I'm watching "Dance Moms" right now (just for background noise), and I can't believe what I'm seeing. These little girls are regularly decked out in more makeup than most women wear on a normal basis, and it just doesn't look right. The cast and crew are just setting things up for drama after drama, and these girls are caught in the cross fire. I feel so sorry for them. And there is just so much grumping, grousing, picking apart, and negativity. I would absolutely wither in such an environment, no matter what the situation. Those little girls are damn good dancers, though. I envy them their strength and vitality.
On February 6, we lost Cortes. I glanced outside just in time to see him looking up from lapping up a puddle of antifreeze that had leaked out of Corey's truck. I rushed him to the nearest vet that would take him, the first being too full and busy, but the second vet that took him in was amazing, so I'm glad we went there. They pumped his stomach and gave him charcoal, but the tests following that showed that he still had 3 times the fatal amount of antifreeze in his bloodstream, and what happens with antifreeze poisoning is that it mixes with the calcium in the cat's body and creates a kind of sticky, cloggy mess that clogs up their kidneys and induces kidney failure, which is a horribly painful and drawn out way to die. I couldn't let that happen to Cortes so I chose euthanasia, which was the right choice but horribly painful for me. I had time with him to hold him and say goodbye, I held him during the procedure, and then they gave me as much time as I needed afterward to hold him and just cry. I couldn't afford the cremation and urn and I didn't want his body to bring home and bury, so I opted for the "mass cremation" (cremated with whatever other animals and disposed of however they do it) and the clay plaque with an imprint of his forepaws with his name imprinted below the prints. They did a phenomenal job with the clay plaque, crimping the edges and making the prints and the words clear and legible. I was thrilled. I plan to paint it and hang it in the living room along with a favorite picture of Cortes in the frame given to me by a good friend specifically for that purpose. A week after Cortes's death, I received a card in the mail from the vet's office expressing their sympathy and signed by all the employees.
Corey and I are both bummed. Cortes was his favorite, and I, of course, love all of my animal babies fiercely. I don't have children, my womb refuses to house them, and the way things stand with my medications and diseases I won't bear children myself. This means that my maternal instinct is funneled into channels it might not otherwise be so present, and that means that my fur babies mean as much to me as anyone's human babies mean to me. Señor Drogo doesn't feel the same way that I do, but he cared for Cortes and misses him a lot.
About a week ago, we took in a new cat that needed a home. She's a calico, about 3 years old, such a love sponge and a purring machine. She will start purring, loudly, if I so much as start talking to her! I have a vet's appointment for her in a week because she has a really bad case of ear mites, one ear being entirely full of gross crusty brown stuff, the poor poor baby. Oh, her name is "Fancy". She was a pound kitty before the previous owners got her, and now she's in what appears to be her forever home. I have better pictures on my cell phone, but haven't been able to get them on the computer yet.
Things have calmed down, at least within me. I've had a lot of blows one after another for some time, but things seem to be slowing down and settling, at least temporarily. I have been beading more lately, trying to work up some sort of an inventory to start my Etsy store with. Just the prospect of doing something solid and with a purpose is exciting and fills me with giddiness. I miss that. Being in the house all day and frequently on the couch or in bed is really kind of dreary after a while. I want to go backpacking and antiquing and run errands and all the good old things I did before! I suppose I'll just have to think of ways to adapt them to my current physical abilities. Backpacking probably is out of the question, though, as I learned recently for a disability appeal form that I can only walk about 300 yards unassisted, and that's without carrying any weight at all. Hey, maybe someone will rig up a Bran and Hodor type situation and carry me on their back in a basket?! Hehehehe…
Besides beading, though, and being generally crafty, I'm working on another project to get my medical bills organized and keep track of how much I owe on each one. The idea is that I'll send in incremental amounts regularly rather than waiting until I have the whole amount at once, which will never happen. Ten dollars here, thirty bucks there… that much money can easily be spent on superfluous things, so why not put those bucks to good use? I'm going to use my old dry erase board calendar with the cork strip along the bottom to write out the company/office I owe money to, the balance owed, and at the bottom I'll pin the paper bills, to be discarded when the bill is paid off entirely. I think it's a good plan, one that will help me greatly. I'm more of a visual, touchy person and just having a stack of bills that I can't pay all at once has done me no good, and will continue to do me no good. (Guilty confession time: I've taken to throwing medical bills into a pile, unopened, because I just don't want to see the numbers that would simply ramp up my agitation. What I don't know can't hurt me… right? lol)
Oh yes, there's also the small matter of my oral surgery this Wednesday. I'll be put under and all three of my wisdom teeth will be removed at once because of serious impaction. (I am simply "missing" one wisdom tooth. Guess it never grew.) I'm going to have to eat nothing but soft, mushy foods for an unknown period of time, as I heal slower than the average person. The oral surgeon has seen many patients with chronic pain and autoimmune diseases, which is a relief to me, and he predicts that my healing time will probably be about double that of a normal person, which is to say three weeks to a month, possibly more. I wonder at what point I'll be able to switch from baby food type meals to a more solid diet? Well, if nothing else, at least I'll lose some more weight over this incident. I can almost guarantee it.
I'm reading The Swiss Family Robinson again, and I notice that every time I do my turns and phrases of speech alter slightly and become a little more old fashioned, as they are in the book. I'm still uncertain as to whether it's really a fictional account or true, but I don't have the heart to look it up because I'd liked to believe it's more of a survival manual than an interesting tale. Seriously, though, that family would break the bank if they played Jeopardy! It seems like they know every friggin' thing to do with nature or animals from all over the world. All. over. If I were stranded on a "desert" (I think they are using "desert" as an archaic term for "deserted", as it's really a subtropical island near the equator) I would rather have the father or the older brother with me than anyone else in the world because I believe that they would increase my chances of survival so greatly. Give the book a brief perusal; you'll see what I mean.
The next few days I intend to spend packing and preparing for a stay of a few days at my grandparent's home after my surgery, and I'd like to get some more beading done as well. I bought a bead/findings organizer last week and setting it up will be quite a chore but so worth it in the end. Lately it seems I've been doing nothing but sleeping or reading, sometimes crafting and all times petting and playing with the cats. It's not so bad of a life, what I've got going on, but still… it does get a bit monotonous and irritating after a while. I still don't know what to do with the fact that my pain is a life-long load I must bear, so for now I've tucked that thought away and out of sight. If I don't, it threatens to become overwhelming and drag me right back into the depression I have so recently escaped from.
For now though, it is, as my mom used to say, "bedtime for bonzos"! Or "Shadrach, Meshach, and Tobedwego!" (That's a joke based on the name of Daniel's companions in the Bible.)
On February 6, we lost Cortes. I glanced outside just in time to see him looking up from lapping up a puddle of antifreeze that had leaked out of Corey's truck. I rushed him to the nearest vet that would take him, the first being too full and busy, but the second vet that took him in was amazing, so I'm glad we went there. They pumped his stomach and gave him charcoal, but the tests following that showed that he still had 3 times the fatal amount of antifreeze in his bloodstream, and what happens with antifreeze poisoning is that it mixes with the calcium in the cat's body and creates a kind of sticky, cloggy mess that clogs up their kidneys and induces kidney failure, which is a horribly painful and drawn out way to die. I couldn't let that happen to Cortes so I chose euthanasia, which was the right choice but horribly painful for me. I had time with him to hold him and say goodbye, I held him during the procedure, and then they gave me as much time as I needed afterward to hold him and just cry. I couldn't afford the cremation and urn and I didn't want his body to bring home and bury, so I opted for the "mass cremation" (cremated with whatever other animals and disposed of however they do it) and the clay plaque with an imprint of his forepaws with his name imprinted below the prints. They did a phenomenal job with the clay plaque, crimping the edges and making the prints and the words clear and legible. I was thrilled. I plan to paint it and hang it in the living room along with a favorite picture of Cortes in the frame given to me by a good friend specifically for that purpose. A week after Cortes's death, I received a card in the mail from the vet's office expressing their sympathy and signed by all the employees.
Corey and I are both bummed. Cortes was his favorite, and I, of course, love all of my animal babies fiercely. I don't have children, my womb refuses to house them, and the way things stand with my medications and diseases I won't bear children myself. This means that my maternal instinct is funneled into channels it might not otherwise be so present, and that means that my fur babies mean as much to me as anyone's human babies mean to me. Señor Drogo doesn't feel the same way that I do, but he cared for Cortes and misses him a lot.
About a week ago, we took in a new cat that needed a home. She's a calico, about 3 years old, such a love sponge and a purring machine. She will start purring, loudly, if I so much as start talking to her! I have a vet's appointment for her in a week because she has a really bad case of ear mites, one ear being entirely full of gross crusty brown stuff, the poor poor baby. Oh, her name is "Fancy". She was a pound kitty before the previous owners got her, and now she's in what appears to be her forever home. I have better pictures on my cell phone, but haven't been able to get them on the computer yet.
Things have calmed down, at least within me. I've had a lot of blows one after another for some time, but things seem to be slowing down and settling, at least temporarily. I have been beading more lately, trying to work up some sort of an inventory to start my Etsy store with. Just the prospect of doing something solid and with a purpose is exciting and fills me with giddiness. I miss that. Being in the house all day and frequently on the couch or in bed is really kind of dreary after a while. I want to go backpacking and antiquing and run errands and all the good old things I did before! I suppose I'll just have to think of ways to adapt them to my current physical abilities. Backpacking probably is out of the question, though, as I learned recently for a disability appeal form that I can only walk about 300 yards unassisted, and that's without carrying any weight at all. Hey, maybe someone will rig up a Bran and Hodor type situation and carry me on their back in a basket?! Hehehehe…
Besides beading, though, and being generally crafty, I'm working on another project to get my medical bills organized and keep track of how much I owe on each one. The idea is that I'll send in incremental amounts regularly rather than waiting until I have the whole amount at once, which will never happen. Ten dollars here, thirty bucks there… that much money can easily be spent on superfluous things, so why not put those bucks to good use? I'm going to use my old dry erase board calendar with the cork strip along the bottom to write out the company/office I owe money to, the balance owed, and at the bottom I'll pin the paper bills, to be discarded when the bill is paid off entirely. I think it's a good plan, one that will help me greatly. I'm more of a visual, touchy person and just having a stack of bills that I can't pay all at once has done me no good, and will continue to do me no good. (Guilty confession time: I've taken to throwing medical bills into a pile, unopened, because I just don't want to see the numbers that would simply ramp up my agitation. What I don't know can't hurt me… right? lol)
Oh yes, there's also the small matter of my oral surgery this Wednesday. I'll be put under and all three of my wisdom teeth will be removed at once because of serious impaction. (I am simply "missing" one wisdom tooth. Guess it never grew.) I'm going to have to eat nothing but soft, mushy foods for an unknown period of time, as I heal slower than the average person. The oral surgeon has seen many patients with chronic pain and autoimmune diseases, which is a relief to me, and he predicts that my healing time will probably be about double that of a normal person, which is to say three weeks to a month, possibly more. I wonder at what point I'll be able to switch from baby food type meals to a more solid diet? Well, if nothing else, at least I'll lose some more weight over this incident. I can almost guarantee it.
I'm reading The Swiss Family Robinson again, and I notice that every time I do my turns and phrases of speech alter slightly and become a little more old fashioned, as they are in the book. I'm still uncertain as to whether it's really a fictional account or true, but I don't have the heart to look it up because I'd liked to believe it's more of a survival manual than an interesting tale. Seriously, though, that family would break the bank if they played Jeopardy! It seems like they know every friggin' thing to do with nature or animals from all over the world. All. over. If I were stranded on a "desert" (I think they are using "desert" as an archaic term for "deserted", as it's really a subtropical island near the equator) I would rather have the father or the older brother with me than anyone else in the world because I believe that they would increase my chances of survival so greatly. Give the book a brief perusal; you'll see what I mean.
The next few days I intend to spend packing and preparing for a stay of a few days at my grandparent's home after my surgery, and I'd like to get some more beading done as well. I bought a bead/findings organizer last week and setting it up will be quite a chore but so worth it in the end. Lately it seems I've been doing nothing but sleeping or reading, sometimes crafting and all times petting and playing with the cats. It's not so bad of a life, what I've got going on, but still… it does get a bit monotonous and irritating after a while. I still don't know what to do with the fact that my pain is a life-long load I must bear, so for now I've tucked that thought away and out of sight. If I don't, it threatens to become overwhelming and drag me right back into the depression I have so recently escaped from.
For now though, it is, as my mom used to say, "bedtime for bonzos"! Or "Shadrach, Meshach, and Tobedwego!" (That's a joke based on the name of Daniel's companions in the Bible.)
Jolene | February 27, 2015 at 8:56 PM
I feel for your loss of Cortes. I literally teared up when you posted pictures of your last few moments with him at the vet. :'(
I remember when you were reading Swiss Family Robinson at our house! Back to the classics! Nice.
You're always in our thoughts and prayers. Love to you