Inane Chatter

It doesn’t take much

Zannah — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:13:10 +0000

We had some excitement at work the other day. I looked out the window (onto the always lovely back of the parking lot) and saw some of my coworkers hanging out by and IN the dumpster. I couldn’t imagine why they’d be doing that – yeah, that’s not true. I can imagine all kinds of reasons why they might be messing around in dumpsters, but none of them are realistic (or good). It certainly didn’t occur to me that they might be trying to rescue kittens. Kittens! (I’ll stop you now. No, we are not the proud new owners of a kitten.) The news raced through the office, and the crowd outside the dumpster doubled. I took pictures.

Poor, adorable, terrified kittens. They weren’t starving or anything – the theory is that someone dropped them in the dumpster the night before. What kind of person would do that? One of my coworkers heard some squeaky meows as he came in, or we might never have known they were there.

They all had new homes within an hour of being pulled out of the dumpster.

Two weeks later

Zannah — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:16:14 +0000

Thank you, everyone, for your comments, notes, flowers, thoughts, texts, and phone calls. It was really sweet of you, and we appreciate it. We’re doing better. Fewer tearful breakdowns (although we had one yesterday – the vet sent us some of her fur wrapped in a bow and her paw prints on cards, along with personal notes from most of the staff who knew her), more funny memories. In the aftermath, we’ve found that we’re transferring all of our attentions and worries to Riley, with lots of running and walks, and constant concern over how he’s doing (“Does he look sad?” “He always looks sad.”) and whether he’s eating enough. He sleeps upstairs now, on his dog bed, and we (maybe a little more me than we) keep finding excuses to take him places with us.

We’ve put away her stuff, for the most part, but we still have it all. Her dog bed stays downstairs for Riley during the day. Her toys are still scattered all over the first floor. Her leash and collar are still hanging in the hall closet. Her food bowl is with her medicine in the cabinet. We will eventually throw out the medicine and the plastic food bowl and the chewed up toys, and we’ll box up her leash and collar. I don’t know when. I’m not in any hurry.

Loss

Zannah — Sat, 04 May 2013 21:14:56 +0000

Roxy died today. It’s blunt, but it’s true, and it sucks. It was this morning. It’s only been a few hours, but they’ve been the longest hours I can remember. How is it possible that it’s still today?

I jinxed it

Zannah — Thu, 02 May 2013 00:47:52 +0000

I should stop telling people when Roxy is doing well. That only lasted about two weeks. Around the middle of last week, she started to slide back into her lethargic wobbly Roxy personality, and by the weekend, she was having accidents in the house every few hours. She was really thirsty, so she’d drink a ton, and then she wouldn’t tell us she needed to go out. Annoying and worrying. We called the vet – turns out the thirst (and subsequent constant peeing) is a side effect of the wonder drug she started three weeks ago. But that led us to another question: if this is just a side effect, why didn’t it start three weeks ago, when she started that drug? So tonight I called the vet again and asked if there’s any way we can tell if she has an infection or if this is just a side effect. They wanted a sample (of course), so I chased after Roxy with an old flat tupperware container and raced the sample out to the vet this afternoon.

They just called with the results. Good news: no infection. Bad news: there’s glucose in her urine, which is a sign of diabetes. We have an appointment Saturday morning now to have bloodwork done to see if she really has diabetes on top of her liver issues (hepatocutaneous syndrome is what’s going on with her paws – all related to the liver) on top of her epilepsy. If she has diabetes, we’ll have to give her insulin injections twice a day on top of all her other medicine. That’s going to be tough. Of course, the vet said that when there are other diseases involved, dogs often become insulin-resistant. I don’t know what happens then. I’ll know more on Saturday.

I’d like the early bird special, please

Zannah — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:14:37 +0000

I went shopping a couple of weeks ago and bought the CUTEST dresses. I wore the sheath dress to the ballet with Emily in March (so I guess the shopping trip was more like a month ago), and I think I’m going to wear the other one (which looks better on me than it does in the picture, if I may say so myself) to a coworker’s wedding in a couple of weeks. I love dresses.

I am so completely exhausted. I skipped yoga. I shouldn’t have, but I got home and told John I was going to go, and his “oh, really?” sounded small and slightly disappointed, and that’s all it took to change my mind. And the best part is that it’s only just after 8, and there’s no reason I can’t go to bed RIGHT NOW. I can climb into my nice comfy bed and read my book until I fall asleep and I’ll still get a good night’s sleep…why am I still here?

P.S. Riley’s fine. His paw isn’t bothering him at all anymore. No more limping.

What a beautiful day

Zannah — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:26:28 +0000

Lots of yardwork this morning, followed by errands. Hooray for Saturdays! I don’t think anything we did this weekend furthered our plans, except where making our house beautiful helps, but not everything can. I’m not being intentionally vague about our plans. They’re just still very plan-y plans. Long-term. Here’s the gist: we want to move. Away. Far away. Like to Europe. It wouldn’t be permanent (probably), but we’ve realized we don’t need that much stuff, and we don’t like doing what we’re doing (9-5 jobs we don’t really care about, not enough free time, looking forward too much to weekends that are too short). We’ve realized this over and over through the years, but recently we decided to do something about it. Why wait? What have we got to lose?

There are a TON of things that we need to do first, the biggest of which are selling the house and finding the right kind of jobs (like the telecommuting kind). The dogs are the other complication. They could go with us, but Roxy’s health problems make that difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. We have a long, long, LONG list of stuff to find out, stuff to do, stuff to figure out, and we’re working through all those things. We just haven’t put a real timeline together yet. Are we trying to go in a year? This year? We still have to figure a few things out before we can tell. We’re working on it, it’s just sometimes a little frustrating that we can’t drop everything and go now.

And now he’s limping

Zannah — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:08:55 +0000

Silly dog #1 has hurt himself. John thinks he may have just landed wrong when he jumped off the couch (guiltily, I’m sure). We’ll give him a day of rest and see how he feels tomorrow night. He doesn’t react when I mess around with the paw he’s favoring, so maybe it’s minor and will wear off. I hope.

The great bumblebee killer

Zannah — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:15:53 +0000

Silly dog #1 had an eventful evening. He chased a giant bumblebee around the yard, caught it in the grass, pawed it to death, and then rolled around on it. His version of a victory lap, I guess. Then he came in, wolfed down his dinner, and threw it right back up. Now he’s resting. Ridiculous animal.

Zero gravity is AMAZING

Zannah — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:48:01 +0000

Guys, did you see this? I heard about it a few days ago, but didn’t watch the video until today.

How cool is that?

Getting antsy

Zannah — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:57:53 +0000

I just acted as middle-person for a crib hand-off (from friends who are moving to friends who need a crib), and I was struck by how restless I am. Those guys are moving to Oregon (like, tomorrow), and I have a coworker who’s counting down the days until she never has to come back to work again (she’s not planning on returning once her maternity leave is up). I’m envious and restless and eager to get moving with our own plans. Let’s go already!