EighteenTwelve

Snip tried fairly hard to die of something wrong with her pancreas on Thursday and Friday. Yesterday the vet made a house call with an ultrasound machine and couldn’t quite tell if it was severe pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer. She’s medicated and a little bit better today, but sitting around overthinking everything your sick cat is doing, or not doing, is a terrible way to spend a Sunday.

One of the reasons I don’t like changing the clocks in the fall is the being stared at by cats who don’t care what the clock says, it was dinnertime an hour ago.

Am I the only one shocked that a puppy who came from somewhere suspect didn't actually have parvo?

I think one of the owners said Moose was a collie/corgi at the very beginning, but I had forgotten that until he was running around on his short little legs.

As of today, I live with two official teenagers. Snip doesn't know she's 13; she merely knows that she'll be called a Mighty Huntress and scritched on the head if she brings me her puffball when I'm awake.

I'm kinda with the cranky Cheerios guy. I want to finish my breakfast (and put on pants) before being shoved out the door for a brisk walk first thing in the morning.

Apparently I need a cast-iron frying pan and something to hit with it, because every time the yellow M&M in the fudge brownie M&Ms commercial hauls off with the frying pan and the scream of frustration, I have to laugh and agree with him.

This weekend I had a list of chores to get done, including putting a drawer organizer in my desk drawer and vacuuming the office rug. So naturally, Lily, who has never shown any interest in empty boxes for the 13 years I've had her, adopted the box the drawer organizer was in. I turned around and saw this and decided the vacuuming could wait.

Long shot here, but I'm looking for a Land Rover commercial from sometime in the 90s. All I remember is a mother cheetah carrying her cub, and the line (delivered in a British accent): "A much better way to transport your children than carrying them in your mouth."

When Lily yawns, she crosses her eyes and sticks all her whiskers out straight forward, and looks completely ridiculous, and I giggle. When Snip yawns, I'm afraid I'm going to fall in, and I call her "O Ye of the Infinitely Expandable Head".

File this one under “silly pet parent”: I had been away for a week, and got home and noticed Lily’s coat was looking rough. I started wondering if something metabolic could be wrong with her, until I figured out that because I had been gone, the cats had been sleeping curled up together, and it’s winter in New England. Lily had a bad case of static electricity bed head, all over.

I babied my sprained ankle for three and a half weeks, and then last week I took it scuba diving in Bonaire. It held up quite well and I got to see a lot of fish and coral and sponges and turtles and a massive green moray eel. Parrotfish make me happy.

Last Sunday I sprained my ankle badly enough that the urgent care center thought it was broken (it isn’t). They put me in a massive walking boot just in case, and I dragged it around religiously despite it being heavy and awkward and no good at all on ice. Today I swapped the boot for a drugstore air cast, and went outdoors with both of my sneakers on, and I feel like celebrating. Dancing still wouldn’t be a good idea, though.

Lily took to sitting on a patch of bare floor, so I put one of the old cheap cat beds in that spot to see if she liked the bare floor or the location. It was the location (the heating duct runs behind it and warms up the wall), so I bought a better cat bed because Lily's an official teenager and I thought she might like more padding between herself and the floor. She did, very much. Then Snip discovered the new bed was quite nice, and parked herself in it. So I had to buy a second good bed and put it in Lily's other favorite spot. These days after dinner both beds are occupied by curled-up sleeping cats, and that makes me happy.

Not defending it, but how big a deal would it have been in the early 1950s for a woman with a kid to take a job?

Speaking of commercials with cats in them, I hate the Subaru commercial with the cat on top of the car. The scream when it falls off the hood is a stock "unhappy cat" noise (like a Wilhelm Scream for cats) but it sounds like the cat is in pain. Subaru should stick to dogs.

Last weekend I got my open water scuba certification. The last dive on Sunday was for fun, and we were out in Rockport, MA, messing around in the boulders. My instructor scared a lobster out from under a rock and he came shooting straight at me (tail first, which is how they swim) so I reached out and grabbed him. I let him go because we didn't have a lobstering license and he was too small to keep anyway, but let the record state that I have caught a moving lobster, 20 feet underwater, by hand. Let the record state also that my instructor is scared of lobsters and was mightily impressed with me.

I am grateful for having a washing machine that's a year older than I am (I found the receipt last night; it cost $250 in 1976). Because it's so old, it's repairable. It needs a new pump and a new belt, but I don't need a whole new washing machine.

Snip was called Fajita by the MSPCA, but it didn’t suit her at all. They told me she came in on a Mexican-food-themed day (Nacho, Fajita, Margarita, etc.).

I have to admit, I giggle at the Domino's ad where the guy catches an errant frisbee and throws back his pizza box, because I can see myself doing that. Gross motor coordination is not my best thing.

Teva is making its original design sandals again. Those were the ones I could walk miles and miles in without getting blisters. So I bought two pairs, and am wearing one now. The straps aren't stiff, so they don't rub, and they don't touch any of my current crop of blisters, of which I have six. My feet are very happy and the sandals from two years ago, which gave me the six blisters, are going in the trash.

For some reason I have never been able to figure out, Snip walks out of my bathroom on three legs. Only the bathroom, and only 95% of the time (if she REALLY wants to be on to the next thing, whatever it is, she'll forget to limp), but the rest of the time, she holds up her left front leg and hops out. The instant she hits the hall, she's back on four legs.

Franz Joseph Haydn is driving me insane. My chorus concert was on Saturday, and it was Haydn's Seasons. The Autumn section includes a drinking song with a horribly infectious rhythm, and it's been stuck in my head for two weeks now and shows no sign of leaving.

@Bastet Thank you! Now I know why Lily was so frantic and confused when she came home from the hospital post-thyroid. They'd given her an appetite stimulant because she wouldn't eat.

The music from the Modelo beer commercials (which the internet tells me is a remix of music from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) has leaked over into a LL Bean commercial. What I want is for it to go away, not be overplayed even more than it already is!