the other shoe

I guess I spoke too fast.  I'm a little boggled by my day, honestly.

I woke up this morning and just wasn't feeling...right...so I called in sick and went back to sleep.  When I woke up, I came downstairs and went to let Tam out of the guest room, where she's been spending nights until she gets big enough to get up on the bed herself (and to keep Toby from eating her food!).

I opened the door and found Tam sprawled on the floor.  She was stiff and cold and unresponsive.  I immediately called the vet and told them I was on the way.  Dr. Mike met me on the way in.  He looked at her and said, "I'm sorry;  she's gone."  But then Tam raised her head.

We spent over an hour and a half working with her, pumping drugs into her and trying to warm her up.  Mike told me that she had hookworms and that this probably put her into shock, which was just too much for her little body.  He finally told me that I had three options:  I could stay as long as I needed to, I could take her home and try and warm her up with a heating pad, or I could take her to the emergency vet.  He said that, if she were his, he'd take her home.  So I did.

I spent the afternoon holding her.  My friend Chris came over and helped.  But just before 7 tonight, Tam stopped breathing.  She was seven weeks old.  

I can't stop crying.

a good weekend

I had such a good Saturday!

I started out by taking Tambien (yup, that's the name I picked) to the vet, where they told me that she's actually a little big for her age (who knew that 6/10 of a pound was big???!!!???) and gave her a shot. The wonderful vet also clipped her nails, so she can no longer use my flesh as a scratching post!!

Cute vet, btw. I decided to find a new vet's office after the deal with Cezanne. I was frustrated by the unwillingness of the vet at VCA to give me a straight story, and I'd gotten annoyed at the fact that we never saw the same vet--the lady I worked with when D'Urb was so sick last spring doesn't even work there anymore. So I went to Bridget's vet; he's been in business for almost 25 years and has few associate vets. I got the associate guy on Saturday.

Then I went to the mall, where I got my Clinique refills and caught bonus time (yay, gift with purchase!!). As I sat eating my lunch, I saw a woman coming out of a salon with a fresh pedi and thought, "oooo, yeah!" So I called Douglas J in Royal Oak and scheduled one. Two hours and $39 later, I had beautiful soft feet and a new bottle of OPI polish (it came with parafin too!). Great place--I'm a fan. I'd go back for anything but a haircut and only because I want an ongoing relationship with my hairstylist and the students are done in 11 months.

new baby

Well, I was planning to wait a couple more weeks to get a new cat, but the lady with the kittens called today to say that her husband was done with them and was planning to take them to the pound if they didn't get out of his house. I decided that it was better to take one early than not get one and have them end up at the pound. So I now have a very little girl in my house. She's currently burrowed in a blanket on the couch sleeping. Apparently, being run from house to house to get adopted was stressful! She's a gray and white tuxedo, and I had forgotten how small kittens are!

I'm pondering names. So far, my ideas are Boleyn, Salinger, and Tambien. My friend Charlie suggested Samantha. I'll keep you apprised and post photos when she wakes up!

strange day

Today I helped my mom get on Facebook.  This is weird.  My mom is 65, and she has very little patience for computers that don't do things in the way she believes is most intuitive.  So she's working her way through the registration process saying, "why do I have to put in my birthday?"  I DON'T KNOW, MOM!!!

Anyway, she decided she wanted to get on Facebook because my younger relatives, particularly cousins but also the generation thereafter, post all their trip photos on Facebook, and she wants to know what's going on.   All of this was to check out the shots my aunt took of my cousin and uncle while they were fly fishing in the mountains last week....lots of pictures of fish.  Whoooeeee.  :)

As a side note with no segueway, my friend Chris from church called me today  to tell me that she has a classmate whose cat just had kittens.  They'll be ready in about a month.  That's about perfect.  Sometimes things do work out.  

bad day

Today I had to have Cezanne, my ten-year-old cat, put down.

She was fine last week and as recently as Sunday. Monday, she ate and threw up her dinner. Tuesday, she didn't really eat. Yesterday, she fell apart. She was barely moving, and last night around 9 she completely lost bladder control.

I took her to the vet. After a long conversation about testing to determine what was wrong, I finally got the vet to tell me that the testing would be extensive and very expensive and that the situation was probably very dire (it took almost 45 minutes to get this statement). I decided not to put Cezi through all that, and I let her go.

For the record, I am really really tired of having to make this decision. It's only been eight months since I had to put D'Urby down.

This sucks.

stuff...

Not a lot going on this week, on account of the fact that I was well and truly laid out most of the week. I was so SICK!!! I left school early on Monday and didn't go back until Thursday...not a bad way to come back from vacation, but kind of unproductive!

Anyhoo, we've got midterms this week, so it'll be a long haul. That's cool--it'll keep me busy!

drain drama

Ok. Spring Break!!! Whooohooo!!

On Sunday, the drain in the basement starting backing up just a little when I put carrot and potato peels down the disposal. I figured that I shouldn't put carrot and potato peels down the drain and moved on with my life.

By Wednesday, it wasn't just carrot and potato peels backing up (ick.). So I called the plumber. He called me back Thursday (by which point I'm making up excuses not to be home to use the water), and scheduled an appointment for Friday morning.

He and his snake guy came out and snaked the drains. A couple times. Apparently, I've got roots (which makes me think: if the roots can get in, doesn't that mean that the stuff in the pipes can get out???). But the drains are clear and we started to clean up. One of the last things the plumber says to me is that I've got a loose cap on one of the access drains and I need to go pick up "an unthreaded two inch drain cap." He says the female threads on the drain pipe are corroded enough that they would catch the male threads on the cap I've got and that's why it needs to be an unthreaded cap.

So I went to Lowe's. I bought an unthreaded two inch drain cap... and a three inch one because the two inch looked too small. I came home and tried them, eager to be done with the project so I could move on with my life without concern about my plumbing (and could use my washer and dryer, behind which lives the drain in question). The two inch cap was too small. The three inch cap...you guessed it: it was too big. ARGGGGG. I tried to McGyver the three inch cap by sanding it down a little, but that didn't work. So I went back to Lowe's.

The guy at Lowe's explained that many of the older houses in my neighborhood actually have 2.5 inch drain access pipes (it is important to add at this point that probably half the people in metro Detroit have exactly the same house as I do--post-WWII bungalows--and we all need the same stuff!!) but that Lowe's doesn't carry anything for 2.5 inch pipes. What I needed to do was go to this plumbing supply store in Berkley...and they closed in 20 minutes.

So I booked it over to the plumbing supply store. I walked in at 5:02, and the owner was distinctly not pleased to see me. He helped me quickly and sold me a lead cap which he said was soft enough that it would work with even the most corroded pipes. As I walked out the door, I noticed that it had a big number 3 on the top, which to me meant that it was for a three inch pipe. Still, I didn't argue. I couldn't. They locked the door behind me.

I took the lead cap home, and I was right. It was too big. At that point, I decided that the loose cap hadn't killed me in the three years I've lived here, so it wasn't likely to kill me overnight, and I went about my Friday night business.

On Saturday morning, I went back. A different guy helped me, and he sold me a PVC cap for a 2.5 inch pipe. It's threaded, but he says that the only other alternative is to get someone to come out and rethread the drain pipe, and that sounds expensive. I managed to get the PVC cap to stay on fairly well. It's not as secure as the other caps, but it's also not leaking sewer gas into my basement. And I am well and truly done with my plumbing experience. Ick. I knew there was a reason I only do electric myself.