I took Zeke to the vet to get his first round of shots and an exam. The bill was only $250 which was much less than the $400 I had made up in my mind. I do love this cat, but I also made it known that I was giving the cat away. And the entire vet office fell in love with this very sweet cat and I scored and found a vet tech who is between pets and is looking for a cat! omg. I had to clear it with both Megan and Christine – Megan immediately said – yes! perfect! give to the vet tech! Christine was a little more reluctant to ease the cat out of our house. She is a tenant who came to our house with a large dog and then over the years, has acquired 2 cats – so it’s crowded down there and the thought of four animals in that space sent me a little out and honestly, the reason that the cat is “mine” is because between the four animals, there is hissing, swatting and general uneasiness. Anyways, I slowly convinced Christine that she can’t adopt every cat she meets on the street. And then I texted the vet tech, who is a slow texter and we are meeting on Sunday to give the cat away. I won’t say it’s a done deal until the cat is out of my hands, but I’ve relished being a cat owner for a week and I will also be very happy to give the cat to a loving home. I canceled my amazon order of air purifiers, little broom to clean the scattered litter, the anti-allergy food, and kitty treats. Kitty is going to have a new home. Christine and Megan have also both changed his name to Rupert.
That afternoon, I volunteered at a Main Street event at a pizza place. This is Mama Peace, the mother of the famous Mattie Stepanek. She’s a board member of Main Street and hosts pizza nite every few weeks to talk about things like – stress, self care, etc. It was nice, I served pizza to my friends and helped clean up and set the tables back.
So the government shut down today, but (selfishly) no worries about me. My agency is self funded, so we have about 52 days of operating reserves. So I still go and defend the constitution. With Edda by my side, we will trudge through this swamp.
Jeremy has been taking long walks with Elka, especially in the am. For which I am grateful, I haven’t had time to take Elka to the dog park much. Since the “country club” dog park closed, the “public” dog park is actually much better in many ways, but it’s just a smidge harder to get to and more out of the way in my daily life. So…that’s that.
I have removed so many apps from my phone, that it is the most boring piece of equipment ever. My texting is basically not very social, just very logistical. I still reach for it, but I mess around with it for a bit and then…it’s so boring.
As I said, I’m interested in having a planted tank, which is a fish tank with a lot of plants and not a lot of fish, so it can sustain itself, but it looks like a lot of work and money and now this cat has inserted itself into the picture. I’m mixed on cat ownership, I like the cat, but he’s extra work. Everyone is slightly allergic, so I’m reading up on how to make the cat as unallergic as possible. First up is air filtration, we need to put new filters in our covid era HEPA filters which have been running for five years now.
I bought these batman sheets off of ebay. I love it.
The cat enjoys drinking out of the toilet. I don’t love it.
Edda got suspended from her day program, so she’s hanging out with us for the foreseeable future. She was suspended because there is a paperwork issue which is preventing our service providers from being paid. They were very apologetic, but I understand and they did give me a few days heads up. I knew this was brewing for a few weeks now, because of other issues that kept popping up and not being fixed. I will not go into what a paperwork/approval nightmare of this entire process is which started almost exactly a year ago when Edda was starting her last year of school and I spend hours navigating the adult system. I’m grateful that we have what we have because I heard that half of the kids in the school system with needs like Edda’s did not get placed anywhere for adult services. Regarding the delayed payments, it seems like it’s just a simple oversight, but I know better now than to call anything “simple”. I’m glad I’m in a relatively good headspace today and can take this all in stride and we are so lucky to have spot.
My hobbies are colliding. Zeke found this plant, appeared to poop in it and left a huge dirt pile around it. And then it smelled terribly and I tried to root around to find the poop and couldn’t find it and then concluded that Elka had found it and ate it. Jeremy does not like this situation. I don’t either, but it doesn’t bother me as much for whatever reason. Anyways, I put the plant on a 12-14″ stool thinking that that would deter the cat, but no. The cat sprang up into it and started to do its business in it and I had to shoo it away. This is the most sentimental plant in the house, I have memories of this plant when I was 4 years old. So I’m hoping not to kill this plant.
On Sunday I went to the gym where I proceeded to continue to be the old lady that doesn’t lift very much, but provides good conversation. I know many of the famous-ish lifters in the weightlifting world, so I can insert myself into conversations there. And I can continue to be amazed at the practice lifting that people do. This is 110 kg snatch, that you basically yank off the ground and immediately throw over your head.
Friday morning, I awoke kind of happy/nervous because I was scheduled to go under anesthesia to get my stuck IUD out. My procedure wasn’t until 1 pm, so I got to not eat for a long time. In anticipation of this, I took the entire day off work – which was luxurious. I had been run down early in the week from the canker sore, so I was feeling extra tired and wanted to sleep on Friday morning and hopefully also sleep Friday afternoon.
After I had put Edda on the bus, I went to go out to take the compost out and found this little kitty just hanging out on our back porch. He allowed me to pick it up and carry it upstairs without struggle and I assumed it was Christine’s cat – our tenant downstairs. So I thought I’d just text her and find out and then tuck it back into her apartment. But she texted back and said – it’s not mine, but I saw it when I left for work at 5:30 in the morning. I texted all the neighbors (nope! not mine!), hung a sign outside my house and waited for the owner to find me.
Meanwhile, I did take a morning nap and then Jeremy dropped me off at 12:30 at the doctor’s office. I had asked Megan to pick me up from surgery – they don’t let you take an uber home and Megan was super helpful and just who I wanted to see slightly woozy. Jeremy couldn’t pick me up because he was on the lookout for Edda’s bus coming home and it was too hard to manage the exact timing for everything. And I was excited to show her the mystery cat because no one loves a cat more than Megan.
The IUD came out no problem, I’m very happy about that. Though I did take the cervix softening pill the night before ORALLY instead of VAGINALLY (which, in my defense – it did say by mouth on the bottle) and I apologized to the surgeon about my tight, unsoftened cervix and she said – no worries, I will meet you where you are. I got a nice mixture of fentanyl and propofol – those things are amazing when used properly, in and out of sleep so easily and quickly, unbelievable. Anyways, Megan came home and promptly fell in love with the cat. Now there were like three people who I thought were interested in keeping the cat – Christine, me and Megan – with me being the last in line – the other two are hard core cat lovers and owners.
So after the surgery, I made Megan drive me around town slightly high – to the aquarium store (where Megan told me she was not going to let me buy anything – I’m interested in setting up a planted tank), then to Trader Joe’s. While she was doing this, she was also gently trying to get me to be more proactive finding the owner of the mystery cat which took me a while to understand because I was high and in my altered state, I was already doing so much for the cat (I had a sign up at my house!). But Megan reminded me that maybe the owner was distraught looking for their beloved cat to which I was like….oh, yes. I get that. So she also drove me to our vet to see if mystery kitty was microchipped. And he was and there was an owner and a phone number. So messages were left and we waited.
And then the vet said – we found the owner! And then the owner called me and said they lived in Silver Spring and that the cat had been missing for weeks. Silver Spring is like 30 minutes by freeway from my house. We imagined the cat wandering for weeks in the wilderness of suburban Maryland. So she arranged to come pick up the cat at 3 pm. So I’m just waiting around…3 pm, then 3:15…, by 3:30 I wonder if they are going to come and finally at 4pm, I get a text asking if I could I keep the cat, their mom is allergic and doesn’t want the cat back in the house and the mom was the one who let it go outside. And so I said, I’ll keep the cat! all the time thinking that Christine or Megan would keep the cat, but it looks like those two love the cat, but don’t really want to house the cat. LOL. So the cat may be ours. At least I got the name of the cat – Ezekiel to which we are promptly going to shorten to Zeke. Welcome home Zeke. Also, Elka ate cat poop from the kitty litter. Fun times.
It’s the end of watermelon season. Like really the end. We’ve been using watermelon to keep Edda’s fiber/water intake higher to prevent constipation. But now I need to switch. I’m switching to apples with the skin on which, we will see, it takes much longer to feed Edda an apple at each sit down meal, but we are trying.
We are still getting into the rhythm of Edda’s adult programming. The day program is going well, the metro access has been fine after getting used to it’s random-ness. We got Eliana and Ginny onboarded to be paid by the state for her home personal supports. We are learning new apps and paperwork requirements and now….no one is getting paid. A glitch in the very complicated system. We are trying to figure it out.
We see Edda’s dentist quarterly paying out of pocket for an extra cleaning between the regular six month visits. I’ve been trying so hard to clean her teeth well. Jeremy and I both descend upon her after dinner and Jeremy holds her mouth open by putting an old toothbrush between her upper and lower jaw and hold her head steady. And then I go to town with: a mouth rinse, water pik, flossing, electric toothbrush and then a final mouth rinse. No one likes this. And yet…her teeth and gums remain…inflamed and plaque filled. I’m always disappointed at myself at the dentist. Like a little checkmark next to oral hygiene – mom=bad. Hahaha. Last night I tried talking Jeremy into taking the brushing role and maybe he’d be better at it than me and then he could do it FOREVER. And he looked at me and said – I’m not falling for that trick. HAHAHA.
I went to Main Street for lunch yesterday because I had to pick up some paintings Megan and I did a few months ago and I was looking forward to eating at the Soul-ful Cafe because I did like the offerings they had at the cafe and I hadn’t been there in a while. Unfortunately, I think the business has not thrived and the sandwiches have been downgraded and the cookies were gone. I had a lackluster chicken caesar wrap, which I usually enjoy, but I did not. I ate lunch with Kelly and a new friend Drew which was fun.
I went yesterday to the dentist and she mentioned that I had a huge canker sore on the inside of my lip and didn’t it hurt terribly? And I kind of had noticed, but not really – you know? Sometimes I can just block these things from my daily experience, but I have been feeling extra run down these past few days and even today, so probably from this cranky canker sore? ughghghgh…
I keep telling myself that I’m going to take “fun” photos, but I take only “useful” photos – like where I parked the car. Apparently, the new car will tell me exactly where I parked it, if only I download the app. But I kind of refuse to download the app because…I am old. So there we go. I LOVE the new car. But also, I completely don’t understand it. Why did it not lock all the doors when I started driving? Why when I push “driver 2” on the settings panel, it sometimes goes to the seat positioning I want, and other times, it positions the seat to accommodate Big Bird and the mirrors slant down as if I want to see turtles crawling under my front wheels? I do not know. So many things I do not know. And will continue to not know.
I’ve been trying very hard to not buy new things. I mean, I still buy lots of new things, but I try to buy old things too. Like – all of my queen size duvet covers in the house decided to self-shred a few months ago. I bought them when the children were 5 and 3 – so almost 20 years of tossing, turning, pee, vomit, dog hair, (sex!), etc. So instead of buying 5 sets of new sheets for over $150 each, I went to ebay and bought 5 covers at an average price of $35 each. Some were new, most slightly used – some had curious george printed on them. I may have bought batman sheets. I also wanted to fix Edda’s bath chair – this is a $2000 chair which has served us well, but the wheels have stopped turning because hair has gotten into them. So I tried to take them apart to fix them, but they are somehow machine pressed together and un-take-apartable. So I emailed the manufacturer and asked how to clean them. And they said – well, we recommend cleaning them often. That was their only suggestion – often. I would clean them often if I could get to the mechanism. They also offered to let me buy replacement wheels which isn’t what I wanted. I want these old wheels, but without hair.
I’m also slowly becoming the building manager at my local unitarian church where I sing in the choir. I love the choir, I kind of love the building and I enjoy the people, it’s the whole “church” thing that still gets to me. We will see how it grows on me. I got handed over the keys to the furnace rooms, the electrical rooms, the back rooms. (The previous building person is moving to the country about 2 hours away. And I also think that there needs to be some female presence on the building team, I have been wearing very nice dresses in which I had sung in to look at water heaters and electrical panels.) So they got a new $50k HVAC system installed this summer and it’s….almost perfect. Just almost. It’s like when you are at a restaurant very hungry and you see your delicious,well-balanced meal sitting on the little pick up area between the kitchen and the servers and your server is like – totally busy – but keeps walking past your burrito, falafel, steak, or eggs Benedict. The HVAC is installed, it works, you can change the fan/temperature, etc. But…the controls are circa 2018. And the contractor didn’t stay to instruct anyone on how to program it and instead left a pile of manuals. So you have to walk to each room (because each room has its own temperature control) and change them manually, the scheduling is difficult, you can’t change the temperature by yelling at Alexa. It’s so difficult that the staff hasn’t even programmed the time into each control – to which the church admin groaned and said – it doesn’t pull the time from the air? And I said….no. I suspect a fancy controller is a whole extra expense/system. Jeremy and I talked about it last night (he watches lots of construction on youtube – from DIY all the way up to insane custom installs with tight tolerances) – you need pay extra for the high end construction where the customer service is higher.
Elka is the boss of Jeremy. Jeremy is trying to train Elka to fetch and more importantly to come when called. And Elka knows what the command it and can do it often, but a lot of the time, she gets distracted and doesn’t want to do it. And she often tells Jeremy, I’m not going that way, let’s go this way. This is Elka telling Jeremy (after an hour long walk) – I’m not going home. To which I texted Jeremy back – I think you live outside now. In Jeremy’s professional life, no one is the boss of him. I think people are (slightly) afraid of Jeremy – I was slightly afraid of Jeremy when I first started dating him (don’t worry, it’s long gone, he is a goofball. No one should be scared of Jeremy). But Elka bosses Jeremy around like a true alpha/beta relationship.
Sometimes I eat banana fast, and other times I eat bananas slow. This wreaks havoc on our banana supply-chain management and just-in-time banana delivery system. So I made this chocolate banana bread last night and it should have cooled for an hour or so, but we needed to go to bed at 8:30 so we pulled it out of the pan piping hot.
So we store a tiny bit of ice cream in the freezer – our emergency ice cream for when Edda has seizures and bites her tongue and won’t eat anything except ice cream. This often happens when only one of us is home with Edda and then you are at a conundrum. Do I go to the store with Edda to get the ice cream – because often times you have given her a benzo and she’s high as a kite and very limp and heavy. (I know, we can instacart ice cream over – I’ve done that before). So I bought some ice cream with a stern warning, this is Edda’s ice cream and it’s for emergencies only. And so last night, I was going to put Edda to bed and then enjoy the cake and break into the ice cream – because clearly this was an ice cream emergency. But then Jeremy looked at me and said, you are going to put Edda to bed and then steal her ice cream? So then I sighed and said, OK Edda gets it too. And we all had a late night sweet.
As soon as we bought the new car, it seemed like the old car broke. We couldn’t start it and it sat, unfixed for about two weeks while Jeremy was away in Chicago and I couldn’t pay any attention to it. Jeremy tried to take it to Costco and the battery place down the street, but apparently our very regular Honda Accord has the more uncommon polarity arrangement. Anyways, he found a place and replaced the original Honda battery and it started right up.
He also spent a lot of time thinking about our cell phone plan. Should we switch? Will it be cheaper? Should he switch his entire phone ecosystem over to Apple? This took a lot of time and a lot of talking to a T-mobile associate. And in the end, we will do….nothing. Which is mostly my favorite thing to do. No, we didn’t switch over to mint or us mobile or visible or any pre-paid plan because we actually have a ton of lines and we use our phones a lot.
I sang in choir on Sunday wearing this rented outfit and I wore it again to Sunday night dinner.
Sooo…my chocolate was not completely tempered. I had my dinner party and they looked great and afterwards, not so much – a bit of bloom. Will try again.
We went downtown to the Miracle theater to watch the comedy band duo Griefcat. These are my lady friends – we were almost the first ones at the show. Lexy wanted to get there early and so we were. We met the ladies of Griefcat while attending another show – I was honestly a little nervous for this show – fingers crossed that it was fabulous and not cringy. (I love this photo of us, the empty theater, the red of the seats… popcorn in hand.)
The place did fill up and the show was FABULOUS. 10/10 recommend. I had a great time, I loved it so much. Funny and homey and sexy and musically accessible. I wish this band a lot of success.
