Stumbling Through Adulthood

This poor kitty's owner died, she's a purebred ragdoll who needs a home. I am so tempted, but we're living in full open warfare between BamBam and Auri and I'm not sure I can deal with a hate triangle. But she's so fluyy and pretty!

I wasn't home but thank goodness dh and Perry were: poor BamBam had a seizure. Dh said it was scary as fuck.

He got hold of the emergency vet, though by the time he got through to them, the seizure was over and BamBam needed to be comforted, he was apparently howling up a storm.

Emergency vet -over the phone- seems to think it is probably something that is developing, and hopefully will be managed with meds.

At least he's easy to pill.

Anyhow, dh will take him to our vet tomorrow. I hope he'll be ok. He's getting up there in years but has been in such good health that this is unexpected.

My poor sweet stripy boy!

1. Cats all still seem to be fine, so eh.

2. Photos from HOCR.

Single
one
two
three, my fave I think
four
five
six.

Quad
quad 1
quad 2
quad 3

3. We went out for dinner last night, and my mom went to bed early. Then got back up at about 10:30, just as dh and I were going to bed. She refused to go back to bed with her coffee (decaf!) and said she was going to just sit at her computer and drink coffee and she'd make herself another cup. But. Twice recently she has turned on the stove with an empty kettle so eh, no, she can't be left alone with access to that. So we stayed up with her, she was being bitchy about it too, after a day being bitchy and laughing in my face when I told her than she does not smoke (she quit five years ago) and if she wanted to live with me, she could not smoke. Anyhow, she stayed up, probably out of spite, until almost midnight. Dh and I get up at 6am and we were both wiped. She ignored both of us suggesting she go to bed, and only when dh got a bit more forceful did she begrudgingly go to bed. By then I was majorly stressed and stayed awake until about 2am. I was asleep until 4:21 when Perry knocked over his bike on his way out to rowing, and awake from then until dh's alarm went off at 6. I then got a whole 'nuther hour and a bit, don't know why I can always fall straight asleep when the alarm goes off, even if I was awake before it. But then. OMG. I had horrid dreams. Like dh telling me it was over, and he wanted a divorce dreams, and I could not wake up. It was just awful. I finally woke up at about 7:30 in tears and with a migraine. I'm feeling a bit fragile and whiny today.

Perry is headed to Boston for The Head of the Charles.

Dh is taking him to the airport, they left at 4am.

I have woken up about every half hour since I went to bed at 11pm.

Fingers crossed that I manage to get back to sleep for an hour or two, I have a job phone screen later this morning and I'd like to be vaguely mentally competent for that.

Hard to think that two of my kids are up at this time almost every day.

Also, I'm really annoyed that my cats can't talk.

And it's siamese1 's birthday! Happy Birthday!

🙄

1. 2/3 of the way through the hike we started getting texts from Linnea telling us that Twisp had a poopy butt. Sigh. She confined him to the bathroom, but when we got back -and I was exhausted, LOL- we had to deal with that. She'd done a pretty good job, but getting Twisp's butt is at least a two person job, preferably three. He is strong and uncooperative.

2. The amount of dog shit on the trails, ugh. It's bad at the place I got on my daily walk, and that place doesn't allow dogs, and on this trail? It was pretty bad. I mean, the stuff left on the trail is disgusting and at the trail entrance is a series of big concrete blocks and one of them had about 50 bags of dog poop. Really people? Dog owners who do stuff like that are scum, and I wish there were ways to fine them or take away their dogs. These people degrade the commons.

3. I voted for marijuana legalization in Washington state, even though I knew I would never use it, because of the decriminalization issue. I didn't like seeing young people arrested and saddled with a record because they had some pot. There are so many days when I reget that vote. SeaTac smells like weed. Areas of DT Seattle are bathed in eau de skunk. People get on buses and exhale their fetid smoke (or vape). But the absolute fucking worst: the number of people who smoke weed on the trail, or at trail destinations. It's stinky and not strictly legal. Yech.

29 years ago today, my beloved cats were born. Gus and Chloe were dh's and mine, and what Good Cats they were.

Chloe was my soulmate of a cat. I've never felt a bond with an animal like I did with her. She lived long, almost to 22, and saw me through the many profound events of my adult life.

I miss them both.

BamBam is not an elderly cat. He's... middle-aged, maybe. He still acts young, but the consequences of experience are starting to impact our day to day life.

Take making the bed. This is not a complicated process: pull up the duvet (in a cover that gets washed with the sheets, no bottom sheet), toss the decor pillows on the bed (three of them), done. It's a matter of just a few seconds for two people, a bit more for one since you do have to walk around the bed.

We used to reliably do it every day. For the past... oh 6 months? that hasn't been happening.

See BamBam has become absolutely vicious about hopping onto the bed the second one of us gets out of it. So either I get out of bed less than, oh, 15 seconds after dh does, or he does after I get up, or BamBam takes over half the bed and it becomes impossible to make said bed.

Move the cat, you say?

About that. Attempting to move the cat or to chase him away will result in him gripping on, all claws out. After more than one sheet ruined and one duvet cover that had to be mended, we have learned that that, alas, is not as easy as it sounds, considering we are two able bodied adults and he's, well, a cat.

So yeah. Unless one of us happens to remember later in the day, at a time when BamBam is not napping on the bed, he settles in the second one of us gets out, and usually does not move until early afternoon.

He didn't use to be that wily.

FedEx, only almost a week late, finally got my new keyboard delivered. It only took three phone calls and a whine on twitter.

I like it so far, but it's going to take some getting used to. The strangest thing is that I've moved my large secondary monitory to be primary, and it's so weird to have a large screen right in front of me, rather than my laptop with the major screen on the side.

Biggest problem: I now have two keyboards I need to protect from the cats!

We got a Ring camera (ugh) and it's first night in operation it alerted us to, in no particular order:

-- a trash panda
-- 4 possums or one possum 4 times
-- a black cat, who made several appearances.

Last night confirmed this basic pattern.

The cats is probably young, seems to be lithe and long legged, and is absolutely gorgeous, sleek and black like a small panther, moving like a huntress. We've both decided she's a she, and I'm thinking about naming her Diana, because goddess of the hunt, or Lucy, because it's a pretty name. Or maybe Lucie, dunno. Must consult with my naming expert, Linnea.

She owns our front porch from 11pm to 5am it seems. I caught a glimpse of her one night when I went outside at 2 am, but aside from that, have no idea there was a cat essentially spending her nights 10 feet from my bed (I mean, aside from Rat, Fat, and Brat.) If she does continue to hang around, I'll try to figure out if someone "owns" her and depending, see about trapping her for basic vet care.

I feel so indiscreet, spying on her.

Also. There is a camera dh called Front and when we get it installed, there will be one called Garage. I say we should name them Freya and Gavin, or Fiona and Grey. Or something like that.

I'm a bit slap happy. Up too early to try to pull things together. We'd be in pretty good shape if we didn't have to get to the airport 3.5 hours early to try to see about getting better seats.

Frustrating

1. I cannot find our duffel bags anywhere. We've used rollers the past few travel times and I don't know where the duffels have gotten to. I thought I knew. I did not, apparently. I really don't want to use rollers because I'm concerned about gear space in the rental car... while duffels can be squashed, rigid luggage NSM. The car should have enough gear room but I don't want to find out that it doesn't too late. Shopping for stuff right now.

2. Mats on Cats. Lots. Popped up in the past week. Cannot get anyone to help me get rid of them, everyone always has something else to do and it's a two pe person job.

3. This is actually kinda funny. I have a small crossbody bag from Timbuk2, I've had it for... almost a decade? The Velcro is totally dead. I will replace it, but I also decided to get another bag, one that would easily fit my card holder (aka wallet), phone, and Kindle. I found two that I really liked, same price, one a bit bigger than the other. I decided on the smaller one, since it is the bag I take exercising and I don't need it any bigger than that. The larger bag went on sale, 40% off, two days, ago, LOL. This would probably not have been a factor in my decision, but.

Awesome

1. My sister, mom, and BIL will be stopping over Thursday night on their way to visit my aunt in Vancouver. Thrilled to see them.

2. My bff will be stopping by next week, she's up from California. Thrilled to be seeing her! (Hi siamese1)

3. Wisdom teeth surgery: done and not traumatic, all things considered. Math class: done, A copped. Child's escalated to a gastro (appointment in October) troubles: gone. Seriously. No more acid stomach, no more "heart racing", no more lightheadedness. We knew anxiety was going to be a component of this but didn't figure it might be 100% of it. Keeping the appointment for now, we'll cancel if things continue to look good. Full disclosure: she does have some calf pain (probably due to not rowing for a week), and has self-diagnosed with leukemia.