Memory and Dream

kitteh trouble

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:13:34 GMT

one of our kitties is sick, possibly dying. this is the second time we have been told to take him home, feed and hydrate him as best as possible and he will either pull through or die.

both times it has been a possible diagnosis of FIP, a truly evil feline illness. it is almost impossible to diagnose, and impossible to treat. cats with the wet form can live days to weeks, with the dry form it is weeks to months. as of now it is universally fatal. our guildenstern is showing signs of the dry form.

he is not eating, not playing, and sleeping all the time. he has lost weight, is skin and bones. i am force-feeding him kitten formula mixed with baby-food in the hopes that i can get some weight back on him. he is on antibiotics.

i am praying to eveything that i can think of that he will make it through this, that it is not FIP, that he just has an infection and if i feed him enough and love him enough and take good enough care of him he will be ok. he probably won't, but at least we can try.

sometimes having pets sucks hairy butt.

he is my favorite cat, out of the 5 in our house. he is my lap cat. he plays with his brother, eats his food, hangs out on the ground for a few minutes and then settles down in a lap to hang. he likes to lie with his butt on your arm and his chin and paws on your shoulder and sleep snuggling with you when you are at the computer. he has the cutest pointy little face and big foxy ears.

our two babies - rosencrantz and guildenstern - are a matched set. they are littermates. they sleep together, they groom each other, they eat together, they play together. rosie will be lost without his brother, and it makes my stomach churn to think of rosencrantz without guildenstern (we gave them those names because they are identical, interchangeable from a distance. they are black and tan tabbies and you can only see the differences when they are close) you can't have the one without the other!

the ups and downs we have had with our shelter kitties are so discouraging. we wanted to get cats from the shelter to give a loving home to an animal who really needed one, and have had one issue after another with their health. rosie has seasonal allergies, gil can't have corn or wheat, he came home to us with a bacterial infection that almost killed him. gil has been to the doctors office more times in his little life than our 8 year old cat has, ever. in his whole lifetime. it makes me reluctant to adopt from a shelter again, a much higher disease rate

poor baby, he is only 8 months old. our cats are so loved. indoor only, limited vaxxing, they get grain-free foods, have tons of toys, and they get all the affection and petting they desire.

i am so pissed at the universe right now.

er... i forgot about this blog

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:49:13 GMT

what can i say, we've been busy.

we lost one of our cats in feb - he died - and in the aftermath everything got a little crazy. the house was destroyed for weeks. we were devastated, he was the best cat i have ever had the priviledge of being owned by. he was full of sweet curious personality and into everything. he was our lovey-cat and we miss him terribly.

we ended up getting two kittens from the SPCA in may, to bring some kitteh life back into our house (we still have momo our big fluffy anti-social kitteh, but he is not a people cat. in fact he hates most people, noise, all children, and being looked at. he spends most of his time under beds or behind my night table. so we were hoping for more social kitteh) rosencrantz and guildenstern have been a happy - though peril fraught and somewhat stressful - addition to our household. they were abandoned and hand-raised by the former SPCA vet, so they had a rough start in life. they have allergies, rosie may have asthma, and gil gave me a huge scare due to a bacterial infection when he was only 13 weeks old. i ended up having to syringe feed him fluids every hour for a few days, then he started drinking n his own again. he is allergic to corn and wheat, eating either results in liquid poo and sad kitten. they are 8 months old now, and enormous and adorable. 7 pounds of feline mischief and craziness.

rosie has attached himself to babygirl, he follows her everywhere and sits by her feet or lies next to her when she is on the floor. gilly is my lapwarmer.

babygirl turned 4 in june, the boy is now 15 and a sophomore in high school. he has a girlfriend. i have been trying to block out my memories of all of the things i was doing in 10th grade. it's not working very well. i met my husband for the first time in 10th grade. i slept with him for the first time in 10th grade. i tried drugs for the first time in 10th grade. i snuck out out of the house, got drunk on vodka and fruit punch, had my very first sleep over with a boy (my husband) after his senior prom, dyed my hair maroon, got my ears double-pierced, and drank a lot of coffee and smoked a lot of cigarettes. all of these are activities i don't want my children indulging in until, at the very least, college... uhg. this teenager thing is going to kill me.

babygirl is totally obsessed with recycling and tries to find a new use for almost all trash. she makes guitars out of old paper towel rolls, fishing poles out of sticks and left over yarn bits, and drums out of the empty coffee containers. she turned the empty spaghetti box into a drum last night. thank you, nick jr., for teaching this child about the concept of recycling.

i am knitting a pair of cabled wristwarmers, and am going to try to get started on some socks. i haven't done socks in years but i am fairly adept at increases and decreases at this point, whereas the last time i tried socks i had never done them before. i have done a lot of knitting over the past few years, and i have found the wonder that is knittinghelp.com, so i think i can breeze through them now where it was a bit of a struggle before. the new stitch counter helps too :-)

i have started writing an inuyasha fanfic, because the crappy grammar and lack of spelling over on fanfiction.net is driving me bonkers. no, i don't capitalize and my sentence structure can get a bit convoluted, but i have a decent grasp of the english language and damn it, i can use spellcheck. and i can tell the difference between wretch and retch, through and threw, and two too and to.

my sony reader has taken over what free time i have left and i spend what little time i get away from kids and kittehs reading happily. the books, they call me...

i am STILL a sucky blogger

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:31:04 GMT

well, oops.

it just occurred to me that i haven't updated this thing since, well, this summer.

i suck.

so. my baby boy started high school in september. i find it hard to believe i have a child in high school. i am totally not old enough to have a kid in high school!

the big new thing that has happened in the past 6 months is that we have moved! we went from a teeny little apartment, where we had no space for all of our stuff, to a 4 bedroom house! there is one for each of us; bry and i have a little brown room with a cool slanty ceiling that is right next to zoes very very pink bedroom. xan has a little blue room, and our new housemate, crystal, has a the coolest little set-up in the attic. she even has a wood-burning stove!

we are now a 5 person household, with 4 cats 2 snakes and 3 floaty zombie frogs. our new house is HUGE! the downstairs is bigger than our old apartment, and we have a huge basement with a washer and dryer. i cannot even begin to explain how happy i am that i can do wash at 4 am if my little heart so desires...

i am a sucky blogger

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:14:51 GMT

things keep getting away from me. the baby has had a birthday, we have a little garden that i am spending a lot of time weeding, and well, its just nicer out so we have been spending time outside.

the baby likes sidewalk chalk and the swingset.

she ate a random weed from the garden that thankfully turned out to be non-toxic.

i will be teaching egyptian mythology at the local witchy store so i have to refresh my little brain and write up my notes.

busy busy busy!

finally!

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:08:46 GMT

baby girl was a great napper... i would nurse her to sleep then put her on the futon and she would sleep for an hour or two, happy as a snug little bug could be. she got a nasty cold and cough in december... suddenly i couldnt lie her down to nap, she would just choke and cough and gag. since then she has been an awful napper. she would only sleep in arms. for the past 4 months i have been stuck in front of the computer for naptimes. i couldnt even pee! any attempt to move her onto the futon was met with immediate complaints and a wide awake cranky baby.

today she fell asleep on the floor.

she has been asleep for 45 minutes, with her butt in the air and her head on a pillow.

its so nice to have my hands free and manga in front of me.

lol

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:15:51 GMT

zoe has been being so freaking cute. the past few days she has been making little beds for the cat, and tucking him under some sort of covers whenever he lies down. it is so funny! he lies there patiently until he has had enough, then he gets up and runs away, with zo trailing after him, heartbroken and wailing come back my baby come back!

baby girl can officially play video games online all by herself. over the past few weeks she has perfected her usage of the mouse and can now click on just about anything she needs to as long as i have set her up with the website she is playing on before-hand.

last week i actually got to sit on the couch with a book and read, uninterrupted, for a whole hour while baby girl happily puttered around playing oobi games on the nick jr website.

god i love technology...

i am grateful for...

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:41:48 GMT

pokemon battle revolution for the wii.

and super smash brothers.

thats what i have been doing this weekend...

soon i shall be a pokemon master.

such cuteness!

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:41:29 GMT

the baby has tucked her cabbage patch kid, kitty, ABC bear, and magic wand into their own separate beds and she has sung each of them to sleep, rocking them back and forth singing hush hush hush little baby its time to sleeeeeeep. she is making me whisper so as not to disturb her sleeping babies.

she has informed me that her babies are sleeping, i can be loud when they feel better.

now she is narrating...

she was zoe the princess and is even driving a bus. she will have to go to it later. she will go make cake, she loves cake. SHHHHHHHHHH! what was that? was it the neighbors? thunking that wall? they have to be quiet! but they're having problems. problems with their stove. and problems with the wall, because its broken. oh! i have one baby! i have one kitty! ((high squeaky voice)) OH! you woke up me! hee hee hee! i want to fly! ((normal voice)) ok i will fly with you *swoops kitty around the room* night night kitty, its not morning time. now its time to sleep ((sounds of pretend snoring))

its impossible not to be grateful for such cuteness!

hooray for st. patricks day!

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:12:44 GMT

today i am grateful for wegmans... its st. patricks day which means it is the day for wegmans irish stew. yum yum yum! it is the most delicious thing in the world. god i love it. YUM! my darling man drove out of his way to fetch me my once a year treat.

i am in stew heaven.

an outpouring of gratitude...

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:13:39 GMT

to make up for the lack of posting. i'm far too distractable. i keep being sidetracked by other things.

i'm just going to throw out a list of the things i have been most grateful for over the past 10 days or so...

- project playlist at playlist.com. i've been having a lot of fun putting together playlists of some of my favorite things to listen to. right now i like this one the most: http://www.playlist.com/node/26186358

- pink sparkly nail polish. it has made the baby ecstatic. she has sparkly pink fingernails and toenails and every once in a while she goes and washes her hands just to reassure herself that it won't wash off. its amazing how happy something so little can make a child.

- manga. i have been drowning myself in manga, and loving it. i have read so much over the past week that i actually had a dream the other night where everything that happened was in black and white drawn panels and i could see the pages turning. i have read some that were so-so, some that made me screech "GAH! MY EYES! nooooooo! i didn't need to see that!", and some that made me all warm and happy that were cute lovey stories... kare kanno, backstage prince, dakedo happy paradise, family border, a thousand years of snow, kimi to scandal, and marmalade boy to name a few.

- the little conversations i overhear the baby having with her toys and herself. she is so darn funny! every day she does at least one or two things that are so insanely cute that it totally makes up for all of her forays into obnoxious two year old behavior. right now she is pretending to be a kitty. this involves walking around on all fours and talking in a high squeaky voice.

- good friends who like to cook and feed us dinner. its always a treat to go to lorrie and laurens, lauren loves to feed people. she claims its the italian in her. i don't care what is is, shes a fabulous cook and there is always something yummy for dessert.

- my nintendo ds. i freaking love the ds. its the coolest handheld game system ever. i've been spending far too much time leveling up my pokemon and planting berries for poffins. its amazing how much time i am willing to put into the berry sidelines of these games.

- my darling husband. hes been particularly wonderful over the past few weeks. he is so damn sweet! he makes me breakfast, cooks me dinner, does the wash, and lets me hog the computer without bitching about it.

- pre-ordered books from amazon.com! i got one last week (and finished it)and i have two more ready to surprise me in may... i cant wait!

- books. i am always grateful for books, but i have actually had a lot of time to read over the past few weeks, thanks to my husband and the babys obsession with nick jr tv programs. she watches yo gabba gabba, dora, and the backyardigans and i read. its a good compromise :)

- my new little book-light that i have clamped onto the back of the babys crib. i LOVE being able to read in bed at night while my sweeties are sleeping. its bright enough that i can see my book to read but not bright enough to keep the husband or baby awake. the best part is that i don't have to get out of bed to turn it off when i am done! just one little click and i can roll over and drift off to sleep.

i'm sure there are a hundred more things, but i cant think through all the noise behind me. i'll have to get back to this later :)

so i suck at gratitude

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:38:35 GMT

its not that i suck at feeling grateful, its that i suck at remembering to write about it every day. especially on the weekends when my house is full of boisterous squabbling children and what i am most grateful for is bedtime and the sweet sound of silence. i swear two children are 20 times as much work as just one...

today i am grateful for freecycle! we just got a bag full of dress up clothes for the little one -4 pairs of disney princess high heeled shoes, several magic wands, two little princess bags, a whole wad of dresses, skirts, and a cape or two, 2 pairs of fairy wings, a grass hula skirt, an incredibly cute little disney princess jasmine outfit, 2 pairs of lacy gloves, and a bunch of fancy tiaras. my little princess is in heaven. ever since we got home and went through our bag of loot she has been waddling around in a pair of red and blue high heeled snow white shoes, fairy wings, a little purple headband with purple kitty cat ears, waving a magic wand, and carrying both the purses.

she is so darn girly!

what was i thinking?

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:15:32 GMT

today i'm grateful the baby let me have a little nap while she watched a dora dvd, since i made the mistake of staying up half the night watching anime the past 2 nights in a row. i haven't watched a series straight through one episode after another like that since i watched gravitation, and that was only 12 episodes (oh and 2 OVAs) i adored lovely complex, and i ended up watching all 24 episodes over the course of the last 2 days. it had just the right mix of comedy sweetness and poignancy.

i'm all worn out and feeling silly about it. i'm too old to stay up till all hours watching cartoons, no matter how fabulously entrancing they might be...

two days worth

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:46:49 GMT

yesterday i was grateful for the wonders of wireless technology. specifically that of video game controllers... its a whole lot easier to play without a little person getting entangled in the wires every 5 minutes.

i love my monsters in monster rancher! i spent far too much time training them and taking them adventuring. we won a few competitions and went shopping. luckily the baby loves to watch my monsters, so she sat with me while i played. we talked about the monsters and she told me what they wanted to eat. she cheered them on in battle. a good time was had by both of us :)

today i am grateful for the serendipity that led me to lovely complex. its the anime i have been watching over the past few days and i *love* it (insert hearts and sparklies here) i have gotten so absorbed by the story line, its terribly sweet. i have watched a whole bunch of episodes today while the baby took a nap on my lap and then watched a backyardigans DVD. i am very very grateful that she let me watch it in relative peace. i'm only 8 episodes in, i hope the rest of the series is as great!

and now, back to the anime...

i'm a slacker

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:25:56 GMT

i am falling behind in my gratitude posting! its partially due to my own tendencies towards slack, but also because my darling husband has been hogging the computer a bit more than usual. he's been having a grand old time playing with numbers. he is so weird!

at this point thursday is a blur... it involved a yummy spinach pasta for dinner, some time to read, and the beginnings of a massive snowstorm. my husband was a sweetie and entertained the baby for a bit while i watched some anime. the baby did not take a nap and made it to the end of the night with no large issues in spite of it. i was certainly grateful for that! normally when she misses a nap she is crabby and unpleasant for the majority of the evening and tries to doze off 3 hours before bedtime.

yesterday was a snow day. it started snowing around 11 thursday night and kept going. b took the bus into work, sat around outside the office for a while waiting for someone to show up, watched the snow continue to fall, and just said to hell with it and came back home. it was so nice to see him walk back in the door knowing he was home for the day! we got about 8 inches of snow, too dry for snowmen and snowballs but still fun for little babies to play in regardless. we bundled her up into a little starfish puffball and got to watch her waddle through the snow. she tried desperately to throw snowballs. we played on the swingset until mommy and daddy had to go inside and warm up.

it was wonderful to get outside in the fresh air and being the first people to leave their marks on the pure expanse of white in our yard. it is such a pleasure to watch the baby girl enjoying herself so thoroughly, her little face lit up with joy as she kicks fountains of snow up into the air in front of her.

then i was grateful to come inside and make myself a nice hot cup of tea, to drink it curled up on the couch with a book, the snow falling softly outside.

a day late

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:03:24 GMT

yesterday the husband came home 2 hours early from work. it seems that it is engineering week, which means no engineering classes this week, even the distance ed classes. that meant no broadcasting last night. it was a lovely surprise to hear him thunking about in the hall at 5 instead of 7 30.

the baby was a darling. she was adorable and sweet almost all day. standard amount of why-ing but no back talk and limited orneriness. she was happy as could be playing with her stuffed animals. she has amassed quite an army of pokemon! over the years we have collected more than i was aware of. she has an enormous pile of them on the floor and she has been lining them up to play with. she seems to like the members of the polywag family the most. she knows all the pokemon by now, and will happily watch over my shoulder while i play my game. i am so glad she loves pokemon, because i am addicted and i have been for years. i dont care for the show these days, but the games still number amongst my favorites. right now i am in the middle of pokemon diamond... soon i will become a pokemon master.

yesterday i was grateful for good behavior, a nice surprise, and pokemon.

a full head of hair

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:18:37 GMT

when i day-dreamed about a second baby i always pictured a little girl. a little girl who i could play My Little Ponies with, who would pat the kitties nicely without prompting, who would be ornery and girly at once. a little girl who would have long hair... hair that i could play with, that i could brush and braid and fiddle with to my hearts content.

my daughter was born bald. she had a tiny bit of light brown peach fuzz on her round little head, but that was it. i figured, oh well. the hair will come soon enough.

a year passes, and she is still mostly bald. she has no hair on the top or side of her head and very little on the back. she has the beginnings of a spectacular baby mullet. it is just a funny poofy wad of curls at the bottom of her hairline.

she hits 18 months and her mullet has grown... she is looking somewhat backwoodsish.

she turns two. at this point the mullet is close to gone... she has little ringlets all over the back and sides of her head, but there is still nothing up top. she has fine wisps of hair and no sign of bangs.

now the baby girl is two and a half. her head is covered with perfect little spirals. a month or two ago she started growing bangs!

i never knew i would be this excited about my babys hair. i looked down at her almost full head of beautiful ringlets and was totally thrilled. soon she will have enough hair for me to braid! she already has enough for me to get in tiny pigtails. its crazy, when you stretch her curls her hair comes halfway down her back. when left to itself it comes to her shoulders. i cant believe how much hair she finally has!

i am grateful that soon i will be braiding my daughters hair. silly i know, but so true!

note to self...

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:11:44 GMT

perhaps it is not the wisest of ideas to make a batch of snickerdoodles right before dinner. it may end with far too many being consumed, especially by a little girl who may or may not have finished all of her dinner because she ate an enormous amount of cookie...

i must say, they turned out rather tasty. and i am not eating them for breakfast... really...

moments of silence

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:54:08 GMT

i am so lucky to have my husband. i have written about his fathering, but today i am full of gratitude for the fact that he is such a thoughtful and wonderful partner.

its a late night for him tonight, he wont be back home until close to 10. on his later days he is here for dinner snuggles then bedtime, barely enough time to see the girl and certainly not enough time to do much with her. on late days he comes home for an hour or two in the afternoon so he has a chance to get some quality floor time with the little princess.

today he came home from work with a bag of groceries and shooed me into the bedroom to read for a bit before he had to go back to the office. i treasure these little golden moments of silence where i can just be and not worry about whats going on around me. i can try to read when he's not here, but part of me is always waiting. for the girl to get into mischief, for her to spill something, for her to insist she needs to change her dress AGAIN. for her to climb up behind me, wrap her arms around my neck, and yell "PEEK A BOO!" in my ear. its impossible to sit in silence around my girl. there is always something.

i feel so blessed to have a husband who takes the time to do small sweet things for me.

he organizes my bookmarks in firefox so its easier for me to find things.

he cooks, he cleans, he does the laundry.

he saved all of the chicken bones from dinner last night so i could boil them down for stock.

he gives the best gifts, not big expensive things but the kind of gifts that show how well he knows me. the books i read, music i love, videos he knows i am lusting after. (thats new for me, i spent years with a guy who would buy me presents that were plainly meant for himself. books by authors i never read, music i would never listen to, movies i never wanted to see)

he gives me a hug and a kiss when he comes home from work.

he curls up behind me in bed at night and snuggles into me.

he lets me leave the light on to read even though it makes it harder for him to fall asleep and he has to get up early in the morning.

he comes home in the middle of his long days to give me a breather from the constant demands of our small princess.

he takes the baby out for a trip to the store when we have had a rough day and i need a little break.

he knows all of my faults and flaws and loves me anyways.

he is my best friend, and i have so much fun with him. hes such a silly thing.

i am so lucky to have him!

my little gamer

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:37:05 GMT

tonight my son hurried me off the phone so that he could go play world of warcraft. i would love to play, but alas i value my relationship with my husband too much to get involved. i would disappear forever.

i suppose i could have felt slighted or sulky about being ditched for a computer game, but instead it made me realize that i am so grateful that we share interests. that we always have something that we can talk about. he loves video games, dragons, fantasy novels, anime, manga and dungeons and dragons. he reads dragonlance and forgotten realms books. he plays magic the gathering and pokemon. he loves punk rock and metal, they might be giants, and falls asleep to space rock or trance. he may have hustled me off the phone tonight but tomorrow when i call he will happily tell me all about the mission he was on, sparing no detail.

its a gift to be able to turn the music up and screech along to loud punk rock with my child. it is a gift to be able to play a video game with him and have as much fun as he is having. it is a gift to be able to talk to my son for hours about the twisty complexity of an anime plot line. it is a gift that he is still thrilled to tell me all about what he is doing, and that i can understand and enjoy listening to him talk about it.

i am grateful for these gifts.

yesterday

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:23:41 GMT

so i didnt get a chance to post yesterday, i spent half the day reading and the other half of the day playing with my baby girl or snuggling on the couch with my husband.

yesterday i was grateful for my husbands never-ending patience.

baby girl was being very high needs and high energy yesterday. she insisted on wearing her purple fairy dress -with its attached wings- pretty much all day. she wanted to listen to the same songs over and over again so she could make her full skirt twirl out as she spun around in circles. she asked to listen to mephiskaphales bumble bee tuna song about six thousand times. she had a lousy nap. she refused to do anything without first demanding an explanation. it was "why?" all day long. she did NOT want to play by herself at ALL. she wanted her daddy.

every time the husband sat down the baby was on him, climbing up his legs and flinging herself into his lap. every time he tried to do anything on the computer she would firmly plant herself between him and the screen. every time he turned around in the kitchen while he was making dinner the baby was under his feet, every time he stood still she tried to crawl between his legs. she was driving him crazy.

he is such a sweet father, its beautiful to watch. he has so much patience, and is so full of love for her. i have loved this man for years, but the look on his face when he held our daughter for the first time made my heart sing. watching him with her every day since has only made me love him more and more.

an exercise in gratitude

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:44:22 GMT

part of the reason i cleared out this space was to take part in attempt to appreciate what we have and find a reason to be grateful, every day for the next month. the goal is 30 days, i am hoping i can keep the momentum going a bit past that. i love this idea, i try to think about the good things that happen each day as i fall asleep but i think it will have more of an impact to put them in writing and be able to look back at this blog and see the tangible evidence of my happiness and appreciation.

this morning i am full of gratitude for a good nights sleep and delicious books.

i ripped through "twilight" by stephanie meyer yesterday, finishing it up at about three thirty AM. i have had this book in my house waiting to be read for months now, but my darling son ran off with it and it didnt resurface again till the end of january. it was wonderfully absorbing and i enjoyed it thoroughly. stories of love, angst, and vampires fill my little heart with joy. i'm glad the boy already has the next two books in the series so i dont have to stalk shelly down to borrow hers. with any luck i will have read them by the end of the weekend. the husband will be able to watch the baby, right? i think i should add friends who always point me in the right direction to books and anime i will love on the list of things i am grateful for today. thank you shelly, for insisting that i needed to read these books!

to add to this the baby was a sweetheart today and slept until eleven. if she woke up to nurse she did it all by herself and i had no part in it, remaining blissfully asleep. she slept right through the night peacefully in spite of her stuffy nose and nasty goo-filled cough. i will have something else to be grateful for if she manages to avoid bronchitis with this nasty cold. the congestion seems to have settled into her chest for the moment, and today i think i will spend some time trying to find a way to get this yuckiness out of her lungs.

ressurection

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:51:22 GMT

its time to brush off the dust and cobwebs and start using this space again. i have started fresh and this time will attempt to stick to my guns and keep writing here...