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Monday, June 30. 2008Since We Last Talked...
Hi, there! Remember when I used to write every single day, sometimes twice a day? Did the days have more hours back then? That must be it.
) I discovered on the verge of tears last night that I aced my Economics final. I tried sharing the overwhelming joy with Nick, but he seems to consider my A's a dime a dozen. I'm like an obedient pooch: I'll gladly do my trick as long as you promise to pat my head afterwards. Last Wednesday was Nick's birthday. We spent the afternoon biking and the evening dining with friends. It was a good day and the bad storms never came. I gave him two tickets for a hot air balloon ride. After I purchased the tickets, I nervously text-messaged Brenda to see if she thought he'd like the gift. She replied that if he didn't, she would go with me. He liked them. Sorry, Bren. Sophie is becoming such a lap cat. She's panting more often now that the days have grown humid. Nick turned on the air conditioner last week because she's really quite pathetic with all that hair. I've known all along that she's part-dog but a lot less maintenance. It is very nice to have her run to us when we get home at night. What else? Oh, I've been diagnosed with yet another digestive disorder. I tell ya, I feel sexier as the years go by. Add more foods to my list of what to avoid. Citrus, pineapple, tomato, anything high-fat...and coffee should be there, but I just can't bring myself to avoid that one. So I take my medication like a good girl and avoid most of the things I should. Last Saturday was Rhythm and Booms. Great show, bit of a storm scare early on when we made a mad-dash to a nearby gas station while the hail assaulted the ground. That's all I can remember at the moment. Time to head off to work...we're carpooling today. Ciao! Tuesday, June 10. 2008Morning Entertainment:) I can't decide if she's happy that I've taken to feeding the squirrels or not…she seems to jump at the screen an awful lot while they're out there. Nick tries to cheer her up, telling her that those squirrel tails have nothing on hers. Monday, May 5. 2008Problematic Kitty
Sophie went in for her follow up appointment on Saturday morning. Her bladder wasn't full enough for the urinalysis when we arrived, so they pumped fluids into her and held her for a few hours. The vet walked up to us saying, "Good news, bad news…" She had no crystals in her urine—amazing after having too many to count (excess of 100) in the small sample they viewed a month ago. The prescription food has done its work...even though she hates it.
(But, as Nick points out...she eats it. She eats everything. She just keeps eating and eating...) Bad news, the new urine sample was riddled with bacteria. We have to pill her with an antibiotic twice a day for two weeks and then go back for another follow up. She no longer has to take solely Prescription Diet S/D; instead, she has to take Prescription Diet C/D. But now she can have Pounce again. Still no pretzels.  I had been holding her stock of Fancy Feast Marinated Morsels hoping that one day we would get the green light to give them to her again. I asked the question point-blank on Saturday, and that one day will never come. Not worth the risk. That afternoon, I emptied her place in the cupboard, moving the cans to a paper bag to take to her cousins' house. She was so excited to see me in that cupboard, fingering those cans. Nearly dancing with excitement, she stood on her back paws and braced herself on my leg. STUPID PH! Friday, March 28. 2008How'd she pick up MY problematic genes?
Sophie went back to the vet on Tuesday; her father took her. I was concerned about her long stretches of sneezing and a weeping eye that I first noticed Saturday. Sunday night, she went potty—first #1, then #2—in my closet. Monday morning, I called the vet to see if my fears were unfounded: nope, they wanted to see her.
Her eyes looked good (I keep thinking of her sister whose eye infection caused them to remove her eye when she was a kitten...so weird eye stuff with Soph freaks me out) and her sneezing has stopped. BUT, it just isn't normal for cats to do their business just anywhere. Instinctively, cats look for soil or sand-like material to eliminate…shag carpeting does not so much meet the prompt. ) So they did a urinalysis and found crystals. Feline cystitis has ruined our little kitty's life. I gave the unopened bag of cat food that I had to a friend at work. (When I handed over the Iams Naturals she exclaimed, "My cats have never eaten so good!" and somewhere Sophie was weeping at her lost lifestyle…) I want to have a vet tell it to my face before I give away her precious Fancy Feast—she will be on low pH food the rest of her life. Dr. Larsen told us that her infection is very rare in a female feline. She is on Hill's Prescription Diet s/d for at least the next 1-3 months (at which point we would be able to switch to the over-the-counter version), but possibly forever. As I rearrange my budget to accept that I can probably live off on an English muffin a day, I am planning to call PetSmart (where I get an über low price) to see if Sophie's clinic needs to fax over her prescription for a refill, or if I can walk in there with the copy they gave Nick on Tuesday. I will also call the vet today to see what I can give her for treats since she is used to getting them in the morning (it's the only reason she gets me up at the most ungodly hours, but I enjoy her enthusiasm), and OTC treats are a no-go. We read over her diagnosis and her new diet, Sophie sitting on the counter-stool next to Nick. He looked at her with sad eyes and said, "You know what this means, don't you? No more potato chips." And I swear, if she was any kind of a teenager she would have ran upstairs and slammed the door while screaming, "I HATE MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!" A Life Gone By: . Thursday, March 13. 2008Beware the Ides of March Remember when she use to actually fit in her bed? Ah, they grow up so fast... I am almost afraid to mention it, but I think Spring is well on its way. It has been over 40° most of the week, and after a winter season that seemed to start in October and during which we broke snowfall records from 1978, 40° feels just about like paradise. Finally I can look both ways without edging halfway into an intersection, and that stubborn icicle on the edge of the garage has bid us farewell. Good riddance. My car said it was 50° when I got in after work. I rushed home to turn off the furnace and open the windows and the patio door. Immediately, Sophie scrambled to the edge of the now screened door. She sniffed excitedly at the smell of real air, so excited in the exercise that she began to sneeze, sniffed more, sneezed more, and then rolled to her back, stretching all four paws in opposite directions as if to say, "I love life!" And then she sat up to clean her butt. She has an appointment on Saturday, March 15th: her one year check up! She has no idea, as I can assume that she's pays about as much attention to soothsayers as she does to me or Nick. She's a cat: if it isn't sparkley or jingly, why should she care? Though, I must say she always comes when called, even if she's in the middle of doing her business downstairs where the litter box resides. She's good like that—which is why Nick was alarmed Monday morning when she wasn't underfoot and did not come to his call. I, slower to stir after that nasty bout of Daylight Savings Time, awoke to his frantic looking for your favorite cat and mine. We found her in the garage. Even though it was her own lousy fault for somehow sneaking out there, I felt incredibly guilty and bought her several toys and two beers. 
Sunday, March 2. 2008Dire Straits The past several weeks have been stressful at work as we have be testing a pilot that caused nothing but misery and bitterness. Tammy, my good friend and cube-neighbor extraordinaire, placed miniature candies on her side of the glass. She calls them my personal stash, to be consumed in times of utmost stress. I returned to my desk one afternoon after a tedious day in class to find the above note. SHE IS SO AWESOME. Saturday, March 1. 2008Redemption
Well, those of you who have known me or read this website for any length of time, you know that my right eye has quite nearly been the very bane of my existence. I have my father and brother who have the most alluring pale, Norwegian blues—pure as glaciers—and my mother who had the warmest, spiciest set of golden hazels…and I was left with a mishmash. My mother rushed me to the doctor as soon as the weirdness began to grow (thinking I had a horrible iris-eating parasite, I can only assume). Well, I've come to appreciate the odd coloration and claim it as my own. It's like a pirate who names his peg leg, you know?
Well, maybe not so much, but anyway… (Not to stray, but does anyone find it odd that I've taken to using the HTML entity for the ellipses instead of typing "..."? Curious. Don't think I can blame it on the eye.) Nick likes to sing to me, in his rooster-walking-across-hot-coals way, "You my—mucked-up-eyed-girl. Do you remember when we used to sing, Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da…" I was finishing up on the elliptical this morning when Nick called down to look at what he paused on the television. I wobbled up, sweaty and beat, to find this staring back at me:  I hit the rewind button to see why Kate Bosworth's eye was so magnified (and yes, I knew it was her eye immediately, as my mother pointed out to me years ago that her eye was screwed up just like mine was!). To my immense relief, E! was not doing a show on grotesquest facial features, or stars that ought be quarantined for their weirdness, but that Ms. Bosworth, because of her "stormy" eye, won their award for:  I can see my life being very different from here on out. Power to the Sectoral-Heterochromia-Iridis-iots? Saturday, December 22. 2007Happy Holidays!) We sent this picture with our Christmas cards. It seemed to be well received. I stopped by the grocery store yesterday to pick up more Fancy Feast for the fluffy one, and I did something I swore I'd never do—but this is me imbibed with the Christmas spirit and antidepressants! I bought several "feasts" for her that at one time seemed a bit extravagant, but I think that she should be able to eat white meat chicken and whipped egg soufflé with garden greens on Christmas, dang it! It has been such a wonderful season for me. Yesterday, I was baking cookies for Dad with the amber glow of white Christmas lights and flickering candles while listening to Josh Groban singing "O Holy Night". It all just felt so right. I stopped by my aunts' yesterday while I was in the area and they gave me my present early (just in case the forecasted snow storm wreaks havoc on tomorrow's brunch date). They gave me the LOVELIEST piece of bakeware—ohmigosh I am so in love with it! It has the prettiest, most delicate floral-filigreed pattern with a rattan holder—it is like they saw the picture of what I wanted in my mind and found it! Sophie ate the wrapping on her present this morning so we gave it to her early. She's been mostly good, though we've noticed that the tree now looks slightly slanted in its base. This can be mostly attributed to a good daily climbing from the feline that seems to be getting bigger and stronger every single day. So, the run-down: Christmas with Mom's family was last Sunday, Christmas with Mom's sisters is tomorrow at brunch if the weather holds out, Christmas with Dad's family is Monday for lunch, Christmas with Nick's family is Monday for dinner, and Christmas with Dad is Tuesday for lunch. When we went through the list of invites (of my family gatherings versus his), Nick exclaimed, "I'm getting screwed!" Yes, well, that's the way that it is. You all have a very Merry Christmas! Monday, December 3. 2007Trimming the Tree
Saturday morning, I could barely conceal my glee—nix that. I didn't conceal it at all! We were going to cut down our own tree. I grew up with a real tree year after year, and the artificial sort just doesn't do it for me. We would always go after school the first Friday in December, my family and I. Charlie and I would be little Michelin Men in our snowsuits (we used to get much more snow way back when, our first snow fort dug out by Thanksgiving!) and the four of us would squeeze into the cab of Dad's old pickup truck. Mom would lead us in a round of Christmas jingles and we would take turns telling each other what we were most grateful for. Always, we said family.
The light would dim as we made our way to the tree farm of choice, and the four of us would pile out in the thick snow to look for the perfect tree. We always found it. Charlie and I would grab onto the tree as Dad carried it down to feel like we were helping and we watched in glassy-eyed awe as they secured it to the truck. By then it was dark and we were numb with cold. Gratefully, we crammed back into the cab of the truck with the heat blasting. At home, Bing Crosby crooned as Mom warmed milk on the stove for hot chocolate with candy cane stir-sticks. I looked forward to it year after year. This year, I looked to reclaim that feeling of absolute wonderment and warmth. Nick and I traipsed out Saturday morning. Earlier in the week I exclaimed, "Oh no! I don't have winter boots!" Nick reminded me that there was no snow on the ground. Oh, yeah.  We weaved along the lines of spruces and I hopped sporadically, unable to contain the thrill. Just as we found THE ONE, the snow began to fall. I flopped my head back and stuck out my tongue, hoping to catch a flake. Back at home, I wish I had heeded my mother's advice that trees always look smaller in a forest than in a living room, as our tree exceeded the height of the ceiling by ten inches. We set it up on Saturday, monitoring Sophie to see how destructive she was going to be. We left it undecorated that first day, hoping to ease her into the newness of it all. The lingering presence of evergreen was hypnotic and I was light in carefree in the memories of Christmases passed. Sophie was mostly good, but not so much that we didn't keep a spray bottle at hand's reach. Sunday, we decorated. As was evidently clear during the initial phases of trimming, Sophie would be a holy terror with the decorations, the gold beading in particular. This in mind, we have a "mostly" decorated tree, the bottom void of anything that might tempt the cat to wreak havoc. As you can see from the picture, she's at the bottom waiting for a moment when nobody is watching to get into a little mischief. I set up the nativity scene in made for my mother seventeen years ago, much to Nick's chagrin. (I am not sure where his dislike of nativity scenes stems, but I will have none of it.) Besides, mine is beautiful, if I do say so myself. Boughs adorn the stair railing and the large window, and we have received our first Christmas card. Saturday, we received up to a foot of accumulated snow and I am recording Nestor tonight on the Family Channel. I love the build-up—LOVE! |
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