Still Life, With Cats

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.