Ok, it's like this.
On November 19, I took one of my cats into the vet for a workup. She was getting older, having a little trouble keeping her food down, and I wanted to know that she was not in pain and find out if there was anything I could do for her.
Almost $ 400.00 worth of x-rays and blood work ups showed nothing. But that was cool, he prescribed a laxative that would help her keep her food down. 'Nuff said. We go home and rock along for a couple of weeks, force feeding a cat who does not want laxative laxative and generally getting along pretty much like we were. I'd had her for ten years, I was fully expecting that there would be a couple of more good ones before I had to make the decision that I did.
On January 14, we had to have our 12 year old cat put down. Cancer. I can accept that. Animals get cancer just like humans do and the treatment is often worse for them than the disease. He wasn't eating, sleeping, socializing, he was barely breathing on the last day. Cancer got my Roofie cat, but I got twelve years with the Roofie.
January 18, my mom calls me at work, Harlow is weaving as she walks, throwing up and not eating or drinking. And when this cat is not tanking up on water, something is definetly up. I left work and found a vet that was open and could see Harlow that afternoon. Once there Harlow is rehydrated and given a shot for nausea. We go home with a referral for another vet who does the eqivalent of cat colonoscopies and I make an appointment for the next week.
Monday, January 21 gets here. Harlow is once again weaving and bobbing as she walks,her breathing is raspy and labored, she stares into the water bowl for five minutes at a time and then gets up and painfully walks off. I can't take looking at her like that, she is completely dehydrated again and she won't look me or anybody in the face. She cried out in pain every time someone touched her or she touched something. She simply wanted to be left alone to hide with her face to the wall in a cabinet in the den.
I called the vet to cancel the colonoscopy and called the Friday afternoon vet to see if I could being her in to be put down. If you want to stay with your animal, you have to have an appointment. After 11 years together I could not bear the thought of leaving her alone with strangers to die. In the afternoon before the appointment we went to get some lunch, and event thought I was not in the least bit hungry I pounded down a plate of Tex-Mex and two bowls of chips. I stopped on the way home for a milkshake too. I eat when stressed, and the thought of not having my Beanie around anymore was sure as hell a stressor. She loved me more than I ever loved myself, and I loved her like she was my own child. In a way she was. She just had four legs and no voice box.
We took her to the vet, got in a little examination room and waited. The vet administered a sedative because cats apparently will fight like hell at the end, and at that point the only one that she could hurt anymore would be herslef. I stood over the corpse of my best friend and watched as her muscles twitched and she let out a final shudder.
My heart broke at that moment and frankly I'm not sure how long it's going to take to mend. I feel just as raw about it today as I did yesterday. I was purposefully silent at work today to avoid ripping into anyone.
Her November vet called me today. He had pulled out Beanie's charts and X-rays from November when the Friday vet called and he "might not have mentioned it" but her X-rays showed signs of her developing spondkylitis back in November.
Fuck no you didn't mention it.
It is incurrable in humans, there isn't much treatment other than pain management. Had I known that in November, I would have made myself say goodbye to Beanie before I did and not put her through the pain she's obviously been feeling.
I will hate a certain veterinarian until the day I die.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Friday, August 10, 2007
Um, excuse me, but I am NOT a "southerner".
Ok, ok, it's just me. I accept that. It's me, this is my problem and I will have to get the hell over it, one of these days. But that won't be today.
I am NOT a southerner. I am from Texas. I am a NATIVE born Texan, and my family has been in the Republic/State of Texas for 8 generations. We are not now nor have we ever been southern.
Texans type just like we talk, which is just like we think. There are usually no more than two native Texans in the room at any given time because everybody else decided they would be old enough to break a hip before getting a word in edgewise and left the room.
We don't eat grits with cheese and we don't cover anything with a gravy that is refered to as "red eye". We buy big vehicles because we all have big asses and are generally uncomfortable in little bitty import cars. Trust me, more true dyed in the wool Texans, such as myself, want something our asses can spread out in and big enough that we can push your little unpronouncable piece of shit off into a ditch if you drive like shit. Which, incidentally, you do. If you have to put that much thought into using your turn signal, you probably have no business out on the road anyway.
And for point of future reference, if you where not born in Texas, you are not a Texan. Please quit'cher posing and get a new hobby. Preferably one you can do from home that does not require you to be out on the roads.
I might have to run your ass over.
I am NOT a southerner. I am from Texas. I am a NATIVE born Texan, and my family has been in the Republic/State of Texas for 8 generations. We are not now nor have we ever been southern.
Texans type just like we talk, which is just like we think. There are usually no more than two native Texans in the room at any given time because everybody else decided they would be old enough to break a hip before getting a word in edgewise and left the room.
We don't eat grits with cheese and we don't cover anything with a gravy that is refered to as "red eye". We buy big vehicles because we all have big asses and are generally uncomfortable in little bitty import cars. Trust me, more true dyed in the wool Texans, such as myself, want something our asses can spread out in and big enough that we can push your little unpronouncable piece of shit off into a ditch if you drive like shit. Which, incidentally, you do. If you have to put that much thought into using your turn signal, you probably have no business out on the road anyway.
And for point of future reference, if you where not born in Texas, you are not a Texan. Please quit'cher posing and get a new hobby. Preferably one you can do from home that does not require you to be out on the roads.
I might have to run your ass over.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Tomorrow I will change and today won't mean a thing.
I'm a bitch
I'm a mother
I'm a child
I'm a lover
I'm three weeks away from the end of the summer session, so I'm three weeks away from getting my life back. For exactly three weeks. And then fall semester starts and I will be taking three classes. The power of three. Whatever.
Furthermore I was looking over my degree plan Monday and doing some counting that finally didn't require me to take my shoes off to access additional digits, and it dawned on me that after the fall semester I need exactly three classes in order to graduate. That would be really fucking strange, to think that there was light at the end of the Bachelor of Arts tunnel. It's actually a thought that I'm not letting myself get too enamoured of, just in case.
I'm a mother
I'm a child
I'm a lover
I'm three weeks away from the end of the summer session, so I'm three weeks away from getting my life back. For exactly three weeks. And then fall semester starts and I will be taking three classes. The power of three. Whatever.
Furthermore I was looking over my degree plan Monday and doing some counting that finally didn't require me to take my shoes off to access additional digits, and it dawned on me that after the fall semester I need exactly three classes in order to graduate. That would be really fucking strange, to think that there was light at the end of the Bachelor of Arts tunnel. It's actually a thought that I'm not letting myself get too enamoured of, just in case.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Our Lady of the True Believer.
Urgh! Tonight's class will last until 9:50 on the dot. 9:50. She never lets us get out of there early, even the night she was sick, she sniffled and coughed her way through lecture. (Ewwwww!) So I know tonight she'll talk until 9:50, 10:05, something like that, after which I still have to get home and do some laundry because I am out of clean clothes. Urgh. Somebody remind me again why I want to be educated.
On a much happier note, the electricians are FINISHED!! Damn, I never thought they would leave! I was getting so tired of going off every morning with the house less than secure so they could get and work, and even tireder (huh?) of picking up those little bitty plastic bags that they left all over the house that started out with screws in them, but they really look like little dope baggies. Especially when static makes one stick to the back of your cat's pajamas and she takes off running like the hounds of hell are after her.
Oh, and the repair to the air conditioner only cost $ 80.00. Pitiful state of afairs when you have to have the heater and the air conditioner both serviced within one week, because you need both in one week. Gotta love this south Texas weather.
On a much happier note, the electricians are FINISHED!! Damn, I never thought they would leave! I was getting so tired of going off every morning with the house less than secure so they could get and work, and even tireder (huh?) of picking up those little bitty plastic bags that they left all over the house that started out with screws in them, but they really look like little dope baggies. Especially when static makes one stick to the back of your cat's pajamas and she takes off running like the hounds of hell are after her.
Oh, and the repair to the air conditioner only cost $ 80.00. Pitiful state of afairs when you have to have the heater and the air conditioner both serviced within one week, because you need both in one week. Gotta love this south Texas weather.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
I bet you didn't whistle the theme song to "Bridge on the River Kwai".
Ok, so it usually takes me about fourty five minutes to get home from school, last night I made it in 28.
I call home every night when class let's out before I get on the road. It's a long drive and I have a ten year old car, not that I'm worried about it, but it just makes sense to let someone know when you are heading out at night.
So, after a two hour Shakespeare exam I drag to the car, get in and call. It rings, and rings, and rings. Finally my mom answers , breathless and obviously stressed out.
"What's wrong."
"Harlow slipped out."
She was still talking when I threw the phone into the seat next to me, started up Zippy and floored it. I could have gotten so many tickets last night that I'd be one of those poor fuckers you see on the side of the road on Saturday mornings wearing a plastic blaze orange vest and a look on their faces that's like, "please, run over my ass, now!" I drove like a bat out of Hell and there was no cool soundtrack to go along with it because I had stopped on the way to school to gas up and get a car wash and had taken down my car antenna.
So anyway, I white knuckle it through the South Texas night, screaming at anybody who even turns on their signal indicator in my direction. I was fighting the urge to cry as best somebody as cynical and cold (to hear some tell it) as I am can. My mouth was dry as hell and I had to tell myself at one point to breathe.
Anyway, I get to my street were there are usually at least three or four strays running around after dark, turn on my high beams and drive at like threee miles an hour until I get to the house, cause I'm convinced by now that if she does in fact get run over with my luck it'll be me that has to pull bits of my beloved cat out of my radiator. Not a cat in sight. No strays, none of my neighbors cats who are let out at night, nothing. Oh, and did I mention that a pit bull mix has moved onto the street a couple of blocks over? Yeah, I had all kinds of senarios flowing through the rickety plumbing of my mind.
I get up the drive way, expecting her to dart out from under the azaleas and into the undercarriage of my car, get out and grab my cell phone (like I could call her maybe) leave my purse and everything locked up in the car behind me and go running into the house to put on a pair of shorts and grab a flashlight because nobody is going to sleep until I find Harlow. If I had to call the electrician that has been working at the house the last couple of days and get his ass out there to start looking I was going to, and all of his crew too. (Even the one Harlow jumped on and scared the shit out of.) The screen door sticks a little so I had to jiggle it, I was ready to pull the fucker off it's hinges because I had something to do that was more important than finding a 24 hour door service. (What's another couple hundred bucks, shit!) And here come's my mom down the hall like nothing ever happened, "Oh, I thought I latched that screen", and I'm like, "well, it's a little late now because my cat has already gotten out," and I was about to launch into the tirade/litany of questions I had worked out on the brief ride home when Harlow comes prissing down the hall. My mom is like, "I didn't have your cell phone number, and you had just quit talking so there wasn't anything to do but wait." There are times when strangling the person who taught you how to use a toilet does seem like an appropriate response, and it took me a second to talk myself out of this being one of those times.
Anyway, after her assurances that Harlow had never left the premises, (the electrician's kid had seen her but she didn't and later paniced when Harlow didn't answer her) and that she had hunted and called her and whistled for her before just about giving up and deciding that she had to steel herself to face my wrath, Harlow comes prissing out from behind a chair in the living room, just pretty as you please, seh st down at my mom's feet like, "what's up?", I took my shower. And while I was in the shower, I started thiking that if mama whistled, Harlow should have responded, a whistle is her siren song, she can't resist it. But then, that is not entirely true. It dawned on me, mama didn't whistle the right tune.
"Did you whistle the theme song to "Bridge on the River Kwai"?
"Huh?"
"Bridge on the River Kwai" you know, that catchy little tune that they use in the American Express commercial?"
"She'll come to that?" Harlow was chilling behind the television at this point.
"Try it."
So my mom whistles the first little part to the song and sure enough in just a saecond here comes Harlow, she even pushed her way passed the baby bully cat to get to mama and crawl up on the bed next to her, like, "what, I'm trying to catch a little shut-eye."
All I could do at that point was laugh and go to bed. It was a long assed Monday.
I call home every night when class let's out before I get on the road. It's a long drive and I have a ten year old car, not that I'm worried about it, but it just makes sense to let someone know when you are heading out at night.
So, after a two hour Shakespeare exam I drag to the car, get in and call. It rings, and rings, and rings. Finally my mom answers , breathless and obviously stressed out.
"What's wrong."
"Harlow slipped out."
She was still talking when I threw the phone into the seat next to me, started up Zippy and floored it. I could have gotten so many tickets last night that I'd be one of those poor fuckers you see on the side of the road on Saturday mornings wearing a plastic blaze orange vest and a look on their faces that's like, "please, run over my ass, now!" I drove like a bat out of Hell and there was no cool soundtrack to go along with it because I had stopped on the way to school to gas up and get a car wash and had taken down my car antenna.
So anyway, I white knuckle it through the South Texas night, screaming at anybody who even turns on their signal indicator in my direction. I was fighting the urge to cry as best somebody as cynical and cold (to hear some tell it) as I am can. My mouth was dry as hell and I had to tell myself at one point to breathe.
Anyway, I get to my street were there are usually at least three or four strays running around after dark, turn on my high beams and drive at like threee miles an hour until I get to the house, cause I'm convinced by now that if she does in fact get run over with my luck it'll be me that has to pull bits of my beloved cat out of my radiator. Not a cat in sight. No strays, none of my neighbors cats who are let out at night, nothing. Oh, and did I mention that a pit bull mix has moved onto the street a couple of blocks over? Yeah, I had all kinds of senarios flowing through the rickety plumbing of my mind.
I get up the drive way, expecting her to dart out from under the azaleas and into the undercarriage of my car, get out and grab my cell phone (like I could call her maybe) leave my purse and everything locked up in the car behind me and go running into the house to put on a pair of shorts and grab a flashlight because nobody is going to sleep until I find Harlow. If I had to call the electrician that has been working at the house the last couple of days and get his ass out there to start looking I was going to, and all of his crew too. (Even the one Harlow jumped on and scared the shit out of.) The screen door sticks a little so I had to jiggle it, I was ready to pull the fucker off it's hinges because I had something to do that was more important than finding a 24 hour door service. (What's another couple hundred bucks, shit!) And here come's my mom down the hall like nothing ever happened, "Oh, I thought I latched that screen", and I'm like, "well, it's a little late now because my cat has already gotten out," and I was about to launch into the tirade/litany of questions I had worked out on the brief ride home when Harlow comes prissing down the hall. My mom is like, "I didn't have your cell phone number, and you had just quit talking so there wasn't anything to do but wait." There are times when strangling the person who taught you how to use a toilet does seem like an appropriate response, and it took me a second to talk myself out of this being one of those times.
Anyway, after her assurances that Harlow had never left the premises, (the electrician's kid had seen her but she didn't and later paniced when Harlow didn't answer her) and that she had hunted and called her and whistled for her before just about giving up and deciding that she had to steel herself to face my wrath, Harlow comes prissing out from behind a chair in the living room, just pretty as you please, seh st down at my mom's feet like, "what's up?", I took my shower. And while I was in the shower, I started thiking that if mama whistled, Harlow should have responded, a whistle is her siren song, she can't resist it. But then, that is not entirely true. It dawned on me, mama didn't whistle the right tune.
"Did you whistle the theme song to "Bridge on the River Kwai"?
"Huh?"
"Bridge on the River Kwai" you know, that catchy little tune that they use in the American Express commercial?"
"She'll come to that?" Harlow was chilling behind the television at this point.
"Try it."
So my mom whistles the first little part to the song and sure enough in just a saecond here comes Harlow, she even pushed her way passed the baby bully cat to get to mama and crawl up on the bed next to her, like, "what, I'm trying to catch a little shut-eye."
All I could do at that point was laugh and go to bed. It was a long assed Monday.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Forgot my checks, got to buy stuff, ain't got no credit card, yada yada yada
No kidding, seriously my ass is tired as in I got about four hours sleep last night and that is not even enough for a chick like me. I knew going back to school would be tough, I just didn't think it would be this tough. Of course if I wasn't a masta procrastinator looking for cred, I would have it made in the shade. And, as much as I'd like to say it's all down to I can't start because I'm afraid it won't be perfect, the truth is that I can just be hella lazy.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Oh hell yes, I did just flip you off!
I hate driving in my hometown. It absolutely sux(!)worse than it did all those years ago when I was learning how to drive here. I guess I'm just far too used to the way we drive out where I live now. And yes, if you where the guy driving the white delivery van down Southmore in Pasadena this afternoon, not only did I flip you off I uttered a few vile remarks about your obvious lack of upbringing. There is a reason that your van looks like it's got a bad case of Bondo-pox and my car is in excellent condition and is getting me everywhere I need to go even though she has just had her tenth birthday, I'm a better driver than you!!!! So pull your thumb out of your backside and learn to use your f-ing mirrors!
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