Friday, October 31, 2003 What an odd, horrible couple of weeks we’ve had. I’m just now starting to feel human again. I’ve got much to enter, much has happened and I have a few rants on some of what I’ve seen. Hunting being one of them. When we got back from Disneyland, I’d pulled a muscle in the back of my left leg, one that goes up through my butt. I’m thinking sciatica again. We didn’t walk all last week. Then, this week, the fires started and we were warned to stay inside. We did a short walk yesterday, a longer one this morning.
It was nice to be out and about again. We didn’t see too many folks yesterday, but this morning, I asked Brian “why were all of these people waving at us?” Does he know these people? I most certainly don’t. Heck, I’m lost in my own little Land of LaLa here. When we were over halfway through our walk, the reason became apparant. A man was backing out of his driveway and he stopped and rolled down his window. He was glad to see us walking because it meant life was getting back to normal. To see someone walking when earlier this week we were all frightened to death of the air quality was a mighty fine sight, I guess. For me, I need these morning walks. I’ve missed these morning walks. I had put on a pound and a half according to my weigh in last Friday since my previous weigh in (the week before the Disney trip). I’m sure I’d put on more this week. I’ve not been good. I’ve been stress/boredom eating. Of course, there’s very little junk in the house to eat.
But I found stuff to eat. Like a ten pound bag of Ghiradelli chocolate chips that I’ve had in the freezer for almost a year. Well, maybe it’s not a ten pound bag, but it was there and those chips tasted mighty good, frozen or not. I’ve eaten over half the bag since the beginning of the month. I did seal it back up, but this week I opened it again. Yesterday, on our way out to the street for our walk, I took it out of the freezer and put it in the dumpster. The temptation is just too strong. Hopefully, being back on some sort of schedule, I can get back into the good groove.
Other stuff (I’ll post the pictures I’ve taken the past week after I get all of this other stuff out of the way, the normal stuff, the stuff my life is made of) now.
I don’t recall if I’d mentioned Junior being off of his food. The case of Canidae we got before the most recent one didn’t look right. It was too pink. But Junior didn’t seem to mind it and it didn’t smell bad or anything. He didn’t get the runs and there was no apparent adverse effect to his health, so we kept feeding it to him. But he wasn’t really thrilled with it. The last case we got was a lot better. But he still wasn’t eating. He went nuts for his treats and biscuits, but didn’t seem to like the food. We figured it must be the dry food, also Canidae brand. He would eat if I put shredded chicken in the bowl, but that doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t like what we’re feeding him. And his not eating at regularly scheduled times throws off his blood sugar and the timing of his insulin shot.
So, yesterday, I went to Petco (which is fairly close to us) and bought a bag of NutroMax, which we used to feed the dogs before we went to a human grade food. I opened it up and gave him a few pieces of kibble. Nah, he wasn’t going to eat that. “Huh uh, I don’t like kibble anymore” he seemed to be telling me. I took a piece and put it in his mouth. He chewed on it. Hmmmm…not so bad…. He finished the other pieces I’d put out for him. Last night, he had most of his dinner eaten within ten minutes. Within a half hour, it was all gone. And this morning, his breakfast was all eaten within five minutes. We’ll be throwing out the rest of the Canidae that’s in the container and he’ll be getting NutroMax now.
Tuesday, I made out some checks that had to go out (house payment, IRS payment). I called our local post office and was told that there would be no mail pickup/delivery that day, just like there was none Monday (part of Lakeside burned and the air quality was really bad). Brian offered to take the mortgage payment to the bank (I already had it in the envelope, stamped and ready to go) and take the IRS payment to the post office. About a half hour after he left, the phone rang. It seems the battery died in the Ranger and he needed me to come get him. So, I get my shoes on, grab the keys and get in my little Bronco and off I go. It started rough, which concerned me a little, not having any idea if all of the soot was maybe somehow adversely affecting the operation of the engine. But it worked it’s way out whatever it was. I got down to the bank and didn’t see the Ranger anywhere. I plugged the cell phone in and called the Ranger and Brian answered. He was at the post office (I really should pay more attention). I went down there, got a spot next to the Ranger and he used the jumper cables and got the Ranger going. We went home and he left in his truck to do the other running around that needed to be done. He brought home an extra battery he had, but it was too big. We needed a new one.
So, Wednesday night we made a trip down to CostCo, where we got Halloween candy, the battery and some other stuff. On the way home, there was something in the road and a man in the road was motioning for people to stop. It was dark, not long after dusk and this week just got worse. There was a dog in the road. Beyond help, beyond life. We think this guy was just driving along and the dog ran in front of him and there was nothing he could do to stop in time. The dog had apparantly been drug a few yards (from the marks on the street). The cars in both lanes waited until the man had pulled the dog off of the street over to the sidewalk. What a horrible thing to have happen. My heart went out to the dog (I prayed him Godspeed) and to the man taking him from the street. I’m sure he probably is having nightmares even though it was obvious there was nothing he could have done.
Anyway, we got home, got all the groceries and stuff put away, fed the animals and settled in. This was our first night without the evacuees, Becky having picked them up earlier in the day. Tonight, I could sleep in my own bed and not on the sofa (I had been sleeping there so if a fight broke out between the visiting cats and the resident cats, I could nip it in the bud; plus, I wanted to make sure Bubba wasn’t hurt by an adult cat). We watched minimal fire coverage (it really wears one out) and watched some network television. We were both very tired and were fast asleep by nine.
I was supposed to have gone to the chiropractor yesterday, Lord knows I need to, but I just didn’t have the energy. I really needed to recharge. I never had gotten caught up from Disneyland and then the fires. I called and postponed my appointment. It’s on Monday now.
So, that’s the other stuff. Now, I’ll get started on the fire stuff. With pictures. Although, most of the pictures are of the visiting cats. It may take a while because my computer has been futzing off for some reason. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t run more than two applications at the same time. It started last weekend when I tried burning a CD. *sigh* One of these days, I should probably just reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything.
Well, it’s about 5:30 and I can’t get my graphics program to work. I’ve been thinking about reformatting my hard drive and starting all over for a while now, looks like it’s going to happen. I’ve got so much crap on this computer that it’s just not running right. Keep your fingers crossed that I don’t break it. At least, I still have the other computer if I have to download anything.
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