Not So Fun Times At the Animal ER

Yesterday evening I was hanging out in bed with a book when I looked over at my dog and realized he was having a seizure. I managed to stay calm -- I've had enough exposure to epilepsy in both the pets and people in my family to not freak out too much (although, our dog Fizzgigg passed away during a seizure, so there was definitely some freaking) as I called out to Matt and told him what was happening.

It lasted about ten minutes, but after it passed, Pete seemed fine, albeit a little freaked out himself, but we decided we'd rather be safe than sorry, so we took him to the animal ER closest to our house. They did a full blood workup to rule out poison or illness as a cause, and kept him overnight for observation. Ten hours and $400 later, I picked him up and learned that he didn't have any other episodes and that his blood tests all came back normal. Nevertheless, they left an IV catheter in his leg and sent me away with a bag of IV fluid with instructions to take him directly to his regular vet for a follow-up.

Which I did, despite the fact that it was only 7 AM and his vet wasn't open yet. Somewhere between the ER and his vet my worry-addled and coffee-deprived brain realized I should call ahead. Nobody answered, but the machine said that they opened at 7:30, so I stayed the course and drove all the way across town to his "regular" vet, i.e., the place where we chose to have him neutered three years ago because it was close to my then-workplace. I got there right at 7:30 and they still hadn't opened yet, so I called and talked to a person this time, who told me that the doctor wouldn't arrive until 9, so I might as well go home and come back later. OY!

Never mind the inconvenience of having to schlep clear across town four times in one morning (two of which were during the morning rush). Poor Pete was so anxious and confused by this point, he had NO clue what was going on, and letting him go home only to turn right around just as he was starting to relax and take him back to get poked and prodded by more strange people and get yet another thermometer poked up his backside just COMPLETELY ruined whatever happiness was left in his day.

Stressed puppy

At any rate, we finally had the follow-up, and his vet said that he's basically healthy, but he's at the right age to develop epilepsy and that it's fairly common in chihuahuas, and that we should just keep an eye on him and keep a log if he has any more seizures. If they start to happen frequently, then she'll want to start him on medication, but unless/until that happens, she didn't really see the point, other than to make us feel better. But as noted above, we've got enough experience in this area to know how hard anti-seizure medicine can be on a body, so we're actually relieved that the vet thinks it's too early to start meds, and hoping that he'll never need them.

Since coming home, he's been showered with love and attention and dog treats, and now he's sleeping it off, and I'm trying to restore some order to my day, and my thoughts, since my routine has been so completely disrupted. But of course it's all worth it to know that our little guy is healthy.

365: 5

I thought I'd switch it up and post a web cam pick today, thereby giving you a break from my dirty bathroom to show you my cluttered and cat-filled office instead:

Stats:
Weight - 189ish
Mood - Pretty good, but a little sleepy
Cat - Niblet

And now I'm all covered in scratches because Niblet's claws are overdue to be clipped, we can't find the nail clippers, and she's about as graceful as a bull in a China shop.

The one good thing about this project is that it's giving me an incentive to wash my face, get dressed and comb my hair even when I'm not going anywhere. Not that you can tell about my hair, since it all fell in my face while I was cat-wrestling and trying not to get clawed. The other thing that strikes me is that I look a lot like my mom in this picture.

I'm "a little sleepy" because I didn't sleep so great last night, although I think I probably got slightly more sleep than Matt, mainly because it was hot and we're trying not to turn on the AC yet. As much as I'm loving the warmer weather, it does have its drawbacks.

That mound of clutter you can glimpse behind me is mostly my late mother-in-law's things, including all of her files, piled up on my craft table. I need to either sort through it or just box it all up and move it to the garage, but I haven't had the time, energy, or heart to deal with it yet. I'm not really sure what to do with the files, anyway. I guess we can just throw them out? I can't imagine why we'd ever need her old check stubs or bills or receipts, now that she and Rob are both gone, but I'm afraid to toss them, just in case. Anybody have any experience with dealing with the paper files of the deceased?

Three Pete

I'm not the only member of the Bauhaushold to have a birthday this month.

Our fuzzy son turned three today. That might be drinking age in dog years, but that didn't stop him from acting like an excited human three year old when we gave him his present, that blue rope dog you see in the picture. I've never seen a dog who loves to get new toys as much as Pete does. I wish I took video of him getting his toy, but if you really want to see how he reacted, you can just look at this Christmas video from '09 (and get to see me topping 200 pounds after my first MC. Bonus!). That's pretty much his reaction to every new toy: dance and beg and dance and beg and then grab it and run back and forth through the house with it several times until he collapses in exhaustion and starts chewing it to death. I bet he could power a small town with the wind energy created by all that tail wagging.

Here he is in the "chewing it to death" new toy phase:

That is one happy birthday pup.

See, this right here is why the ASPCA gets all my support.

This week the Infertility Community has been up in arms, and rightly so, about PETA's latest campaign in which they're having a contest to give away a free vasectomy to a man who has his pets spayed or neutered. What everybody is finding so offensive about it is that they're claiming that this is in honor of the upcoming National Infertility Awareness Week.

Because obviously infertile people want a free vasectomy.

I think I'm way too jaded by PETA's media-hogging shock tactics over the years to be shocked by this. Mostly I'm just flummoxed. How does a vasectomy giveaway support the infertility cause again? The who with the what now?

PETA's response to the backlash is to basically say that human overpopulation is just as bad as animal overpopulation and so nobody should be having babies anyway, but so sorry if that upsets you.

But wait. A couple of years ago they ran that whole Save the Whales campaign -- because if there's anybody more okay to make fun of than the infertile, it's the overweight -- that urged fat people to go vegetarian so they would live longer. So which is it, PETA? Do you want to save the world from overpopulation, or do you just want to save it from unsightly fat? And whatever happened to the days when you were all about saving animals?

So apparently PETA wants us all to be thin and live longer AND stop reproducing.

Well, PETA, I hate to break it to you, but I'm a fattie who's losing weight just so I can have a baby. I'm going to live longer AND reproduce (hopefully x2). I guess I'm just throwing off the whole balance of civilization, aren't I?

Melancholy and the Office of Sadness

I'm back in my office today, for the first time since Bobo died. I'd already gotten so used to him hanging out on the pallet we'd made for him on the floor next to my desk, that I haven't had the heart to break the pallet down, or remove his food and water bowls, or sit here next to that empty space.

This room has become a sad room; but it's also the room where I do my best being focused and productive, and I need to take it back. So this morning I made myself remove the bowls and re-cover his pillow for the other cats (and Pete) to use. It was hard, and sitting here at my desk with him gone is hard. I just feel so much like we failed him, and like we failed Mom and Rob, even though I know that we did everything we possibly could for him, and that he just didn't want to go on without his people.

So the mood in my office is melancholic. The gray skies and chilly weather are certainly contributing to that. Today would be an excellent day to curl up in bed and listen to emo music and write more angsty lyrics, but I have too much work to do. I guess I'd best go do it.

To alleviate all the angstiness around here lately...

Here's a pic of some cute animals being cute:

Hooky

I'm playing hooky today. I didn't plan to; I signed onto the Internet with every intention of getting work done. But after a couple of hours of catching up on my "fun" blog reads and watching Muppet videos on Youtube, I realized how much I really need a day to be totally unproductive and just rest. A random day off in the middle of the week that doesn't involve burying pets or going to funeral homes or taking care of the estates of deceased loved ones.

I think when you wake up in the morning already crying, it's okay to take the day off.

It might seem like an easy decision, but it's not. Business has been slow and we're teetering on the brink of financial destitution, so I've been working overtime to generate some income. I set up a new Etsy store for graphic & web design, which still needs more stock added to it, and launched a monthly graphics subscription club. But so far, nobody's buying. I've been working my butt off to generate client leads, and I keep getting bites, but I'm not closing any sales. I even took an online class on ethical salesmanship that guaranteed increased sales, but it hasn't made a lick of difference. So it's pretty frustrating, and certainly isn't helping my stress-levels.

Cue the well-intentioned and not-at-all-judgy e-mails telling me that I should go get a job at Walmart or McDonald's because my business is clearly a failure. I love those e-mails.

Anyway. I have one more product that I want to hurry and get on the market before I go back to writing full-time for Demand Studios until things pick up. I got pretty burned out on DS last year, but at least it's a paycheck. But before that starts taking up all of my time and energy, I want to put together an online course on blogging for businesses. There are plenty of courses out there on how to blog AS a business, but I haven't seen any targeted at businesses that want to add a blog to their web sites to improve SEO, generate leads, build credibility and trust, etc. So I'm developing that, and hopefully I'll be able to develop an audience for it (if you think you might be the audience for it, you can sign up here to be notified when it's ready to launch).

I'm also thinking about putting together a chapbook of my short stories and Ficlets to sell. And possibly re-editing and re-packaging This Old Haunt and going whole-hog with the self-publishing instead of just throwing it up on Scribd. But I probably need to get a few DS articles under my belt before I can make time for that.

But today, I'm going to put my feet up and watch TV and videos and maybe get some exercise and practice my bass and read something for pleasure. Work and money woes and packing away Bobo's things and cleaning the carpet stains in my office can all wait for tomorrow.

Bobo

I knew when I woke up with a headache this morning that it wasn't going to be a good day.

Bobo, the kitty we inherited from mom and Rob, passed away today about noon. I checked on him when I got up, and could tell then that he probably wouldn't last through the day. I loved on him, but he seemed to want to be left alone. I debated whether we should leave it to nature or just put it on our credit card to take him to the vet and put an end to his suffering. I prayed about it, and asked the Lord to please take him quickly and not let him suffer if there was no hope for his recovery. About twenty minutes later, Matt went to check on him, and he was gone.

We wrapped him in his favorite blanket and took him to my mom's, out in the country, where we buried him next to our doggie Fizzgigg.

So it's been an emotional day, to say the least. Bobo was all that was left of Matt's family, and we got a lot of comfort from him before he started going downhill. But after Rob died, it seemed like Bobo just gave up the will to live.

After he stopped eating kibble, we were able to get him to eat tuna a few times, but then he stopped eating that, too. I started force-feeding him mashed up kibble through a syringe, which he hated. Yesterday, he took all of his food -- well, most of it; he kept trying to spit it out -- and he hung out with us instead of hiding out in my office. After a particularly nasty bout of diarrhea (in my office, all over the carpet), he even let me bathe him, and then he let me hold him, swaddled in a towel and cradled like a baby, to keep him warm while he dried off. When we went to bed last night I was still hopeful that he'd pull through. But like I said, all it took was one look at him this morning to realize how wrong I was.

He was a really sweet cat, and he had a perfectly happy life until his family and home were taken away. Matt and I tried our best to do right by him and let him know he was still loved, but it just wasn't enough. I hope he gets to go be with them now.

This Is How We're Doing

People keep asking how we're doing. I keep giving them a forced semi-cheerful "We're hanging in there" response, but the truth is that everything pretty much sucks right now. We're doing about as well as you'd expect anyone to be doing who's had a significant portion of their family wiped out in the space of two months.

By the grace of God, we ARE hanging in there, but I won't lie. We're both pretty depressed. And for these last few days, mine's been exacerbated by PMS, and Matt's is made worse by an impacted wisdom tooth that hurts like hell and that we can't afford to do anything about.

So far, this has been the hardest week, when everything we do takes so much more effort, and we're both feeling so tired and beat down, and he's in a lot of physical pain and I'm too hormonal to deal with any of it particularly well. There's been a lot of crying, and a LOT of sleeping, and a lot of just generally being grumpy at each other.

Of course, there's also been a lot of hugging and holding and praying and trying to make each other laugh. So it's not all dismal.

Bobo's not doing so great, either. In the last few weeks, right before Rob died, he had improved to the point that he'd pretty much settled in to be part of the family. His appetite was healthy and he was being social and seemed like he might actually be happy here.

Then, weirdly, the morning Rob died, before we even got the message, he started acting withdrawn and depressed, and he stopped eating. The first time he stopped eating, I didn't worry, because he was grossly obese and seriously needed to lose a lot of weight.

But now he's lost that weight and then some, and he's starting to waste away. He's 13 years old, and starting to exhibit other "old cat in the last stage of life" signs, like his fur has become grimy and started to fall out in large tufts. So we're not really sure if there's anything to be done for him, except to love him and make him comfortable and hope for the best. Yesterday he actually left my office and came out to be social, and drank some water. Today he did the same plus he ate a few bites of food, so I'm hopeful that this is a passing phase and he'll get better.

Although he loved Gina, he was clearly always Rob's cat, or rather, Rob was clearly HIS human. So I don't know if it's just a coincidence that he started going downhill so rapidly on the very day that Rob passed away, without any of us even knowing yet that he was gone (so it's not simply that he reacted to our mood). I don't know if I believe in some kind of psychic connection between people and their pets, but it certainly is a strange coincidence. At any rate, he's a really sweet kitty who's been through a really hard time, and I hope he gets better.

So that's how we're doing: not really so great. Hopefully the next time I post I'll have some good news to report for a change. I know we certainly could use some.

Memorial Planning

This week has been better. Busy, but better. Busy because, believe it or not, taking three weeks off from your business to deal with your late mom-in-law's estate followed by a week of double-whammy sickness results in a big daggum pile of stuff that needs getting done. Shocking, I know. But at least we're both mostly over the crud now, so getting stuff done has gotten easier.

First things first: we've made arrangements for the memorial service. If you'd like to attend, it will be next Saturday, January 22nd, at 3:00 PM CST, in the fellowship hall at Southwood Bible Church here in Tulsa. We're asking people to bring, if possible, a snack, appetizer or dessert and a story or memory to share about Gina. But nobody will give you the stink-eye if you don't bring any food or don't want to speak.

I went shopping today for supplies for the service, and for a decent pair of pants for Rob to wear in public since, being a shut-in for the last however many years, all he had were sweat pants. I also bought supplies to make a picture collage to display at the service. We'll probably start on that tonight. My friend Erin wrote a really touching poem that we'll probably include somewhere in the collage.

Still debating on whether to do a program, or some kind of obituary hand-out. We also still need to get a nice urn. We were going to shop for that the other day after visiting Rob, but it's a depressing task and when the time came we just weren't in the mood to deal with it. Obviously, we're going to have to suck it up and get that done soon.

On a happy note, Rob's mood is improving. He's making friends at the nursing home and he told us the other day that he's starting to like it there.  Of course, he's still grieving pretty hard, but at least it's no longer compounded by depression over his new living situation. His birthday is tomorrow, so we'll be taking him some treats and letting him try his new pants on for size.

I wish Bobo was doing as well as Rob, but he's still hiding out in my office and not eating very much. He was so gigantically obese when we got him that I'm not too concerned yet. He's lost weight, but he can still stand to lose more. Before the month is out I'll do a proper introductory post about him. Hopefully with pictures, if I can get him to come out of hiding long enough to get a few.

Merry Cute-mas

At least one of us managed to have a merry Christmas yesterday.

We hope your Christmas made you as happy as a puppy with a meat lollipop.

Earthquake!

I thought my biggest news this week would be that I done gone and lost my turtle again. But then this morning I felt my very first earthquake. Earthquake! In Oklahoma! Where we already have to worry about tornadoes and crippling ice storms! Clearly, this state wants us all dead.

Or not... they’re saying it was the second biggest quake in state history at a 5.1, with the biggest being a 5.5 about sixty years ago. So it’s not like anyone got hurt or suffered any major property damage. But it was strong enough to shake us awake in our bed. At first I thought Matt kicked something to make the bed shake, and I asked if he was okay.

“Are YOU okay?” he asked.

“Yeah... did you feel the bed shake?”

“The whole house shook. It felt like an earthquake.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s what it felt like.” And then he went back to sleep, because he grew up in California and is therefore completely unimpressed by Oklahoma’s piddly little show of fist-shaking fury.

As for the rest of us Okies, according to Twitter and Facebook we’re all just a tiny bit freaked out, but mostly excited to talk about it, because this was a first for many of us.

And as for Matilda, she’s home safe. I found her after more than two hours of combing our yard and searching around the neighborhood with Matt, crying the whole time. I was crying, I mean. Matt was just looking manfully concerned. Finally, our behind-us neighbors let me search their back yard with the help of Charlie, their beagle mix. Charlie’s the one who found her, stuck between their chain-link fence and our next-door neighbor’s privacy fence. She peed all over herself and me as I pulled her out of there, and then I took her home and cleaned us both up and collapsed and lamented the five years she took off my life.

The worst part of that whole ordeal, besides thinking I might never see her again, was knowing it was entirely my fault, because I am a gorram fool who didn’t learn well enough the first time that when she’s outside, an eagle eye must be kept on her, and EAGLE EYES DO NOT MULTI-TASK. Seriously, if she was lost for good I didn’t know how I was going to deal with bearing the whole blame for putting my pet in danger and making my husband and I both sad. I thought of all the parents of missing kids who just looked away for a second and then never saw their children again, and what kind of special hell on earth they must live in, because I was ready to fall apart over a turtle.

Thank you, Lord, for happy endings. Now could you please make sure the ground doesn’t open up and swallow us all?

A Girl and Her Turtle

I lost Matilda the other day. Only for about ten minutes, and Matt found her before she found a hole in the fence, but those were a frightening ten minutes by the end of which I was nearly in tears. I was so sure that she'd escaped and I'd never see her again, that she'd gone under the fence and right out into traffic and that was the end of her, and I'd never, ever forgive myself.

I don't normally take her out of her pen in the middle of the day, but the weather has been gorgeous lately, like early fall, so I decided to sit out on the patio while I outlined some articles, and I figured she'd enjoy an afternoon stroll around the yard. Then one minute I was watching her sunbathe and munch on a dead cicada, the next I looked down at my writing to jot some notes, and by minute three I looked back up and simply could not see the turtle.

You might think that it would be hard to lose a turtle within the space of a minute. After all, they don't exactly have reputations as speedsters. But they are, in fact, faster than you'd expect, and on top of that they have built-in camouflage that, as it turns out, does an excellent job of blending in with the overgrown grass in our way-past-due-to-be-mowed yard.

I spent about five minutes walking the yard and poking through said grass before I went to get Matt, to have him stand guard at the most likely point of escape while I continued to scour the yard. After another five minutes, he spotted Matilda hiding behind a cement brick by the back fence. That's the chain-link one with links that she can't fit through, thankfully, and not the wooden privacy fence that lines a busy street and has gaps that she has yet to discover are just the right height for her to slip right under.

Afterwards, I tucked her safely back in her pen, where she burrowed down in the dirt in her favorite sleeping spot beneath her hollow half-log, and then sat down to recover and be amazed at how attached I've become to a turtle. I mean, yes, I've wanted a turtle just like her for a really long time. But she's not exactly cuddly, and all she does is eat, sleep and crawl around. But she sure is cute doing those things, and it's neat to watch her hunt for bugs, and she seems to enjoy being baby-talked and having the back of her neck rubbed. As it turns out, I love her for all of that. And I will never, ever, ever leave her unsupervised in the back yard again, not even for a minute.

Camp Wear-you-down

We're back. And let me tell you about camping. Or I guess about vacations in general, because it seems to me that the whole point of vacations is to make you shut up and stop whining about your day-to-day existence and appreciate how easy you've got it on a regular basis, because it seems like my vacations always leave me feeling more worn out and drained than when I started -- which of course I never remember until after they're over -- and this was no exception. Matt and I both came back burned, battered and just plain beat.

But about camping, specifically. To hear my mom tell it, my family went camping all the time until I was about two years old, then they up and moved to the lake and there was no longer any need. So for all intents and purposes, this was my first time. Matt's camping experiences were both sporadic and long ago enough that he was essentially a newbie, too. So it should come as no surprise that we made a lot of rookie mistakes.

Mistake the first: not traveling light enough. Before we left we stocked up on everything we thought we could possibly need or use over the weekend. Our little Aveo was so crammed full of crap that there was barely any room left for us. We only ended up using, eating or wearing about half of what we took. We brought along way more food than we needed, and we weren't so far from a grocery store that I couldn't have just gone shopping after we'd set up camp. We also took gallons and gallons of bottled water when our Pür pitcher would have been more than sufficient. Next time, we'll pack much, much lighter, which will make the next item less of an issue.

Mistake the second: parking too dang far away from the camp site. This wouldn't have been an issue if we'd stuck with the lot we'd originally reserved. But once we got there and saw an available lot right down on the water, we were so lured by the prospect of doing all of our swimming and fishing right there next to our tent that we didn't care that we couldn't drive down to it and had to park 50 yards away up a steep hill. It wasn't so bad carrying all of our stuff down hill on the first day, but having to schlep everything back up that hill on our last day pretty much undid all of the rest I'd managed to get in the interim. Which wasn't really that much, considering...

Mistake the third: setting our tent on rocky ground and trying to rely on cheap water loungers for air mattresses.  Both of which popped about ten minutes after we turned in on the first night. The next morning I wasted no time driving into town for some quality camping air beds, but we're both still covered in bruises from that first night of having to try to sleep on the ground with nothing but a tarp, the tent bottom and cheap thin plastic between us and the gravel. A situation that was aggravated by...

Mistakes the fourth and fifth: not taking ear plugs or an animal-proof locker for our food. Ear plugs would have made it easier to sleep through Pete's incessant barking at the raccoons that invaded our camp looking for food, and the locker would have kept them from finding it and strewing hamburger and hot dog buns all over the camp site. After that first night we started keeping the non-perishable foodstuff in the tent with us, but that didn't stop the critters from trying to get to it. And let me tell you something. In my house, when I'm safe in my own bed, I cannot sleep without having my feet covered, because I have a basic, deep fear, which precedes Paranormal Activity by about thirty years, of being awakened in the middle of the night by some unseen thing grabbing my feet. So when that actually happened the other night? Knowing that the unseen thing that had grabbed my toes through the tent wall was a cute and furry raccoon didn't really make it any easier to stop being terrified and go back to sleep.

I'm sure other mistakes were made, but these are the major ones that I think rectifying will make our next camping go-round a lot more restful. And there will be a next time, because despite all of our shiny new aches and pains, we had enough fun that we're already planning to go back for a weekend fishing trip in the fall. Matt caught a couple of fish, and the fact that they were too small to eat and had to be let go didn't make it any less exciting. The shore we camped on was rocky and I kept banging myself up on underwater boulders, but swimming was still fun, especially watching Pete swim back and forth between us until he was pooped enough to make a break for dry land. Despite the extreme heat, between the lake breeze and being able to jump in the lake when the breeze wasn't enough, we managed to stay pretty cool. And in between all of the swimming, fishing and hauling stuff up the hill, we fit in a lot of lazing about, as illustrated in this picture of Pete, who'd had all of the hyperactivity worn right out of him.

Now that we're home, we need a vacation from our vacation, but a single day of recovery will have to do. I woke up this morning feeling stiff and achy and sore all over, but also really appreciative of my own bed and all of the small luxuries and creature comforts we enjoy on a daily basis, and of not having to carry anything up a big hill again any time in the foreseeable future.

Chill-away Camp

I'm still nursing my wrist, and still doing a lot of non-blog writing, which is still seriously cutting into my blogging time. It's been cutting into my Twitter/Facebook time, too, so I figured I'd better leave an update so nobody thinks I died.

Our air conditioner is broken. Again. It's done this every summer since we moved into this house, which I think is a good argument in favor of replacing the ancient piece of spottiness. We took out a debt-consolidation loan large enough to cover a replacement, but Matt's still nervous about committing to throwing that much money at the house, even though that thing's so old that any new AC is bound to be way more efficient and lower our cooling bills, no matter whether or not it's rated high-efficiency, which I think is another good argument in favor of a replacement. And also that we'll need to replace it before we sell the house anyway, so we might as well get it done now and reap the benefits for a few years. I think you can see which side of the argument I'm coming down on. But we're both too cranky to discuss it calmly and come to a mutual decision because it's so motherlovin' HOT, you guys!

By the by, this week I learned that a broken AC, short shorts and a leather desk chair are unmixy things.

Anyway, maybe we can figure out the AC business during our long weekend camping at the lake. At least, I think we're going camping this weekend. Matt suggested perhaps putting it off until the weather cools down a bit, but I pointed out that we can be hot here, or we can be hot there, where there is a great big lake to jump in to cool us off. Besides, the whole reason we were scrambling to go this weekend in the first place is because we realized he starts back to school next week and by the time the weather cools off he'll probably be too buried in studying and paper-writing to go. So it's pretty much now or... not this year.

And, you guys. This is my ONLY shot at getting a vacation this year. And you know, if you've been paying attention AT ALL, how desperate I'm getting for a vacation. Even if it's just a hot and sweaty long weekend in a tent at the muddy-bottomed lake out by where I grew up. At least it will be a long weekend without internet access or cell phone reception or anywhere to plug in my laptop, all of which will force me to, y'know, chill the heck out. Which at this point is ALL I NEED.

***

Matilda the turtle is doing well, for those who were wondering. She's the only one of us who doesn't mind the sweltering heat. She just buries herself in the back yard for the worst of it, and at night it's saving me from having to turn on the reptile heater in her indoor tank. I've got a pretty good handle on what she likes to eat, or rather, what she likes to be fed on the days when she hasn't managed to catch some bug the size of her head and remind me that she is perfectly self-sufficient, thank you very much, lady who is holding me prisoner. But for all that she still makes a beeline for freedom every time I let her roam the back yard, she otherwise seems to be enjoying all of the attention and pampering. I'm pretty confident that a bigger habitat will nix her escape attempts.

How Is a Turtle Like a Tree?

For a long time now, I've been wanting a pet box turtle or tortoise. But since the local reptile sellers never seem to have box turtles in stock and tortoises run too far out of my price range, I figured I'd just wait until I encountered one on the side of the highway in need of rescuing. Because every single summer of my life there has always been an abundance of turtles plodding right into traffic and needing someone in possession of better common sense to stop and pick them up and save their lives. Every single summer, that is, until I decided I wanted a pet turtle. It's like word got out and they all made a plan to stay hidden whenever I drove by.

Apparently one turtle missed the memo, because on Wednesday morning, while I was eating breakfast, it strolled right up onto my patio and settled in to chill. I squeed so hard I almost choked on my Kashi, then ran outside to pounce on it. I couldn't believe it. A turtle! On my back porch! In the middle of the city! What are the odds?

It was good timing, too, because I'd already planned to take the day off to give my wrist a break. So as soon as I could I set to work McGuyvering an outdoor habitat out of things we already had around the house and yard, which included flowerbed fencing, plastic chicken "wire", bread ties and paper clips. Yes, I actually used paperclips to hold the chicken wire in place, and it worked like a charm. Add a bowl sunk into the ground for a "pond" and a half-log Matt had left over from his reptile-keeping bachelor days, and it turned out to be a pretty nice, if small, turtle habitat.

Now before anybody reams me out for taking an animal out of the wild, let me say that I did take time out to check my conscience on that. My yard is surrounded on two sides by busy streets and on the other two sides by a big dog and a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant family who appears willing to eat just about anything that moves, so I didn't like her odds for survival once she left our yard. So we decided to keep her on a trial basis for a few weeks. Originally, I was thinking that if she didn't take well to being a pet, we'd drive her out to the country and release her, but now I can't stop imagining some bozo on a four-wheeler tearing through the countryside and ending her, so I'm thinking it would be better to see if the zoo or any local wildlife sanctuaries would take her. On the other hand, if she seems fine with the pet life, we'll build her a bigger habitat with plenty of room to roam. In the mean time, she pretty much just sleeps and eats in the little pen, and the rest of the time we let her roam around the yard or the house. Supervised, of course.

Since she literally walked into my life, I've been doing a lot of research on box turtles, and here is what I've learned:

• How to tell the sex of a turtle - her yellow eyes, shortish claws and convex bottom shell tell me that she's a she (you can also tell by looking under the tail, but I won't get into that here - this is a family blog).
• How to tell the approximate age of a turtle - this is the answer to the title riddle. Turtles have growth rings on their shells that you can count to get a good idea of their age. Going by this, she's 4-6 years old (a couple of the rings were faint enough that I wasn't sure whether they should be counted, hence the +/- 2 years margin of error). She'll live around 30 years, so it's a pretty major commitment if we decide to keep her.
• She's an ornate box turtle and as such won't get any bigger (her shell's about 4 inches long), and she needs a drier habitat than other turtle varieties.
• I have to feed her bugs, which is gross, and she particularly likes roly-polies, which is just sad. Hopefully I'll manage to get her outdoor habitat populated with enough of these that she can hunt them on her own and I won't have to feed them to her.

After spending some time with her, I've decided to call her Matilda (after trying on and rejecting Phoebe). This is her fourth day with is, and so far she's doing great. She's already used to us enough that she responds when we baby-talk her, she's totally over any initial fear she had of the other pets (although they're still pretty freaked out by this strange rock that can sprout legs and come after them), and she's taking food out of our hands. Well, out of tweezers, since she accidentally bit Matt hard enough to draw blood while snatching a roly-poly out of his fingers. At night we bring her inside and let her sleep in a heated terrarium,another left-over from Matt's pet reptile days. If we decide to keep her, we'll also build her a bigger indoor habitat in time for winter.

She's pretty neat, and I'm having a lot of fun with her. If we end up having to give her up to keep her happy, I'll definitely have to start saving my pennies to buy a captive-bred turtle. But she already seems to be getting pretty comfortable with the ridiculously pampered lifestyle that goes with being our pet. I have a feeling she's going to stick around for the long-haul.

***

In other news, I haven't blogged all week mainly because my tendonitis has been flaring up a lot lately, and I can't type for very long without pain. I've also been having to write a lot of eHow articles for Demand Studios to help make ends meet while business has slowed down for the summer, and that's pretty well pushing me beyond my pain tolerance threshold. Any time I can make for blogging is mainly going to my new Task Wrangler blog, and I'm only managing to post there once a week.

As a compromise to tide me over until my wrist quits acting up, I've started a Tumblr blog, "Falling In the In Between", meaning that if it's too big for Twitter but not really appropriate for here, it goes there.

And now I have to go write some more articles to make up for Wednesday's turtle-centric slackitude.

Rainy Day Cleaning Spree

I cleaned my office today. Over on the left is the before pic of my work area, which is not really "before" so much as "twenty minutes in," after I took down and re-hung the sari-serving-as-curtain that was previously held up crookedly with binder clips. You'll just have to trust me that it looks much better now. You'll also have to trust me when I say that my desk isn't usually quite that messy -- my cat had knocked over a pile of mail and I didn't bother to pick it up before I snapped this pic.

I've been meaning to clean it up for a while now, in the hopes that I might work a little more efficiently if I'm not constantly having to clear a space for my laptop every time I sit down. What motivated me to finally do it today was a sudden desire to bring plants into my office, and to not have them be eaten by the cats once I do.

I don't actually have any plants ready to bring in yet, but I've started to propagate some cuttings from other plants in the house. They're currently hanging out in the little windowsill garden we've got happening in the kitchen.

Those plants are, from left: jade, cilantro, African violet, English ivy, and sweet basil. The ivy is what's being prepped for my office - it's my first experiment in trying to get cuttings to grow roots in water. If this attempt is a success, I'll try it with the violet and a begonia my Big Sis sent home with me yesterday (not pictured).

I'd like to eventually duplicate the windowsill garden in my office window. The only trouble with that is, all of those plants are toxic when eaten, and my office is a hangout for plant-eating cats. To that end, I've rearranged some things to start training them that the windowsill is off-limits. Which breaks my heart a little, because they love to perch up there and bird-watch. But seeing as how they knock over something on my desk every single time they get up there without fail, I'm cool with taking away their windowsill privileges.

And so, for now I've filled the sill with so much stuff that they can't get up there. I moved my writing & editing reference books up there, putting them within easier reach, which also freed up some shelf space for my growing paperback collection. Hopefully, the rest of the tchotchkes lining the sill can be traded out for plants once the cats are used to the window being off-limits. As for my desk, it's organized and clutter-free, and there's plenty of room for the cats to lounge while they're pouting about being barred from the windowsill.

A Very Bauhaushold Christmas

We had already decided to stay home for Christmas. The original plan was to go to my mom's house, but I realized that it's hard enough for us to be around babies and small children right now without having to force Christmas cheer on top of it. I know I have to get over that some time, not the least of which because I love and miss my wee nieces and nephews; but neither of us had any desire to spend Christmas day pretending to be happy when the constant reminder of what we lost meant we were both dying a little inside. And so, we didn't have to suffer disappointment when we ended up being snowed in on Christmas day, anyway.

It was a lovely, peaceful day.  I woke up before Matt and spent the morning in quiet reflection as I read the accounts in Matthew and Luke of Christ's birth and the events leading up to it. It was nice to be able to take the time out and remember what the day was really about, instead of rushing to get out the door. Then, after a prayer of gratitude, I fired up A Christmas Story and settled in to wait for Matt to get up.

Once he did, it was present time. First we gave the pets their stocking goodies, and much cuteness abounded:

Then it was the hoomans' turn. Even though we had pretty much stuck to each others' Amazon wish lists this year, I still managed to surprise Matt with some Clark bars (he'd been craving them recently and we haven't been able to find any around here), and he surprised me with a cook book I'd wish listed over a year ago and then forgot about. He also got me a couple of books I've been dying to read, including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which, YAY!

After that, it was decision time: we'd bought advanced tickets to a late afternoon showing of Sherlock Holmes, but that was before our yard turned into Planet Hoth:

So between the dangers of getting eaten by a Hoth Wampa and getting stranded (or worse) on the icy roads, we decided to cut our losses and stay home. To me, it was worth the ticket price not to have to dig the car out from under a snow drift, anyway.

So Matt put our Christmas turkey in the oven (after doing his gourmet magic to it) and we hung out and read our Christmas presents and watched our current Netflix pic (Terminator: Salvation, which I liked better than I expected to after seeing how much it was panned) until the bird was done, and then we had ourselves a cozy (and delish!) little Christmas dinner. Then we had pie. And then we read some more until bed time.

It was about as close to a perfect day as it gets.

How was your Christmas?

Goals for the week, and Halloween paper crafts

It's Sunday night and, like I said, Monday's are heck-a busy, so let's lay out some goals for the coming week. But first, a quick recap of my day, most of which was spent with part of Husband's side of the family, where meat was smoked and then consumed, rowdy, excited dogs (well, one) were petted and petted and assured that they are very pretty and that yes, I love them even though I just met them, too, Guitar Hero and Scrabble were played, mead (yes, actual mead) was drunk, and a fine time was had by all. All, that is, except our own pets who, judging by how forlorn they acted when we left and how pee-their-pants happy they acted when we got back, were lonely and depressed and miserable the entire time we were gone. Either that, or they've got us so fooled that we don't even suspect them of partying the entire time. I like to think it's the former. Poor babies.

Last week, I didn't feel so great. I was struggling with the SAD and not getting enough sleep, and coughing and paranoid that I was coming down with the dreaded pig flu, and it was the kind of week where I felt too poorly to be able to concentrate for very long at a time, but not so poorly that I could justify not working. All of which means that none of my admin goals happened, and the things I did accomplish took me twice as long as they should have. So the admin and marketing goals are still on the list for this week. Specifically, I want to start planning my new web site this week, and spend some time networking and working on my business plan. I already have a pretty full slate with client projects, plus the NaNoWriMo prep I outlined yesterday, so it'll be a challenge fitting all of that in, but I can't keep putting it off, so I've got to try.

I already talked all about my NaNoWriMo and writing goals yesterday, so that leaves personal goals. My main goal is to try to feel better this week so I can be more focused and productive, which means giving up on trying to start my morning earlier. I just can't get myself to go to sleep earlier, and it's not really worth it to keep trying if it means more sleepy, unfocused foggy-brained misery. I've got to do better than only working out twice a week, too. I don't know why it's so hard to make myself do it, when I know it makes me feel better once it's over with. Also, I think I'll postpone moving my work back into my office until I can replace my desk chair. Right now I'm using an old kitchen dining chair, and it only takes an hour sitting at my desk before my back and head start hurting, which is not helping in the focus department.

So it's gonna be another busy week, and I've got to be sure to take time out to take care of myself so I don't feel worn out by Wednesday. I'm hoping to get all of my major projects wrapped up enough by Thursday night that I can take Friday off and go visit my mom, and maybe see if she'll let me dig up some of the bazillion iris and daffodil bulbs on her property to transplant to my poor, flowerless yard.

And now I shall leave you with some pics of yesterday's lazy Halloween papercraft project, which was inspired by this DIY Halloween decor project at Young House Love. After you're done admiring my prowess with a a pair of scissors and card stock (and these Halloween paper cut-out templates over at Martha Stewart), you can share your own goals for the week down in the comments.

I made gloves. And now I make goals.

I've been enjoying a lazy morning snuggled up on the sofa with my pets and the snuggliest afghan in creation (thanks again, Susan!), but it's about time to wake the aytch up and get to work, so let this post serve as a warm up for my brain.

It's chilly here, and wet and gray, and it's been that way for a few days now. If we don't see the sunshine soon I'm going to start fighting off another case of the SAD blues, but for now I'm enjoying the cozy vibe that all of this covering up and being glommed onto by cold kitties (and Pete) desperately seeking body heat is giving me. The house is chilly enough to be uncomfortable without hiding beneath layers, but not cold enough to justify turning on the heat and running up the gas bill; so when the chill starts to get to me, I try to think about early August, when our AC needed repairs and I pined for just this kind of weather. And then I make tea.

I also made myself a pair of "Fetching" wrist warmers over the weekend. See? I kind of thought fingerless gloves were pointless when it came to actual warmth, since it's my fingers getting frozen that hinders my typing and such; but then I realized I kept pulling my sleeves down to cover my hands and figured there might be something to this hand-warmer thing. And you know? There is. Even my fingers feel a bit warmer when I have these things on (and when they get too cold I can just tuck them inside the gloves until they warm up). Since we tend to keep the temp in the low 60s throughout the winter (except for when we have company, natch), these will be a big help in keeping my hands functional instead of frosty.

On to this week's goals. Oh, but first, on the accomplishment front, I finally cleaned my office, including my desk, so I have an official work space again. It's still not as private as I'd like it to be, since we keep the cat box in there and I have to leave the door open so they don't just up and decide that the clothes hamper or the dog's bed or, Heaven forfend, our bed makes a perfectly good toilet. Earphones do a pretty good job of tuning out distraction and signaling Husband that I'm in concentration mode, though. And for jobs for which even music is too distracting, there's White Noise mp3s.com, which usually does the trick.

This week I'm trying to turn my schedule around and go to bed/get up a couple of hours earlier than I did during the summer. This is mainly because I thought it would be nice if I could get most of my work done before Prime Time hours, so I can relax and enjoy my shows in the evenings, and then finish up my work before bedtime without it taking until 2AM. So far, the getting up earlier is happening, but the going to bed -- or at least, the going to sleep -- earlier is not. I'm telling myself that if I keep getting up early, eventually my body will get a clue and start getting sleepy at the right bed time, but these experiments have been tried before, and have failed. So we'll see how this one goes.

I'm aiming to finish marking up my Hero Factor edits this week, and then I'll start gearing up for NaNoWriMo next week. I only have four or five more scenes to get through, so that's totally doable. As for This Old Haunt, if any of you are waiting for me to post the conclusion, I'm going to try very hard to get it posted tonight.

Work is still keeping me busy, which is excellent. I need to get a lot of admin-type stuff done for the business, and I want to totally redo the web site and start keeping a professional blog over there, but I keep getting too busy with client stuff to do any of that. So I'm going to try scheduling my own business as a client and see if that helps me get on top of things. I still need to formalize the biz, register it with the state and get my taxes sorted and all that. I haven't made enough yet to make income taxes for this year a concern, but I'm not sure about business taxes and how that all works, so at some point I'm going to have to sit down with someone at our tax agency and have it explained to me. But those things probably won't happen until the new year. For right now, I'm just focusing on figuring out how to fit in running the business with doing the work and keeping my clients happy.

In other news, my cats keep wheezing. Niblet's been doing it intermittently for a few weeks now, and I was getting pretty worried, because she's getting older and I've read that that's a symptom of heart disease in cats. But now Boudica's doing it, so now I'm wondering if they're just passing around a kitty cold of some kind. If Sasha starts to do it, too, then we'll have a trifecta and I can stop being so scared that Niblet's going to have a heart attack before we can get her checked out. I'm still keeping my eye on her, though. Which is not hard to do, since she's practically been attached to me and my afghan since the weather turned chilly.

And now my brain is as warmed up as the rest of me, so I'm going to go put it to work. What about you, dear reader? Tell me how your goals are coming along in the comments.