lisaviolet's diary

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

otherstuff
01:57 PM - 12/28/2005

The topic: Christmas
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The week of Christmas I spent hours in the kitchen making cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. Snickerdoodles, two kinds of peanut butter cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, milk chocolate chip cookies with chopped walnuts, semi-sweet chocolate cookies, milk chocolate chip with Santa chips cookies and some fudge. Lots of cookies.

I gave some to the trashman, the mailman, a friend of my mom’s, a ton to the vet’s office and to my mother-in-law.

Brian was kind of disappointed that all that were left after I had packaged them were snickerdoodles. Oh, well. I guess I misunderstood him when he complained about all of the chocolate chip cookies being too sweet. *sigh*

Anyway, when we moved into our house, Brian brought this old Atari console with him. He said the game didn’t work. Earlier this year, I tried to fix it, but wasn’t able to. For Christmas, I found a retro Atari game, with forty games on it. Games that looked just like the old Atari system. I bought it, wrapped it and put it under all of my mom’s presents that I stacked in a box for easy carrying.

He didn’t like it. On the way home he said “I can’t believe you bought that. I can’t believe you don’t know I hate games like that”. Huh? If you hated it so much, why didn’t you just throw out your old broken console instead of bringing it to our house? I told him it was the thought that counted, he could consider my feelings hurt and as a matter of fact, I was ready to cry. He said he was sorry.

Anyway, I’ve been collecting stuff for my mom all year long. I got her (and my mother-in-law) these really nice socks they sell at CostCo, they come three to a pack and they’re called “the world’s softest socks”. They aren’t only soft, they’re very, very warm. When we were up at Disneyland last week, we picked up assorted chocolates for both of them. For my mom, I got a singing leprechan for St. Pat’s day, a clock that has what day of the week it is on it, as well as the time (I can’t count the times she’s asked me “what day is it?”). I bought her a sweater that has kitties embroidered on it. And a six pack of Spam meat. And a gift card for Wal-Mart. Her kitty cats got four flavors of Greenies cat treats, some shiny mousies and an electric cat bed.

She was just tickled. She said it was the best Christmas she’s ever had, she didn’t think she’d ever gotten that much stuff (I don’t believe that, my dad was a great gift giver). She’s been showing off stuff to her friends since.

My mother-in-law didn’t get her gifts until this morning. I wish it could have been sooner, but since Brian’s brother and wife live at my mother-in-law’s house now (well, they’ve got their own home elsewhere, but moved in with Brian’s mom until they get their rental remodel finished since he needs to be up here to work on it) and my sister-in-law absolutely hates my guts (don’t think that’s gonna change any time soon), I won’t go over there. Just too much tension and too hard on everyone’s nerves.

She called here this morning thanking me for the cookies and the socks. And she said the card we gave her brought her to tears, it touched her so. Then she told me how she helps the neighbor ladies out by bringing out their trash and bringing it back in. She was going over to sweep the leaves off of one of their driveways after we finished our conversation. Her neighbors are 93 and 95. My mother-in-law is eighty. I wonder if she’ll ever be able to have her own life, to be able to live for herself. She had it for a while after my father-in-law died and her youngest grandson would go back to live with his mom. I know she really enjoyed being able to just sit there and read a book and not have to worry about cooking dinner or doing laundry. I hope she does get a chance to rest before she dies.

I also got a call from my mom’s friend who I sent a tin of cookies. I gave her cookies last year, the first time I started doing this. And she told me this morning that every Christmas, her mom made cookies for her. And that her mom had died early in December 2004. She said she missed her mom and missed her mom’s cookies. And when she got them from me, it was a complete surprise and it brightened up her holidays. That was nice to know. I gave them to her because I felt sorry for her because she’s all alone.

So, my Christmas is done now. And this New Year’s eve will be our twentieth anniversary. Hard to believe.

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catstuff
01:25 PM - 12/28/2005

The topic: Annie…..*sigh*....
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I made a vet’s appointment for her. I’l be taking her in tomorrow at 10:45. I don’t know what’s going on with her at all. Yesterday, I thought she was making progress. She had more of an appetite, she was drinking more from the tub faucet.

Then, late yesterday afternoon, I noticed her left paw was swollen. It was better this morning, but I didn’t think it should be that swollen that long after I’d given her fluids. Whenever I looked in on her during the night, she looked like she was fast asleep.

Then this morning, she wasn’t doing nearly as well. She did drink from the faucet. I gave her a quarter of a tab of periactin and it did perk up her appetite. But her head tilt looked like it was coming back. So, I called and made the appointment. I tried for today, but there were no openings.

Shortly after this, she started the frequent trips to the litter box, showing the signs of those bladder infections she gets. And the only thing that helps those are the amitriptyline pills. She went outside a couple of times, trying to pee and I was able to get a pill down her. About a half hour after I dosed her, she started sleeping. She just got down to pee again and now she’s back on her towel.

*sigh*

I know she’s old. I know she’s had a good life. In cat years she’s a few months shy of 18. In human years, that would be 80. And I have to remember this when I look at her. Not see a human eighteen year old, but a human eighty year old. It makes a difference. Her eyes are clear and with any luck, this won’t be her time, just like it wasn’t her time last year. She’s a good old girl and I’ll surely miss her when she’s gone, which hopefully, won’t be for a while yet.

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otherstuff
01:11 PM - 12/28/2005

The topic: I called Sears this morning
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Again about the washer. See, I never did change detergent, I just lessened the amount I was using and quit using the liquid color safe bleach.

And last night, the SOB gave me the SUD message. And it would stop the cycle, set a while, then start it back up. It would have done this for hours and hours, probably all night long, if I hadn’t ended up unplugging the POS (which is what I was calling it last night). The first time I called, I was told to let it set. Well, I let it set all damned night and the expletive thing did the same thing this morning when I started it back up.

So, I call Sears. I told the guy who answered the phone that my washing machine wasn’t working and I was just about ready to go get a big hammer and make sure it had a real reason not to work. *lol* He quickly transferred me to a service tech and he walked me through the process of getting it working again. I was told that using regular detergent was not a good thing and that this would start happening more and more. Even using less than usual, wasn’t good enough. He said if I must use it on a rare occasion, to only use a sixth of what is called for. He said that I had been misinformed when we purchased the machine. Grrrr…......

First thing was to get the soaking wet towels out of it. I couldn’t do that because the POS, SOB, frikking door was locked to keep little kids from climbing in during the spin cycle.

Unplug it for two minutes. Plug it back in. If the “screen” isn’t blank, press “end cycle”.

Take soaking wet laundry and put it somewhere outside of the washer drum. (I put it in the dryer, great place, for it, huh?)

Put a gallon of cold, clean water into the washer drum. Shut the door. Unplug the machine (not necessary, but I did it anyway).

Let it set for at least an hour for the cold water to get down into the pump and dilute the suds.

Plug it back in, turn it on. Select the spin/drain cycle.

And voila, it should work.

And it does. Later today, I will be heading off to the grocery store to buy some HE (high efficiency) laundry detergent. And just save the old stuff for emergencies.

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