A Charmed Life

Me-Ouch

There's no funny way to say this. Cat-tastrophe hit the Charmed household again today, and I said goodbye to my sweet little 12 year-old tabby earlier this evening.  I brought my camera along, so I could get a final picture of Bonnie in her favorite spot- riding on my shoulder.  The picture doesn't nearly do her justice- she's obviously in pain, so her eyes are slitted and you can't see her beautiful chartreuse eyes with the ring of sea-green around her pupils.  A photograph can't show her silky bunny fur, and you can't hear her purring her head off, or feel her starting to drool like she always did on my shoulder, because she has always thought my hair was her mommy.

I kind of was her mommy, since I've had her since she was three weeks old.  Back in 1995, when I knew next to nothing about cats, I bought what I was told was a 6 week-old kitten at a pet store in central California.  When she started having diarrhea all over my rug, I brought her back to the store, where the proprietor wormed her.  That afternoon, the little kitten (who I'd named Callie) collapsed into a coma and later died at the vet's office.  As it turned out, the horrified vet informed me that Callie had only been three weeks old, and that the worming had probably done her in.  I wanted to take the shop owner to small claims court for my staggering $129 vet bill (ahh, those halcyon days, when I thought *that* was an expensive vet visit!), but since I was moving several hours away to San Diego, I accepted another kitten instead.  I brought her straight to the vet, who told me I had another three week-old on my hands, and that she needed bottle-feeding if I wanted her to make it.

I named the new little girl, who wasn't much bigger than a hamster, Bonnie, for Scarlett's daughter in "Gone With The Wind" who had "bonnie blue eyes".  That's how young she was- her eyes weren't even green yet.  The first thing I did was to de-flea her with baby shampoo.  She was immature enough that even that amount of chemical could have hurt her, but she had so many fleas that she could have died from anemia anyway. I had to clean her after every meal, because she didn't even know how to wash her own face, and I rubbed her tiny tummy with a gentle finger to stimulate her digestion like her mother would have done. She refused to sleep in the fleece bed I bought her, and instead scaled the bedspread like some miniature Sherpa until she reached my pillow.  She'd curl up under my shoulder-length hair, actually rolling herself into it, and would suck on it like she was nursing.  I remember having to cut four inches of dead ends off of it once that summer was over. 

Even after she weaned, she still thought of my hair as her mommy, and would climb onto my shoulder at the slightest provocation and start to drool.  Our favorite "party trick" was for my to pat my shoulder from several feet away, and she would lightly spring into the air and land on it.  She stayed very petite, so I could easily walk around the house and go about my business without disturbing her from her perch. 
Though she'd never had much time with a real mother, she had more than her fair share of a maternal instinct.  Everything needed a bath, she decided, everything from the other cats to stuffed animals to my then-husband's hair.  I'd wake up in the morning to see one neat white-gloved paw laid tenderly on each of his temples, and the front of his hair soaking wet, not so much because he didn't have the heart to shoo her off, but because he wanted to see just how long she would try to groom him before deciding he was "clean".  (He gave up after ten minutes, when the sandpaper tongue got to be a little much.)

Bonnie never changed her sweet and loving nature, even through her long illness.  Our vet, a lovely man who is a cat aficionado and has twelve of his own, told me today that she was probably the sweetest-natured cat he'd ever seen.  I'd love to say that it was because I raised her, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it's the other way around.  I wish I could say that she went gentle into that good night, but with how sick she was, her veins had collapsed and it took three separate tries to give her the injection.  My poor barely 4-pound cat had me and two vet techs holding her down, along with the vet trying to insert the needle, and by the end all of us were sobbing.  I'm glad I at least got to be there, since I'm leaving town next week and I would have been devastated to leave her to die without me.

Goodbye, my little Bonnie bubbles. I'm sure I'll see you again, and I promise you can sleep in your favorite spot.

Happy Love Thursday anyway, and if you have a cat, pet her extra for Bonnie and me.

Eeek, A Mouse

I'm not much of an athlete.  When I tore my meniscus in high school, I told people I'd injured myself on the football field.  Technically, this was the truth.  I simply neglected to mention that I was in marching band at the time and had hyper extended my knee marching backward over a color guard member's flagpole.  So when I tell you that I have to cut this post short because of a surfing injury, I should probably admit that my itsy bitsy teeny weeny underwired pink bikini had nothing to do with it. Microsoft is to blame, specifically my rollerball mouse.

I can't actually prove that web-surfing and typing gave me yet another ganglion on my wrist.  All I know is that I see stars every time I try to scroll down a page, and this is coming from a woman who had natural childbirth.  At least this time it's my right hand (I'm a southpaw).  The first time I hurt my wrist, I was taking a karate lesson from my then-husband.  I blocked him with a little too much enthusiasm, and was packed off to the base hospital for x-rays.  The doctor looked at me very seriously and asked me to tell him the "real" story.  At my puzzled expression, he clarified, "If your husband is beating you, you don't have to be afraid to tell us."  I burst out laughing and replied, "First of all,*I* hit *him*.  Secondly, if he ever laid a hand on me, he'd be your patient, not me."  One wrist brace and a prescription for "vitamin M" (Motrin) later, and I was on my way.  I've had a lump on my left wrist ever since, despite having the ganglion drained, especially since there's no practical way for me to avoid using that hand, which is the only real way to help the inflammation go down.  And I refuse to have surgery on my dominant hand.  I just constantly apologize for my lousy penmanship (admittedly never that great to begin with, so at least now I have a valid excuse).

A lot of lefties are more than a little bit ambidextrous.  I'm not one of them- I've always bragged that my right hand does little more than prop my head up when I'm tired.  Whoops.  My bad.  It's amazing that I never noticed that I need that hand to put on a bra.  Now getting dressed in the morning looks somewhat like trying to force a rubber band onto a water balloon.  Anything that bends my hand to more than a 20- degree angle either way makes me yelp.  Ever tried to pick up a wiggling 27-lb. toddler in one hand?  I should just lasso her with the bra, first.  Forget web-surfing- and since I'm not a scary Internet pervert, it takes me forever to type.  (Yes, I know, I should just shut up already, but my hand hurts and I can't sleep and I get twitchy when I don't write.)

On the bright side (you know the refrain by now, "and there always is one"), everyday hausfrau stuff like laundry ( now cruelty-free!), vacuuming and cooking don't hurt a bit.  (Dave, if you tell on me that I don't vacuum much anyway, I will karate-chop you with my good hand ;)  On the very bright side, I am getting many sympathetic kissies from the adorable blonde sprite who chirps, "Owie?? Mmmwwwahhhh!" and plants a wet one right on the wrist brace.  That almost makes up for having to pay $21.95 for the darn thing.

And, you know, maybe Santa will bring me a laptop with a keyboard mouse.

The Lights Are On, But No-one's Home

In a nutshell, why I feel blessed this Sunday:  our house is finally on the market, I didn't kill my daughter's cat, and you can evidently get the smell of cat pee out of the dryer.

I may have mad skillz in the kitchen, but I'm no Martha Stewart when it comes to keeping house.  As anyone who stays home with a toddler can attest, doing housework with a giggling 25-pound weight clinging to your leg can get pretty challenging.  At this point I consider my head above water if the dust bunnies aren't breeding, so it should follow that normally I don't worry about things like wrinkled bath towels.  However, yesterday afternoon we were rushing around madly before our 2pm appointment with our realtor, trying to make our Home Sweet Home look more like a Marriott.  While Dave headed to the storage unit to stow away yet more boxes, I decided to throw the guest bathroom towels in the dryer to fluff them.  I already had it set on "High" to dry a cotton slipcover, so I just lightly dampened the towels and tossed the towels in on top of it.  I continued to bustle around the house until Dave came home with cheeseburgers for lunch, and we sat down for a fifteen-minute break.  I then walked back into the laundry room and heard a banging noise...coming from inside the dryer.

Pookie.  Our beautiful, sable Burmese, who lets our two year-old manhandle him, while he purrs like a fool the entire time.  Who sits on the tub while she takes a bath and loves nothing more than having  his belly scratched. The cat who I call a root beer barrel with ears, a living teddy bear, was slumped in the dryer, tongue hanging out, wet and bloody.  He'd somehow slipped into the dryer unnoticed, and was not only suffering heatstroke but had had three claws ripped off while inside the drum.  (We think that perhaps Seph let him in the dryer earlier and he'd crawled under the slipcover for a nap- I'd caught her in the laundry room a few times after we took down the pet gate that had barred her from playing in the litter boxes.  I'm not ducking from my own carelessness, but it would explain how he got in the dryer when I barely opened the door to throw in those towels.)

Luckily Dave was there to stay with Seph while I rushed Pookie to the vet.  Pookie passed out on the way there and I really thought he was gone.  I prayed my standard prayer to St. Francis (patron saint of animals, naturally!), something along the lines of, "oh please, oh please, oh please"...I think he must get a lot of those and is therefore understanding ;)  Luckily, they got him on oxygen and fluids right away to bring his temperature down.  When the vet finally came back to talk to me, he told me that Pookie's temperature on arrival was 107, but that they'd brought it down to almost normal already.  I guess I have a smart mouth even while in shock, because my response was, "well, that's because my dryer was set to "cotton"- there was no setting for "cat".  I got lucky and the vet cracked up laughing.

After a transfusion of plasma and a 24-hour stay, Pookie is back home- still not eating, but purring and resting comfortably.  The only bruising is a little one on his leg from the IV, his three sore claws, and our bank account.   The cost of my stupidity, combined with the curiosity that almost killed this cat?  $1031.00  Yeah, I know, I almost needed them to put me on the oxygen instead.  That's roughly the cost of, what, a new dryer?

So, you've gotta help me out, here.  That was the last thing our budget needed, and we really need to sell this house!  Our realtor gave us all kinds of tips on how to present our place in the best light- actually, she said that when we leave the house to allow for a showing, we should turn on every light in the house.  I think that's awfully descriptive of my mental state...the lights are on, but no-one 's home!   Anyway, if you're reading this, and would love to live in a four-bedroom home in a cute neighborhood in northern San Diego county, shoot me an e-mail!  Special pricing for all blog readers!  The house comes with a new furnace, master bath and all appliances...including a freshly-scrubbed dryer.

Not Wrapped Too Tight

Has anyone seen my brain?  Gray, about three pounds, right side-dominant?  It's gone missing and it's too little to be wandering around by its lonesome. 

I think the moving stress is finally starting to get to me.  Trouble is, since I'm not much of a drinker and I refuse to devour an entire frozen cheesecake like a normal female, my stress is choosing stranger outlets, such as forgetfulness and generally geeky behavior.  Haha, I can just hear my friends asking themselves, "how can she tell this from a normal day??".  Good question!  Lately, every day is starting to feel like a Weird Wednesday to me.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel, though.  That would require actually remembering to bring mine.  To paraphrase "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", home is where your towel is...and that's exactly where I left it on Monday, when I'd intended to shower at the gym while my carpets were being cleaned.  I had to be out of the house for several hours, and thought it would be brilliant to enjoy a long, hot shower without having to worry about corralling a toddler.  So I dropped Seph off in the children's room at my gym, and headed back to the locker room.  I discovered the lack of Egyptian cotton goodness right away.  Did I act like a sensible person, retrieve my child, and drive the two miles back home to fetch my towel?  Nope.  Did I decide to put up with bedhead and feeling kind of grungy, and go on with my day sans shower?  Nope.  Did I decide to take my shower anyway and just put up with drip-drying instead?  Bing bing bing, we have a winner.  Bonus points if you guessed that I also forgot I'd run out of shampoo, and had to wash my hair with liquid soap.  On the bright side (yes, there always is one), J. Crew cotton T-shirts are not only beautifully fitted and come in a gorgeous assortment of colors, they're also very absorbent. 

Today, I thought I'd perk us up a bit by going out to lunch.  Our lunch date, Auntie C., had to cancel, so we took our lovely neighbor, Auntie KQ, to Panera's with us instead.  I felt like ditching my usual SAHM uniform of T-shirt and jeans (umm, also, my favorite green T-shirt was mysteriously wrinkled and a bit damp), so I was wearing my favorite Libby Dibby wrap skirt instead.  K. rang my doorbell and instantly noticed that I'd gotten the hem of my sweater caught in the knotted tie that closed my skirt.  (Thank you, K., for not actually dying of laughter, because as you know, I did just get those rugs cleaned.) 

As slow as I am lately, it didn't occur to me that simply plucking the sweater out of the ribbon tie would loosen the skirt.  I had to find that out the hard way.  As I walked through the door of the restaurant, I noticed that my skirt felt really heavy...and that I could actually see several inches of my tights from the waistband down.  A few more steps and I'd have been a walking wardrobe malfunction.  I was wearing tall suede boots with those tights, so it's possible that I would have been mistaken for a gigantic elf, instead. The bright side?  I figured I should really eat up at lunch.  No sense in letting that waistband get loose again!

I think I'll just spend Wednesday in my bathrobe!  In the meantime, if anyone finds my brain, wrap it in a towel and come on over.  We'll do cheesecake. 

 

The Task Of Zorro

This is Seph on Halloween, fulfilling her mother's 23-year dream of once again procuring free candy from strangers.  Yes, I know I am a grownup now and can buy my own, but I'm addicted to the thrill of the hunt.  I can eat up to the limit of the waistband on my jeans, and who's gonna stop me?  Honestly, it's like taking candy from a baby...

I was pretty excited to actually find a "Zorro" costume for her, since that was what I was planning to dress her as after she drew all those W's on our freshly-painted walls with that Sharpie marker.  Looking back, it could have been much worse: she could have drawn Dubyas on the wall instead.  Do you like the shoes?  When they told me at the store that MaryJanes went with everything, I highly doubt they were picturing an ensemble with a cape!  The shoes even have sparkly flowers on them!  I suppose they didn't call Zorro the "gay blade" for nothing.

The photo was taken at the beginning of our evening of pillaging, at the home of Seph's godfather's mom, an old family friend who we decided should be our first "victim".  Seph doesn't have any candy yet, but she looks that happy because she's attempting to abscond with the Halloween decor.  Once I pried her away from the full bag of Milky Way minis that she insisted on emptying into her borrowed "punkin!", we headed to Clifton, a city in northern NJ that is the most perfect trick-or-treat locale I have ever seen.   The houses are on level ground, close together and festively decorated.  Did I mention they were close together?  My longtime college buddy J., who lives in town, was our escort for the evening.  (He also found my great-grandma's old house for me..I could have sworn that house was twice as big..)  After his mom made an enormous fuss over my little bandit, we cleaned out his neighborhood within about a five block radius and ended up completely filling the pumpkin with candy.  Ahhhhhh. =)  And, since we figured we'd burned about 10,000 calories apiece toting around a  two year-old, we headed down to the local pizza place afterwards.  Bad mommy that I am, I let Seph eat two Reeses' peanut butter cups and a mini Kit-Kat bar before our pie arrive, and as a result she didn't touch even a bite of it.  Oh well...if you can't let your child gorge themselves on candy once a year, what kind of a parent are you, right?

Seph had a fantastic time (as did I), and wasn't scared a bit- not even by the Freddy Krueger-clad neighbor who sprang out of the bushes at us.  (I was just glad I was wearing dark pants.)  My turn to be slightly apprehensive came the next morning, at the Mass for All Saints' Day.  It was Seph's first Mass- I don't bring her to church with me at home since there's no childcare.  While in the line for Communion, I realized what it must look like to her and started fervently praying, "oh, please God, don't let her say "trick or treat!"

Jump In The [Security] Line

Seph and I flew home almost a full week ago and I am so mad at myself for my writer's block that I haven't posted up until now.  (Yes, I do realize that makes zero sense.)  Between everything that's going on that I do want to talk about and everything going on that I don't want to talk about, I feel like the centipede that couldn't remember how to walk once someone asked her which foot came first.  Heck, maybe she actually did know which foot came first, but she was so busy tying her dang shoelaces that she never got to go anywhere.

Did you know, when you travel with a toddler, you have to take off *their* shoes as well while going through security?  I have no real problem with this, even though it's kind of a pain, especially if you're traveling alone with one.  Better safe than blown to smithereens, I always say.  What I do have a problem with is that for that rule to be in place, it means someone is messed-up (I can think of a better word but I truly hate the taste of soap) enough to have thought of placing dangerous substances in children's footwear.  Seriously, if you're that committed to a life of terrorism, you need to be an adult about it and use the standard hiding place, so that the rest of us contracting some deadly strain of athlete's foot and/or pneumonia from standing there in our stocking feet can at least enjoy a quiet chuckle when we hear the snap! of a disposable rubber glove.

I tend to have a good time in the security line, though.  Last spring I was traveling alone, without Sephie, and I got wanded to the point that I was stunned not to receive a dinner invitation afterwards.   Of course this was only after they stuck me behind glass for a good five or ten minutes while they rounded up the Female Body Inspector. I'm pretty sure they only let me out because I was doing my best impression of "mime stuck in a box" behind the guard's back.   Then the FBI had the nerve, no, the stupidity, to ask me, "Are you wearing an underwire bra?"  Hello, I'm an F-cup, if I weren't wearing underwire. the girls would be on the conveyor belt along with my shoes.  Honestly, I'm lucky I don't have to count them as my personal item.  One final search of my belt line area and I was free to go- which means they missed out completely on my traditional Metal Detector Dance.  No, seriously, I've discovered that I completely unconsciously sing and dance to the exact same song every time I go through the metal detector at the airport. I think it has something to do with the fact that I don't dance, except if I'm home in my stocking feet.  My "soundtrack" of choice is "Jump In the Line" by Harry Belafonte.  Ever seen it danced as a tango?  with a toddler? No?  You're really missing out ;) 

Hmmpf, stuck again.  I guess this should be a short post, since I still have to go move some boxes and stuff for tomorrow's big rug and tile cleaning extravaganza.  I'm having my grout cleaned, which is both much less sexy and much more expensive than it sounds.   Coming soon:  my 23-year quest for free Halloween candy comes to a successful end; why nobody can hold a candle to old friends, and why I can't possibly blame the zit on my face on the oil of chrism Seph got all over me after her baptism. 

In the meantime, if anyone at Liberty International Airport saw a busty thirtysomething mom in a skirt and argyle tights trying to limbo under a security wand last week?  Totally wasn't me.