We survived it! The cat-kids and I survived their vet visits for teeth cleaning this last week. Poor babies. Addy had 4 teeth extracted that were beyond saving. Zoe had 2 extractions and some gun resections. It's my fault their teeth were so bad. It's been over 10 years since I've had any work done on them. They just get so traumatized by vet visits that I don't like to take them in unless they're obviously sick. Still, the constant mouth infections is probably one of the things that adds to their overall health issues, including the kidney function issues. So there's really no excuse.
As expected, the three of us were traumatized by the process. All day while they were there I kept remembering my old cat Eber, who went in for a minor "routine" bladder surgery, and ended up with heart failure and fluid on her lungs. She was sick for over a month, and survived but lost half her body weight doing it. Eber was younger when that happened than both my cats are now, so I kept thinking about it all day while they were at the vet. I was so glad to get the call that all was well and I could come at get them around 6:30 pm. You can imagine, I was there at 6:15, doing the paperwork to get them released.
The cats were more traumatized than I was. It's taken them about 2 1/2 days to get back to eating and drinking normally. When we get up in the morning, they hide from me instead of following me out to be fed. So It'll take a while to completely return to normal. I figure just about the time they relax again, I'll need to take them back for a check-up. The vet wants to see them in four weeks to see how they're doing. Damn it! *sigh* Can't be helped.
The pictures of the cat-kids today show you their "bracelets". The vet place doesn't shave just a patch on their forearms to put the IV in, they shave around a section of the forearm. So it looks like Addy and Zoe are wearing bracelets until the fur grows back in. Maybe by then they'll have forgiven me. Maybe not.
I'm still working on figuring out all the bells and whistles on the new car. I need to take a picture of it and show off what it's like. It's such a deep navy blue that it looks black. I'm working on getting my vanity license plates transferred to it. I already put regular plates on the old Outback to get it ready to go to my sister. One thing the new car has is an electronic parking brake. Well, come to think of it, EVERYTHING in that car is electronic. But the parking brake thing could be an issue, because if you have the parking brake on and the electrical system dies (battery dies), you can't move the car. Wheels are locked. So just about the only major thing the sales guy showed me was how to climb half under the car and attach this long wrench tool to release the electronic barking brake should I ever need to. I hope I don't ever have to because you have to turn it 300 times.
Besides the navigation system, the car has satellite radio, which they give you free for the first month, then start billing you if you decide you want to keep it. It's a nice hook, because you can really get used to it in a month. I read some of the new car's owner's manual yesterday to start figuring things out. You can control the radio/phone/sound system from the steering wheel, which is kind of cool. No reaching for the radio. Changing volume, changing stations, changing mode (FM/AM/Satellite/i-pod) - all on the steering wheel. As is my cell phone, which I can now answer when it rings by hitting a button on the steering wheel. Spoiled much?
Oh, did I mention it has a sun roof?
It might be easier to list the things the car doesn't have/do.
Anyway, I've been out this morning, thinning out the mint around my patio again and dead-heading my roses. It's supposed to be another 100+ degree scorcher today, so I wanted to do a few things early. Then I can essentially relax the rest of the long weekend. Yay!
That's it for today.
I looked out in my back yard the other day and discovered that the two plants growing in my garden are most definitely not corn. As you can see in this picture, they're sorghum! I suppose the fact that they weren't growing tall should have clued me, but to me the small corn and sorghum plants are indistinguishable. I've seen sorghum in fields all my life, but had no idea what it is and what it's used for. So of course I had to look it up. It's a type of grass raised for its grain which is used in the US mostly as fodder for livestock, and it's put in things like birdseed. So I learned something new.
Things have gotten a little less crazy busy in the last week. I'm mostly caught up at work from being gone. This coming week I took a vacation week just to do projects around the house finally - a stay-cation. I'm not taking my usual 3-week August trip, simply because I've been traveling or gone from work a fair amount anyway this summer. So I decided not to go this year. Plus my sister who often goes with me is mad at me currently and my friend who goes, can't this year. I could have gone by myself, as I have many times in the past, but I decided I'd been gone enough for one summer.
My mint plants have been flowering for the last month or so. The blossoms are pretty, and pretty unique as you can see. And the honeybees just love them, so I have a fair number of honeybees out there in the back most of the time these days.
The birds are figuring out I've re-filled the feeders and are starting to come back, but I haven't yet seen the flock of sparrows who were here. Mostly I've seen house finches, the cardinal pair and the doves.
I should mention that I bought a new car yesterday. A pretty, midnight blue 2014 Subaru Outback with all the bells and whistles. It's going to take me a while to learn to drive it I think. Everything's electronic. Push button ignition (no key!), electronic parking break, back-up cameras for seeing behind you when you're going in reverse, navigation system, cell phone synced by bluetooth, etc, etc. It also has forward cameras, which if you leave them on while you're driving, will brake the car before you can if they see an obstruction ahead of you, and will also beep to warn you if you change lanes without signalling (figuring you're falling asleep at the wheel). You can also set the cruise control to drive a specific distance from the car ahead of you, so if that car speeds up, so will yours and if that car stops, so will yours. Won't be long before cars are driving themselves.
So far I'm driving with all those things turned OFF, although I have tried out the navigation system. We don't agree with the best route sometimes, so it politely recalculates the route if I go where it didn't intend me to. It's a pretty nice car, and handles like a dream, so so far I'm pretty pleased. I promised my sister I'd sell her the 2008 Outback, so that one will go to her whenever she wants to come and get it.
That's about all for today. I thought I'd end this with a picture of Zoe enjoying both the sunlight and the air-conditioning from the house. Or maybe she's guarding the door.
Later.
I'm so behind on posting on this blog. Busy, busy. But I'll come back to that. First of all the pictures on this post are a daily progression. For the fun of it, I took pictures of the opening sunflower every day. So day 1 was the first picture in the last post, and then this first picture of this post is day 2, and the rest of the pictures progress through to day 8. Kind of fun.
The bad news is though that the sunflowers never went to seed. We had some miserably hot temperatures, including a week in the 100s. No matter how much water I gave it, the flowers themselves drooped and drooped after these pictures were taken. The plant is still alive, but none of the blooms lived long enough to go to seed.
The corn plants are doing well. They're almost waist high on me now, and happily thriving, although I don't see anything resembling ears on them.
Let's see. I was gone for a week to a convention, which went well. I almost didn't go because my Mom's been very sick. Luckily, she turned around and began the long road to recovery just as the convention was starting, so I went to it. I managed to get in all the schmoozing I was planning on. The election's not until September, so I'll know October 1st if the schmoozing was helpful. Then I was home for a week.
This last week I was out in east Texas with my parents and sister and brother-in-law. My Dad was scheduled to have a pacemaker placed on the same day that Mom was scheduled to be released from the hospital. I figured my sister and her husband could use some help. They've been handling the load of both my parent's illnesses since they live out by them. The pacemaker placement and subsequent recovery has gone like a charm, but Mom's release didn't go smoothly. She passed out the day after her release and ended up back in the hospital for two and a half more days while they adjusted her medications and ran a billion tests to rule out any other causes. Looks like it ended up being a drug-related incident.
Don't ask me why they would send her home with three new medications she hadn't ever taken before, but at least one of them didn't work for her. Anyway, she's now back home again and doing well this time, gaining strength and adjusting to home life after a month and half in the hospital post aortic valve replacement. Nothing like having both parents with heart-related issues. But I'm delighted to say, both seem to be well on the road to recovery now.
I did spend all week in east Texas, although I had originally planned to spend 3 days. Luckily my pet sitter is awesome and adjusted her schedule to keep the cat kids covered. My cat kids are not too happy about me being gone two full weeks so close together, but they seem to be forgiving me. That'll last until I drag them to the vet to have their teeth cleaned at the end of the month. No doubt they won't be quite so quick to forgive me for that.
I'm fighting new car fever. I want to buy a new car. Doesn't help that I got the title to my current car in the mail. Paid off! Yay! I'm ready for that new one now.
I refilled the bird feeders, but the birds haven't realized it yet. The feeders were both completely empty when I got back yesterday, so the birds have been eating elsewhere. Usually it takes them a day or so to find the full feeders again. I haven't seen the little rat since before I left to go to the convention, so maybe he's found other food sources, or been found by the cats that roam the neighborhood.
The last sunflower picture is foggy because it was so humid that day that when I walked out of my air-conditioned house I couldn't keep the camera lens from fogging over. Oh, well. You can sort of see it.
That's it for today. More later.
We survived it! The cat-kids and I survived their vet visits for teeth cleaning this last week. Poor babies. Addy had 4 teeth extracted that were beyond saving. Zoe had 2 extractions and some gun resections. It's my fault their teeth were so bad. It's been over 10 years since I've had any work done on them. They just get so traumatized by vet visits that I don't like to take them in unless they're obviously sick. Still, the constant mouth infections is probably one of the things that adds to their overall health issues, including the kidney function issues. So there's really no excuse.
The cats were more traumatized than I was. It's taken them about 2 1/2 days to get back to eating and drinking normally. When we get up in the morning, they hide from me instead of following me out to be fed. So It'll take a while to completely return to normal. I figure just about the time they relax again, I'll need to take them back for a check-up. The vet wants to see them in four weeks to see how they're doing. Damn it! *sigh* Can't be helped. 
Besides the navigation system, the car has satellite radio, which they give you free for the first month, then start billing you if you decide you want to keep it. It's a nice hook, because you can really get used to it in a month. I read some of the new car's owner's manual yesterday to start figuring things out. You can control the radio/phone/sound system from the steering wheel, which is kind of cool. No reaching for the radio. Changing volume, changing stations, changing mode (FM/AM/Satellite/i-pod) - all on the steering wheel. As is my cell phone, which I can now answer when it rings by hitting a button on the steering wheel. Spoiled much?
