COLD!!

January 2015 is well under way, and it's COLD outside.  I may have mentioned that I'm not fond of cold.  And today it's cold and gloomy, so twice as bad.  But I suppose I shouldn't complain.  It's not sleeting or freezing rain or snow.  Just cold and gloomy.

I have a new group of birds at the feeders.  It's not my sparrow swarm from the summer, so I'm only having to fill the feeders about once a week these days.  But I looked out yesterday and I have a couple of these guys on the feeder.  American goldfinches!  I didn't even know they came through here, but I'm glad they do.  Pretty birds - even with their winter coloring. And not very schitzy.  This one sat and let me take many pictures, so I posted several.  

I also have some black-capped chickadees hanging out, and some dark-eyed juncos, and of course, the mourning doves, a pair of cardinals and an occasional blue jay.  The juncos are definitely ground birds.  They forage in the yard or under the feeders, but I never see them up on the feeders.  And they are hard to get pictures of because they're very schitzy, as are the chickadees.

I'm actually glad to see the birds around.  After I had both my big trees trimmed up and all the low branches taken off, it seemed like the birds all left the area.  Of course that could be partly due to them migrating around that time, I suppose.  

I have been having trouble with a smell in my guest bathroom.  I've looked everywhere and cleaned everywhere and finally decided it was an animal that crawled under the house or into the walls and died and I'd have to live with the smell a while.  But that was back around the end of September and I still have the smell, so I was about to call plumbers out, afraid maybe I had another leak under my foundation.  I was talking about it to my friends at lunch last week, and one of them said, "google it. Maybe it's something you can fix."  So yesterday I googled it, as "sour smelling drain".   One of the suggestions that came up was to run hot water full blast through all your drains at once for 10 minutes.  Something about trapped gas in the drains coming back up in drains you don't use a lot, and I rarely use that guest bathroom.  I figured it couldn't hurt to run water in all my sinks, etc, for 10 minutes, so I did it.  The smell is gone.  I'm serious.  I've had that smell for 4 months, and I fixed it by running  water for 10 minutes.  Amazing.  And on top of that, I almost had a plumbing call too.  Guess I'll use that bathroom occasionally or at least just run water in there at times. 


I have all my aloe covered against the cold, but I'm kind of afraid of what they'll look like when I uncover them.  This has been a pretty extended cold stretch, dropping down to freezing or lower at night and just barely making it to the low 40s during the day.  Plus they're not getting any sunlight covered up like that.  I'd uncover them if it would stop freezing at night.  Oh well.  They're pretty hard to kill.  

My little pine looks dead, unless you look closely at the fat buds waiting for Spring.  And the little peach trees have dropped all their leaves.  I'll need to do serious trimming on those here pretty soon - whenever it's warm enough for me to get outside.  I don't want to leave it very late, because I want to trim them back while they're the most dormant.  And trim all the roses too of course, but it's going to have to be a heck of a lot warmer than it is right now for me to get out there.  Did I mention that I don't like cold?

Addy's still doing okay.  Still maintaining her health pretty well and demanding a lot of attention.  I am meeting some new pet sitters next week.  My current sitter is going to be having cataract surgery and I'm going out of town for a Board meeting the first week in February, which happens to be when she'll be out with her surgery.  So she recommended a service and I'm meeting with them this coming week.  So far, from their website and talking to them on the phone, I like what I see.  I hope I have as good of luck with them as I have had with my current pet sitter.  Even if I weren't a paranoid parent, I'd want someone to keep a good eye on Addy while I'm gone, at her age.

So that's all.  Not much going on right now.  Maybe next time I post I'll have been able to get out into the yard and putter around.             

New Year's Eve 2014

Wow!  I'm not sure how it can possibly be the last day of 2014, and the last few hours of that day.  2014 has sped past faster than light.  I'm not really sure where it's gone.  

Such a difference a year has made though.  After struggling with health and house in 2013, 2014 was much better.  I think I'll start out by skimming the major points of the last year.  

I guess the most notable thing about the year was losing Zoe.  Even when you know your pet-kids are old, losing them is not something you can really prepare yourself for and having to put Zoe to sleep hit me very hard.  I'm recovering slowly, but I'm recovering.  I think I'll be able to remember her without so much heartache in the not too distant future.  I'm not going to dwell on her tonight because I've been thinking about her a lot for the last couple of months.  One of my toasts this evening will be in memory of my sweet Zoe girl though.

The other big news for the year is that I won my election to office with my national professional organization.  In 2015 (tomorrow!) I'll be President-elect, and then in 2016 I'll be President.  To say I'm delighted would be a mild understatement.  I'm thrilled to death.  Especially because my opponent was tough.  This will mean a bunch more work the next two years, but I'm actually looking forward to it quite a bit.  It should also mean a decent number of cool trips too.

Most of the rest of the things that have occurred this year are not very exciting.  Health-wise, I finished the TB drugs in June.  I've had 2 mild colds over the course of the year and 5 migraines.  That's a high number of migraines for me in a year.  I usually average 1-2 per year, but one year of having 5 doesn't really mean anything, so I'll just keep an eye on that.  I've back-slid a bit on healthy eating, so my cholesterol has come up to around 200 again, but I'm maintaining my weight around 133 so I'm happy about that.

Once I got the house repairs finished in January, I've had no other house issues, except replacing the AC/heat system in July.  Compared to all the work I had done on the house in 2013, replacing the central heat/air seemed minor this year.  And wasn't unexpected given that it was the original system in a house the age this one is.

One really fun thing I did this year was the trip to Istanbul.  I'm glad I had the chance to take that trip.  And I had a great vacation to Utah and Colorado this year, despite more rain than I like.

So I guess I'd have to say that 2014 was good to me, even with losing Zoe.  I'm grateful to still have Addy, especially since she'll be 19 in February. I imagine I'll spend 2015 being an over-reactive and over-protective Mom with Addy.

Let's see.  Resolutions for 2015.  Pretty much the same as the last several years, I guess. Maintain my Health: maintain current weight, eat healthier and exercise.  And MONEY:  STOP SHOPPING!!!!!   Actually, the health thing is going well, it's the finances I need to crack down on in 2015.  They are way out of control.  It's now time to once again do what I did before I bought each of my current houses - get rid of my debt. I hate to admit though that the payoff is significantly more than it's ever been before.  Thus my resolution to get my act together and get my finances under control.  It's also going to be a tough resolution not to break because I simply love to shop. Oh well.  I've done it before, I can do it again.

So I guess that's the short and sweet of it.  I'll leave you with pictures of my Christmas tree and other various Holiday decorations, and Addy of course. Here's to Zoe and to 2015.

Happy New Year!  

Zoe 2

It’s slowly getting easier to see Zoe’s things around the house but I’m still not ready to post about all the good times with Zoe.  I’m still working through a bunch of regrets and times when I seriously miss her.  This post is another one to help me work through some of those feelings.  And to start posting some of the old pictures, including this picture of the first Christmas I had them. 

Regrets.   Where to start?

That Saturday I took her to the vet, I was sitting in the exam room at the vet, holding and stroking Zoe, and getting impatient wondering how long it would take for them to see us.  And all of a sudden I thought: ‘What if this is it?  What if this is all the time I have left with Zoe? Would I be impatient?’ Only I didn’t believe it.  I immediately shoved it out of my mind.  Impossible!  Only it was.  It was essentially all the time we had left in the world together while she was almost normal and I could really hold her.  Once the vet came in and took her to run tests, I never had her again.  Not like she was.  Oh, we had that last 24 hours, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. But she was so ill and frail by then.  I couldn’t hold her like I used to.  It really was all the time we had.  

So now of course I seriously regret all the thousands of times she wanted attention, and I was too busy.   Too busy to take some time and brush her or stoke her or play with her or just pay attention to her.   It hurts to think of all the times I said, “Not now, Zoe.  I’m busy.’ And ignored her.

I know it’s normal to regret the missed opportunities.  I know that.  But it’s so hard.  Zoe asked so little from me and gave me so much.  And, God, I miss her.  So much sometimes that it doubles me over from the pain of it.  Just seeing someplace that she loved to be – looking and without thinking, expect to see her there.  Expect to see her drinking from the birdbath, or laying on the bathroom rug, or reach to stroke her in her regular spot on the bed right before dropping to sleep at night.

And I regret all the signs of ill health I missed.  How could I not have noticed that she never went outside any more – when she used to love to stalk the birds for hours on end.  How could I have missed that she rarely left the bedroom any more, only venturing out to eat, and sometimes not wanting to do that?  Zoe.  Not wanting to eat.  I know, I know.  I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to accept that she was getting ill.   And truly, at her regular vet visit in July she had a clean bill of health except for the borderline iffy kidney function.  Three and a half months later I had to put her to sleep with heart and kidney failure.   And so I wonder, if it happened that fast, how could I have ignored it?  I suppose in the end, I was afraid that what happened would happen.  So I pretended she was fine – until I couldn’t any more.

There’s no way to know if I had done something sooner, if it would have made any difference.  And that’s both a curse and a blessing.  A curse because I’ll never know if something could have been done if I had acted sooner, and a blessing because it would be hard to forgive myself if I knew for sure that acting earlier could have helped.  I can’t know.  All I can know is that we all did everything possible once we started.  And I’m still struggling hard to forget those images of her suffering through it all.

I suppose I did see the signs.  Of course I noticed, but I rationalized it.  She’s getting old and slowing down.  She doesn’t like this food any more.  She has off days, she’ll be fine.  And underneath, I knew that when the health is precariously balanced and something upsets the balance, like a vet visit, it may be hard to achieve a re-balance.  I suppose I just didn’t think she could go from old-age healthy to put to sleep that fast.  So I do regret not taking her to the vet sooner.  That one I will always regret.

At the end, when I knew it was no good and took her back for them to put her to sleep, I got caught in two traffic jams on the way to the vet.  Inching forward in the car, stroking Zoe as she fought to breathe, wanting to get there so she could stop suffering, and at the same time grateful for the inching traffic that was giving me just a few minutes more with her.

I still haven’t put away her things. Her favorite toys and fleeces and places to sleep, cat bed and bathroom rug.   I miss her so much still, still expecting to see her waiting for her share of morning strokes, or waiting to be fed.  Eating the cat grass.  Sleeping on her scratching post or favorite chair.  I still expect her to come and get strokes like she always did when I first sit down on the toilet in the morning.  To come up and plop her big self in the middle of me when I’m reading on the couch, demanding some strokes.  Nobody turns the laundry basket over anymore, sleeping in the dirty clothes.  So her things are still all around the house.  I need to have her things around for a while longer – and that includes her urn. 

I managed to work my way through scanning in the pictures of her, and I do think I’m going to be able to remember her and all the great times without hurting so much one of these days.   I just have to tackle these things a little at a time, including these regrets.  When I stop expecting her to be there when I turn around in the house – I think that will be the point that I can start remembering her without crying.  Because I don’t want to forget her.  I want to remember how sweet and loving and undemanding she was.  My sweet big Zoe girl.  And then I can write that ‘good times’ post.

Nice day

I will definitely post about Zoe again, as I work through my grief over her, but I thought I'd do a random post today.  It's a lovely day outside and that always raises my spirits.  Yesterday it rained all day.  I was happy for the 1.5 inches of rain, but gloomy days still depress me - right now more than usual.  So I'm happy with the sun and cool temperatures.

This first picture is Addy chilling outside.  I'm using this picture not only because I almost always post pictures of the cat-kids, but because I also wanted to show that the little pine tree was once again doing pretty well.  Because the next picture down is that little tree this morning!  I don't think it's the type of pine that normally loses all it's pine needles in the winter, although all pines shed some needles in the winter.  But it looks like it's going to lose them all this year.  I'm guessing that's because I tortured it this year.  It has nice buds covering it, at the branch tips and all the nodes along each one, so I think it will winter over and grow again in the Spring.  That last week of below freezing temps we've had has made it decide to shed it's needles for this year though.  

The peach trees' leaves are finally beginning to turn color also.  The freezing temps caused a massive color change this last week to all the leaves that normally change, including the Bradford pears and the maples in the area. A few good storms will probably take most of those leaves down.  The peaches have been hanging on to their green leaves though.  This morning finally I'm seeing some change beginning in them too. 

I also wanted to post a picture of the plant that my work colleagues sent me when Zoe died.  It's so cool that they understood what she meant to me and sent me a plant.  This is a peace lily I believe.  It has really unusual blooms, as you can see.  I hope I can keep it alive since my track record with plants isn't the greatest.  I brought in the spider plant, so it's doing okay.  The wandering Jew, I just took three cuttings from and put in water and left the rest outside.  It was really too big to bring in - and I say "was" because that big plant is DEAD.  The multiple days of freeze did it in.  

Most of my birds have left the area also.  I'm only filling the bird feeders about every 5-6 days rather than daily.  I see mostly doves out there, with a few sparrows now and then. I hear cardinals occasionally too.   

Every month or so, especially in the winter, I grow grass for the girls to chew on.  Zoe really loved it, but Addy likes it too.  This last batch I noticed that the grass was respiring and producing water!  I don't know how well the picture shows it, but there is a droplet of water at the tip of each blade of grass.  Kind of cool.  Maybe that's one of the reasons the cats like to chew on it.  

I found an album of pictures of Zoe and Addy when Zoe was a tiny kitten.  I'm working on scanning those into the computer, so I when I do the next post on Zoe I'll have kitten pictures for it.  16 years ago I didn't have a digital camera, so I have many pictures that need scanning.  So I probably won't do my next Zoe post until I get a good portion of those in.

Anyway, that's it for today.  See ya next time. 

Zoe

My sweet Zoe is gone.   My big, clumsy, soft, incredibly sweet, fat cat is gone.   I’m struggling to deal with a massive hole in my heart – a huge pain that rises up at random times when I see the spot she loved to sleep, or turn, expecting to see her waiting to be fed.  And of course, there’s all the second guessing, what ifs, if only's . . . it’s endless.  These are some of my favorite pictures of her - while I tell you what happened.

Three weeks ago, I saw that Zoe was working hard to breathe.  This wasn’t the first time.  For nearly a month I’ve randomly thought – is she breathing hard?  But the next time I looked she would seem fine.  So I ignored that fact that her purr seemed liquid.  Until that Saturday morning, when I saw her working just to breathe and unable to get comfortable.

I took her to the vet and they had to put her in an oxygen box.  Fluid on her lungs and heart disease.  Of course that wasn’t an immediate diagnosis.  Her breathing was so bad that they couldn’t take her out of oxygen long enough to get x-rays or a sonogram of the heart.   I had to leave her in that oxygen cage and go home without her.

If I had known then what she would go through for the next week, I would have had her put to sleep then, but you can’t know.   I couldn’t stop hoping there was something we could do.  And to give them credit, the vets tried hard – and so did Zoe.

She had both heart disease and kidney disease.  I’ve known for a long time that her kidney function was iffy.  But the two diseases together are pretty much the worst combination you can get.  They restricted her fluid, so her breathing improved as fluid left her lungs, and her kidneys tried to shut down.  They increased her fluids to help her kidneys and her lungs filled back up with fluid.  For a week, my girl lived in an oxygen cage while we tried everything, so many medications and fluid regimens, to try to balance the needs of the kidneys and heart. 

In the end, we couldn’t achieve it.  Nothing worked to balance her.  So they tapped the fluid off her lungs, weaned her off the oxygen as her breathing improved, and sent her home with me with the combination of meds most likely to succeed. 

We had 24 wonderful hours together.  She slept in her favorite place – so peaceful, breathing so easily, sleeping so well.  I let her sleep as much as possible, and stroked her when she was awake.  She tried to purr.  But she wouldn’t eat or drink, and finally she began to struggle to breathe again as the fluid came back. 

I took her back to the vet and held and stroked her as they put her to sleep.  It was very quick.  They gave her a little sedative to start, but as soon as it kicked in, she was gone.  As soon as she wasn’t actively fighting to live, she was gone.  Everything shut down.  I think they didn’t need the other drug although they used it.

The vet said there were no right or wrong answers at the stage Zoe was in.  But I can’t help wondering.  If I had taken her a month earlier would her chances for living longer been better?  Or would she just have spent more time in misery while we tried to give her medications and fluids and treatments.  As it was I wish I could have spared her that week of misery, but I had to know that we had tried everything.  I think in the end, I waited so long to take her in because I knew in my heart that she was a 16 year old cat and she would not survive once her precarious health balance was upset.  I wanted to give her a peaceful life at home as long as I could. 

I suppose I’ll never really stop wondering, what if.  But we had 16 wonderful years of companionship and love, and I am working now to actively recall all those great memories and times – to actively replace memories of her struggling and suffering with the memories of her during the million great times.  This post is part of that struggle.

Goodbye, Zoe, my love.

 
 

Random things

I don't have any real reason to post today.  It's just been a while so I figured I'd ramble on for a bit.  It's kind of a gloomy day and cool, currently about 69 degrees at 1:00 pm in the afternoon.  So I'm cleaning and doing random things, including posting to this blog.  The girls are sleeping or hanging out.  Since they're 16 and 18 years old, they do a lot of sleeping now.  

The sages I planted are doing well.  The Russian sage is still blooming as you can see.  The Texas sage has stopped blooming, but looks good.  So it looks like I managed not to kill either one so far.  I'll be interested to see how they winter.  I know the Texas sage has leaves year-round, but I don't know about the Russian sage. 

The little pine is looking okay, but is getting brown tips on it's pine needles.  Maybe that's normal pine behavior when they prepare to be somewhat dormant over the winter.  It would be just too ironic if the brown tips I tried so many things to cure a year ago are normal for a pine before the winter comes.  Whether they are or not, I'm not treating the tree with ANYTHING.  It will survive or not as it sees fit.  

The peaches are putting on that last growth spurt before they drop their leaves.  My big peach at the other house did this too.  They actually grow more in the early Fall than any other time of the year.  Maybe peaches are too busy producing fruit to grow in the Spring, so they grow in the Fall instead.

And in other gardening news, the aloe vera that got frost damaged and stayed out all winter last year, is the healthiest one of my aloe veras.  It's a nice dark green and thriving, as opposed to the ones that I kept in the house over the winter.  Those in-house ones got badly sun-burned when I put them outside last Spring and are still pale and just beginning to look good.  That's yet another indication that I should leave my plants alone and just let them grow.  They always look worse when I try to "help" them.  

In work news, I managed to win my election to national office in my professional organization!  To say I'm delighted about that would be a massive understatement, because I had a tough opponent.  That puts me as President-elect next year in 2015 and President in 2016.  I suspect the next two years are going to fly past even faster than the last two have.  

My neighbor across the street had foundation repair work done last week, and it not only made me very sympathetic, it caused dream flash-backs.  I dreamed twice last week that my foundation shifted and I had these huge cracks in my walls and ceiling and had to have the foundation work re-done.   It made me realize again how great 2014 has been and what a difference from my struggles in 2013.  On top of that I've only had two minor colds this year, and I'm maintaining my weight around 132 without too much trouble.  My cholesterol is back up to 200 the last time I had it checked, but that's because I started eating some greasy fast food again, and slacked off on the fruit eating.  Guess I'll have to keep an eye on that.  Shouldn't be too hard to find a happy medium.  Plus my HDL cholesterol was 91, so nearly half my total is "good" cholesterol. 

So unlike last Fall at this time when I felt like the whole universe was against me, I'm once again pretty happy with my life and how things are going.   

That's about it for now.

Gardening

Man.  Once again a month has gotten away from me.  Here we are at the end of September.  Time continues to move way too fast.  Plus I've been busy on the weekends, which is when I usually post to this blog.  So blogging falls by the wayside when I have too much to do.

I've been gardening today.  Or at least puttering around outside, pretending like I'm gardening.  I pulled nearly all the mint out of the garden around my patio.  Mint tries to take over everything, so I have to pull it occasionally.  I love the smell of it though and the bees love the mint flowers. I also pulled lots of other plants that I have no idea what they are.  But they're not flowering, so they go.   I found this little blue flower in the first picture, a morning glory maybe?, hidden in the mint and I did leave it growing.  I also pulled up the remains of the sunflowers that grew from the birdseed.  I let them grow until they flower, because they're pretty, but it was time for them to go.  

Then I dead-headed all my roses and then drained and cleaned the metal tub out by the fence that's become a gnat-squito (Dad's name for these damned tiny mosquitoes that are about the size of and as aggravating as little gnats) breeding ground.  That tub is also where the birds like to drink, so I cleaned it out and refilled it, with the intent of flushing it out every few days.  

Then after all that, I planted two sages in between the shrubs around the patio - one on each side.  Those are in these two pictures of plants with purple flowers.  When I was in Colorado this summer I kept seeing this shrub that was flowering a gorgeous purple color.  It was such a bright spot in every landscape where I saw it, that I finally asked someone what it was.  It's called Russian Sage, and it's supposed to grow here in Texas too.  So yesterday I was picking up some potting soil at Home Depot to plant cat grass in (I grow the cat-kids grass every month or so), and I saw some small Russian Sage shrubs.  And right next to them were some small Texas Sage shrubs and it reminded me how much I liked the Texas Sage at my old house when it would bloom purple.  So I bought one of each type, and today I planted them on either side of the patio.  

I know it's probably not the ideal time of year to be planting things, but I figure, this is Texas.  If we get a freeze it probably won't be until January, December at the earliest.  So the sages should have time to take root in place and grow some before the weather turns on them.  We're still dry as a bone here though, so I'll have to be sure and water them a bunch.

I took pictures of the three peach trees today.  The one by the back fence is doing okay, but the other two are growing gang-busters.  I've but in some pictures from June and from today, so you can see how much they've grown.  The top picture is June on the smallest tree when it was almost half as tall as the fence.  Below it it today, when it tops the fence.  Then below is the oldest tree in June when it was just taller than the wall, and  the last picture shows it considerably taller than the wall.  

You can also see that they think they're shrubs, not trees.  When they drop their leaves this Fall, or before they put on new leaves next Spring, I'll try to trim them into some sort of tree shape.  That won't be easy for the one that was the smallest and it now the largest because it got mostly buried by the foundation guys and came back up this Spring as multiple limbs from the ground.  There's not really a central trunk there.  I'll have to see what I can do with that peach shrub.

The birds are unhappy with me because I was outside on the patio a bunch today, disrupting their feeding.  I did pull the hummingbird feeder today while I was out there.  I've been watching it this week and haven't seen any hummers at it for at least a week, so I guess they've moved on for the winter already.  I still have plenty of sparrows and finches though.  Some of them may try to stay through the winter.  

Anyway, That's what I've been up to today, digging holes and planting things and cleaning up.  It's been nice and decently cool in the mornings lately, although it was getting hot by the time I finished.  I like the cool morning time of year.  I could wish it wouldn't get up to 90-ish in the afternoons, but I can't really complain.  For Texas, we've had a cool summer.

That's all today.