Still Life, With Cats

I loathe yardwork. Words cannot adequately express how much I hate doing it.

And yet, once or twice a year, there is nothing else to do but suck it up and go out into the front yard and deal with it.

Today was that day. Whee.

We used to have grass (or rather, weeds that vaguely resembled grass once mowed) in the front yard, but three years ago we ripped out the whole front yard and replaced it with drought-tolerant landscaping. And by ‘we’, I mean we paid someone a large sum of money to do it, because see above for the loathing of yard work. The bonus of having a drought-tolerant yard is that it is usually far less maintenance than grass, but no amount of ground cover will prevent the weeds from eventually making their way through.

Richard’s been congested and wheezy the last couple days so he stayed inside, out of range of all the the allergens, and worked on other household chores. I, meanwhile, grabbed a bucket, and headed out to the front yard to do battle with the weeds.

Two hours later, the yard was (mostly) weed free. After that, we decided to take a ‘break’ from house work and headed off to Home Depot to pick up some new mulch.

They laid down a lovely bed of black bark, three years ago when we first had the landscaping put in. We haven’t added any since, so yard’s been starting to look a bit bare. Conveniently Home Depot was having a sale – buy 5 for $10 – so we bought 5 bags and headed home to get back to work.

Hah. Those 5 bags were not close to enough. I stayed beyond to keep spreading out the mulch while Richard headed back to fill the trunk back up again. Five more bags, and nope, still not quite enough, so back we went for one more round. Turns out it takes 15 bags (or 30 cubic feet) of mulch to cover our entire front yard, and I suspect we probably ought to have actually laid down more, except laying down 15 bags was tedious enough and did I already mention that I really, really loathe working in the yard?

But at least the front yard is clean and tidy, and with the new mulch it looks quite nice (although the bar was pretty low, considering the sheer volume of weeds). We showered off the dirt and grime from the day’s work and headed off to our favorite local English pub, where Richard had fish and chips and I had an absolutely incredible vegetarian pasty topped with welsh rarebit sauce. And now I can rest easy for another year and ignore the front yard completely like I normally do, until it’s time to do it all over again.

The letter Y is brought to you by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge

I woke up this morning filled with a tiny amount of glee. No, it wasn’t because it was actually raining outside, and as California is smack in the middle of a rather nasty drought, any amount of water falling from the sky is cause for celebration. And no, it wasn’t because the sickly elderly cat only woke me up for food once last night instead of twice, so I actually got more than 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep for a change.

No, today I woke up full of happy because today is April 7th and thus it is the LAST DAY OF ROBOCALLS thank the great FSM may you all be touched by his noodly appendage etc., etc.

We’ve been in the middle of a special election in our neighborhood because the previous city council member decided in the middle of his term to become a state assemblyman instead, leaving an opening. There’ve been people canvassing the neighborhood, fliers showing up on our porch and hanging from our door and tucked into the mailbox, and of course, the bane of every single election season, the relentless robocalls urging us to vote for .

Seriously, if they ever allow people to opt out of election-related calls (a Do Not Call list for the political spectrum) I bet people would be tripping all over each other to sign up. Has anyone ever changed their mind on who they are voting for based on a robocall? Anyone? Ever? In the history of robocalls?

Yeah, no.

There are two people running to fill the spot left vacant on the city council, and we have no opinions one way or the other. They both seem like nice people and they both list all the relevant talking points on their respective campaign paraphernalia, and unlike with most elections, I don’t get the sense of having to hold my nose and just vote for the lesser of two evils. As a result, neither Richard or I could give a rat’s patooty which one of them actually wins.

I admit, because we really do not care which of them takes the seat, it was tempting to just sit this election out. But in order to preserve our permanent absentee voter status, we have to keep on voting in every election. So we decided, as there are two of us, we’d each vote for one of them, thus managing to both fulfill our patriotic duty of filling in a bubble on a ballot, as well as effectively cancelling out both our votes. Ha, take *that*, adulthood!

And meanwhile we’ve finally reached the end of having to screen our calls, and sort the mail directly into the recycling bin (spam, spam, election spam, more election spam, for crying out loud people save the trees, spam, more spam, oh, a bill, spam). Okay, maybe the mail sorting isn’t going to change; it’s just that the ‘spam’ part of it won’t include the election fluff.

Well, at least until the next election ramps up. And considering how things go in this country, that should be …. any day now.

Ugh.

The letter E is brought to you by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

The downside to being an adult is that sometimes you have to actual do adult things. Act responsible. Vacuum the house. Scrub the toilet. Figure out what the scary thing is lurking in the back of the top shelf in the fridge.

But sometimes you can still find ways to make it almost sort of vaguely kind of fun.

For example, let’s say that you have a toilet that needs cleaning, and you really don’t want to do it. Stand back, kids! This is where being an adult means you can do Science! For the heck of it! Just toss a couple tablespoons of baking soda into the bowl, dump in a few generous glugs of white vinegar, and give it a quick stir with the toilet brush. Voila! The water will begin to foam and bubble as if a certain green tentacled elder god is rising up from R’lyeh, directly into your toilet bowl, hellbent on scrubbing that weird stain off with his mighty claws! Another quick swipe of the toilet brush (to…uh…’vanquish’ said elder god), and the toilet is magically sparkling clean. Adulting for the win!

Or perhaps you are grumpily mopping the floors because living with six cats means there are always spots of mysterious origin lurking just around every corner, and it’s vitally important that the floors be occasionally degunkified (so that the cats have a nice, clean surface onto which to hork later, at their leisure). That’s okay. Suddenly recall that hey, you have a Steam account and Plague is now available on the PC. Reward the effort of getting those floors clean by spreading an evil bacteria that wipes out all of humanity in less than two years. Score another point for Adulting!

And also let’s not forget that as an adult, technically you are supposed to be eating nutritious meals and pretending that you do not occasionally just eat ice cream or frosted toaster pastries for dinner. In that case, toss some broccoli into the steamer (or if you’re my older sister, for whom broccoli is anathema, any other veggie will also do), and when it has reached the level of doneness you prefer, sprinkle it with a little bit of garlic salt, or Parmesan cheese, and pair it with a piece of tender, juicy Pecan Crusted Chicken, which you had previously assembled and put in the freezer the last time you were in full ‘responsible adult’ mode. Two more points for Adulting!

And if you happen to follow it up, later in the evening, with a handful of those chai tea caramels you found when you were cleaning out the fridge, well shhh, I’ll never tell.

The letter A is brought to you by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

When a woman (or a man) reaches a certain age in their life, they might discover that they start to have trouble seeing things. Reading tiny print can be done only in really, really good light, and with no small amount of squinting. Upcoming street signs aren’t quite as sharp as they once used to be. The ability to increase the zoom on web pages suddenly becomes a life saver. And eventually, you figure out that maybe, just maybe, it’s time to go see the eye doctor.

I’ve been near-sighted all my life – well, except for that lovely period of time after the Lazik when I didn’t need any corrective lenses at all. But lately things have been harder and harder to see, and when it occurred to me that I actually couldn’t remember when the last time was I had an eye exam, I finally decided to suck it up and go.

The optometrist put me through a whole battery of tests and hmmed and nodded and wrote down lots of notes. And the verdict is exactly what I was expecting. My prescription has gotten worse since the last time I had my eyes checked, and all that eye strain I’ve been dealing with is the result of my eyes trying desperately to compensate. Oh, and also, ladies and gentlemen, I have now reached the…um….level of maturity (the assistant and I decided that was a niftier way of saying ‘being middle aged sometimes sucks) in my life when I get to get bifocals. Huzzah.

Interestingly, he did point out something I didn’t know before – something he was surprised no one had ever diagnosed. It turns out that my eyes tend to correct too far inward, especially when I’m tired, or trying to compensate for not being able to see as clearly as I need to. I have noticed that when I’ve spent too long on the computer or other close-up work, my sight tends to blur a bit and sometimes I start seeing, well, not quite double, but double-edges on things. Turns out it’s because I’m going just a little bit cross-eyed when that happens.

So not only will I be getting bifocals, I’ll also be getting prisms, which will work to ‘fool’ my eyes into thinking that things are in a slightly different spot than they are, so they look straight ahead instead of turning too far in the wrong direction.

I’ll get my new glasses in a week or so, and I admit I’m really looking forward to them. I have a feeling there is going to be a bit of an adjustment period, but it is going to be awfully nice to go back to seeing clearly once again.

The letter O is brought to you by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

So because I am trying to get my brain back into the ‘blog more frequently then a handful of times a year’ mode, I signed up for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Basically that just means that for the month of April I’ve committed to posting a minimum of 26 entries, with each related to one letter of the alphabet. If you’re looking for other people to read, I recommend going over to that site and checking out the other participants – there’s a couple hundred of them.

If you’ve wandered over from the A to Z challenge group, and you’re wondering who I am, you can check out my About page, since that covers all the basics. It’s a fairly short blurb because I figured I’ve covered all the other relevant info throughout the years in the actual entries.

I know a lot of the A to Z participants are doing some kind of theme. And I did toy with trying to come up with one for this month. But I did that once already this year, and once feels like more than enough. So…as this is a personal online journal (for the younger set, that’s what they used to call this sort of naval gazing, back in the early days, before the word ‘blog’ ever became a thing), the ‘theme’ is that I shall (continue to) write about whatever I feel like. This also means I’ll be doing the letters in whatever order I feel like as well, because we all must rebel in our own special way.

Anyway. Hi. Welcome to my little corner of the internet. I hope you like cats.

The letter H is brought to you by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge

I spent most of the day knitting. I had grand plans to get the taxes done and give the house a thorough cleaning, and while we did scrub down the kitchen and unearth the floor and all the surfaces in the office, we didn’t do nearly as much as we were planning, because….I spent most of the day knitting. And while it involved cotton yarn, it primarily wasn’t dishcloths.

I will reveal the thing later, once I get some good action shots. No, it’s not another goofy video, although one grey cat is involved, tangentially, but you will just have to wait to find out.

Things were going along smoothly until this evening, when Richard went to let Rosie out of her room (because she is on a self-imposed wet-food-only diet, we feed her in a room away from all the other cats so that they will not hoover up every bit of her food and leave her none), and noticed blood in her water bowl. Again.

Back up a bit. A week or so ago I’d noticed that the water in her bowl was tinged faintly red, and there were a few drops of dried blood on her heating pad. Naturally concerned, I flipped her over and opened her mouth to peer around inside. She had a whole bunch of teeth extracted a couple months ago, and I was concerned maybe there was some kind of infection or she’d bitten her tongue, or something. But I didn’t see anything, and she was acting normal (well, as normal as a 16 1/2 year old cat acts). So we decided to just keep an eye on her.

This time, however, it wasn’t just the blood in the water bowl. When she came out, she hopped up on my lap and I noticed immediately that her mouth was ringed with blood. I gently swabbed away what I could with a Kleenex and pried her mouth open, and that’s when I saw that there was a big hole in the roof of her mouth.

Here is where I note that this cat gets pilled twice a day (and is super easy to pill) and so I am looking inside her mouth a LOT. That hole definitely wasn’t there this morning.

So…we stuffed Rosie into a carrier and dashed off to the emergency vet.

I wish I could say that the verdict was a definite ‘oh, this is X, and here is how we treat it,” but alas, no. They verified that yes, there is definitely a big hole in her mouth, full of grossness that might be pus or might be necrotic tissue; they can’t really quite tell without a more invasive process like a biopsy. The vet did indicate that if she’s eating and drinking (which she is), then it obviously isn’t causing her any pain. It might be nothing more than an abcess, or it could be a something-or-other fistula (between the mouth and the nasal cavity) or it could be a tumor. We really don’t know at this point. All we know is that she has a big hole in the roof of her mouth.

The vet sent us home with some antibiotics, so that if there is any sort of infection, we can get started on clearing it up. We’ll schedule a visit with our regular vet at some point this coming week, to run more tests and see if we can narrow down the cause.

In the meantime, Rosie was squawking imperiously for food shortly after we returned home, and proceed to start inhaling it as soon as I put the plate down in front of her. So clearly she isn’t as bothered by this thing as we are. And for that I am grateful.

*****

In between noodling around on the other project, I did whip up a dishcloth. It’s a plain garter stitch cloth because I didn’t much feel like trying to track down a pattern. Please note presence of Rupert toes at top of picture.

And then, after we came home from the vet (shortly after 10pm, which is normally when we go to bed), I was pretty wired, my brain buzzing with all the ‘what-ifs’ for our elderly cat, and so I sat down and knit up another one. This one is based on the White Birch pattern. I say ‘based on’ because I could tell right away that there was absolutely no need for the garter stitch border, of which I am so not a fan, so I simply left it out.