuff in and trying to find a clean restroom to take a shower in. There's trash in the shower drains. There's so much stuff in the house it's overwhelming, but it's a really cool house so I keep on. Sometimes the dream is that we're buying or have inherited an old house that still has the former owners belonging in it and I'm having to try and sort out what we can keep, what's worth keeping, sometimes it's really neat stuff and the dream is really kind of a treasure hunt.
Other parts of the dream that are recurring are: for some reason the house or rooms can't be properly secured or locked, there are windows missing, broken locks, etc. I think that can be traced to my childhood where I shared a connecting bathroom with my little brother and one of the dooors never locked correctly, always made me feel insecure. Another element is that I'm always searching for a proper bathroom, that's clean, has doors on the stalls, has a private shower, etc. And sometimes the dilemma isn't moving in, it's that we have to move out of a huge crowded house and I'm trying to get as much packed as possible while having to decide what's really worth taking and what I have to leave behind.
Psychology-wise, I'd say the dreams interpret as: I'm overwhelmed, insecure, and have too much stuff. And have a deep need for privacy. All true, especially the last year or two. I left my fulltime job for a medical leave a few years ago and have been trying to make a living on the internet and Ebay, and did quite well at first but the last year has been very slow, but then that's true for every business.
At the end of the dream, I have a "dream within a dream" that I can't wake up and I've overslept and it's like 7 pm. So when I do wake up, I'm in a slight panic, thinking this is true (years of shift work will do that to you also). I wake up exhausted, but relieved to find I have another hour to sleep, though I'm not certain I want to go back to the "house". Start dozing off again, and in comes husband, he's been depressed all day because of the dog (she's really doing quite well, honestly), he's going to take his afternoon shower early, so I have to get up again. Oh well, the end of sleep for today.
After he finishes, I decide to shower and try and wake up too, we're actually going to get to go out to eat dinner tonight. Our first thought is to go to our favorite Chinese restaurant, but then we decide on the Black-Eyed Pea (nice filling American comfort food). With Thanksgiving approaching, I've been craving turkey and dressing and theirs ain't half bad. We're both still in rather somber moods, go to the used bookstore afterwards but I'm just not in the mood for it. Normally you can't get me to leave once I'm there, but today the aisles of books just seem to make me dizzy and disoriented.
I get home, check my email and I have three unhappy Ebay customers (I have 6000+ positive feedbacks so this bothers me). One person has an expensive damaged item (in the Netherlands of course, no cheap shipping refunds for me), one person hasn't received their necklace (OK, look through the shipping records, I don't see it on my postage receipts, no problem, send another, fortunately it's something I have extras of), and the third person bought a movie collectible item apparently expecting a retail item and is being wants a refund. OK, that's not my problem. I spend a lot of time taking photos and writing descriptions and this one is exactly as described.
Yikes, I just want to go back to bed. I'm sipping a really nice 10 year old Port trying to get rid of the "crawling skin" feeling as I type this. I don't feel very productive or imaginative from lack of sleep. I feel like I have a bad case of PMS, though it's not time for that yet.
While I'm getting things out of my head, had an even more interesting dream the night before last. (I drive my husband nuts when I try and explain these dreams to him, he rarely remembers his, and he thinks I'm nuts!) We're in a huge old house that was some kind of student dorm and it was Halloween. I was trying to go upstairs but every stairwell had some kind of haunted house monster on it blocking the way, ready to jump out at me. So I try a different way, but it's a moving stairwell, you had to jump on it, like and elevator and I can't do it. Then I find another stairway, and there's a monster on it, but it turns out to be my husband in a mask, so we both go upstairs. We get up there and there's a little girl in a room with big open spaces where there should be windows and no door, just an opening in the wall. There's a big black panther stalking the halls and we realize that we have to get to a room that we can close before it catches us. We're running from room to room, sort of a live video game, avoiding the panther, trying to warn people. I think I woke up then.
Still with me? Thanks, my entries aren't usually this long, but as I mentioned, it's a full moon... I think I'll go to bed early tonight.
