Is 2011 over yet?

Yeah, another fall off the planet moment. I blame work. No, really, I do. It’s still insane, as is most retail this time of year, and has been insane since the end of October. A few weeks ago, I managed to end up at the local urgent care from doing something messed up to my knee. a week of crutches later, plus pain killers, anti-inflammatories, and a trip to the orthopedic doc later, and I had a diagnosis of Pes Anserinus Bursitis – aka “your inner knee hurts a damned lot, so quit doing all that stuff for a while.” Well, there’s more to it, but that’s about what it ended up as. One week with the crutches, one week of being banned from stairs and ladders, and two weeks of physical therapy (I start my second week of therapy tomorrow). The therapy is helping, but I have a feeling that it’s not going to completely go away until I stop what I’m doing at work, which means getting a different job. Yeahhhh, fun times. :/

With everything that’s going on (Jared still looking for a new job, Mom having her own issues), it’s going to be a slim Christmas for us here. We’ve set a monetary limit on gifts for each of us this year for the first time in a really long time. If you’d asked me at the beginning of the year, with full knowledge of everything that would be coming out in the next 12 months, here’s what my list would have looked like:

1. Apple iPad 2, black, 16g, wi-fi only
2. Apple iPhone 4S, 16g for AT&T
3. Knit1 Oxford Gift Certificate (the local yarn shop in town that is awesome)
4. New cat tree for the kitties
5. Clothes, clothes, clothes!
6. Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition

I finally got around to making my list today, and for about 20 minutes only had one thing on the list: the gift certificate to Knit1 Oxford. It took me another 30 minutes to add on 4 books and a DVD set, and I still feel meh about adding them. Like I told my Mom when she was sighing at me, I -want- a lot of things, but they’re so improbable at this point, there’s no point in adding them to the list. What do I -want-? Everything on the first list, plus ethernet cables run through the old section of the house to get better wi-fi reception (old house walls made with chicken wire to hold the plaster = leaky Faraday cages). I also want a phone call from some place that I talked to back in October to say “let’s go on Round 2, you know, nm, let’s just have you start tomorrow, k?” I want no more stress from friends and family over money, cos they all have jobs that they love (or at least like) that they’re being appropriately recompensed for. I want time. Dammit, I want to be happy for more than 15 minutes out of a week, cos I’m tired of everyone around me having a crap existence right now.

Like I’ve said, it’s not the frostbite that gets you, it’s the frost-nibble, and dammit, I’ve been just about nibbled to death. :/

Bweh. Okay, off that. Something happy… Oh! So a good thing recently? I got to beta SWTOR, fell in love with the Sith Inquisitor like I thought I would, and before everything went to hell in a hand basket, paid for Jared and I’d Collector’s Editions in full. They asked me at the store “Why now?” My response: “We have the money now, and I’m terrified that if we waited til release day, it wouldn’t be there.” In hindsight, I was right and I rule. So come December 20th, Jared and I will have our CE keys and have been playing early access for 5 days and having a blast. Yey us. ^^; Hey, at least it’s something.

Mother’s Day and illness

First off, Happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there, whether it’s to human children or to the four-legged and furry. May you all have a lovely day, including being spoiled rotten.

And illness has hit our house again. /facepalm At least this time it’s not me or the cats. I guess The Powers That Be decided Jared needed to get hit with the sick bat this time around. He ended up coming home yesterday from work after getting sick at work. By the time he got home, he looked worse than when he’d left. Right now, I’m hoping it’s just a stomach bug, but with him saying this morning he’s aching all over, I’m not so sure that it’s a stomach bug anymore. Later today, we’ll take him in to an urgent care place in town (we have to wait til they open at noon, argh!) and see what they say.

And the weekend got busy yesterday, cos in addition to him getting sick, a family friend came to visit for the weekend. Well, she’s here to spend Mother’s Day with her mom, but she’s staying with us. Love having Joyce visit, and it’s been amusing watching Joyce and Jared talk to each other from across the room as Jared tries to stay at a distance to keep anyone else from getting sick.

Wait, he doesn’t try to stay away from me. … Oh, dear! We need to Have A Talk! /stomps off

Felis Interruptus

Yeah, I finally broke my streak of posting, but I have a darned good reason. Meet Kika.

Cute little bugger, ain’t she? I’ve had Kika since just after Christmas of 2006. I got her after my previous cat, Sylvie, passed away. She’s been an awesome kitty and while not the best with the full on lap snuggles like Pixie is, she’s still, well, awesome. In addition to “Kika”, she’s also called “Bunnybutt”, cos when she runs, if you watch her from the back, all you can see is this butt going up and down like a rabbit’s when it runs. She’s also called “Plushkitty” cos she so soft and squishy in the belly.

She hates that last name, tho, cos it means we just like to play with her belly.

But back to the reason I’m showing a picture of Kika. I mean, she’s a cutie and a half, but really, who other than Jared and I (and a few other assorted friends and former kitty sitters) care about pictures of her? Well cos she’s not here at the house right now. She’s at the vets.

Sunday, she started acting, well, weird. This is a kitty that loves food. Nay, ADORES food. The running joke is we could butter a brick and she’d try to eat it. So when we feed her and Pixie twice a day, we usually just about get knocked over by her trying to shove her head into the bowl. Sunday, she didn’t do that. When she finally got off the pillow at the foot of the bed where she’d slept all night, she had about three bites of food and walked off. Cue worry.

I finally got her to eat more, but it took a long while. I thought maybe she might have a allergy problem and may have a stuffed nose, so we went and got wet kitty food to try, since that’s stinkier and more likely to tempt a kitty with a stuffy nose. That night when I tried to feed her that, she licked at the gravy a few times then walked off. At that point, I called the local vet. He said sounded like a sore throat (she was also licking her mouth and nose a lot) and possibly a fever, but wasn’t worried yet enough to have me bring her in NAO, but to bring her in Monday morning.

Jared took her to the vets Monday morning since I had a doctor’s appointment, and later that afternoon, I tried to pick her up. No dice. He was right about the fever. She had a temp of 105. So she stayed overnight. Tuesday it was 106. Other than the fever, she was fine and sassy, so he kept giving her fluids and antibiotics.

Yesterday, however, he checked her all over for anything since her temp had gone down a little but not much, and we’re thinking he found the problem. She’s got a bite on the inside of her right front leg. We’re not sure if it’s spider, insect, or from her and Pixie smacking each other. But at least it’s something to treat instead of “random high fever with no other signs”.

So today, I’m hoping for a couple of things for my birthday (yep, today’s my birthday, go me), but the big one is that Kika comes home by tomorrow, and is back to her sassy, snarky, bunnybutted self sans fever soon.