Holidays

It's happened.

We have reached the point in the year where the holiday spirit hits me. It usually (since moving to Austin) doesn't hit this early, but what are you going to do?

I can even tell you the precise moments leading to this point-- At Bond and Dave's house I flipped through a foodie magazine that was themed for Thanksgiving. It is 'cold' outside today, meaning it is in the mid 60s and is rainy. I got the Pier 1 Christmas catalog the other day. The day after, I got the LLBean Christmas catalog (this is because all the retailers are trying to get you in the Christmas mood early so you'll buy more stuff). And then finally, the Woman's Day December magazine came yesterday so I've been reading all these Thanksgiving recipes, and feel good Christmas stories, and decorating ideas and gift ideas all day. And that's when it hit me. I'm now officially looking forward to the holiday season.

I'm sure it doesn't help any that last night my dream was about finding an ornament for Ma-Belle, and since she's in a total Disney Princess phase I was trying to find a princess-esque ornament but all the ones I found were all wrong--all the Snow Whites were wearing blue Cinderella dresses, Sleeping Beauty was wearing a Jasmine outfit, etc.

Yankee Sports

God I have missed hockey. Not that I ever really was into it when I was in Colorado. Okay, you caught, me that's not quite true. I was totally into college hockey in 4th and 5th grade, and went to a bunch of the DU games with my friend Kay (Wow, just checked the DU site and Gwozdecky has been head coach for a long time--he was the head coach back when I watched them) . When Denver finally got a hockey team, albeit a farm team (the Grizzlies), my parents got me tickets for my birthday. Then the Avalanche came to town. I remember being most excited because they were previously the Nordiques. Yeah. Weird that I remember that. I helped Kay babysit Patrick Roy's kids once, it was back when none of them spoke English and the boys were, well, boys. But I never went to an Avs game. And then after that I just never really went to any more hockey games.

But tonight I remembered why I liked hockey so much: because it's a lot of action in a short span of area and time AND there are fights.

For example, tonight there were 3 fights in the first 2 minutes and 15 seconds. AWESOME. I'm honestly still a little surprised that the Dallas Stars' farm team (Texas Stars) beat the Canuck's farm team (Manitoba Moose)--the Stars' offense wasn't as good as the Moose's offense...but then the Stars' goalie was better than the Moose's...so I guess it all washes out in the end.

1981

Every year the insurance people send me a birthday card about how things were in 1981. Things like which movie won Best Picture, which song was on the top of the charts, etc.

One of things is "averages." This is the part that I am going to be sharing today:

Average Income 1981: $25, 065
Average Income 2009: $50, 986

Average New Home 1981: $68,900
Average New Home 2009: $218, 400

No wonder more people are broke today--their salaries only doubled while their house prices tripled.

Cat Rug

I realize this is about a week and a half late, but this is the cat that I had gotten back from the Emergency Vet two weekends ago

Home

The cat is home. We'll have to do tube feeding for a while--40-50 ml 4 times a day, and subcutaneous fluids 50-100 ml once a day. The goal is to do the feedings for a while until she starts eating on her own, and the fluids every day for about a week, then every other day for about a week, and then every 3rd day for a week.

We have to take her in to get her bandage around her neck changed every 3 to 5 days (where the feeding tube goes in), and blood work needs to be done again as well--we'll see when that gets done because one doc doesn't want to draw blood since they have to sedate her until at least a week out while another doc wants to do blood work when she's in for the bandage change.

The biggest problem with all this? the fact that the Quazi doesn't even recognize Ivy and so we're having to go through and re-introduce two cats to each other, neither of them likes cats, but they put up with each other. Last night Quazi managed to get Ivy stuck on the bed by guarding the bottom so she couldn't jump off to go to the bathroom. That was a fun time at 4 in the morning.

Elevator

Overheard in the elevator on my way to my office yesterday:

"At one point last night I thought to myself, 'you know, I should really switch to drinking Red Bull and Vodkas now so I won't get drunk.' Obviously I was already hammered."

In other news, I have Ivy sitting on the chair next to me because I picked her up from the E-vet early and have to wait for my normal vet to open. She was meowing a lot which either means "don't take me there", or more recently it's meant "I have to pee now, where's the litterbox? K, thanks" so I decided to stop off at home. Sure enough, I let her out of the kennel and she first headed for the back door (oddly cats that used to be strays and are still indoor/outdoor prefer to go to the bathroom outside instead of a litterbox, no matter how clean the litterbox is). Obviously I didn't let her out, and so she then turned tail and made a beeline for the litterbox. That cat can hold a bunch of urine in her bladder.

Anyhoo, the main point of this post isn't that she's using the litterbox (which is good), but it's more that because since she's gained so much weight on the force fed diet, she's like the really overweight people you see at Walmart--you know, the ones that have to take the little invalid carriages because they can't walk around the store without getting winded? Yeah, the poor cat has to rest after every 8 steps or so because she's getting so worn out. She jumped on the chair next to me and promptly went to sleep for 15 minutes.

well, looks like she's awake, and the vet is open, so I better get her back there.

Sigh...fingers crossed that she can come home soon and we can do fluid treatments here.

Prognosis: Still guarded...I think?

today I dropped Ivy off at the e-vet for the night. Yes we're still taking the cat to the e-vet. She has gained 5 pounds. I gave them a slightly overweight house cat and they handed me back a brine filled butterball. And when I dropped the cat off at the vet, the actual vet himself asked me when we're going to be done with this back and forth thing...sounds to me like they're wanting her out of there just as badly as I want it.