Thursday 13: Catching Up

Since I haven’t posted anything since March, a Thursday 13 seemed like a great way to catch up on what has been going on since March.

1.    A cat picture is always a good way to start one of these, so enjoy this one of Mortimer.

2.     We have hot water!  The water heater installation was finished on time, and it has been worth every bit of disruption.  Showers that don’t become progressively colder are so much more pleasant!

3.    We did a lot of decluttering while we were getting the house back in order after the water heater installation.  We reorganized some things and got rid of a lot of stuff. 

4.    Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the process, but here’s one of Theodore in one of the storage cubes. 

5.    Speaking of Theodore, he had a vet visit for a cough last week.  After x-rays, they determined that he most likely aspirated some fluid while coughing up a hairball and developed a slight infection.  He’s on Laxatone for hairballs and got an antibiotic shot for the infection.  He goes for a follow-up in two weeks, but has already stopped coughing and seems to be feeling fine.

6.    Part of why I haven’t posted in a while is that I was working on a big project at work.  It was the second part of the December project.  Our deadline got moved up by about six weeks, so everyone had to put in a lot of extra hours for a while.  It is finished, though! 

7.    As usual, Caroline felt the need to be heavily involved in my work. 

8.    I’ve learned not to say I’m expecting any kind of break from projects with tight deadlines!  There isn’t one at the moment, but I’m expecting at least a couple more this year. 

9.    It hasn’t been all work during my blogging break.  We have done some fun things, including going to Greenville to see a performance from the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus.  It was a great show!  I haven’t been able to find a video of the show, but here’s the promo video.

10.   The groundhogs are back!

11.   There are at least three baby groundhogs this year.  I just love them so much.

12.   I’m working on catching up with everyone’s blogs, so I’ll be visiting you soon.

13.   A cat picture is always a good way to end a post, so enjoy this one of Charlie.  

Catching Up

I didn’t mean to go so long between posts, but work has been incredibly busy lately.  I just haven’t wanted to sit down at the computer again after staring at a screen for twelve-plus hours.  But I’m trying to get back to blogging now.

Even Caroline, who loves “helping” on my work-from-home days, is a little tired of the long days. 

 There hasn’t been much outside of work lately, but here are a few highlights.

Of course, the flowers are blooming.

A local yarn shop donated the materials for crocheted Pride pins to our local Pride group.  They asked for volunteers to make the pins.  I only took one kit because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to figure out the pattern.  Fortunately, I was able to do it.  

The most exciting news is that we now have groundhogs living in our backyard.  They are so cute!  I’m aware that a lot of people consider them to be pests and work to get rid of them.  However, they’re not doing any damage, so we’ve decided to peacefully coexist with them.  There has been a lot of new construction here recently, so it only makes sense that the groundhogs have had to relocate closer to humans.  If our yard is a safe place for them, we’re perfectly happy with that. 

At one point, I saw seven small groundhogs and two large ones, but lately, I haven’t seen more than four small ones and one large one at once.  So, I’m not entirely sure how many are currently living in our backyard. 

Here’s a video of some of them eating corn.

I’m working on catching up with your blogs, but feel free to let me know what you’ve been up to in the comments.  

Some More Catching Up

I’m still working on catching up from my blogging break, so here are a few more recent happenings.

Let’s get the not-so-good news out of the way first.  Frankie is having some health problems.  At 14, he’s an older kitty, so it’s concerning.  He had an abdominal ultrasound in January due to some unexplained vomiting.  It showed some minor thickening of his intestinal lining, which could be indicative of lymphoma.  After talking with Dr. D, we chose not to pursue exploratory surgery and biopsies; the outlook for treating cats with lymphoma isn’t great, and we’d rather give Frankie a good quality of life.  Dr. D put him on some different medication, and the vomiting stopped. 

Last month, the excessive vomiting started again, so we took Frankie back to the vet.  Dr. D did some x-rays and a lot of bloodwork and determined that Frankie is in the early stages of kidney disease, lymphoma is still a real possibility, and he also has thyroid disease.  Out of all of those, thyroid disease is the easiest/least invasive to treat, so Frankie is now on thyroid medication.  Dr. D also adjusted his dose of some other medications, and the vomiting has stopped.  Frankie goes back on the 27^th to have his thyroid levels checked again.

He has lost some weight, but he’s eating and seems to be happy.  Frankie still plays and likes to get into things, so as long as he’s happy and has a good quality of life, we’re happy.  We’ll continue to treat his thyroid issues and go from there when he has his appointment later this month.  With any luck, he still has quite a few good years ahead of him.

In other news, it has been cold and insanely windy here.  Everyone at work has been running space heaters, and this morning, there were lots of trashcans blown over when I was leaving for work. 

One of the local animal shelters has been asking for extra blankets since it has been so cold.  It has been nice to see people step up and drop off and/or ship blankets.  It just shows how much people working together can do.

Our local sheriff’s office did a women’s self-defense class last week.  It was a great class!  They did it at a community center, and several female deputies taught it.  It was a good mix of teaching situational awareness and teaching and practicing specific self-defense techniques.  I definitely learned some things. 

One of my coworkers is retiring this month, and we had his going away party last week.  We did a potluck and ended up with tons of food.  I brought macaroni and cheese. 

We’ve also managed to squeeze in some Christmas fun.  One of the churches does a fundraiser event that’s a journey to Bethlehem.  They have people in costume, live animals, and tons of props to recreate walking through Bethlehem.  Nick’s family used to go every year.  I went for the first time last year.  This year, our neighbors went with us.  It was a lot more crowded this year, but we got to listen to Christmas music (which I love) while we waited for our turn.  It was fun going through with a bigger group this time.  We also drove around and looked at Christmas lights.  There’s a subdivision where almost everyone goes all out on the lights and decorations, and it’s so fun to drive through it.  This is a Pixabay picture since I don’t think I’d be able to get good pictures from the car.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this funny picture of Charlie.  He seems to have no concept of his size, and yesterday, he spent quite a while trying to stuff himself into this box.  I don’t think he ever figured out why he couldn’t get in the box.  He definitely looked cute trying!  

Catching Up

Thank you all for your kind comments about Howard.  I love that people who never met him enjoyed his pictures and personality.  He really was a very special cat.

Since I didn’t blog at all in October or November, I’ll share some highlights to catch you up.

Our neighbors did tons of great Halloween decorations, including a miniature cemetery in their front yard.  There were “tombstones” for everyone on our section of the street.

Here’s mine:

Caroline is definitely our most temperamental cat and takes tortitude to a whole new level.

And here’s Nick’s:

We also did a neighborhood Halloween event on the last Sunday in October.  It was surprisingly warm that day, so we sat outside by one of the neighbor’s fire pits.  I made a huge batch of chili, and our neighbor Lori made jalapeno popper bread and desserts. 

Three of the adults (including Nick) and two of the older kids went to a haunted farm.  The other three adults (including me), one of the older kids who wasn’t feeling well, and the two younger kids stayed behind to watch Hocus Pocus. 

Everyone had a great time, and it worked out well that some people wanted to do the haunted farm while some of us weren’t into that kind of thing at all.  We’re talking about making it an annual thing. 

I’ve struggled some with getting into the holiday spirit since we lost Howard, but I knew I wouldn’t be happy skipping Thanksgiving, so we had our usual huge Thanksgiving.

Since our fridge is a little bit smaller than the old one, I had Thanksgiving food stashed in four different mini-fridges at work the week before.  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I took several things we wouldn’t need over the holiday weekend and left them at work to make sure we had room for all of the Thanksgiving stuff. 

I took the day before Thanksgiving off to do all of the baking.  I couldn’t fit all of the desserts and sweet potato bread on the table, so there are two pictures. 

As usual, Nick did a lot of cleaning.  I’m a very messy cook, so helping clean up when I do that much cooking is a massive job.  At one point, he was dashing into the kitchen with the vacuum or Swiffer every time I left it.  And one of the neighbor kids very sweetly came over and helped out with some food prep and cleaning on Wednesday night. 

The day before Thanksgiving is always my highest step count for the year!

We took Thanksgiving dinner to the hospice house for lunch.  As always, they were so kind and made me cry.  There’s a nurse we’ve seen for the past several years, and she hugged both of us and was just incredibly nice.

After we dropped the food off there, we went home and finished getting ready for our Thanksgiving dinner that evening.  I almost forgot to get any pictures of the food until someone else mentioned taking pictures, so I only got two not-so-great pictures of the food.  We had food and desserts on nearly every available surface.

We had a total of 14 people: all of the neighbors on our end of the street and some friends from Nick’s job.  Everyone ate, talked, and played games.  It was everything I love about Thanksgiving.  As usual, we had tons of leftovers, so no one had to cook for the next couple of days.  After everyone left, Nick and I were talking about how you can always tell whether or not it’s someone’s first Thanksgiving at our house by whether or not they bring storage containers for leftovers.  No one does the first time, but everyone does the next time. 

We also had an inflatable Thanksgiving decoration this year.  I bought him on sale after Thanksgiving last year.  His name is Gregory.  Good for you if you get the reference to the Doris Day movie, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.”  I’m hoping to add more Thanksgiving decorations every year. 

Frankie absolutely loves the box that Gregory came in.

I’m not sure how he managed to stuff himself inside the box, but he happily hung out in it for hours at a time. 

So what about you?  How were your October and November?  And how were your fall holidays?  

Thursday 13: Catching Up

I thought a Thursday 13 was in order since it has been so long since I’ve posted anything.  As usual, not all of the photos are related to the post. 

Tara

1.    We’re still working on getting Howard’s insulin regulated.  He’s up to six units twice a day.  He had a glucose curve done last week, and Dr. D. increased his dose from five units twice a day to six units twice a day.  He goes next week to have his blood sugar checked again. 

2.    I still haven’t given Howard an insulin injection.  Nick has been doing them.  We’ve decided that I am definitely going to do it over the long weekend. 

3.    We went to Dollywood two weekends ago with our neighbors.  They have a season pass and invited us as their guests.  Between their family, one of the boys bringing his girlfriend, and us, we had eleven people in our group.  It was so much fun!  There was always someone to ride any ride with, and there was always someone to hang out with if there was a ride you didn’t want to go on.

4.    Bumper cars are so much more fun when you know most of the other people in the cars.  It’s much more fun to ram a friend than ram a stranger.

5.    I can no longer go on rides that move in a constant circle.  I used to be able to if I took Dramamine, but it’s a definite NO now. 

6.    I got a new laptop.  So far, I really like it.  I loved my old one, but it’s almost eight years old and has really slowed down.  The new one is a Lenovo.  I use a Lenovo ThinkPad at work, and I love it.  Those are out of our budget, so I opted for a Lenovo laptop.

7.    I’m hoping that with a faster laptop, I’ll be able to post more often.  I always miss blogging whenever I don’t do it.

Howard, modeling his stylish ultrasound trim.

8.    I also purchased more Google storage, so I’m in the process of moving all of my pictures from the old laptop to my Google drive.  I take a lot of pictures!

9.    In the Ford versus Chevy debate, I am 100% team Toyota.  My Camry is in the shop, and the rental is a Chevy Equinox.  I have been referring to it as Satan’s SUV if that gives you an idea of how much I dislike it. 

10. Nick doesn’t hate Satan’s SUV like I do, so after I drove it once, we switched.  He’s driving it, and I’m driving his car.  His is a Honda, so everything is very similar to my car.  Nick says he has had more time to get used to how different everything is because the car he drives at work is a Chevy.  He also handles change much better than I do.

11. Last month, we went to Fleet Feet in Greenville, SC, to get fitted for shoes.  My sister did at the beginning of 2020 and has been recommending it ever since then.  They’re the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn in my life!  I ended up with a pair of Brooks, and Nick ended up with a pair of Hokas.  Our feet didn’t hurt at all after the Dollywood trip.  Neither one of us could remember the last time we’d done that much walking (my step count was over 23,000 for the day) without our feet hurting.

12. I started a Zazzle store.  I love notebooks, so I’ve been putting my photos on notebooks. 

13. Walgreens’ text messages about pet prescriptions are hilarious.  I especially love the one instructing Duke the dog to pick up his prescription. 

So what have you been up to lately?  

A Long Catch-Up Post

 I know it wasn’t a very realistic hope, but I was kind of hoping that things would be a little more normal by the time I posted again.  Nope.  Not even close.  It seemed like North Carolina started off fairly strong, compared to neighboring states, in taking COVID precautions.  But now, despite all of the pleas from the experts, we seem to be on a crash course to disaster.  I don’t know of anyone now who hasn’t had a close friend, family member, or co-worker have COVID.  But enough about COVID.

Duke

We painted and re-did the floor in our kitchen in October.  We postponed our annual Folly Beach trip to next year, but still took the week off of work. We both have a lot of paid time off accumulated, so we decided to take the week and do the kitchen project.  

And that’s probably the last house project we’ll do for quite a while!  It took much longer, and was much harder than we expected.  You know how people complain that romantic comedies paint an unrealistic picture of relationships?  Well, I think that’s nothing compared to the lies Lowe’s and Home Depot are selling in their commercials.  The couples in those always look so happy during their projects.  They have on nice clean clothes and are smiling at each other.   There’s none of the covered in sawdust and paint and seriously re-thinking being married to someone who wants to blast whiney 80s music, or doesn’t know the name of every single tool.  Anyway, that’s my take on who sets couples up for unrealistic expectations.  

Fortunately, both of us, and our marriage, survived the kitchen project.  Here’s a progress picture.  I haven’t taken a finished picture yet because I only think about it once I’ve started cooking, and I’m so messy, I don’t want to take a picture of that.  You can at least see the colors.  Almost everything was a very ugly beige before.  

Painting in progress.

I’m still crocheting mask adapters/extenders.  There was a lull in people asking for them for a while, but people have started asking for them again, so I’ve been making and mailing them.  If you need one, let me know in the comments.  

Mask Adapters

We had a health scare with Tara in October.  It turns out that she has bladder crystals and has to be on a special diet.  She had to have an ultrasound to look for crystals (which the vet suspected) or stones, and to rule out any kind of mass.  Due to COVID, the vet’s office isn’t allowing people into the office, so we had to wait in the parking lot when Tara had her ultrasound.  One of the vet techs came out as soon as it was finished and told us, unofficially, that there were no masses, but the vet would be out later to tell us that officially and talk to us.  I wanted to hug her!  Every other time we’ve had a pet have an ultrasound, the news has been devastating, so we were pretty nervous.  I thought it was so sweet of her to come out and tell us the good news right away.

Tara has to be on a special diet, and we’re limiting her stress.  She’s a very timid cat, and is afraid of almost everything, so limiting her stress isn’t the easiest thing.  It has taken a lot of trial and error, but we seem to have figured out the food situation for her.  There are three different kinds she likes, for a few days at a time, so we have small bowls of all three brands of dry food out for her, and we alternate the brand of wet food every day or two.  Tara is also currently living in our bedroom, away from the other cats.  She seems to have no desire to leave!  Howard goes in and hangs out with her (and eats the special food he’s not exactly supposed to have) every day.  For now, it seems to be working.  We’re tossing around ideas for later on, but for the moment, she’s happy in the bedroom.

Doesn't she look happy?

We didn’t host Thanksgiving this year.  I was very disappointed about that, but I believe we made the right choice.  We did still get to drop off the meal for the hospice house, though.  I wasn’t sure if they would want us to, so I wanted until the week before to ask, since things seem to change so quickly.  The lady I always coordinate with was incredibly nice.  She said a few people had asked if I was bringing the meal, so that made me happy.  They aren’t allowing volunteers inside, but said that as long as we were okay dropping the food off at the door, while wearing masks, they would love to have the meal.  We were more than happy to do it that way.  We now have an uninterrupted streak since 2016, so I was thrilled not to miss a year.

Everything went smoothly with the drop off.  We’re normally able to use a cart they have, but couldn’t this year, so there were a lot of trips back and forth to the car, but nothing was spilled or forgotten.  We ended up talking to a very nice lady in the parking lot.  She was nice, but made me cry.  I’d like to go one year without crying! 

Two older couples that we’re friends with were also staying home for Thanksgiving, so I offered a drop-off/pickup of food for them since I was already cooking and it’s practically impossible to cook Thanksgiving dinner for only two.  One couple came and picked up desserts.  We talked for a few minutes through the glass door, which was strange, but also nice.  The other couple lives just down the street from us, so we dropped off desserts and sides, and they sent some different desserts and sides home with us.  It was a fairly warm day, so we sat out on their patio, six feet apart, in masks, and talked for a while.  Again, it was weird, but nice to see them. 

Like so many people, our Christmas plans look very different this year.  We’re not doing our usual trip to my sister’s.  We talked to her and to Nick’s mom and step-dad and all agreed to forego gifts this year, since we can’t be together, and plan for an insanely huge celebration next year.  Everyone was happy with that idea, so it’s nice that we’re all in agreement.  I imagine it would be very stressful if the people you normally celebrate with are taking a different approach from you.  

We haven’t even put up our Christmas tree this year.  Neither one of us felt especially motivated to on Thanksgiving weekend (when we normally put it up), and then we were sick (NOT COVID, we both had negative tests) for a while after that.  Then it just reached the point of not being worth it to drag everything out for such a short time.  It’s weird not having the tree up, but that’s 2020.  I did put up some wreaths on the doors, and we’ve been listening to Christmas music, so there’s some Christmas spirit here.  

The only Christmas shopping I’ve done has been for my chemo/senior buddies.  Their packages have all been shipped and delivered.   Caroline helped with the wrapping and packaging.  I decided on mostly small things that would fit in a stocking, so I hope they like everything.  We also did a family package for my buddy who’s married and has a young son and a dog (the dog toys were from Duke and the cats to her dog).  I asked Nick’s mom if the family package would be weird, and she said it wouldn’t.  Hopefully they’ll like it.  We included a DVD of Home Alone in it, which the kids next door LOVED, when they were the same age as her son, so we’re hoping his taste is similar.  

Caroline "helping"

I’m still working from home, as it seems a lot of you are.  I’ve worked from home longer than I worked in the office before we shut down.  And it has already been over a year since I started the new job!  I still love it, even if it’s a little weird working from home, so I’m so glad I made the switch last year.  

I think those are the highlights of what I’ve been up to since the last time I posted.  So what about you?  Any home projects?  Are you working from home?  What have you been up to for the past couple of months?  

I’m almost certain I won’t post again before Christmas, so I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas, or a happy holiday.  I hope you’re all safe and well.

AT&T, A to Z Blogging Challenge, and Catching Up

First of all, I’m back from a forced blogging hiatus.  Our internet wasn’t working for over two weeks.  We currently have AT&T, but are likely going to be changing providers within the next month or two.  I realize I haven’t responded to any comments this month, and for that I apologize.  Thank you very much for taking the time to read, and comment on, what I write.  It is always appreciated. 

Apparently something happened with the DSL lines, which I totally understand, especially given the bad weather and crazy wind we’ve had.  Mother Nature gets mad, stuff happens.  I get it.  But, the reason we are planning to change providers is their rotten attitude about the whole thing. 

Nick called them and explained the problem, and they basically treated him like a blithering idiot who was just too stupid to realize that the internet was working.  Now, I understand that they get a lot of calls from a lot of people who aren’t very technologically savvy.  I’m sure it’s frustrating, and I’m sure there are questions they have to ask to make sure they’re not dealing with someone who has accidentally unplugged something before they send out a technician.  I’m one of those people.  I admit that.  Nick isn’t.  He called and tried to explain what the problem was and what he had tried to fix it (which by the way, if they’d listened, would have told them it was a DSL line problem), but they treated him like an idiot and decided to send a new modem to solve the problem after several days of phone calls.

They sent the new modem (which wasn’t the problem) to the wrong address.  About ten years ago, the county re-numbered our street, and we went from 737 to 718.  This was done long before we moved in, and long before we signed up for AT&T.  All of the other utilities have been able to grasp this change, but not AT&T.  When Nick talked to them, he reminded him of the address issue.  Once again, they didn’t listen, so they sent the modem to 737, which doesn’t exist.  UPS left a notice that they couldn’t deliver the package because it had the wrong address, so we’d have to pick it up from their distribution center.

Nick picked the modem up the following Monday, and (surprise, surprise) it didn’t solve the problem.  He called AT&T on Tuesday and, once again, tried to explain the problem.  They finally said they’d send a technician out on Wednesday afternoon before 4:00.  When no one had arrived by 4:30, Nick called them back and was told that the technician had probably been tied up on another call and would be there by 8:15 Thursday morning. 

Thursday morning turned into Thursday afternoon, with no technician, so Nick called AT&T back and was told that they couldn’t dispatch a technician to 737 on our street.  He explained, once again, about the address change, and they said they’d send someone “soon”. 

That was the point at which I saw red.  I logged into Facebook from work and posted our issue on their wall.  I had a response within an hour asking me to email them with the details, which I did.  They finally forwarded our issues up to the next level, and three technicians later, our internet service was restored on Friday evening.  They’ve said they will credit us for the time we didn’t have service, but given their history, I’m not sure that will happen without a fight. 

On the bright side, we have a lot of other options for internet, and they did get our service restored in time for the A to Z BloggingChallenge. 

I’ve signed up for the A to Z Challenge this year.  I waited until a few weeks ago, but I really, really need and want to get back into a regular blogging schedule, and this seems like a great way to do it.  If you’re not familiar, basically you blog every day, except Sunday, during the month of April following the alphabet (the 1^st is A, the 2^nd is B, etc). 

I completed the challenge in 2012, and really enjoyed it.  I planned to participate in 2013, but life got a little scary and crazy, so I backed out.  But I’m back for 2014.  I’m not doing a theme, but I have written some posts already, though I haven’t done that in any logical order; my W post is written, my A post is not, and I’m super excited about my J post.  Are you participating this year?  Are you going with a theme or more freestyle?

In other catching up news, Emma had some less than great blood work results, and we’re still trying to figure out what’s going on.  I took her to the vet about a week and a half ago because we thought she might have a UTI.  She’d had a few accidents in the house, which is NOT at all normal for her, so I took her for what we thought would be a urine sample and antibiotics, but the urine sample revealed no signs of infection.

She looks great, and seems to feel fine.

Our regular vet was out of town, so we saw the other vet in the practice.  She’s a good vet, and she’s nice, but she’s just not our regular vet.  I know my fellow pet parents will understand this!  She mentioned possibly returning to potty training since Emma is an older dog and there was no infection.  I know Emma, and I knew it wasn’t a potty training issue.  She’s old, but she’s not senile.  The vet then suggested blood work since Emma is a senior dog. 

The blood work showed really high liver enzymes, and slightly high cholesterol.  The vet suspected Cushing’s Disease based on the blood work and Emma’s other symptoms, so we had more blood work done to check for that.  That test ruled out Cushing’s Disease, which is good and bad.  Our next step is an ultrasound of her liver, etc to look for any masses or anything abnormal.  We have that appointment on Tuesday. 

Unfortunately, they don’t do ultrasounds in our vet’s office, so we’ve been referred to an internist for it.  Emma doesn’t always do well seeing a new vet, so I’m a little nervous about that.  I’m also trying really hard not to dwell on the bad things an ultrasound might show.  Emma doesn’t seem to be in any pain; she’s eating and playing normally, and is acting like her usual happy self.  She’s not worried at all, but I would definitely appreciate any good thoughts for her. 

I hope life, pets, the internet, and everything else is well in everyone’s little corner of the blogging world.