I'm gonna have to stop...

going to the vet and to Yellow Springs.

Why? (I hear you ask.)

Because it seems as if my ratty little gerbil car is going to have "issues" it's going to have them at one of those two places. (and this is when I would love to be able to use smilies here because I would certainly use a grumpy-assed smilie here)

A couple of months ago it died in the parking lot at the vet and I had to have the alternator and battery replaced. So last night as I was driving home I noticed the battery warning light was on so I pulled into a gas station. The car lights dimmed and the car sounded odd. I decided I wasn't going to risk driving 50+ miles at night on a busy interstate which gets a lot of semi truck traffic in a tiny car that could just die at any moment. Plus I had my down's syndrome aunt with me.

So I called AAA and they sent a truck out for us. It took close to two hours for the truck to get there because the driver was sent to the wrong BP station. Poor Di -- there was only a bar stool in there and she's not at all good at sitting on that type of thing, but she also can't stand for long periods. She actually did very well though -- a couple of Milky Way bars helped her mood immensely.

Getting Di in the tow truck was a challenge -- tow trucks are HUGE now and she had to climb up several steps in the dark...well actually I mostly lifted her up each step (the truck driver did help me heave her up there so I have to give him a lot of credit for that...many people won't), but she did pretty well. And once she was sitting and comfortable she was quite happy, and then she slept most of the way home.

So the ratty little gerbil car is back at the shop. I think (and dearly hope) the problem is fairly minor -- maybe something didn't get adjusted or set up quite right when the alternator was put on a couple of months ago. The real bitch is I have a lot of things I need a car for over the next three or four days -- including yet another trip to Yellow Springs. If I have to I can rent a car, but I'd like to avoid that if I can.


And speaking of smilies -- if I could, I would also use them when I comment on Steve's blog today. A board I visit has great "oh my!" and "lmao" ones which would be the ones I would use. What a little horny toad! ;-)

At least I got a good laugh from reading that.

It wasn't quite what I was going for...

At the arts coop shop were I sell my glass the members all donate a few handmade Christmas tree ornaments each year to sell in the shop with all proceeds going to the shop. This helps cover our operating expenses and allows us to keep our yearly dues relatively low. These ornaments do not need to be in the same medium the member usually sells in the shop (members have to jury into the group and then are only permitted to sell items in the medium they juried in with -- occasionally a member will be allowed to sell works in another medium if no one else is doing that at the time).

So I decided to do take some inexpensive shaped beveled blanks and paint on them with heat set glass paint. I figured they would be fun and relaxing to make and they would have a low price point. I'm not much of a painter (which is why I make stained glass), but I had fun with it. What I ended up doing is painting lots of various little coloured dots all over the bevels. Since the bevels are shaped like christmas trees I figured the dots would kind of look like ornaments.

So I take them with me the next time I worked in the shop and as I was putting on ribbon and price tags it occurs to me the dots don't really look like ornaments -- they make the poor trees look as if they have chicken pox. Oh well. So much for my painting talent. They were fun anyway. I wonder if anyone will buy my "pox" trees. lol



An interesting thing I just noticed -- my blog on the brownies got four visits from someone at Continental Mills (the company which makes the Ghirardelli brownie mixes). It looks as if each time someone commented on that post I got another visit from them. I wonder if it's an automated thing or if it's a real person who's job it is to check out all mentions of the company's products online. I was kinda creeped out at first but then I thought "hmm...if I keep mentioning Ghirardelli in my blogs I might get more visits." Hehehe.

Of course the most visits I ever got was the couple of days SK had shut down comments on his blog and I used that "links to this post" button at the bottom of his most recent post and wrote my own blog about it. That was the first (and only) time I had ever used that "links to" feature and I have to admit I was a bit freaked out seeing the link to my post at the bottom of his -- but I did get a lot of traffic (for me anyway). I guess if I want another burst of visits I should get back to posting a bunch of rude and insulting anonymous comments on his blog shouldn't I? ;-) :-D

Decadence

Holy shit these are good!

I don't normally get mixes (occasionally I will get a cake mix) because baking from scratch is easy, tastes better, and is often less expensive for better quality. But last week I saw Ghirardelli brownie mixes on sale so I bought a box of the Double Chocolate mix. Tonight I was in one of those I NEED chocolate!! moods, so I made them.

Oh my. Oh my, oh my -- these are really good. They have a very nice intense chocolate flavour and the texture is also great. I thought they would be good in a pinch, but these are better than the usual "oh well, it's better than nothing" munchies (that you realise after you eat them that actually nothing would have been better after all). These are really quite wonderful.

I won't be buying them often because once I buy them I'll eat them. But I'll enjoy the hell out of this batch. :-)

Maddie

This is turning into the "All My Cats" blog....

Maddie has been having problems with sore spots in her mouth this week and wouldn't eat because it hurt, so I've been having to force feed her since last weekend. She's very sweet and not very bright so she's gullible which makes this force feeding (a mix of very finely pureed very high calorie canned cat food and a bit of water to make it thinner put in a large syringe and squeezed into the back of her mouth) fairly easy, but it's a pain and she doesn't get nearly as much food that way. It's enough to keep her ok in the short term, but that's all. I was able to get her to the vet on Wednesday (yay! MORE vet bills!!!) where she had blood drawn and got a shot of antibiotic (her mouth is infected), oral antibiotics and steroid pills (which always help this).

Thursday she would drink a little broth I gave her, but still needed the cat food given to her in a syringe. Friday during the day she drank more of the broth, swiped a bit of the cheese spread I make for my aunt, and licked up a bit of the sauce in the canned cat food, but she still wasn't quite ready to eat solid food although she was clearly interested in it. But about an hour and a half ago she started to eat the super soft, super high calorie canned cat food. I'm so pleased -- both for her and for me. She obviously feels so much better and I don't have to force feed her anymore (except for pills and antibiotic drops)!

Sometimes the little victories are all you get.

hay hay hay

Talked to one of my old neighbours Saturday morning. She told me hay was going for between $6-8 (and occasionally more) per bale. Wow. That's a lot -- especially for that area. When I last bought hay -- early spring of 2005 -- it was selling for $3-5 per bale, depending on what it was (alfalfa, clover, timothy, grass, various combinations) and the quality. So the current prices are a huge jump.

The reason the prices are so high, of course is the lack of rain. The hay just didn't grow well. And what makes it worse is horses fed on pasture during the summer (as mine were) would have to be fed hay during those months because the pastures didn't grow either. I knew it was very dry this summer, but it doesn't really have the same day to day meaning for me now as it used to.


On a different subject -- I picked up Bruiser's ashes today. They are in a little wooden box with a black plaque with his name and the year engraved on it (the lettering is gold). Included with the sympathy card that comes with it are two cards with one of Bruiser's paw prints. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with those (just as I'm not sure what I'll do with the ashes -- I'm not one for displaying them), but they are kinda cute. Bruiser had cute (but really tough) feet.

When Bruiser was at my regular vet before going to the emergency one they had drawn blood and fluid from his abdomen for some tests. Anyway, a day or so later the vet called and left me a message asking if I still wanted the tests run (to see if we could figure out just what it was, because we had several possibilities but nothing further than that). I said not to bother with them, but the tests managed to get run anyway (I wasn't charged). They said the samples were sent out accidentally, and that could be, but my guess is the vet just really wanted to know what was wrong with that cat.

The main three suspects I was told were FIP (feline infectious peritonitis), lymphoma (probably mediastinal form), and a ruptured or torn bladder. All are bad. And all are made more problematic by FIV (the feline equivalent of HIV) -- and Bruiser did test positive for FIV. FIP is (at least now) invariably fatal. Lymphoma can be treated with chemo, but cats with FIV don't do as well. From what my vet is telling the tests show it appears Bruiser had a torn or more likely, a ruptured bladder from an untreated blockage. It is treatable with surgery, however the surgery is expensive (she said about $3000, and I've noticed vet estimates generally run low...), difficult, and the FIV would make recovery from the surgery more difficult, so it's very possible he would have just suffered more and still not survived.

The vet at the emergency clinic said he really didn't think Bruiser had much of a chance no matter which of the three he had and the best case scenario was a few months. Especially with FIV. I know my vet was charmed by the little guy (he was so sweet and cute at the vet) and really wanted to save him, but I think to have pushed ahead with treatment would have just caused him a lot of pain for not much gain. So although I'm sad about having to put Bruiser to sleep and I miss him more than I expected to, the decision to put him to sleep wasn't hard. I felt it was the only compassionate thing to do.

And I couldn't have afforded $3000+ anyway. I am glad the decision didn't come down to money though. To have not been able to do a treatment that would have given him a few more good years because of money would have been crushing. I can't fathom the agony a parent, or spouse or child goes through when the treatment their loved one needs for any hope of survival is out of reach because they can't pay for it.

?

When I was driving home on I70 from Yellow Springs tonight I was passed by 19 Highway Patrol cars. Nineteen -- all in a line in the high speed lane, not going terribly fast (I would guess about 70-75 mph), and without any sirens or flashing lights. I've never seen that before.

I just wonder where they were going or where they were coming from.

A little experiment

I post on a forum which has an active politics/current events section. I've noticed that many threads have descended into:

"You're biased/a bigot/too blinded by your prejudice to see anything else!"
"No I'm not!"
"Yes you are!"
"No I'm not!"
"Yes you are!"
"No I'm not!"

over and over and over -- sometimes for pages -- and end up going nowhere.

I strongly believe that it's a very rare person who has no biases and I doubt most of those post on that board. So I decided to start a thread to see if people would disclose just one of their own biases. Here are the "rules"/clarifications I set up for the thread:

1) this is for disclosing your bias, NOT someone else's.
2) don't pull the old job interview/beauty queen trick of "turning a negative into a positive" ie., don't say "my bias is I can't stand hate." Big deal -- most of us can't stand what we perceive as hate. If you really cannot find any prejudice in you don't post here (or you can post "I'm as pure as driven snow" but I think most of the rest of us will roll our eyes and laugh)
3) let's not attack anyone for his/her confessions here. It's easy to say "you have preconceived ideas about people"; it's a lot harder to look inward and find one's own preconceived notions about others.
4) it can be a bias or prejudice you have nearly quashed or just feel minor twinges. It doesn't have to be foaming at the mouth hatred.
5) you can do some explaining why you think you hold this feeling if you'd like, but don't excuse it

Fourteen people responded. Of those 14, 10 were female. Three were from people I rarely see post in that forum. Four of the responders are among the people I find are generally the most balanced in their posts and the least likely to bait other posters (and one of those disclosed nine biases -- ok...one was against Yankee fans and one was towards Canadian musicians and hockey players and Russian figure skaters...lol).

In a lot of ways though what I found most interesting weren't the people who responded, but the ones who didn't. None of the responses were from the conservative posters. And the liberal posters most likely to bait others and to get into pissing contests (such as the one noted at the beginning of this entry) about other's bigotry didn't respond either.

It turned out to be very much as I expected -- right down to which specific posters responded and which didn't. The people most capable of discussion without personally attacking others were also the ones most willing to disclose at least one of their own flaws. Those on either side of the political/social spectrum with the most dogmatic responses and the most willing to attack (personally) others in discussions were the least likely to disclosed any of their own flaws.

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Now on a different subject entirely -- my Bruiser story ended unhappily, but if you click here you can read a much happier older-seen-better-days stray cat story. I'm sure the time I will cry for Loki will come (it comes for all of us eventually), but now he's living a very happy life. :-)