Life is in flux BIG TIME these days. I want to keep in touch with all of my peeps. The Internet is this beautiful thing. I can move to a brand new city and still stay in easy, near-daily contact with the people I love. When I feel connected to the people in my life that matter, I am unstoppable!
Maggie’s kidneys are failing. All the details are here:
I was so sad last night. It’s really been a doozie of a summer.
This morning when we woke up, I took Maggie to the vet for the first of two days of dialysis. I spoke with the vet about the fact that I have planned a party for myself tonight. She said I could either leave Maggie at the vet overnight or pick her up at 5:45pm before they close at 6pm. She said Maggie would probably just sleep a lot, so the fact that I will be out of town for a few hours shouldn’t be a problem. In short, THE BLARTY’S ON!
Here are a few pictures from this morning (settling into the car and the drop off):
Filed under: Kitties — Comments Off on Some Bad News About Maggie; Blarty Update
Five years is 1,825 days, and all together, I’ve posted 1,480 times. That’s an average of 4 out of every 5 days! It’s a lot, and there was a time when I was frequently posting 2-3 times a day. As with pictures, I post when I like. Since the dawn of Twitter Google Shared Reader (shared RSS) and Tumblr, I no longer use my blog to repost or share items created by other people. This is something I used to do often. In recent years, my posts have become much less frequent, but I still like having the blog. You won’t see 1,825 posts if you search. I have hidden large sections of my archives, just because I don’t see that there’s much of a reason for anyone to be able to have total access to everything I’ve ever posted – well, anyone other than me.
Anyway, point is: Tuesday, 7pm-12am. If we’re friends, or you read my blog, you are invited. Hope to see you there!
My kitties are having a really rough time. Maggie hasn’t been eating at all. She’s been to the vet twice. There are calcium oxalate crystals in her urine, but no stones were visible in her x-ray. They put her on special food, but she isn’t eating it at all, and now she’s just not eating anything. Yesterday, she weight 8 ounces less than she weighed 10 days earlier. What’s weird is that she isn’t acting all that strangely. She’s still peeing outside the box sometimes, and she’s definitely staying close, but she’s willing to play, and she seems happy. It’s weird. She just won’t eat. I got her to eat a bit yesterday and the day before after buying her a different type of food, but today, it’s back to no eating at all. Earlier, when she woke me up, I tried feeding her, but she didn’t want to eat. So finally, I gave her the appetite stimulant pill the vet game me. She then proceeded to puke it up. Sigh… The pill was whole, so I cleaned it off and crushed it up into her food. She still wouldn’t eat more than a bite or two. She just woke me up again, and I tried to get her to eat. No dice.
Jeep is another story. She’s kind of crazy. When I take Maggie to the vet, Jeep freaks out completely. Yes, you heard right. Jeep gets very stressed by the smell of Maggie after she arrives home. So she was already stressed by Maggie’s vet trip, and then she herself had to go to a new vet. This has been scheduled for several weeks. She is participating in a pain study at the NCSU vet school. So I take the poor girl over there. She HATES the car (got some audio of that)…
Once we arrived, there was a lot of paperwork for me. And meanwhile, in the same exam room, Jeep was tested for arthritis. This was sad and kind of funny, too. They basically stretch her in various ways to test for pain. My question was this: “I know she’s going to growl at you the entire time, so how will you know when she’s in pain?†Apparently, the growl from pain is different than the regular growl. Poor girl, to see her arms being pulled, along with the crescendo of growls… She was NOT happy. They found what I expected they’d find: pain in her hips. They kept her for a few hours. She was sedated and x-rayed. The x-rays revealed visible signs of mild degenerative joint disease in both hips. She was given a collar that monitors her activity level, and I received detailed instructions about what I need to do to until my next visit there.
The bad part of all of this is that because Jeep was sedated, she now has dilated pupils, poor vision, and is really sensitive to light and noises. She also seems to have no balance at all. So she’s pissed, walking into things, hissing constantly, a real delight. And Maggie doesn’t really know what to do with her. Jeep has been hanging out in my closet with the lights off, and Maggie has been following me around wanting attention, but not food.
I’m glad I have nowhere specific to be today. Think I might take Maggie back over to the vet (it’s very close by) and see if they can get that appetite stimulant down her without her puking it back up. That might make the day a little better. Since I’m stuck in, it might be a nice movie/reading/photo editing/cleaning day… although I REALLY want to vacuum, but I don’t see that as a good idea, given Jeep’s fragile state.
In 6 days, this blog will be 5 years old! It’s not a real occasion, but who cares. I wanna have a party! I twittered about this blog party idea, and Katy suggested I have a “blarty,” so BLARTY it is! More details to follow. What do you think a blarty should include? I have to start planning!
Ginny asked me about my favorite iPhone apps this morning. I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d just share my answer to her in a blog post. Thanks for the inspiration, Ginny. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while!
Feeds is awesome if you use Google Reader, and just awesome for RSS feeds in general.
eBuddy is new, free, and AWESOME. It’s an IM app that uses push, so you can set it to wait for 5, 10, or 15 minutes after you exit it so stop being “on.” Hard to explain, but it’s really good. Interfaces with all the popular chat clients.
ReQall is badass for speaking to do lists and converting them to text. Worth experimenting around with. I love it for talking in things I need to do when I’m driving!
My favorite Twitter app is Tweetie. Tweetdeck is nice, but crashy sometimes.
Audioboo lets you post talking directly to Twitter.
Are you a Last.FM user? If so, the app is great. (For the record, these are so easy to find by looking them up on your iPhone or in the iTunes app store, that I’m going to stop doing all the leg work at this point in my blog post!)
I have three radio apps I use: Slacker, Public Radio (for listening to Tara on WCPE!), and Radio Paradise.
For reading when I’m out, I have the Kindle app, Instapaper (free AND paid are both good – takes a little learning to get going, but it’s so badass, it’s ridiculous).
Do you use Tumblr? If you do, then the app is excellent. I recommend it highly, for posting and reading.
Shazam is fun to have, cuz why not? And it’s free.
Card Star will blow your mind. You won’t have to carry around those little keychain cards anymore. It really works.
Shopper is good for grocery lists.
Evernote is handy as hell.
Local Picks is (to me) the most useful of the location-based sites (better than Yelp or Urban Spoon if you ask me)
Produce Guide and Locavore are good for being healthy. I love the little quiz in Produce Guide.
Birdhouse is good if you have a bunch of things you want to tweet, but you don’t want to flood your stream. You can save as many as you want. I don’t use it a lot, but when I need it, I’m glad I have it.
iMapMyRide is great for biking, and I know you can use it for walking and running, too. It tracks your route, speed, etc.
Now Playing is so good when you are thinking of taking yourself to a movie. It interfaces with Rotten Tomatoes, which is my favorite movie site online. It’s purely data based. So instead of averaging the reviews, it simply culls all reviews of a given movie. Each review is considered GOOD or BAD. Then it gives you a percentage of how many reviewers liked it and how many hated it. If more people hated than loved a movie, I’d rather not waste my money!
i.TV is good for finding when stuff is on TV. I use a TiVo, and I can schedule recordings right from my phone.
Bebot is silly and fun and awesome and just a trip to play with.
Games I dig are Solitaire City Spiderette, Peggle, Quordy, and Drop7. The kids are really into Flight Control, but I’ve been trying to resist addiction to another game.
There are many more I love and have on my Mac at home for when I feel like adding stuff back, but I don’t like more than 4 pages of apps at any given time. More than that, and I can’t find anything. My main rule for myself is to keep the stuff I use most on page one. Page Two is for Camera Apps, Audio Apps, and Reading Apps. Page Four is for Games and Entertainment Stuff (TV/Movies). Page Three is all the other Utilities I use.
My Current Page One
That’s my iPhone way. Everyone’s is different, but mine makes me superhappy.
