Sunday, December 30, 2007

the wee hours

Goodbye & Good Riddance 2007

Not just for me, but for a lot of people I know.  I don’t want to tempt the fates, but 2008 could hardly be worse.  If it is, well...then that’ll be somethin’, uh huh.

Friday, December 21, 2007

the wee hours

Life Sucks.  And Then It Sucks Some More.  And Then A Little More After That.

Cricket is currently spending her second night at the vet’s office, getting IV fluids and possibly pain meds still.  Last night around 8p, when all the vet offices were closed, Cricket started vomiting constantly.  When I say constantly, I mean every two seconds.  She was diagnosed with pancreatitis a couple of weeks ago and she’d been doing well.  She spent the day acting weird, but Cricket is high strung, so she sometimes just acts weird.  Well, now we know, she was in pain.  I’d even given her the pain meds in the morning, but apparently the pain went way beyond that.  We had to take her to the emergency clinic that’s 15 or so miles away.  Cricket settled down a tiny bit in the car, which was a relief, because she couldn’t have kept up the constant retching much longer.  I feel sorry for people whose pet stops breathing or something, and have to drive so far to get emergency help.  We have a vet’s office a couple blocks away that used to be an emergency clinic.  We called them, and the vet called back five minutes later, telling us that they’re no longer an emergency clinic.  He basically told us that it was $100 to leave his home, did we want him to get off his warm and cozy couch to come treat our dog in distress?  Gee, why would we want that, Mr. Vet Guy.  Duh.  So, since it would’ve required waiting for Mr. We Don’t Have An Emergency Clinic, we drove to the actual emergency clinic.  Also, that’s the vet that screwed up Carlo’s neuter and had him bleeding all over the kitchen floor...and had him under-medicated for pain.  The emergency clinic is all women, all the vets, all the techs (that we saw), the receptionists (that we saw), and they’re very very competent.  And expensive.  But competent.

Cricket was probably having a bad pancreatitis attack, although we’re not sure why because she’s been eating a special diet...and really not eating very much.  Her x-rays also showed that she has a narrow area between the disks in her back.  Not oozing out like my herniated disk, but a flattening of the cushy material between them.  We don’t know if she’s always had that, or if she got that when she fell off the bottom step of the stairs two days ago.  It was a very short fall...and one where the brunt of it sounded like it was taken by her jaw.  Ouch!  But, she seemed okay after that.  We were at the clinic until 11p, then had to drive home and get back up to pick her up by 7:30am, because the clinic closes at 8am.  They’re open during all of the hours that the other vets are closed - evenings, weekends, and holidays.  While I’m grateful they’re there, and I’m glad to know that the pets receive really terrific care there, the prices are higher than our vet’s office, which is one of the more expensive offices in town.  Although, again, the care there has proven to be at a much higher standard than the office run by Mr. Are You Sure You Want Me To Leave My House?

We picked Cricket up and had to take her directly to our regular vet’s office.  We left the emergency clinic with a goodie bag of vials of blood, a bag of fluids, and a cd with her x-rays on it.  She was put back on IV fluids and kept overnight.  We wanted her to stay overnight to make sure she was on the road to wellness since Leigh-Ann is leaving for Canada on Sunday night.  I don’t want any pet medical issues while she’s gone.  It’s awfully quiet without Cricket here.  Phoenix is such a peaceful well-behaved dog.  Cricket is more, well, yappy.  Let’s just say that she makes her presence known at various times throughout the day.  If the doorbell rings, if one of the cats walks in front of the bedroom door, if we’re downstairs and she’s lonely, well, you get the idea.  If any of you have a poodle or terrier, you probably know what I’m talking about.  Cricket seems to be a combination of poodle & terrier (we rescued her from a puppy store that couldn’t sell her because she’s a mix), and she gets the worst of their characteristics (yappy sometimes & high-strung) and the best (she’s adorable).  See, isn’t she cute?

So that was the sucks part.  My paycheck was the “and sucks some more” part of the equation.  I asked when I’d get my invoice because it was later than it normally is, and I need the invoice in order to bill for my work.  Well, my invoice was held up by the editor who decimated the previous invoice - yeah, apparently he was too busy to look at it then, but now was an excellent time to reject commissions that I’d been expecting right before Xmas.  Although, really, who needs money during the holidays?  Oh, not us folks who work on commission only, no sirree.  Not only will it be too late to pay the mortgage (on the 26th), it was a whole whoppin’ $350 for two weeks of work.  Merry Effin’ Xmas, no?  Let’s add this up - the mortgage (a lot), the car payment (a lot...and due Monday), and the power company wants $500 on the 31st, after I paid them $781 on the 12th.  Not only that, I called them on the 11th and made payment arrangements (they billed for the equal payments overage all at once), and then paid them on the 12th.  On the 17th, they shut off the power.  Yes, after I’d called them and made payment arrangements.  You’d think that paying almost $800 would keep your power on for more than a week, right?  I called them, in horror, telling them I paid them.  Two different people (I asked for a supervisor, which is something I don’t ordinarily do) gave me the most ridiculous reason - they said it was because I hadn’t CALLED BACK after I made that payment and made payment arrangements.  The hell?  When you’re on the phone, talking to someone at the power company and they give you an amount to pay and a date it’s due (which I paid them by), isn’t THAT the damned payment arrangement?  Why on earth would someone tell you to call back to make another different payment arrangement?  Honestly, I’m so sick of worrying about money.  It’s no wonder I can’t get the Fibromyalgia under control - I don’t have a single day without financial stress.  My body is probably attacking itself inside.  Oh wait, I didn’t finish the power company story.  I had to make ANOTHER payment arrangement to pay them another $500 on the 31st, or they wouldn’t turn the power back on.  When I finally agreed to it, because I would’ve agreed to anything to get the power on, they told me, “Oh, we can’t guarantee that you’ll get the power back on today.” Yeah, they said it like it was no big deal.  The guy had left our house less than ten minutes prior to that point in the conversation and they’re telling me that they can’t guarantee I’ll get the power back...when the lows are in the 30’s.  They turned it back on at 8pm, which beat their deadline of 8:30p by thirty minutes.  So, we had to spend 8 hours without power, and we both work online.  Luckily, I’d worked through the previous night until 10am, so I’d only been in bed for two hours when the power went out.  So, we just went to bed and hoped to have power when we woke up.

It’s been a crappy crappy week.  Leigh-Ann’s leaving on Sunday for Canada, and I’m glad.  It’s depressing being here, so I want her to get away and have some fun with her family.  Maybe I’ll have sold a kidney by the time she gets back.  A kidney and maybe three toes.  What the heck, and a spleen and a gallbladder.  Wait, and an appendix.  People have those removed all the time without a problem.  So, I can have them removed and someone who’s been missing their extraneous organs can give me some cash for them and have them inserted ASAP.  They’re barely used.  I personally think I have a lovely appendix and that no one could give them a better deal.  Well, no one in North America.  Oh wait, and tonsils.  Oh, what the hell, I’ll throw in the tonsils for free.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

the wee hours

Some questions, a little American Idol talk, some dog food tips and the always enjoyable coprophagia

When you’re getting your paycheck, do you like to know the exact date you’ll be getting it or is okay with you if it’s any time within a seven day period?  Am I the odd duck who likes to know exactly what day the direct deposit or wire will show up?  And, if you don’t care, does that mean that you won the lottery or you got Andruw Jones contract with the Dodgers of $36.2 million over two years.  I think that if I got paid $1,000,000 a month or say, got direct deposit of $500k every two weeks, I’d probably have enough savings that if a couple of payments were later than usual, it wouldn’t matter.  Well, unless my house payment was $500k and due 10 days after the last game of the pay period and all of my savings had been donated to a variety of people & businesses...and I was starting my rainy day savings account again from scratch.  So then, I suppose I’d need to know exactly when that $500k was going to be in my bank account, so the down payment check I wrote for my first house payment (you should see the cool house you can get with a $500k down payment) didn’t bounce, right? 

I haven’t purchased an album since the last P!nk cd that was released last April.  But yesterday, I was feeling wild and reckless, so I bought the Blake Lewis “Audio Day Dream” album directly from my iPod.  If I still cared about music like I did when I was a youngster, buying Mp3s online would be way too easy and tempting.  But, I don’t, so that’s good.  I like music, but I like Rhapsody, which lets me listen to any album or song, but I don’t own anything.  It just saves me having another thing to gather dust. 

So yeah, Blake’s album is pretty catchy, wholly unlike Jordin Sparks’ extremely boring album.  She has a decent voice, but the songs are snoozers.  I was going to say that generally I don’t like the American Idol contestant albums, but I have Kelly Clarkson’s two cds and Kimberley Locke’s cd (zzzz, and religious, so extra zzzzzz - I think it was like half price or something, and had one good catchy song...the one I’d heard before I bought the cd), and I listen to Carrie Underwood’s music all the time.  I also like the Daughtry album.  But Ruben, Clay, Fantasia (though I thought she was fabulous on the show), Bo, Taylor, Katherine (I expected to like it, but thought it was rather average), Elliott, and all of the other top tenners who tried to capitalize on the show...did nothing for me.

Anyway, if you liked Blake on AI, you’ll really like his album.  If you have no idea who he is, click on his fancy schmancy picture up there and listen to some song snippets.  If you like any of what you hear, I promise that you’ll like the whole album.  Plus, it has lotsa songs - kind of like getting a book that has lotsa pages.  You feel like you got a better deal.

Cricket is still feeling kind of lousy - I can tell that she’s in pain.  She has almost all the signs of pancreatitis.  The special fancy prescription food we had to get for her is Eukanuba low-residue food and is filled with crap.  I can’t believe how much they charge for it, when they use meat by-products and corn grits.  So, not only does it cost as much as the really excellent human grade ingredients of foods like Merrick & Fromm, but I can’t let Phoenix lick Cricket’s bowl when she’s done (which Phoenix enjoys very much, even when there’s nothing left in the bowl), because she’s allergic to corn.  These aren’t the exact ingredients on Cricket’s cans, but this answer at Yahoo Answers does a really terrific job of describing the veterinary prescription diets.  I’m only whining about six cans of food though - if Cricket needs to stay on a low-residue diet, we’ll find a new food for her.  The big problem is that when the food isn’t the raw food that she & Phoenix have been doing so well on for the past six months or so, or a food that looks like people food (chunks of meat, chunks of vegetables, visible other ingredients like blueberries, apples, carrots, and peas), like the Merrick & Dick Van Patten (giggle) Eatables, she eats her own poop.  So, we can’t feed her anything that looks like paste or mush or anything that you wouldn’t look at and think, “Hmmm, that looks & smells really good, I wonder how it tastes?”, because we all suffer in various ways from that final result.  Blech.  So, if your dog is eating its own poop, try changing its diet to better food.  Their bodies use up all the nutrients, so there’s nothing tasty left in their poop, so they leave it alone.  None of the other stuff worked for Cricket - not Forbid, not hot sauce, not meat tenderizer, and not gagging, begging, and pleading for her to stop it, stop it right now.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

early evening

On The First Night of Hanukkah My Pets Gave to Me

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (yeah, the test result was positive for little Bunny - we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the next test shows that it’s a mild case and that we have years with her versus months.  We also have to get her brother checked because it’s hereditary), Constipation (Cricket is all bunched up and acting weird and in pain - this is her constipation look, we’ve seen it before.  If the pumpkin doesn’t do its trick tonight, she gets to go get rrrrroto-rrrrrooootered tomorrow afternoon), Scratching & Slurping (Phoenix’s allergies are acting up, which means she’s making awful noises sucking on her legs and such. Blech!), and colds all around for everyone.  Yay!  We have more snot per capita than, uh, Snotville.

Here’s something fun for Hanukkah by The LeeVees.  No, seriously, way more fun than anything else in this blog entry.

Oh yeah, yesterday brought an $1800 power bill.  That’s what they punish you with if you don’t pay their equal payments on time - they think you’ll magically find MORE money to pay them somehow.

Although, I just checked and a warrant isn’t out for my arrest.  I was called for jury duty, and as much as I enjoyed it a couple of years ago, I was healthier then...and didn’t really have a job.  I asked my doctor to write a note verifying what I wrote to the court.  I asked the doctor’s office to send me a copy, so I knew it had been sent out, but they didn’t.  I was supposed to report today, so I tiptoed up to the jury duty url and typed in my secret codes to get in.  First, I tried to get it deferred...you know, just in case.  They said that with my status that I couldn’t do that.  Uh oh, what was my status???  Phew, here’s my status.

Yay!  I’m sorry that I’m letting those people who will serve, get away with “gut feelings”, unlike last time, when we stopped those silly (read: dumb) people.  But, it couldn’t be helped. 

One more Hanukkah song for you

Monday, November 26, 2007

late evening

Oh no, Bunny is very sick :(

Poor Bunny seems to have heart problems.

update below:

For more sad details, you can read Leigh-Ann’s more thorough explanation.  I can’t stand the thought of losing Bunny.  I know I’m not supposed to be choosing favorites, but Bunny & Carlo have always had a special place in my heart.  Carlo had such a rough beginning, and we thought he was going to die until we discovered Wild Kitty Cat Food, which is the only food he was able to digest and thrive on.  He tried the special prescription-only diets from the vet and...nothin’.  But, the Wild Kitty stopped the irritable bowel, the constant diarrhea, the body rippling cramps, and the pooping outside the litterbox because he didn’t have any idea when the cramps would hit him.  Once Carlo started to gain weight (he’s probably going to be one of our largest cats), we thought everything was perfect.  Until Bunny stopped being joyful and kittenish, and started panting and not wanting to lay down.  Now, it appears that she was in the beginning stages of heart failure.  She’s only 8 months old, it’s not fair.  More proof that there isn’t any sort of supreme being, at least not one that’s at all useful.  What sort of omnipotent being would let a kitten go into heart failure?

I guess when I posted about being rewarded for our good karma by winning the iPods after we rescued those two cats from the shelter...I was jumping the gun.  We could’ve bought my iPod Touch for what Bunny cost just yesterday.  I’d gladly give up the iPods for a healthy Bunny.  Oh, and we have to worry about Carlo now too, because it’s genetic, I belive.  We went from being very very happy (we both got paid last week and my parents gave us a Thanksgiving/pre-Hanukkahmas cash giftie, in addition to a bunch of casino giveaway stuff like a ginormous universal remote that anyone can see without their glasses, and drill bits, Tupperware-like containers - we had to fight my brother off to keep the remote) to not being happy at all.  Bunny is no longer panting like she was yesterday, but she’s still listless and doesn’t seem to want to lay down.  As soon as her meds calm down the acute problems, Bunny will be getting an echocardiogram from our regular vet.  Our regular vet, who owns the clinic, has been out on maternity leave for a while.  Yesterday’s vet was the vet that was going to take Spiderman home, but wouldn’t take Greg with him.  We didn’t want the boys separated, so we weren’t really thrilled with her.  She totally redeemed herself yesterday, and she was great.  I don’t know, I guess before she seemed a little less, maybe, empathetic than we would’ve liked.  Perhaps she was saving it for something really important.  She was terrific with Bunny, and with us...as was Jen, the hot tattooed vet tech.  Jen, if you’re reading, hi!  Apparently your hotness made Leigh-Ann cry more.  It doesn’t hurt that the hot vet tech is also a really great tech and very very nice. 

Bunny & Carlo at 8 weeks or so.

Bunny (sniffing TJ) and Carlo at five months or so.