Wednesday, April 29, 2009

mid-morning

I haven’t been blog writin’ lazy, just full o’ bad luck

I wrote this about two weeks ago, but I didn’t feel like editing it, so it’s just been sitting here.  I may as well just publish it.  Please edit it in your head. (whoops, I had two versions saved for some reason and it looks like I deleted the long one.  Oh well, you didn’t miss anything. )

I somehow missed one of those “last notice before we turn off your service” letters from my cable company, and I thought my due (or die) date was a week after it apparently was, but also, the cable company has always made a few days worth of phone calls to remind me that I’m about to lose my lifeline to the world.  This time, they did not.  And sadly, all of our lifelines to the outside world (phone, internet, and tv…although, we discovered that the tv still worked, so at least we were able to watch the Stanley Cup playoffs) were in the hands of a single company, and I couldn’t afford the amount they wanted to turn the service back on.  It felt really lame and depressing.  I’ve never in my whole life lost my phone or internet service.  I lost a car, but the internet is actually more important to us, because without it, we can’t make any money.  It was weird and isolating.  We have a cell phone, but we’ve been trying to sell it because it’s a pay-per-use phone that requires a top-up every three months of $15 to keep the account.  We very rarely use the phone, so it has more than $200 of credit on it, which the company won’t allow us to have back; hence, the reason we wanted to sell it and start over with a new account.  We’ve had the account for around five years and the most we’ve ever used the phone was for a few minutes here and there, every few months or so.  Plus, we used it to take pictures occasionally when we were out.  So, while we weren’t cut off totally, we didn’t want to use up the credit on the phone because we still want to sell it.  Plus, it’s a bit pricey for just random chatting.  The text messages though, at 15 cents each, were kind of a bargain (compared to 25 cents/minute for talking), so we learned how to send text messages to a few people, so friends and family were aware that we were weren’t dead.

After a week of being cut off from the world, we got our service back, which was good.  Although, toward the end of that bad week, things in life got much worse than just not having a phone or an internet connection.  I had to pick up a certified letter that my letter carrier only tried to deliver once.  That letter?  It said that our house was due to be auctioned on Thursday (that date is now June 1st - I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I’m hoping that money will fall from the sky and someone will be able to buy the house in a short sale for pocket change and rent it back to us).  Some people think my blog is supposed to be rainbows and kittens all the time, no matter how crappy I feel, so I suppose I’m also supposed to keep my financial problems to myself, too.  Well, I’m not gonna.  While I feel like a total loser for having lost my car and having my house in foreclosure, I’m not into keeping secrets.  I didn’t do anything to deserve this other than herniating a disk and having Fibromyalgia, so I’ve ended up with lots of medical bills and the inability to run right out and get myself two jobs to help remedy the situation.  I’d love nothing more than to be able feel like a normal person and be able to pull myself up by my “bootstraps”, only I don’t have anything I can pull up.  I can push myself extra hard, but all it will do is make me feel lousy for longer afterwards.  Blech, it sucks.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

evening

If you’d like to help out Wee Paws Animal Sanctuary…

this is an easy way to do it.  It’ll make money for our rescues & and it’ll allow us to rescue more pets and give us time to foster them until they’re ready to find a good home, and all you have to do is do your search engine searches through Good Search.  Wait, I’ll let them write it up: Here’s a new easy way to raise money for your favorite cause. Just start using Yahoo! powered GoodSearch.com as your search engine and they’ll donate a penny to your favorite cause every time you do a search! In addition, do all of your shopping through their online shopping mall, GoodShop.com, where you can shop at more than 900 top online retailers and a percentage of your purchases will go to the charity or school of your choice. You pay the same price as you normally would, but a donation goes to your cause! Here’s the web site — http://www.goodsearch.com. You can also read about GoodSearch in the NY Times, Oprah Magazine, CNN, ABC News and the Wall Street Journal.

Monday, April 13, 2009

evening

Tonsillitis - Go Away!  (Added Bonus:  People I Don’t Understand)

I’m getting tired of having tonsillitis.  It used to be that I’d just get it once every few years or so, but I think this is the third time in the past six months.  Enough!  I had the swollen gland in my neck for a few days before my throat started hurting, and it’s only swollen on one side, yet both tonsils are affected.  Hmmm.  I have no idea what that means, other than it’s gross to look in the mirror with a flashlight to see pus on your tonsils.  The last time I had it, I got antibiotics from my doctor, but I think I’ll see if I can wait it out this time.  It’s supposed to go away within four days or so, and I’m already on day three or four.  I don’t think it’s going to instantly be gone when I wake up tomorrow.  Frankly, I’m just plain tired of being sick, in one way or another.  Plus, my internet connection has been really lousy for the past couple of days, so if I AM going to be sick, then I want my speedy connection back.  It seems only fair, right?

Hey, I have something funny (not funny haha, funny strange) to tell you guys.  We discovered that we’ve been accused of abusing our pets…wait, wait, you’ll love the quality reasoning behind this - because we get vet care for our pets.  Yes, that’s abusing them and ruining their lives, getting healthcare for them.  I guess we’re supposed to take them into the back forty and shoot them or something.  Because yeah, getting antibiotics to take care of a cat or dog’s bladder infection is just cruel and inhuman.  Of course, this comes from the same sharp minds accusing me of faking being sick and of having my back surgery for, uh, I’m not sure why, just that I supposedly didn’t need it.  Geez, so now, not only do I fake my own illness, I (or maybe Leigh-Ann?) fake illness/injuries for the pets?  It’s so weird.  Do we just have our doctors and vets fooled, too, so they treat the whole household for imaginary things?  Actually, I’m not sure if we’re inventing the pets’ illnesses or if we’re just not supposed to get them treated…because it’s, uh, “cruel”.  So, so, so, so incredibly weird.  Do they think the same way about their kids?  That if they get sick, they shouldn’t take them to the doctor to get treated?  Is it a huge lack of empathy for other living things?  Or is it that pets aren’t supposed to be treated like a member of the family?  I really don’t get it.  And, honestly, I don’t think I even want to get it. 

I can’t imagine not taking a sick pet to the vet.  We have older pets who have arthritis and they live normal lives by taking meds to help their arthritis, just like people do.  You don’t kill off your kid/parent/sibling because they’re achy when they wake up in the morning - you give them something to help them feel better, like Rimadyl for dogs or Celebrex for people.  This is so bizarre and rambly because I don’t even know how to approach a defense for the weird accusation that we take our pets to the vet when they get sick or injured.  My response is basically, “Well, yeah, duh.”  Sick pets deserve treatment just like sick people do.  Yeah, sometimes we can’t afford to pay for expensive cancer treatment for our pets, but they also don’t have county hospitals for pets where they can be treated now and billed later.  So, if the accusation is that I treat my pets like I would my children - guilty as charged.  Fortunately, all of my friends are the same way, so I don’t feel the slightest bit misunderstood in my circle of friends.  They’re people who are willing to get surgery on an elderly dog so that it’ll feel better in its last years; people who did everything humanly possible to save their cat, including Sub-Q fluids and a multitude of meds; people who have their elderly dogs on Rimadyl so the dog can still get around and enjoy life with its family…all the same things you would hope that they would do for you, if they were responsible for your care.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

terribly early in the morning

If anyone can help Jody in Oregon by adopting some cats…

This isn’t my post, it was written by Jody, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to repost it.  If you can help Jody in any way (adopting or donations), please do.  She does an amazing job rescuing abandoned cats/kittens and getting them spayed & neutered and adopted out.  She deserves the help that the big charities get, as she does more than one person should be capable of doing.
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I have too many in my care, although they are all healthy and happy. I have 29 cats here currently, only four of which are my own cats.
If any of you know people looking for a wonderful cat, please direct them to my youtube site, where I have videos posted of cats up for adoption:  http://www.youtube.com/user/Catweedhigh
Or, to my petfinder site, where you can click “My Adoptable Pets” and see most of the cats here listed, with more specifics.
Yoyo is a very very sweet young black and white male, now neutered, among four left behind by a disabled woman when her house was condemned.  The other three, his mother, brother and sister, got homes almost immediately, while Yoyo remains here.  Yoyo is a people cat for sure!  But, he takes awhile to get used to other cats. 
The most adoptable cats I have here now are Tugs, a young torti, Mums and young muted calico and Matilda, all from that Lebanon situation, where an old woman was feeding the cats left behind by neighbors, when another neighbor threatened to kill of them with a shovel.
Sam, is a wonderful loving super friendly people oriented adult gray tabby male, abandoned in Millersburg.  The three starving kittens I found in Dead Car Field on a dead end street just outside Albany, have taken to following Sam everywhere and just adore him.  I call them “Sam’s Clan” in fact.  Be lovely if all four, Sam, Doc, Mops and Buffy could get a home together.
Tweetie and Button are the last teens here of 12 cats I took in when an old woman in an Albany trailer park died suddenly just after Thanksgiving.  I’d gotten all the cats fixed she fed just before Thanksgiving.  The family called me after she died, asking me to take the cats.  I resisted, instead asking the family to help find them homes.  They refused, and even though they promised to donate, if I took them, they never did so.  All the others got homes.  Button and Tweetie are still here waiting.  They are shy, but delightful.
You can see all their little glorious faces on the petfinder site:  http://www.purr.petfinder.com.  Any help finding these wonderful cats loving homes would be greatly GREATLY appreciated. 
Thank you.
Jody
May the Cats Be With You!