Saturday, January 3, 2004 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I haven’t posted in a while. Busy doing stuff that isn’t really important, I guess is why.
We went to my mom’s for Christmas Eve, had a nice little Christmas with her. We got her a DVD/VCR combo player and the first four seasons of M*A*S*H on DVD. We also got her the obligatory canned Spam that she loves so much. She always acts so surprised and mentions that she was “down to her last can”. And we got her a Wal-Mart gift card.
I was a little iffy on the DVD/VCR player, but it turns out she’s really happy with it. Before the evening was through, she’d already planned on giving her old VCR to one of her neighbors. I went over Saturday morning to set up the new player and showed her the basics. She’s since learned more about it than I knew and she’s very happy with herself. And she likes DVDs, says they don’t take up so much room and are lots easier to handle than VHS tapes. She might even start buying some movies. *grin*
Brian and I went up to Disneyland on Christmas Day, met up with some friends we met for person the first time on my birthday trip. They gave us a wonderful Christmas bag, full of fun things to eat and toys for the cats. I haven’t given the cats their stuff yet because I want to take pictures of them when they first see all the booty they got. I’m so mean. *lol*
The cats are doing as well as expected. Annie is doing fine. I got really tired of her peeing and pooping by the printer (my Epson 1160), so I moved it to the computer stand I got last year after taking my first color printer off of it. It barely fits and it does work well where it is now. I taped a pee pad against one side of the cubby hole where the printer was, since that’s where she was peeing all the time and a towel over that. Well, she still kept pottying in there, so I folded up the towel and only had it on one side of the area and the pee pad on the other. Then Sagwa found this nice little place to sleep while Annie was on the towel under the monitor. He’s taken it for his own. Leaving the catcam chair empty once again. I put Lisa in it yesterday and she stayed there all day, but she’s not there today. I hope another cat finds it soon. I did sprinkle some nip on the blanket with the hopes that some cat would take residence on camera. So far, no luck. Well, at least there’s been no pee or poop anymore.
DeeJay isn’t doing well. I don’t know what’s going on with him. I search my memory for what Rusty and Lucky did, but he’s not doing what they did. He’s getting fluids every other day now and mid week last week, he was eating up a storm. He was even munching out at the dry feeder in the dining room, something I’ve not seen him do for a long, long time. I don’t know if it was food overload or what, but he’s had bouts of diarrhea all week. I never actually saw him pooping, but I was finding dried stuff on the floor in front of the litterbox in the laundry room. Wednesday and Thursday, I did watch him go and although it wasn’t massive, it wasn’t loose, it was well formed. Well, last night, he crashed. Big time. I saw that he had runny stools in the exercise room (he’s the only cat who uses that litterbox). I gave him some Immodium A/D, he went to bed and within an hour, he was puking. Brian got him off of the bed quickly, so there was nothing there to clean up, and I cleaned up what he’d done on the floor. (It’s sure nice to have tile at a time like this.) I got fluids ready for him (since his having the runs and vomiting were most likely robbing him of much needed fluid) and took him into the exercise room. He got his fluids, was a little put out, but did okay the rest of the night. This morning, I found more dried loose stool on the kitchen floor as well as some very bloody urine. There was also bloody urine on the floor in the garage. I cleaned it all up, washed my hands thoroughly and fed the cats their morning chicken. DeeJay was thirsty this morning, but he did want to eat. He ate a little Fancy Feast, he ate more Nine Lives. He also pooped in the litterbox in the exercise room. There wasn’t much and what there was was loose. I started him on amoxicillan this morning and right now, he’s sleeping on the bed with a towel over him. He’s more receptive to being covered this past month while he’s laying down. I actually sat on the sofa with him on my lap yesterday morning with the blanket over him for over an hour and a half, a record for me. He liked it. I know the restful sleep isn’t hurting him.
I know he most likely won’t be with us much longer. I told Brian this morning that I sure wish when they were ready to go, they’d just go, like Maggie did. I wish we didn’t have to make that horrendous decision. It’s so hard. And once it’s done, it’s a thing of “did we do the right thing?” I hate playing God, I really, really do. I just looked in on him and he’s curled up on the bed, the towel draped over the lower part of his body. He’s got his face under the towel, I can see his ears and his back. And along his back, Opie has stretched out against him. They both look so relaxed and content. I hope this is just a bump in the road for DeeJay and not the final mountain.
There’s so much I want to do. I’d really like to learn how to make DVDs to show on my television. I got a DVD burner for my computer last month (before we ran out of money…whoops!). It has a $30.00 rebate, but I tossed the UPC code. If anyone out there can get me the UPC code from a box of an external Iomega Super DVD multi disk burner USB 2.0, I’d sure appreciate it. I kept the box all month long, waiting until I’d tried out the machine. Then it was Christmas, and after Christmas I got rid of all the boxes, not even thinking about needing a code for a rebate. *sigh*
I also found out last night that bennydakat.com isn’t working. After all the crap I went through back in November with the website host, this happens. I can’t access that site and even though you can still see it on the internet, I don’t have access to the lisaviolet.net directory. Highly irritated, I looked to see when I’d renewed the service with him. It was last November. Not sure how long my credit card company allows disputes, I called them. I got the two charges put into dispute. No way am I even going to mess around with him this time. The frustration just isn’t worth it. There’s no phone number to call, he’s in Puerto Rico, I think. He doesn’t respond to emails and I’m not even going to try this time.
While I was on the phone with the credit company, I found out that they had my phone number wrong. They wouldn’t tell me what it was, for security reasons. Well, I was online, so I checked out the information they’ve got for me. It was an 866 number. A toll free number. That was really strange. The only thing I can think is when my identity was stolen (this is the same credit card company) last year, that the thief changed my personal information, which includes my phone number. When the company transferred my information to a new account, they also transferred the incorrect phone number. It’s fixed now.
I’ve got so much I’d like to get done. I’ve got nine calendars to finish and send out. That I hope to have done by the end of the day. I want to teach myself how to make DVDs so that I can have slideshows on the television. I want to sew. I want to finish the sofa covers that I started over a year ago. I want to make more CDs. I want to get the area down by the pool finished (and what I did last year needs a lot of work, too). I want to make candles (I ordered more scents, figured I’d get this spending bug out of my system by the end of the year). I want to get my photo gallery set up on my website. I want to go through all of my photos. I want to clean litterboxes on a daily basis, without even thinking about it.
I want to lose the ten pounds I put on since our trip to Colorado. I hope it comes off as quickly as it went on. Then I want to lose the rest of the weight I wanted to lose, then more.
Oh, a week ago, Brian was off with his brother and I had to page him. I’d found a leak in the ceiling. It was dripping down in the hallway closet. Brian had to go up into the attic and after hours of me draining the hot water heater and him using a torch and solder on the leak spot (it was right against some wood and the wood is burned) without any luck, he came down and I emptied the closet. He sawed a hole in the ceiling and fixed that leak in no time. But he was really, really sore the next couple of days from being so squished in the attic.
And our eighteenth anniversary was last Wednesday. New Year’s Eve. I made a roast and got all the trimmings. I was going to make a little cake and hot fudge sauce for ice cream. The last good meal of the year. Well, we had to go someplace and when we got home, I went into the kitchen to start the cake. And the light over the sink came on. Damn, I said. Brian asked what it was and I told him that the lights both went out at the same time. He came in to change them and I tried another switch. It wasn’t the lights. The breaker had gone off. It was early evening and we both went outside to check it out. We couldn’t get the breaker to stay on. It was late afternoon and Brian went down to Ace Hardware, but they were closed. He went by his brother’s hoping he had an extra breaker and he didn’t. So, he ended up going to Home Depot. We changed the breaker in the dark, me holding the flashlight so he could see what he was doing. He switched it and it popped right off, but then it took hold the next time. The only thing we can figure is one of the outlets was ruined by the cats. Brian was going to fix it that night, but electrical is a scary thing and he changed his mind. So, it still has to be fixed, but he’ll get it done.
Brian said later “we must have really pissed someone off to have such bad luck….”
Maybe it will be better this year.
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