Deprived

Normally I'm woken up at about 5-5:30 am by either B's alarm or a very obnoxious Lily yowling at the door. This morning, it was neither - instead, a bizarre dream about Castle, Beckett, and I trying to escape from a murderous cult that was holding us hostage. A murderous cult of teenage girls, no less. Beckett and I escaped first by locking ourselves in a public bathroom, but when Castle tried to sneak away to meet us, somebody threw a grenade into the hallway and we had to escape through the vent onto the roof.

And now that I would like to go back to sleep for another hour, Lily is raising a holy ruckus as usual. *sigh* It's always something.

But, on the unrelated bright side, I start working at the bookstore next Thursday, and B has another interview today for a job that is a much better fit for him. So prayers, wishes, & FGBVs for him would be much appreciated.

I DEFY THEE, HUMAN!

"WHAT is in this bag?!  I MUST SHRED IT."

"Oh NO you DIDN'T."

"I'll teach YOU to squirt ME!"

Yes, when I squirt her with the spray bottle, she comes running as if she's going to fight the bottle or something.  She makes that goofy "ackackackack" noise that cat's make when they're hunting something, and gives me the evil eye.  Then 30 seconds later she's back doing whatever naughty thing she got in trouble for in the first place.

She's like a rebellious teenager - "You telling me 'no' just makes me want to do it even more!  So BITE ME, Human!"

(Also, whoever had the lame idea to caption cat pictures with so-called "LOLSpeak" obviously doesn't own a cat.)

Nap, please. PLEASE.

Is this the face of a terrorist?

The answer is, abso-friggin-lutely.  This psychotic, annoying little beast kept me awake ALL NIGHT.  She has it in for our humidifier, and no matter what I do she insists on trying to tip the damn thing over.  I'm a horribly light sleeper, so every time she gives it a yank it wakes me up.  Add to that her habit of jumping up on the bed right next to my face and demanding attention by standing on my boobs with her 20-pound feet... AND THEN when I booted her out of the bedroom and shut the door, she scratched at the carpet and the door, shaking the whole thing in its frame.  So I booted her down the stairs (I really had to refrain from throwing her at this point but I probably would have thrown my back out too) and shut the door at the top of the stairs and the bedroom door so I couldn't hear her attempts at taking it off the hinges.

Then there's this guy.

He's not a little dog, but he's usually allowed to sleep on the bed because of his wonderful ability to curl up into a ball the size of a pumpkin.  However the past couple of weeks, his skin has been dry and his ears have been bothering him.  He's kind enough to not scratchscratchscratch on the bed, but it means that he's getting up and down, on and off the bed all. night. long.  Last night he got the boot too.  Tonight, he'll be quarantined to his bed on the floor.

Needless to say I'm a bit tired.

Add that to the uncomfortable state of my girly-bits and I really wish I was back in bed!  I started reading up on the side-effects of birth control after reading this article by Amalah, and I thought that I would try going off my pills for a while and see if it improved my state of mind and energy levels.  So far, so good, but of course I totally forgot what it would do to me physically.  Bleah.

***

The bright spot today was the LEED Green Associate test this morning.  I spent most of yesterday evening cramming for it - because with my memory, it was utterly hopeless to try and study in advance.  Some of the stuff I was reading left me thinking, the last time I checked I'm not an architect or a general contractor... WHY do I need to know this stuff??  Apparently, they expect their GA's to double as HVAC experts?  Well, regardless, I passed it.  So yay for that being off my shoulders!

***

Christmas was nice and quiet, just B and I.  (Except when he woke me up at 6:30 in the morning, demanding pancakes.  There was some grumbling then.)  It was a pretty lazy day, and didn't entirely feel like Christmas, but it was good.  I had ordered a package of wild game steaks from Cabela's as part of our gift for ourselves, and I grilled the Nilgai Antelope for Christmas dinner.  (Random factoid: Nilgai is native to India, but is ranched for hunting in Texas... apparently there are now more of them in Texas than in India.)  It's pretty good, tastes a bit like pork.  We're saving the rest of the package (elk, wild boar, venison, & bison) for other special occasions.

I scored big points by surprising B with a circular saw (I know!  I managed to pull off a surprise!  I was so proud of myself.) and he scored big points by visiting the Brighton store for a pair of earrings & bracelet for me (canaries! squee!).  He also used his student discount to get me Photoshop Elements 8, which I've been playing with a bit.  I'll start posting some of my experiments with it soon.

Otherwise... yeah.  I'm pretty fried.

So how was YOUR weekend?

Me, I spent mine in the hospital. Nothing horrible, nothing major, but it's kind of a long story.  

My big black cat, Gyro, likes to beat the crap out of my smaller cat, Lily. I was working in my craft room when I heard them going at it in the bedroom (no not that kind of "going at it." Sickos.). I went in there to break them up right as Lily tore up into the shelving of the closet to get away, but Gyro must have grabbed her or she slipped or something, because suddenly she was hanging upside down from the wire shelf at the top, with one back leg caught in the wire. I grabbed Gyro & threw him out of the closet, and tried to grab Lily and hold her up with my left hand while untangling her foot with my right. She was (rightfully) REALLY freaked out though, and turned and latched onto my left hand and bit me twice before I was able to get her down. By this time I was (rightfully) freaking out too - blood was pouring out of one of the bites. B heard me screaming at this point, got me to the bathroom & we cleaned out the wound and got the bleeding stopped, just in time for me to almost puke/pass out on the bathroom floor.  

The last time we went to the ER, we went to UTMC, right around the corner from our house, but the wait was ridiculously long. Our landlord had recommended a couple of other places (part of the Mercy system), but we must have looked up the wrong location or something because when we got there, they told us we were at the wrong place. We finally made it to St. V's downtown, but their ER waiting area was overflowing onto the sidewalk outside. The security guard said they'd just had two major traumas come in too, and that the wait would be REALLY long. We were pretty frustrated at this point, so we just said "screw this" and went all the way back to UTMC so we would at least be closer to home. Amazingly, we sat in the waiting room for all of 10 minutes, then only waited maybe 15 for a doctor to see me. The doc ordered xray's and a consult from an orthopedist, and they decided to admit me to make sure that the bite on my knuckle didn't cause an infection in my joint (which would be VERY bad & result in surgery). I sat there waiting for a room to open up in the main hospital for longer than my entire visit put together, and in the meantime B went home to get my stuff (mainly, sweatpants... I was in shorts and a tank top and was freezing my butt off!).  

I spent the night Friday, getting dosed with antibiotics and vicodin - my hand swelled up at least twice the normal size and hurt like hell! Saturday, the orthopedic docs couldn't decide whether to discharge me, or cut my hand open to drain it. By the afternoon, the swelling had gone way down, the redness was gone, and a doc from Infectious Diseases came by & said I should go home with a couple different antibiotics to take. It took a few hours for that to be communicated properly to everyone else though, so I was finally released around 6 or so. Got my pills, one of which makes me horribly nauseous and the other tastes like battery acid, and now have very little swelling but still a bit painful, and can't bend my fingers all the way. I'll probably still go in to work tomorrow though... I'll just have to be careful when I take my pills so I'm not zoned out or camped in the accounting department bathroom all day.

B has been the BEST and only got mad when we were trying to find St. V's - the streets in Toledo are a pain in the ass! So that's the whole story. Aren't you glad you asked? :-)

Here's the notorious (and messy) closet - Lily likes to hide on the top shelf, but Gyro can't get his fat ass up that high. She was dangling from the spot where my hat is hanging in this pic.

And yet, I'm still awake...

The critters had a very eventful weekend... or so you'd think if you were to walk into my living room right about now.  Lily is passed out to my left:

Jake is over on the other couch:

and Gyro is in the cat bed in the window (on top of the dog crate).

They're all racked out like they're the ones who planted all sorts of flower seeds, cleaned out the dead plants from last year, put fresh dirt in the window boxes, planted herbs in the cute little pots I painted a couple of weeks ago, washed the rug outside then dragged it back in & soaked it and the floor with Nature's Miracle to try to get rid of the cat pee smell (stupid little &$@#!'s), watered the gardens every evening, ran a million and one errands, did laundry, unloaded & reloaded the dishwasher, got groceries, cleaned the litterboxes, patched the grout in the shower... and still had time to blog about it.  

This isn't even half of what I'd initially hoped to accomplish either, but stripping wallpaper is not one of my favorite past-times, and I didn't feel like getting out the power driver to take down the coat rack that's going to be painted, so that's all been put off until next weekend.

(My herbies - Cilantro, Parsley & Basil.  The 4th pot in the back will have mint, and the tall branch is a cutting from our raspberries waiting for some Root-Tone.)

Pet Parenting 101

Things I have learned during my time as a fur-baby's momma:

• Cat health and carpet quality relies heavily upon clean kitty litter. If necessary, set an alarm on your cellphone/computer/both to remind you to clean the catboxes on a more regular basis.
• Dogs like squeaky toys because they imitate the sound of a dying animal. (Maybe it was a bad idea to get Jake that "Naughty Kitty" stuffed toy and encourage him to "get the kitty!")
• Dogs do not care what other things may be in the water they drink. Like toilet paper that didn't make it all the way down on the last flush, or B's "compost tea" mixture of rotting plant bits and rainwater in a tub on the patio that smells like methane.
• Cats, however, require pure, fresh drinking water, straight from the tap, in a fine little trickle. Sink or bathtub, either is fine, as long as it is turned on at their demand.
• Cats see things.
• Dogs are just neurotic.
• Both dogs and cats, when peeing/pooping/vomiting/harcking up hairballs in a place they shouldn't, will always choose a carpeted area to do so, rather than a tiled/hardwood area that would be ten times easier to clean after the fact.
• Cats are allowed to beg at the table (short of jumping up on the table) because it's cute when they meow/purr/butz your legs with their heads.
• Dogs are not allowed to beg at the table, because they stare/drool/whine/are annoying as hell.

I'm sure I will continue to add to this list as time goes on.

I still have cat fur in my nose

I had to take both cats to the vet tonight, and it was not an enjoyable experience! I can always tell when Lily is having gland problems, because Gyro just beats the shit out of her & won't leave her alone because she smells like "girly cat". But Gyro has been smelling funky lately too, so I figured he had the same issue. I never have a problem getting them into their carriers, and Lily is always quiet in the car (she slept almost the whole way from Cleveland to Toledo when we moved) but Gyro is another story. The 2 hour trip when we moved was a living hell... he yowled, he cried, he drooled, and he peed. He was miserable, and I was freaking out too! And ever since he's been like that in the car no matter how short the ride. However when you compare their behavior at the vet, it's just the opposite... Gyro is usually well-behaved, but Lily is a holy terror.

But tonight, neither one of them was happy about it.

Last time Lily had to go to the vet, she had to stay all day so they could get a urine sample to test for an infection. When I went to pick her up that evening, the vet tech was like, maybe you'd better come back and see if she'll let you put her in her crate, because she won't let any of us near her! I was dubious, but I went back to her cage and sure enough, she was all frizzed out, yowling and hissing at anybody that walked past her door. I went over and she hissed and yowled for a second until I said her name, then she was like "Oh, thank GOD it's you!!" and practically jumped into my arms. It was kind of funny, but the techs and doctors were obviously a bit freaked out by her and glad to be sending her home!

So she must have a pretty good memory, because I swear she remembered the vet tech and started hissing as soon as she walked in the door. The girl was like, "Oh... Hi Lily...." and you could see she was thinking "Shit, not HER again!" Lily threw a holy fit the whole time, but the fur literally flew when she had her glands evacuated. If you have pets, you may have gone through this before... but imagine a frigging Tazmanian Devil having its butt squeezed and you'll have an idea of Lily's attitude towards it.

It didn't help Gyro out either. He was quiet when they took his temperature and looked at his inflamed eye, but when they went to do his glands he also turned into an absolute hellcat. He's strong too, and I could see the tech straining to keep him from shredding the countertop!
They both bolted back into their carriers, and Gyro was still a whiny little wuss in the car on the way home but noticeably quieter than on the way there. They both got special canned food dinners when they got home and I think I'm back in their good graces, but I might sleep with one eye open tonight!