2008 - a new beginning again

Looking back over the '07 blogs, I realize I've talked about everything that was important all year, so putting it down here is redundant, and I've already done that, and by reading it here you'll be re-reading what you already read before I put it down here, so it's a waste of time. I see a couple things I didn't talk about so here go those:

Amanda and John split up the middle of December and he moved out for real. He only moved up the block to a friend's apartment however, and so far things are going ok. He's been good about keeping Fay when Amanda works and spending Daddy time with her, and the other grandma Linda and I are taking turns keeping Fay too. Amanda has put her size-12 foot down on Linda about taking Fay when it's John's nights to have her. Usually John calls his mommy and begs her to take Fay so he can do this or do that...now she is ordered to say NO, you keep her, it's your night. I kept Fay on Friday night while Amanda worked till midnight, and John had her Saturday, and Linda has her today, and I get her tomorrow (New Years Eve) till Amanda gets home from the party she's going to. I'll bring Fay out here for dinner and to give the horse a carrot and after while we'll go back to her house so she can sleep in her own bed. I'm working New Year's Day (make $120 or watch football, tell me what you'd choose?) at 9AM, so will go home whenever Amanda gets home. As for John and his BS, well, it started the same way this December as it did last December, he says he's not happy- doesn't feel like Amanda is THE ONE for him, wants his space and all that. Ok, when she mentioned this to me, I said I'll be right over, lets pack his crap up and put it on the porch, if he's not happy, let him go. She really wanted to cry and beg again this time, but all her support people gave her the same advise: LET HIM GO!!!! And so, she's learning how to live alone and is pushing away suggestions from people who think anti-depressants and sleeping pills will help her get over this. I tell her don't do pills!!! Pray, walk in the sunshine, hug your baby, be thankful for your health and ability to work and pay your bills, and F*** that guy, show him you'll be OK without him, that's the best revenge there is.

I had my 45th birthday quietly on the 26th. Didn't find any new grey hairs or wrinkles, but have noticed a hitch in my right hip most every morning when I get up. Time to go to the chiropractor and get snapped back into shape again, gosh it's been better than 6 months since I saw him last. Chris's parents are doing OK, her mother Wilma moved in with them and they had 6 rough months getting used to the change - imagine your MOTHER moving into your house??!!! His sister and her husband survived their first year of marriage, guess they're doing OK, we don't hear from them, and don't keep in touch - sad isn't it?

My brother and his wife are still doing OK. They celebrated their 35th year together (33 legal he says) and their kids are both doing great. Tannen - their first grandchild - born to a heroin addicted woman and their son Jay is doing great finally, he's thriving in the love and support of his grandparents home, both their kids live at home too. My grandmother and I are still communicating on a semi-regular basis - she doesn't write all the letters she used to, and well neither do I. My aunt is still not speaking to me, guess she'll die being right and I'll never be able to apologize. My good friend Myrtle passed away on the 23rd. Her son didn't feel the need to call me and let me know, I had to read about it in the paper. Of course if I were a better friend I'd have known Myrtle was getting worse and going downhill, but of course she was 94. I'll miss her - and sent her son a sympathy card, wrote in it So sorry to read in the paper of the passing of Dear Myrtle...(ya shithead- no, I didn't write shithead, but I sure thought it). Chris and I are doing well together. After the breakup of John and Amanda I really had to sit back and revue our relationship for what it is, a real committed thing, and married or not, we're in it for good. If we don't get married this year, as I hope, I think the next best thing will be legal paperwork filed with an attorney - something that says he has these rights to this property, and I have these rights to this property...we'll see. We're talking about taking two weeks off for vacation this year and going south - I need to scatter my dad's ashes as I promised him I would. And we'll be in Reno then, so maybe Chris can be talked into getting married while we're there.

My little business is thriving. I raised rates as of the first of January, and only one client cut back from weekly to every other week. The one person that quit completely was going to quit anyway because he's a picky drama king pain-in-the-butt that goes through housekeepers faster than he goes through girlfriends - Jerk. I'll be advertising to fill those two vacancies, and am planning to have the best year yet - my 6th year in self-employment.

Hopefully you all have a safe and happy New Year celebration and a prosperous and healthy new year too!!! I am so happy that Grammie gets to be a grandmother again in 2008! Gattina, good luck to you and your family and cats, I hope you get to take a lot of wonderful trips, as I enjoy seeing pictures of them. Pistols and his flaxen haired woman might get serious, and thankfully Bert Banana's is back from the Blog vacation, he was missed!! I hope Claudia is feeling well and will be blogging more than she's been lately, I miss her too. Bye for now !!!

Back to the "M" word - again

Gosh I go through this on a regular basis it seems. Chris and I have been together 7 years this coming March, and again my mind is drifting toward that M word. We dated a total of 6 (SIX) months before we were intimate, and only after that face-to-face discussion about where are we going with this? Do we mean it? Are we going to commit? Yes, we dedicated ourselves and our lives to our faith and eachother, and so here we are, looking at 7 years, and even though we are committed, and belong together, and will be here 47 years from now (God willing), it is still on my mind that legally we aren't linked.
Should (God forbid) anything happen to either of us, legally, neither of us has the right to speak for the other. The health care industry doesn't recognize a live-in relationship as a legal right to say treat or don't treat. The housing industry doesn't recognize either that we have split the house payments, insurance, and taxes for half of the time (so far) that I've owned my home, so if I died tomorrow, he'd be homeless. Well - Amanda promises that in the event I die first - she as the next of kin would never put Chris out on the street, the house belongs to him. BUT what would the probate court say?
And so, we talked about it again while we were in Oregon for the Eat Turkey and Take a Nap holiday weekend. He says he's not opposed to it - though Jesus himself said don't get married - he's opposed to doing things the way everyone else does it. Well - my wedding wouldn't be the way everyone else's is. He's just waiting on me to get the paperwork that we need and set a date and he'll be there.
If I can have my perfect wedding, it would be him and me and a justice of the peace standing together at sunset on the beach in Lincoln City Oregon. Probably in March it'll be cold on the beach, so there won't be formal dress, just comfy warm clothes and us and the legal binding of our relationship. Witnesses? Heck I don't know - might get Amanda and John and Fay to come along, or Chris's parents maybe - I don't want a big party. If I can't get us to LC, then the rose garden here in town at the courthouse is beautiful too.
We were watching a movie this weekend called The Theory of Everything (see it if you can, please!!) There was a line in the movie the man said regarding his late wife (this is a paraphrase) - he said sometimes there was joy and sometimes there was silence, but the committment was always there. Yep - that's us, sometimes happy, sometimes not, but always together - no matter what. Well - there are a couple of exceptions to the NO MATTER WHAT rule, but let's not go there right now.
Tomorrow I'll probably want to kick his ass out the door again.... Ahhhh love.
I clean for a couple that are 96 and 90 and just celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary - oh my gosh can you believe that? Going from 24 years old to 96 with the same woman? Going from 17 to 90 with the same man... wow, how amazing. That's committment.

And now there are three

This is one of the last pictures of Buddy - this was last summer, he was laying in the grass in the backyard watching the rest of the cats.

I took him to the vet this morning to have him put down. Yes - I knew a month ago he was sick. Yes, I knew he stopped having bowel movements about a week after he stopped eating, but he was still drinking water, and knowing that cats will stop eating if their stomachs are upset, I didn't really let it concern me too much. He started losing weight, he was showing signs of severe dehydration, he stopped talking much, all he wanted to do was sleep and not be bothered. I forced some fluids once he stopped wanting to drink water. I made gruel and fed it to him once he stopped taking food at all. Every time I tried to feed him though he gagged.

Let me back up just a little. He always had a hard time when we'd leave and be gone for a few days, and when we were gone in March for 9 days he had a really bad time. When we got back I knew he'd been sick, because he wasn't eating much and didn't want to drink water, so I force fed him for a couple days and then he was OK. In October he had a really bad asthma attack, and refused food for a few days again, and didn't want water either, so I pushed fluids and made gruel for him and after a couple days of that he was back on schedule, but not normal.

Ok, let me back up a little more. Bud was born asthmatic and has always had a hard time. Plus he got fat really early and that didn't help a lot. My vet has been giving me mass amounts of crap about his weight, and wanted me to have him on a liquid lung dialotor every day - which I didn't do, he only had an asthma attack once a year or so, and he would always get back to a reasonable amount of normal after that.

Ok, fast forward to this weekend. Bud refused any liquid or food, he vomited bile on Saturday, and just wanted to be left alone. Chicken me was hoping he'd go outside, crawl under the lilac bush and go to sleep. Reality me knew it wasn't going to happen that way, he was going to make me take him to the vet, so I did that this morning.

Dr. W. was UNHAPPY with me from the minute I got there. WHY if he was going down 3 weeks ago didn't I call? WHY did I allow him to suffer when it wasn't necessary? HE KNOWS he can treat what's wrong with BUD even now, totally dehydrated and shutting down.

NO, I told him, put him down - do it now, don't prolong it, the needle is in the vein, you can't stop now. So - he pushed the plunger, Buddy let out a deep breath, and put his head on my arm, gone.

THEN, Dr. W really got unhappy - he HATES to put down young cats that only needed to be treated from when the symptoms started NOT waiting until it is too damn late. Yes, it was likely diabetis, considering his weight, and NO I didn't want to deal with needles and whatnot, he said there are thousands of cats on insulin and doing fine...There was no reason for delaying so long. Well, I was in tears, and couldn't defend myself at all, so I picked up the carrier, and left.

After I cried all the way home, changed clothes, left and cried all the way to work, and cried through 6 hours of work, and cried all the way home, and so on... now I can think of some reasons why I didn't call the vet a month ago. Because I knew that Dr. W. would say " well, we have to run blood tests, and x-rays, and probes and anesthetetize him and yadda yadda", and a $1,000 bill later, I'd be hearing it's cancer or it's diabetis and its going to require surgery or insulin and daily injections and torture... to which I would say "Put him down".

So I came home and was crying over my appointment book and Shadow came and got in my lap with her dirty little feet and walked cat prints all over my appointment book page for October next year and purred and looked at me, so I wrote on the sheet that those are Shadow's prints.

I'm a bad cat - mother, I know I let him go too long for no really good reason other than I thought he'd come out of it like he did so many times before, or he'd die. I guess this time he just didn't have it in him to fight back again. Yes, I should have taken him to the vet a month ago, but he was in pretty good shape then, and Dr. W. would have fought me to put him down even harder than he fought me today to treat him. I hate doctors.

Here's a picture of Shadow - my little artist:

Finally have time to discuss last weekend.

Here's a couple of pictures from our weekend trip to Lincoln City, Oregon for the turkey holiday. We had lovely weather, and as you can see, the sunsets on the beach are darn near to spectacular. The mist over the water picture is from Thursday morning, we drove over Wednesday night and had to hang out till we could get in our room at noon. So, we sat on the beach and watched the waves and the mist. The wind was blowing out to sea as the waves were coming in, so we got these NEAT shots of the mist over the waves, and if you look close you can see a rainbow in the mist. Awsome, huh?

So, we had sunny and warm on the coast, beautiful 50's and sunny. That was Thursday and Friday. Saturday it was cold and rainy and on Sunday early we left for home.

Oh - by the way - on the way down there Chris had to stop at the Indian Casino, he won enough there in about 2 hours to pay for the room, and I was happy about that. Then while we were in LC he decided he was bored and needed to go gamble, he spent the entire night at the casino, and lost $150, oh well, its his money to do with as he pleases. I WAS NOT happy about him spending the night gambling and WAS NOT happy about him coming in stinking like a smoke-filled casino. Made him remove his stinking clothes and I tied them into a garbage bag, would have been happy to throw them out onto the balcony, but the seagulls eat anything that's tossed out.

Meanwhile, we're getting snowed upon here in the Northwest. About 3" on the ground today and one of my clients called to warn me that there's a B I G storm coming, we might get a foot here by Monday and I shouldn't worry about making it to her house if the roads are icy. Lemme fill you in on something here: NOT ONE CLIENT is so important to me that I would risk death for them. Besides, I checked the forecast and only supposed to get up to 5" before it changes to rain on Sunday night, no problem!!!

Now if my daughter, grandchild, or a select couple of friends needed me in a storm, I'd very likely do my damndest to get to them, but not some client with a dirty sink that needs cleaning. Granted, the loss of $120 would make me unhappy, but living to see an0ther smile and hear Fay call me Nanna is so much more important to me.

We're coming up on a year anniversary of the BIG windstorm of Wenatchee, blew over some 500 trees and the roofing companies still don't have all the roofs repaired. Amanda's guy John works for a roofing company (though he'll be switching to Mr. Plow through the rest of the winter). She's still working at the pizza place, and doing OK with it, though she wants to go into Dental Hygenics and just has to talk herself into going. She'll have to drive 6 hours a week to go over to Seattle to take the classes - for 10 weeks, plus gas and food, etc. She can get a student loan to cover it, but hates to think about having to pay it back someday.

Also it's been just about a year since the "BIG BREAKUP" between Amanda and John. Boy was that a flop. They had a cute little 2 bedroom house running them $650 a month. John had a dinner date with some floozy that made him feel alive, so he went home and broke up with Amanda, told her he was moving out, and bye-bye. Well, she called mommy and needed moving money, which I loaned her. She found a little tiney itey bitey place, one bedroom, and the bathroom is off the bedroom, so anyone going pee has to go through their bedroom to get there. Anyway, supposedly (and I don't know if this is truth or not), the guy that John was going to move in and room with made a sexual pass at John and so John freaked out and decided he better stay with Amanda and his daughter, so he moved into the itty bitty apartment with them and now they pay $350 a month rent. Personally, I don't believe about 3/4 of what John says, but he's a good Daddy and Fay loves him completely. I'd love to see him GROW UP and spend more time with her than he does getting stoned and hanging out with his buddies...but that's another days complaint on the GET OFF THE PHONE blog.

Oh, by the way (again), I'm going to Seattle in February to see Jeff Dunham in person, I'm excited to go. He's a ventriloquist and pretty darn good. Not quite the level of Sherry Lewis and Lambchop, or Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (both of which I have seen on stage), but Jeff is really funny - his puppet Walter is someone (some ONE??) I could see working as the greeter at WalMart- he says his greeting would be "Welcome to WalMart, get your shit and get out!" You can visit Jeff Dunham's website at http://www.jeffdunham.com/.

Meanwhile, Bud isn't doing well, he's stopped eating about a week ago, he's drinking water and urinating, but he's really dehydrated. I can't justify taking him to the vet for torture and fright, if I could just take him in and have the vet say "yep, you're right, it's his kidneys, or it's his teeth or it's his bowels obstructed", and fix the problem without putting the poor cat through blood, urine, and probing tests. I don't believe the vets need to do all those tests anyway, he sees 500 cats a month, surely he recognizes signs when he sees them? WHY do they need to run up a $1,000 bill to tell me the cat is sick? I know he's sick!!! He's not eating, not pooping, and he's dehydrated. CU-CHING says the vet, needs fluids and IV's and intubation, and, and, and (which translates into he needs a payment on his Ferarri), so I think that me and Bud will stay home, I'll force water on him (which he hates, but he's taking) and long as he's urinating, we'll take this far as we can. The only reason to take him to the vet in my opinion is to put him down. If he gets to the point where he REFUSES water and his kidneys shut down there's nothing to be done for him. I poked around his belly and he didn't complain, I looked in his mouth and his gums are red and his breath is NASTY and his tongue is dry, but again he's taking water and urinating, so I'm not UTTERLY worried about him, yet. And I do have a bottle of antibiots, I'll start giving him tomorrow, didn't want to push them tonight after I finally got water down him.

Here's a good picture of Bud on the couch, and Ben doing his flattened cat impersonation.