I’ve started this new and disturbing trend with my eating. Take a typical workday: I wake up and have coffee and perhaps cereal before work. Then after 2 hours I have a yogurt and a protein bar. Then 2 hours after that I eat part or all of my sandwich (turkey on Health-nut bread with low-fat Miracle Whip and Pepper Jack cheese) and some fat free cheese-its. I always have an extra yogurt and a no-added sugar Apple sauce cup, just in case I get hungry later. All fine and good. I may swap turkey for tuna salad, but it’s pretty basic.

Where I fail is when I get home. That’s when I get into the chips and salsa. Which is fine, we get pretty healthy chips. But chips lead to cheese. Dinner is normally healthy, but working retail it’s not everyday. So I can graze on chips and crackers and cheese twice a week if I’m not careful! So I am basically a Daytime Dieter. It’s been working ok so far… but to reach my goal of being BELOW 200 pounds I have to stop that. OR do cardio daily, which works for me *when I do it*. It’s just daily… That’s like Every Day. Gross.

Anyhoo. That’s on my mind tonight. Ugh.

  meh

daniel · the wee hours · say it · ping it

My cat isn’t dead! In fact I would cautiously venture to say… she’s getting better. But I can’t get too much hope going. She’s been better and worse and better and even more worse for days. But I am still *cautiously optimistic*. I have decided, groggy or not, it wouldn’t be right to groom her in any way while in this state. That is definitely OCD self control. There is some ear trimming one does on a purebred Siamese.. But I refrain. I do!

All kidding aside, I do hope we are finally healing. I have been sick with worry. This cat is my very first actual pet that has been all my own. Not the family dog. Not the Pre-Existing Cats I moved into with my Richard. I chose her. Or more actually, she chose me. I just chose the breed. The rest was magic. I feel totally responsible. Her surgery hurt me.

And on that note, since I brought it up… What the hell with the Spay-Neuter campaign? I get, *no*, I TOTALLY GET the importance of both procedures. However, they are recommended and tossed about like candy. Like it’s totally natural for your pet. Common even. In most cases it may be all those things! In our case it was not. It was a very real, very major surgery. It had very real and serious complications. I just imagine how it would be handled if it were a woman, instead of my cat. She was sent home with me the same day. Like it was nothing. I didn’t know. I thought it was “nothing” too. Although I had done a bit of online research, I went with the flow. I selfishly wanted my kitten back home. Now that I have been through it, I find it amazingly cruel to send an animal home with untrained, unprepared regular folk to handle the POST MAJOR SURGERY CARE. All I got was a useless e-collar (the lampshade that my cat could both reach around and remove at will) and a painkiller that was hard to administer. No antibiotics, which as it turns out are the magic cure for rejecting sutures. I had little idea of what to expect, and the online info combined with the “discharge instructions” were absolutely useless. It is my belief that an overnight stay would have saved her all this undue suffering. The veterinary hospital has much better “kind confinement” than I can provide at home to speed healing the first day. My cat did some amazing body slams and contortions because she wanted out of the suggested “isolation in one room” as well as repeatedly removing the e-collar (and that took BODY FLIPS people, all with a fresh incision) The symptoms of my cats complications would have probably been noticed had she been overnight. Or had we been given antibiotics to start right away. But the surgery is so common. So many cats have no issues that the rules are based on the majority. So here I am, exhausted from fear and guilt, and 300 dollars poorer (not counting the cost of the spay) for something I feel could have been totally avoidable.

Dude. Learn from me and ask questions. Make sure you and your pet never has to endure what we did due to lack of knowledge. Had I known what to ask for and insist on, we would have had none of this pain and heartache.

tagged: cat kitten advice spay procedures

daniel · late evening · 3 comments · ping it

And I mean that title literally. Using the guest bath to shower is like camping! Exciting and humorous. Let me explain.

You see, when we were house hunting a proper guest area was extremely important to us. Both our families are some distance away. So at first glance this place was ideal in that regard. It has a second bedroom equipped with it’s own full bath. Nice! It’s a good sized bathroom too. We occasionally use that bathroom for the odd toilet trip or to blow-dry and dress in the morning if one of us is up extra early (our bathroom has no door on the vanity area). It’s roomy for a guest bath, and you aren’t wedged against the cabinetry or shower door if using the toilet in a seated position. TMI, I know. But you know it’s nice not to be wedged in there… 

Today I was reminded again how they saved all that space to make the room seem big. The wee shower. I am on a re-grouting mission this weekend in the master bath, you see. So we are forced to use that second bathroom. The shower is rather small. It is like showering in a doll house. Literally. I am 6’ 2”. The top of the shower doors barely reach my shoulders. I have to stand sideways (and duck) to wash my hair. All I could do was laugh the entire time I was in there picturing our loved ones all happy with the private guest quarters and then experiencing the wee tiny shower! I am LOL as I type right now. It’s like we now all know how Buddy the Elf felt while at the North Pole….

Anyhoo, glad I only have one more day of it. Even if it is hilarious.

tagged: shower guest room guest bath small shower

daniel · early evening · say it · ping it

Actually, I fear this will always be true:

You know, Christmas doesn’t just happen. You have to force it.

(from 2006)

tagged: holiday making the yuletide gay 2008 snarky

daniel · lunch time · say it · ping it

It’s not easy. Sigh.

I spent my morning going thru the bills I neglected the last few days. It took all my blogging time! Oh well. Maybe later.

tagged: morning chores bills normal

daniel · late morning · say it · ping it

Now that the stress of Birthday Week is over, I was thinking. This past week has been pretty awesome. Amazing even. None of it, or even some of this past year, would have been possible without our great friends and “San Diego Family”. You people are amazing! Whether you’ve been in our lives since we arrived here in San Diego for the first time or if we’ve only gotten together a few times. None of the laughs and good times would have happened without you.

Thank you so much for changing our lives for the better.

tagged: family thank you
  thankful

daniel · early afternoon · 1 comment · ping it