I'm a Winner!

Although this has been an inordinately quiet blogging month, it has paid off in the end.  Kind of.  Whoopis finally seems to be on the mind and the spider lily mosaic won first place.  That gets me a blue ribbon and $300.  A ribbon I tell you!  We tried to go see it yesterday but were 40 minutes too late.  Why do museums keep such dumbass hours?  Sadly we couldn't see my mosaic from any of the windows (last year you could see the seahorse from the entrance).  I did see a cupcake drawing by a young child.  It didn't win anything, which was sad.

Unframed, freshly grouted

Unfortunately, my laptop is dying.   It is sluggish and cannot even defrag itself.  Blue Screen of Death happens all the time now.  It is extremely frustrating to use it right now.  I have to wait quite some time before the words I am typing show up on the screen.  The anger it causes me makes me want to drive to Dell and tell them that I am glad they are going out of business.  But that would be rude to all the Dell workers who have been going through lay offs, and will continue to be laid off. 

This damn thing is just a couple weeks shy of being two years old.  I got a BSD the second day I owned it.  Due to my innate laziness, I didn't send it back.  I couldn't bare to be without a computer for however long it took Dell to fix the damn thing and get it back to me.  It probably wouldn't have worked anyway.  The hinge broke within months.  I've held it together with wishes and duct tape.  Opening and shutting it sounds like I am breaking the laptop in half.  For the most part it stilled work, but within the last month it has been gasping.  I've started using my iPhone for everything, and just not doing anything that involves spreadsheets.ward

I hate this fucker.  I'm going to back-up my files, and try to minimize my computer use until I can figure out what to do or give it to some shop to fix it.  I really don't want to lay out the money right now to buy a new computer (hello HP!).  Therefore, blogging will continue to be sporadic.  I apologize.

Sure, I just won $300 (I don't think I'll get it in hand until mid-December), but that isn't going toward a new computer.  I'm getting these beauties:

Fluevog: Mattie Silks

One Sure-Fire Way to Make Your Relationship Stronger

With less than three hours remaining, I remembered to pay our car insurance.  My mind has thrown up some kind of roadblock when it comes to paying bills these days.  I can't explain it.  At least most of them are in The Boy's name.  Brahahahahaha.

Whoopis is getting better in the tiniest increments.  He cleaned himself for the first time in over a week.  Sadly, we just discovered we have fleas.  We are not winning any pet awards this year.  Though, for the record, I did pull poo off of Whoopis' butt fur a bit ago with a Nutty Bar wrapper.  As Wikus said, "hilariously appropriate."  Nothing like jokes at the cats' expense.  So what if they have no idea why I am laughing at them.

I was out of the office for most of the day, and when I got back in this afternoon, Twit's timesheet was on my desk with a doctor's note saying that since she has now finished her radiation she needs a week off of work, and can return to work on November 34th.  WHICH JUST HAPPENS TO BE THANKSGIVING WHEN WE AREN'T WORKING!  So actually she gets 1.5 weeks off of work.  Bully for her.  My boss didn't say a word to me, and Twit just left her unfinished tasks on my desk to do for her.  Bitch.  The doctor's note also said that she'll need intermittent leave during December for "weakness and fatigue."  Hot damn, I should getting my own doctor's note if that is all it takes.

I coordinated an appreciation lunch for a group of my peers.  We normally have quarterly meetings, but we all agreed that me finagling a free meal for us would be a much better idea.  We have a crazy old lady who works with us, she's a widower who gets befuddled and upset very easily.  She called me the other day to yell at me about how upset she is that we were not having a meeting.  She thought we were having a meeting then a lunch.  She didn't want to do the lunch--she actually preferred to have a meeting.  She literally told me how UNFAIR it was, and that she was VERY VERY UPSET.  These are the people I work with.  And no, she did not show up for the 100%-free-to-her lunch today.

Not that this is bragging per se, but The Boy and I just finished Showgirls.  It took four or five sittings to make it through to the end.  It was a very hard thing to do, but I'm sure our relationship is now stronger because of it.

Fatty Lumpkins Nom Noms

Yes, Whoopis ate some food!  He started last night--I heard some nomming of the kitten kibble, and it wasn't the kittens eating it.  My little Chirpy Bird was shaking that food dead and actually ingesting a bit of it.  We're so proud of him.  He hasn't eaten a whole lot today, so more IV fluids and forced feedings.  We're going to start a decongestant for him (we can't give him too many medications at once due to his diabetes and how that affects his kidneys).  So it goes.

Wikus helped me draw out a fantastic mosaicing idea for a special someone for Chicken Day.  I am so excited to get started, but my allergies are so terrible that I fear I should not go in to the garage tonight.  It's a very simple project, so it won't take long to do (but may actually be my best design yet).  Since it is a prezzie, I won't be able to share it until after Chicken Day.  Just know I am constantly pissing myself with excitement.  I taped the design to my wall at work this morning, and it has garnered laughs (probably more of confusion than actual merriment, but I'll take what I can get).

NUTTY BARS!  A very nice gift from The Boy.  Yum.  This has been an awesome day for food; though, my body (specifically my heart and intestines) may disagree.  Barbecue, pizza and Nutty Bars.  I tried a banana, but it was actually not remotely ripe, and I had to spit the only bite in the trashcan (I felt like I had poured chalk dust in my mouth).  I cleansed my palate with three grape tomatoes.  Obviously that means I have a full serving on fruit, right?

I am sucking back some serious snot.  It is wholly unpleasant, which means I will make it just as unpleasant for all of you.

Can't Smell It, Won't Eat It

Whoopis is still not doing well.  His eye got better, but his infection is lingering, and he still isn't eating.  It is so distressing for all of us.  Multiple times a day we drag him out from under the bed to force various fluids in to him.  It is horrible.  He acts like he wants to eat, and cries like he is hungry, but simply will not go through with the act of eating.  I think he probably can't smell, and therefore won't eat anything because he can't smell to determine if it is edible.  He will drink a bit of water, but not enough.  Thus The Boy has to stick an IV in to Whoopis' back and have me squeeze fluid in to him.  As terrible as that is, it is way easier to do that then force his mouth open and shoot liquid down his gullet.  I'm not sure how much longer I can make the little guy go through this.

In other news, I just cleaned out the fridge.  I removed SIX packages of deliquesced vegetable matter (spinach, collard greens, etc.).  There was a bag of coffee that had been lurking in the back of the fridge for almost a year.  The Boy always insists that he will use something, but then it goes and  lives behind the front row of items, and it lingers until I come through and evict it.  The Boy just came home with groceries (yay, food!).  We'll see how much of it actually gets used.

Then Things Were Marginally Better

I'm sitting here watching the most recent 16 and Under, which may not sound like a good thing to some people, but it means that a) I didn't die, and b) nor did Whoopis.  It's just another low-key night in the Grumples' household where Whoopis is hiding his evil blind eye under the bed, and I'm sitting here accepting that I probably have some fatty log stuck in my intestines.

Using my health-measuring yardstick, not being dead after 36 hours of pain in my right side means it is not appendicitis.  Now I'm just going to do my best to ignore it.  I took some Metamucil (jesus, those pills are huge and you have to take five just to get one serving size) and ate an apple.  The Boy fell flat on his face and died when I asked him to bring me some fruit.  I swear I didn't mean to kill him.  I'm only eating it out of desperation.

Best quote ever, "...my girl's going to be working down at the local Piggly-Wiggly as a cash register."  Yes, that would be very sad.  I would much rather be a cash register on some swanky grocery store like Kroger's.  At the Piggly-Wiggly I'm mostly fed moist singles and worn coins.  It would be so unfair.

The vet came to visit Whoopis in his time of gurgling breathing and blood-tinted mucus.  It seems he just has a bad infection (she couldn't tell if it was his eye or a tooth), and put him on antibiotics and gave him an IV for hydration and nutrients.  We now get the phone of giving him eyedrops, pills, and more bags of fluid.  He already seems better, so I am much relieved.

Maybe my pain and his infection will go away magically by morning.  That is my hope for us at least.

In the meantime, here is a picture of my mosaic before I framed it.

Things Are Not Good

Things are not good.  They started out good in that I finished my mosaic (my absence from here was due to spending every last damn moment I could in the garage toiling away at the damn thing).  Then things went bad.  Whoopis is very sick, and we're waiting for the vet to come see him.  I am very worried this is it for my little guy.  He's having problems breathing and seems to have gone suddenly blind in one eye.  And he's drooling a foul brickish-colored mucousy substance.  Please say it is not blood and just weird cat snot, and that he has a cold.  I don't even care if he loses the eye.  Just let my baby be okay.

Oh, I also have a pain in my right side.  I woke up with it yesterday and it has not gone away.  It is not near my navel, and I refuse to think it is appendicitis.  I take high dosages of iron, and seriously hope it is just constipation.  It is not acute.  It more like a menstrual cramp that doesn't go away.  Like someone is lightly squeezing an ovary.  Nothing to make me scream, but hard enough for me to say "cut it out."  I am horrified at the thought of going to the doctor to find out I just need to take a huge shit.

I would hate for The Boy to have to deal with me having surgery and with Whoopis dying.  I'd hate it, too, but at least I would be knocked out for some of it.

For now, I'm just going to sit here on the couch and watch Whoopis breathe and gurgle.