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      Wednesday, March 03, 2004

11:45 AM - 03/03/2004 The topic: What’s new… ---------------------------------------------- Wednesday, March 3, 2004  Well, what’s new? I didn’t realize I hadn’t made an entry since last week. Ciara is slowly getting better.  Her vet’s visit went pretty good.  Her Albumin level was up.  Low normal is 2.6.  When we went in on the 23rd of February, her’s was 1.6.  Albumin is very important to keep the body running properly.  Monday, this week, it was 2.33.  The vet was pleased, but wants to see it at least 2.6 before he considers her out of the woods.  She’s still on flagyl and prednisone.  If her values come up next week, there’s a possibility we’ll cut back on the amount of pred she’s getting and quit the flagyl altogether. Her stool is still pretty loose, but she has much more control over it.  The only time I see any drips from when she’s upright is at the litterbox, not along her walkway, although she still leaks occasionally when she’s sleeping.  But she’s more active and she’s getting a little cleaner.  Her butt isn’t nearly so raw as it was.  I did notice a dime sized patch on her tail yesterday, looked like she’d been skinned there and it was bleeding, but not badly.  Kind of like when you scrape skin off.  I think there may have been some dried stool there that wasn’t ready to drop off (there’s no fur there because one of the vets trimmed it off).  It’s better today.  And she’s sleeping much more comfortably than she had been. I’ll tell you who I’m worried about now.  I’m worried about DeeJay.  It’s hard to describe.  A couple of weeks ago, he was eating everything in sight.  It was great.  Then, for some reason, he didn’t seem as interested in food.  I’m thinking it may be time to say goodbye, soon. We were pretty sure it would be this year, but gosh, not this soon.  Well, he still likes to be loved and he still does like to nibble on food.  He’s drinking water, too.  I watch to see if he drinks as much as Rusty or Lucky did, but so far, he hasn’t.  And he’s not peeing nearly as much as they did either.  I just don’t know.  I wish he didn’t look so uncomfortable.  He wanted to be outside on the pillow and the big pillow is wet.  We had rain yesterday.  So, I covered it with a plastic table cloth and put a big towel over that.  He’s out there now and he’s just huddled up like he’s freezing cold.  I wish it were a little warmer.  It’s supposed to warm up by the weekend, they’re calling for a high in the low eighties on Sunday.  We’ll see if the warmer weather perks him up a bit. So, that’s about it for now.  Not a whole lot going on, just waiting.  For whatever. | Permalink

      Monday, March 08, 2004

12:21 PM - 03/08/2004 The topic: Waiting for the vet to call ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 8, 2004  I took Ciara to the vet this morning, for another albumin recheck.  Now, I’m wating for the vet to call with the results.  She’s doing lots better.  Her butt is almost back to normal, now she just has to grow some fur back on it.  And she’s a lot more active.  Still not eating much. And the vet scale showed it.  She’s lost a couple of ounces since last week, he didn’t like that.  So, for now, we’ll keep her on the predinsone and flagyl. The weather has been beautiful the past couple of days.  Pretty warm.  I’m itching to get out and start pulling weeds.  And there are plenty that need to be pulled. DeeJay is doing better.  I think the warm weather is helping him.  He ate almost an entire can of Friskies yesterday.  Which he vomited part back up last night.  Speaking of the weather, we slept with all the doors and windows open last night.  When I went to bed, Brian had even turned on the ceiling fan.  I asked him about it this morning on our walk and he said he had been burning up.  I turned it off sometime during the night. I saw all four ferals last night.  Sometimes I’m not sure if I see the tortie or not, but last night, there was no question about it.  Little Bit is getting bigger.  I wonder what will happen with this litter.  So far, she hasn’t had one that survived.  I sure wish we could trap her. I guess that’s all that’s going on now.  Not a lot and that’s a good thing.  Now, if only the vet would call. Later  Well, I got tired of waiting for the vet around 12:30 and went over to my mom’s to see why she was having problems viewing the M*A*S*H DVDs again.  Turns out, she was trying to program it to watch one episode after the other, instead of having to go back to the menu to select the next show.  Can’t be done, I told her.  Some DVDs have that capability, these don’t.  I guess she had quite a few people trying to figure it out for her.  I wasn’t gone for fifteen minutes and wouldn’t you know that’s when the doctor called?  He left a lengthy message.  Ciara’s albumin level is now normal.  Yay!  But he doesn’t like the fact that she lost weight.  Boo!  And that her stool is still loose.  Boo!  So, until the end of this month, she gets two prednisones a day (he makes sure to ask me about her behavior, making sure that she’s not having adverse affects from the medicine).  Then, next month, she gets a full tab in the morning, a half tab at night.  For the entire month.  Then, for the month of May, she gets a half tab in the morning, a half tab at night. Then in June, she goes to a full tab, every other day.  That’s as far as he can see it right now.  And she’s to stay on flagyl for another two weeks.  If she doesn’t start gaining weight and if her stools don’t firm up, he wants to run another test.  This time for pancreatic problems.  Gah.  Junior died of pancreatitis.  I’m hoping her system is just trying to balance out. It’s been really warm (hot) today (92.7 at 2:30).  I certainly didn’t get much done.  Unfortunately, I seem to have a hard time starting anything when I’m waiting for a phone call. Doesn’t really make any sense.  But tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler tomorrow.  I’ll switch out the old files, start new ones, then get ready to do the taxes.  That shouldn’t take too long.  I looked at our profit/loss for last year, and, boy, howdy, there sure wasn’t much in the profit column.  And that will drop considerably when I go through the credit card statements (out of sheer laziness, I hardly ever do this when the statements come in, I wait until the end of the year) and the receipts for stuff Brian paid cash for.  And then, there are our standard deductions, as well as the deductions for health care premiums, mortgage interest and the money we paid for property tax.  I bet we don’t owe very much, if anything at all. Saturday night, I had a hard time going to sleep.  I kept thinking about Junior.  I laid there in bed and saw his face.  I surely miss that boy.  Then I started going through and seeing each and everyone of the guys we’ve lost this past couple of decades.  It was pretty sad.  I hope I see them again someday. | Permalink

      Monday, March 15, 2004

01:32 PM - 03/15/2004 The topic: Well…. ---------------------------------------------- Monday, March 15, 2004  Well, it’s been a week since my last entry.  I just don’t know what to think about Ciara.  She’s still slowly losing weight, about an ounce a week.  This weekend, I finally figured it wouldn’t hurt to let her eat the food that I’ve been giving DeeJay.  She doesn’t seem to like the Sensible Choice that they all get very much.  I don’t doubt that we have a little diarrhea problem while her tummy adjusts to the different food, buy I’m hoping if she likes it, she’ll eat more of it. She is much cleaner now, there’s rarely any poo on her butt.  And she’s not leaking so much while she sleeps, either. This is all good.  And she’s really feeling a lot better.  If you didn’t know she had a problem, you wouldn’t know she had a problem just by the way she acts.  If we could just get her to put on weight and stop with the runny stool. When this first started, I got some plain yogurt for the cats.  Well, I found out DeeJay likes it.  So much so, that if I put some out, he eats it all.  After cleaning up runny stool for about four days in a row in the laundry room, we heard some cat out there going.  And it was DeeJay. That put an end to the yogurt.  There was a little runny stool last night, but none from him since. I got our income taxes done last week.  Took less than six hours.  Because Brian didn’t make squat.  Thank God for credit cards and out home equity line of credit and the business equity lines, otherwise we’d have never made it.  This year has started out busier.  With any luck, it will stay this way. One of the things he’s going to do this year is go back to one day a week off.  If there’s anything he can do by himself, he’ll do it then and not have those extra hours to make payroll.  And he’s going to stagger the day off.  One week it will be Monday, the next week it will be Friday.  Making a four day week end twice a month. That would be nice. This coming weekend, he and his brother are going to finally trim back the trees. Brian hopes they don’t go into shock. I’ve been paying more attention to my fingernails.  I think the splitting part is almost grown out.  I took someone’s advice and found some stuff at Wal-Mart called “hard as hoof”.  Smells like cherries. It’s really gunky and greasy, but I think my nails are doing better for it.  Or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m massaging them so much.  I did find a problem with one of my cuticles. I’m fortunate that my cuticles do what they’re supposed to do, but on my left hand ring finger, part of the cuticle was growing up onto the nailbed.  I used some lotion last night and gently pushed it back.  Man, it really hurts right now.  It looks a lot better, but it hurts like hell. A sad thing happened this morning.  I caught Sammy with a baby bird.  It was still alive and I checked out websites on what to do and they said put it back where the parents will find it.  Not possible in our yard.  It also looked like it had a broken wing.  Well, I’ve not had luck with raising baby birds and I just couldn’t see letting it die a slow death here.  So, Brian took care of it.  I said I didn’t want to know what he did, I didn’t want to see what he did, I just wanted the little one put out of its misery.  He did.  I’m curious how Sammy got the bird.  It’s obvious he didn’t climb a tree, since the access to the nests is blocked.  I’m thinking either mom or dad bird pushed it out or one of those nasty huge black birds raided a nest. There are quite a few of those birds hanging around the past few weeks.  Must be a lot of baby birds. Guess I should go do the laundry and clean the litter boxes.  And go stare at the weeds I have to pull soon. | Permalink

      Friday, March 19, 2004

01:40 PM - 03/19/2004 The topic: Argh.  Just argh. ---------------------------------------------- Friday, March 19, 2004  I just can’t believe it.  This morning, I see a puddle of pink urine in front of the litterbox in the laundry room.  No runny stool like last week and earlier this week.  But sure signs of a bladder infection.  My immediate thoughts turned to DeeJay.  Then I thought ‘maybe Marco’.  Brian said he agreed that maybe it was Marco.  When we got back from our walk, I let Ciara and DeeJay into the exercise room to eat.  Ciara came out earlier than DeeJay.  And when he left, there was a new small clump of urine in the litterbox.  And it looked a little pink.  I show it to Brian.  He said it looked pink to him.  DeeJay has a bladder infection.  I grabbed the amoxicillan and got him started on them. Later on, Brian remarked that Georgie was all wet, but his feet were dry.  I wondered if maybe he’d fallen in the pool.  I went down to look and couldn’t see where any cat had climbed out of the pool.  So, I wandered around the yard looking and found a bunch of fur back by the shop, next to the bank.  The only wet part of the yard is at the bank, because Brian has the sprinklers coming on every night for about an hour on the bank.  Someone was in a fight and it didn’t take long to find out who Georgie was rumbling with.  Benny was also soaking wet.  Silly cats. I finally called to get the old freezer hauled away.  It was supposed to be taken yesterday.  It’s still out there.  If it’s not gone by 3:30 this afternoon, I’ll call again.  Later today, a lift is supposed to be delivered for the weekend.  Brian and his brother are going to trim back our trees.  I’m glad.  The one in the back by the doghouse has limbs that get really heavy with leaves and seed pods during the summer and I’m scared that they’ll break off, not able to support the weight.  I wish he’d been able to do it sooner, because now, all the new buds are coming in.  The last time Brian did the trees, it was so much nicer. We got a better breeze through them and the yard got more light in the mornings. I got on the scales this morning and I’ve put on almost twelve pounds since last November. ARGH!!!!  Guess I can’t just eat everything in sight and figure “well, I walked this morning, it’s okay”..... I actually got started on making some new shirts for the summer.  The pattern I’m using calls for knits, but I washed and dried a couple of different pieces of cotton material and I’m using those.  Just tank tops, from a pattern I modified a couple of years ago so that it’s more tailored, not just straight up and down.  I was going to make little dresses, but I found out after I ironed the washed material that it had shrunk up more than I had planned on. So, I’ll just make some lightweight tank tops.  They’ll look pretty good with shorts. Ciara is putting on a little weight.  Not much, but she’s no longer losing, which is great.  Brian called home last night, around 6:30.  Guess what?  The tranny on his work truck died.  He could only go in reverse.  It started having problems earlier in the day and he babied it, got it to keep going.  Well, on their way back from Coronado, it started having some bad problems.  And it quit working altogether about a half mile from his shop.  Mark walked back to the shop, got Brian’s other truck and they towed it back.  Brian came home, had dinner and had to go back to the shop when the tow company paged him that they were on their way.  They took it to Ford and Brian came home. What was kind of nice is I made Brian some deviled eggs yesterday evening, as a surprise.  He really likes my deviled eggs (really easy to make, just boil the eggs, peel, split, mash up the yolk with some mayo, mustard and a little vinegar, top off with paprika).  He was surprised.  I only made a dozen (six eggs).  I had three and he had six last night.  He took the rest with him this morning.  I told him last night I wasn’t making his lunch today, since he wasn’t doing his company work.  He gets days off, so do I.  Not that making his lunch is a big deal, but it’s the principle, yanno?  I’ll make his lunch when he’s off making money.  *lol* Well, I’m going to go cut out some more material. | Permalink

      Thursday, March 25, 2004

11:56 AM - 03/25/2004 The topic: Woohoo! ---------------------------------------------- Thursday, March 25, 2004  Woohoo!  It’s been hectic around here the past week.  Brian and his brother started trimming the trees on the bank last Saturday.  Brian thought the lift would be here for just the day, figured they’d do a tree an hour.  HA!  They finally finished Monday afternoon. There’s a big bill for the lift.  But the trees look much nicer.  And the “tree hating neighbor” is ecstatic.  Brian was up in their driveway with his dump truck, loading branches and pine needles into it and I went up to help.  Then, she came out and she helped.  She was just so happy.  She even washed her windows because now she gets lots more light into her house.  And the nightlight in my bathroom doesn’t stay on during the day, either.  *grin* Of course, there’s a big huge mess in our yard.  Brian’s been so busy taking off plans for customers and putting out bids for work that he hasn’t been able to clean the tree debris in our yard.  There is lots in both the front and backyards.  The cats are having a blast with the stuff in the backyard.  One of the things that concerned me was the loss of bird nests, but it doesn’t seem that it was that bad.  I did find one very small egg.  :( I know there’s more.  Oh, yeah.  Brian got his work truck back from Ford yesterday.  The transmission they fixed a few months back died.  Turns out they didn’t tighten a bolt and it ended up busting the tranny.  They rebuilt it.  This morning, he sees that they also busted one of the headlight lenses.  He wasn’t really happy about that, it’s not like he has lots of time lately.  At least he is getting those plans done.  Some of them he’s put off for months and now the people need to have his bid.  Otherwise, they might have to go with someone else.  These are high buck homes and it might help pull us out of the hole we went into last year.  If he gets them, he’s going to be a very busy boy. I know there’s other stuff I wanted to put in here, but I’ll be darned if I can think of it now.  Maybe later.  I’ve got a ton of housework to catch up on.  My whole routine is off because of the tree trimming and having Brian home.  So, I’d best get busy. | 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.

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