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      Saturday, April 03, 2004

11:18 AM - 04/03/2004 The topic: Ho hum ---------------------------------------------- Saturday, April 3, 2004 Life has been pretty ho hum lately.  I’ve been really busy, but it’s nothing extraordinary, not much to speak of.  Last weekend Brian and I cleaned up all the limbs and branches from the front trees, this weekend we’ll get the backyard done.  There’s not nearly as much there as there was out front.  And if you check out the backyard camera, you might see us. Of course, today, the cats have to stay in.  We got up early, went to breakfast in Ramona, then went up to the property to get some stuff Brian needs.  I’m really tired, almost numb.  I think I might be a little depressed because yesterday was the second anniversary of Rusty’s passing. Ciara is doing a lot better.  The few times I see her poop, her stool looks almost normal.  And she’s starting to bully the other cats again (a favorite target is Georgie).  She’s slowly putting on a little weight. DeeJay spent the past twenty four hours in the exercise room, his choice.  I straightened it up Monday and Tuesday and there’s more room.  It’s a nice quiet little room, warm in the morning as the sun shines in the window.  Right now, he’s outside, but when he comes in, I wouldn’t doubt he goes back in there.  He’s not bothered by the other cats (Ciara is the only other cat I let in and that’s for the food). Some of you might remember my ordeal with the chiming Mickey Watch back in 1999.  I got a new battery and broke it trying to set the time?  Sent the watch back to Lorus, they no longer made that model so they offered me a new watch?  But they didn’t have anything I liked at the time?  Last year, I finally saw a couple of models I liked and got two?  Well, just for the hell of it, I searched eBay for them a couple of weeks ago.  Saw one.  Went to eSnipe and put in an offer of $49.99.  I told my mom, she said she’d put fifty dollars towards the price, so I raised my offer to $99.99.  I got it for seventy six dollars.  Get this.  There was another one from a different seller up at the same time, but the auction closed five days later.  It went for twenty six dollars.  Argh.  I shouldn’t have looked, I shouldn’t have looked, I shouldn’t have looked!  Anyway, the watch got here in two days, I figured out how to set it (that took five days as there were no instructions included) and now it’s running nicely. I started counting weight watcher points again yesterday.  I’ve put on at least twelve pounds since last December.  That’s more than enough.  I just don’t have the willpower to count points in my head, I guess.  It’s so easy to forget about this nibble or that nibble.  So, no more nibbling without counting it.  Brian said this morning that the days he was taking off plans at the shop (impossible to do here with the cats and distractions), he was snacking on this big jar of animal crackers we had gotten at CostCo.  He realized that as he munched, his energy level dropped.  He threw out the crackers. Well, I guess I’d better change into clothes more conducive to moving and bending and picking up pine needles and stuff.  Have a good weekend. | Permalink

      Friday, April 09, 2004

11:01 AM - 04/09/2004 The topic: Okay, I know, it’s been a while… ---------------------------------------------- Friday, April 9, 2004  I’ve been busy doing a bunch of boring stuff.  Paperwork, laundry, the usual. I don’t know how much I can type this morning because darling Oliver put a considerable puncture in my right hand, between my thumb and index finger.  It’s getting sore.  Yesterday, he was really rambunctious, running around the yard, jumping up on the doghouse, and chasing bugs.  I think he overdid it.  He’s spent the past few months sleeping on the sofa in the family room.  Last night, he tried to make me his bitch.  *lol*  Ollie was on the back of the sofa, behind me.  I started talking to Brian and Oliver started his vocalization and came over to me, ready to make his move (he likes to hold my head in his paws and bite at my hair/head).  I stopped him from doing it twice.  He finally just laid down and went back to sleep. Well, anyway, this morning, I got up around four to open the office door and let the cats out.  Then I went back to bed. Oliver was in my spot.  I didn’t move him, like I should have, but I moved farther into the bed and put my arm around him and started nuzzling him.  I guess I must have hit a sore spot, because he went a little crazy.  I was trying to keep him away with my right hand and he bit it. I ended up pushing him out of the bed, where he was walking back and forth, looking up at the bed.  I know he wanted to get up there and finish what he started.  I ended up chasing him into the hallway (hand bleeding profusely) and he went after Mickey, who was standing in the guest bathroom doorway. I was able to get Oliver away from Mickey, then put my hand behind Oliver’s ears and navigated/walked him out the office door.  Which I closed behind him.  I swear that cat has the jaw span of a big rattlesnake.  The wounds are about three inches apart.  The top canines just scraped the skin, but the bottom canines went in.  It bled for quite a while, which I let happen.  I held a dry washcloth to it and went back into the bedroom.  When I got out of bed fifteen minutes later, and moved my hand, it started bleeding again. Brian put a bandaid on it, which helped stop the bleeding.  But it’s starting to get sore.  At least it’s not swelling up. Remember my comment about DeeJay spending the day in the exercise room last week?  He hasn’t done it since.  But something is happening to him which is making me look at his stay in that room in a different light.  You might recall my discussion about Rusty’s ears.  How certain sounds made them twitch and how, eventually, certain repeated staccato sounds would bring on a seizure (like a breeze through a window causing the blinds to bump against one another).  Well, I thought it was odd that DeeJay’s eyes were dilated that day, I put it off to the Elavil I’d given him that morning.  But after watching his ears, I started to think that maybe DeeJay is having seizures.  I haven’t seen one yet, but the signs are just too similar to Rusty.  Crud. I think Ciara is just about all better.  She’s still getting prednisone, I’ll do what the vet said.  But I think next month, I’ll take her in for another check up to see how long she needs to be on the steroid. Oh! Oh! Oh!  Sunday morning, I went outside to get the paper and I heard a little cat meow.  I went to check it out.  It was coming from under our bedroom window.  It was Little Bit.  She was having kittens!  I didn’t look too long, I didn’t want to scare her.  Later, Brian looked and told me he saw four torties.  Torties!  Girls!  Argh!  Anyway, she’s still there and she seems to be doing fine.  Only, there aren’t four kittens.  There are five.  And four are tortie and one is black.  I hope she doesn’t move them.  When we got back from our walk this morning, I saw her up the street.  But she was back within five minutes.  Maybe she was going potty.  Wednesday morning, her growling woke us up (nice thing about having her there).  I got out of bed, threw on a robe and was out the door.  Brian was right behind me.  He had grabbed the bat, but no other clothes.  He was standing in the entryway in his underwear and I told him to get back in the house.  I chased two raccoons down the street.  I’m wondering if that’s what happened to the kittens she brought over here the last time, the ones she put in the cathouse on the bank. They weren’t even there for twenty four hours before something got them. Of course, we start worrying about what we’re going to do.  We don’t really need five more cats in the house (although I really love kittens).  I mentioned it on a forum and guess what?  A couple of our Disney friends (Fud and Jennifer) do cat rescue in the LA area and Jen offered to take the kittens.  She said she wanted them around 6 or 7 weeks old, so she could “properly fondle” them and get them ready for adoption. Kewl!  And they’re going to help us get Little Bit contained and get her fixed. The yard looks a lot better with all the branches, limbs, leaves and needles gone.  Took us all day Saturday and most of Sunday.  Doing the liquid amber was a lot harder than the pine trees, even though there wasn’t nearly as much of it to get rid of.  It was the untangling, dragging and walking that got to me.  Boy, did my butt hurt Monday.  We’re hoping that by the next time these trees need to be cut back, that we’re living up at the property and they’re not our problem any more. Well, my hand is starting to throb, I think I’ll give it a rest. | Permalink

      Monday, April 12, 2004

10:31 AM - 04/12/2004 The topic: Is winter gone? ---------------------------------------------- Monday, April 12, 2004 What a beautiful day we had yesterday.  A really nice day.  I didn’t do a whole lot, made a couple of transfers (one for a shirt, one for a tote bag).  Saturday, I tried my hand at making candles with soy wax.  Ish.  I most likely won’t be using that too much in the future, although I’ve got two more pounds of it.  It doesn’t take a lot of scent and it doesn’t slide out of the mold.  But the instructions do say “for making container candles”.  Now I know what that means.  Anyway, yesterday I scraped all of the wax out of the molds, remelted it and poured it into containers.  (I bought some metal tins a couple of years ago when I thought I’d make my own candles instead of buying them. Also, the candles I was getting from Susie’s Scents burned so hot, the glass containers would break, which was pretty dangerous.)  Brian and I have both been really tired lately. And we both have sore backs from all of the work we did last weekend when we cleaned up all the tree limbs.  Brian spent most of the weekend working on equipment for the tractor over at his brother’s house.  When he got home Saturday, we went to CostCo and did a minimal amount of shopping. Yesterday, when he got home, he made his dinner, and said that he thought we should go to be early. There was nothing on television that grabbed our attention (I was watching TVLand when he got home; we just kept it there the rest of the night), we were both just really tired.  So, I got the cats in pretty easily, except for Opie and he was being a real little brat.  It took me close to fifteen minutes to get close enough to grab him.  (The cats do this really annoying little play thing. They run a little, lay down and when you reach down to get them, they’ll get up and run a little, lay down and just wait for you to bend down and make your move and when you do, they’re off again. And look at you as if to say “mom!  isn’t this a funfun game?”  Mom thinks not.) Anyway, got him in, did a head count. I took two excedrin PMs, Brian took three.  We were both sound asleep by nine last night.  And we didn’t go walking this morning, just kept sleeping.  It was really nice. We finally watched Finding Nemo Saturday night. I really like it, it was pretty cute.  “Just keep swimming, keep swimming, swimming….” Oh, my hand is no longer sore from Oliver’s bite.  And he’s calmed down since that day.  I think he was just sore from overdoing the day before he got me.  I know that many of you were concerned and I thank you for that.  I’ve got an awesome immune system, I’ve been pretty fortunate.  I’ve seen when a bite goes bad (Lonee got Brian years back, I’m sure it’s somewhere in the diary) and his hand started to swell immediately.  When he was in the bathroom, standing over the sink, hand pumping blood (we think Lonee got a vein), the vet called (I had been concerned about Lonee’s breathing and Brian tried to catch her without gloves on and got bit in the process…I had a call in to the vet because of her rapid breathing).  He said if Lonee could run like she was, she wasn’t in any immediate danger.  As for Brian, the vet told me what he would do, if it were him.  We did what he said he would do and it took a couple of weeks without medical intervention, but Brian did get better (he did take antibiotics).  Well, I never had any of the symptoms Brian had so I think I’ll be okay. I did a little dumbf*ck thing Saturday.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I go outside to check on Little Bit.  I see one of her kittens on the bank.  I stupidly wondered what she was doing, then I stupidly picked up said little darling adorable tortie (which I don’t know if that’s correct; their colors aren’t brushed like Pepper, Lola and Lucky’s were, but they’re more large patches of color on black) and stupidly took said kitten over to Little Bit’s nest.  Of course she went ballistic.  I knew I had to put the kitten down.  So, I did, gently, doing my best to keep my distance from Little Bit.  I backed up slowly.  She sniffed at the kitten and grabbed her.  She tried the neck, head, belly, legs and she finally got a good enough hold in the kit and took it back up to the bank.  Scared spitless (and kicking myself for being so enormously stupid) I left a message on a messageboard, then found Fud’s phone number in L.A. (she being one of our Disney friends) and called her. She reassured me, said as long as the mother can find the kitten, she won’t abandon the kitten.  And when I got off of the phone with her and checked the nest by the house, there was only one kitten left.  So, it came to me in a flash of understanding that Little Bit was moving her nest.  Which I kind of expected all along which is why it was such a stupid thing for me to do, picking up that kitten.  Little Bit found a nice little quiet spot on the bank, under a palm leaf.  It was situated so that when the sprinklers came on that night, they wouldn’t get wet.  Later that afternoon, I looked out at her and she was snuggled on the bank with KittyMeeze, the kittens not two feet away from her.  And he was grooming her.  She completely trusts him.  And yesterday, she’d moved the kittens yet again, up to the cathouse.  A good place.  There’s only one way in and she can see it from just about anywhere in our yard.  This morning, she was eating and I saw SpotTee going up to the house and I went outside and shooed him away from the door.  I’ve heard of tomcats killing litters to bring the queen back into heat.  I don’t want that happening here.  He doesn’t usually hang around in the day, so I think we’re safe. I went to the bank Friday and just about cleanout out our equity accounts to pay some pressing, immediate bills, like insurance and utilities (both business and residential).  I also got some coin wrappers, to start wrapping out some of all of that change we’ve been saving.  I sure wish some of those jobs Brian spent a week or so bidding out would start coming in.  I know we’ll have money, I just hate the lean time in between jobs.  I do wish we were better at budgeting.  I used to be a lot better at it when I was single. Well, time to go do some housework.  Haven’t really done much the past week because of my back, but I just can’t stand it anymore.  I have to do something about all the dust and fur piling up in the corners.  That’s one great thing about tile.  You know when it’s time to clean.  *lol* | Permalink

      Monday, April 26, 2004

09:45 AM - 04/26/2004 The topic: Remember me? ---------------------------------------------- Monday, April 26, 2004  Hi, there.  Remember me?  It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Okay, I’ve been pretty busy this past couple of weeks.  Money is pretty tight and I ended up wrapping a bunch of coins last week.  Got over $900.00 in quarters, nickels and dimes.  Took the pennies down to a CoinStar machine yesterday.  There were 4135 pennies.  No way was I going to wrap those. The cats are doing as well as can be expected.  Ciara still has loose poop, but she’s energetic and as lovable as ever.  DeeJay likes baby food, I found out last week.  He ate two and a half jars on Saturday. Then, he slowed down yesterday.  *sigh*  I wish we could find something he liked, that he’d eat every day.  And not get bored with so quickly. Annie was feeling pretty punky last week.  She was throwing up for at least three days and went over two days without pooping. And she wasn’t eating, either.  I watched her closely, gave her hairball stuff and water with ice cubes, which she drank from slowly.  She did start getting better and now is back to normal. I crocheted a baby blanket for Elena at my vet’s office.  She had a baby boy earlier this month.  This was one of the reasons I’ve not updated the journal.  I got that to the vet’s office last Friday. We went up to Disneyland on Saturday, the 17th.  We hadn’t gone since Christmas.  Whenever I see the weather and they say that there’s a chance of rain, I always think back to the days we’d go up to Disneyland on the spur of the moment, to enjoy the park in the rain.  When it rains, it’s usually not as busy.  We’d talked about going the week before.  If the forecast changed, we wouldn’t have gone.  But, it didn’t.  We left here about 6:15, had breakfast in San Juan Capistrano and were at the parks by 9:15. We got in three rides in the first hour, something we haven’t done in a long, long time.  It was pretty nice.  We left the park around one and the drive home was bad because of the rain.  It took us over three hours to get home. But it was a good day.  When we got home, we let the cats out.  The rain had pretty much stopped by then. Little Bit moved the kittens again last week.  I was really scared because she didn’t show her face in the morning and the kittens were gone.  And I found some sort of organs under the Ranger.  I was really scared that something bad had happened.  I searched for her in the juniper and was backing up when I heard a hiss.  I turned and saw her laying under the Bird of Paradise, kittens suckling.  Whew!  I figured she didn’t show for breakfast because she caught her own. Those organs probably belonged to a tree rat.  Once I had calmed down and started thinking coherently, it only made sense.  If it had been a coyote that got her or a kitten, I’m sure there wouldn’t have been organs left.  When Brian got home, I told him about it and he said last week, he’d seen a dead rate one morning.  Then, the next morning, all that was left were the same things I saw.  I think there were kidneys and the liver.  I know part of it was the colon because there was feces.  Ick. I don’t think it will be too long before I see the kittens. They’re three weeks old now and should be walking.  It won’t be long before they’re exploring.  I hope Little Bit brings them closer to the house, say, in the entry way. I haven’t done any housework in two weeks.  I really do have to dust and vacuum. The next time Brian goes to the property for the weekend, I’ll most likely spend the time scrubbing floors.  They really need it.  And I’ve got some laundry to catch up on.  So, I’d best get to it. | Permalink

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities. In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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