Category: Fostering

Rachael sent me the link to this story yesterday, about a cat who was frozen to someone’s driveway for 24 hours before he was rescued.

You can see more about him at Facebook, and there’s a ChipIn set up to raise funds for his care, here.

I love this picture so hard, I just can’t even tell you. Alice showing Sally Peppers who the boss is with that outstretched paw just kills me DEAD.

Then she gives her the Alice Mo Glare of Death, like “I am NOT kidding you!”

Got it!

And now that she’s got it, she’s never going to let it go.

NEVER.

Sometimes it gets away from her despite her determination.

::LEAP!::

::JUMP!::

An entirely different day, she still keeps her eye on the birdie.

Got it!

BRAAAAAAAAAINS.

In the evenings, when Fred is sitting in the front room reading, the cats like to gather around. First Alice gets on her heating pad, and then eventually Tommy shows up. He loves the blanket that the heating pad is sitting on so very much that he goes into a trance. He kneads. And kneads. And kneads and kneads and kneads. I call it “the long march to nowhere.”

It annoys Alice Mo to no end when Tommy marches.

She glares at him in disbelief.

And annoyance and dislike.

Tommy just pretends she isn’t there, and he marches and marches and marches forever.

Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: The back forty’s only so big, you know!
2007: BobPod, may you rest in peace.
2006: I suspect the latter, personally. Fuckers.
2005: Collab
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: William Fichtner is a hottie.
2001: I hope I’m not doing serious damage to myself, but if you saw how clean the showers get, you’d know how much it’s worth it.
2000: I highly recommend a warm, purring kitten laying against you when you’re feeling nauseous.

Yeah, yeah, happy Valentine’s Day. I didn’t get any cute Valentiney pictures of the cats. Maybe next year. For this year, you’ll just have to agree to be my valentine and we’ll leave it at that, mmkay?

PS: Where’s my candy??

I think that fucking whore of a groundhog actually brought on winter by seeing his stupid shadow. It actually sleeted last night. SLEETED. Not two weeks ago it was so warm I had to go upstairs and put a short-sleeved t-shirt on, and now we’re getting sleet?

Fuck that.

Someone bring me the head of that rotten little rodent.

Am I the only one who, upon hearing Adele’s Someone Like You, imagines the whole scenario from the lost love’s wife’s perspective? I mean, Adele’s at the door, all “Yeah, I hear you got married and settled down. SURPRISE! HERE I AM! Oh darling, don’t be so shy and shrink back from the light. No, no, no, don’t worry about me! I’ll be okay! I’ll find someone like you! I just want you to know that it’s not over for me, that I sob over your picture every night and all. Okay, then! Is that dinner? Got an extra plate? Oh, does your wife have to be present? She’s awfully rude, isn’t she?”

I mean, what is the protagonist of this song hoping to accomplish by SHOWING UP AT THE MAN’S HOUSE to tell him she’s not over him and she’s hoping to find someone like him? What, exactly? Okay, that’s a rhetorical question. I think WE ALL KNOW what she’s hoping, she’s hoping he’ll be like “By god, YOU ARE RIGHT, you are my ONE TRUE LOVE, let me get my car keys and let’s blow this popsicle stand!”

I imagine his wife fixing dinner and fuming about how oh GREAT, here’s Crazypants, back again to proclaim her goddamn love for MY HUSBAND, super fun times!

I wish someone famous would write and record a response to Someone Like You. That would be friggin’ awesome, wouldn’t it? Ohhhh, Pink! I think I have your next assignment!

Miss Sally in the sun. She and Everett look SO much alike – except that Everett’s got the white whiskers, and Sally’s got the white hairs on her chest.

Miz Poo likes to watch from a distance.

Practicing his high dive for the Olympics.

Sugarbutt’s all “Who’s playing with feathers here?!”

I love Sugarbutt’s whiskers in the sun.

Sally again. See the six white hairs on her chest? Too cute!

Someone got a bit too close to Alice.

Sugarbutt, if you’re going to get the feather, you’re going to have to work on your swing.

I think it’s been quite a while since I shared any pictures of Kara. She tends to spend most of her time outside or on top of the dryer. Lately, she’s been coming in and hanging out on the platform in the kitchen. I think it’s probably warmer than on top of the dryer, which is near the back door.

Kara with an attitude.

Previously
2011: Easy listening songs of the 80s? Yes, please, Time Life!
2010: Won’t you be my Val-LOON-tine?
2009: SHE IS A VERY HIGH-ENERGY DOG.
2008: I imagine that when we have 40 chickens, it will be a wee bit more difficult to coax them back into their yard after they’ve escaped.
2007: I should have asked him to be my valentine, no?
2006: “Stop following me,” Sugarbutt said. “Or I shall call the gendarmes and they shall kick your ass all the way back to Paree.”
2005: “I wasn’t worried,” Fred said to me. “Because any party where the invitation suggests bringing Dance Dance Revolution pads is not one that’s going to get out of hand.”
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: Be our valentine, bitch!
2001: Could this get any more exciting, talking about the weather?
2000: Is it wrong that hearing about that incident gives me a whole new respect for Maria?

Congrats to Sarah K., who won the $50 to spend at MrChewy.com! And thank you to Mr. Chewy (and Brent) for sponsoring the giveaway!

I do love a good giveaway, and I just wish everyone could have won!

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I had a good weekend, and even got a few things accomplished, despite the fact that it was FRICKIN’ COLD outside. Saturday morning I got up bright and early and headed out for South Huntsville. It was blowing and blowing on the interstate, and I was starting to think that I should have driven on surface streets instead of going on the interstate, but I finally made it there just fine.

Forgotten Felines was having a pancake breakfast at Applebee’s, they have them four (I think? Maybe three?) times a year, and I’ve been trying to get to one for pretty much the last year. Last February I was recovering from surgery, and the same in October, but this time I marked my calendar months in advance, and even if there’d been a blinding snowstorm (it actually did spit snow a little, but the wind was the worst part of Saturday) I would have gone!

Katherine met me there, and we had a good time eating breakfast and talking, and we got to chat with Suzanne (who works with Forgotten Felines and has gotten to visit the magical Crooked Acres and has been accosted by Miz Poo) and Heaven (a former Challenger’s House foster mum), and it was just fun to get out of the house and have some social time and eat some pancakes!

I spent the rest of Saturday not doing much but playing Words with Friends, reading magazines, and snoozing on the couch.

Sunday morning I got up and got a bunch of small stuff done around the house – laundry, oat bran muffin-making (recipe up next time I make them), organizing my shelf of fabric in the front room. Fun and exciting (but necessary) stuff like that.

When we got our Da Bird feather teaser for the cats, we also got two replacement feather ends. It’s not quite time to replace the feathers on the teaser, but it probably will be soon. So of course we started wondering where the hell we’d put the replacement feathers. Were they on the bookcase? In my desk? With the other cat toys? NO. I have no idea where they are. I’m 100% sure that I said “I’m going to put these here because (whatever excellent reason for putting them there)”, and equally sure that I will never ever find them until 30 years have gone by and I’ll find them behind a book or in the pantry or UP MY ASS and be like “What the hell are these?”

It’s possible that Fred put the feathers back in the box that the whole rigamarole came in, and I didn’t realize he’d done so, and then stuck the box in the garage and eventually took the box to the recycling center without realizing that the feathers were in it. It’s also possible that one of the cats saw the replacement feathers and batted them to parts unknown. Who the hell knows?

So the reason I ended up organizing my shelf of fabric in the front room is to see if perhaps for some reason I stuck the feathers in and amongst the fabric, but there was nothing in that pile but fabric.

Oh well. Now the fabric is neatly folded and organized, so there’s that.

Exciting, no?

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I actually had two exciting bird-related happenings over the weekend.

First, Friday night I was standing near the side door when I heard a loud bang. I looked out to see a Chickadee laying on the doormat, barely moving, his beak opening and closing. Birds occasionally hit the side door, but usually stand up, shake it off, and fly away. The Chickadee didn’t look like he was going to make it, but we did what we always do when we have a half alive bird on our hands. We put him in a box in a dark room and waited to see whether he was going to die or recover. Ten minutes later Fred checked on him and he was bright-eyed, so Fred took the box out onto the front porch. As soon as the box was open, the Chickadee was like “Later, sucka!” and flitted off. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of the Chickadee in captivity.

And then Saturday afternoon, I realized – this is very exciting, try to control yourselves – that we not only have a Mister Bluebird hanging around here, we also have a MISSUS Bluebird!

Dare I hope that we might one day have baby Bluebirds around here? Oh, I HOPE SO!

(I just wish that Mister and Missus would stop checking out the bug situation in the back yard, it makes Kara very excited, and she’s an excellent little hunter!)

Mister in the front, Missus in the back.

The Missus.

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The Peppers are now out in the house 24 hours a day, I don’t remember if I mentioned that. The first couple of nights were a little rough, because they were very excited about jumping on my feet if I moved them, or smacking at my eyelashes, or any number of other things that disrupted my sleep (I do not like having my sleep disrupted, thank you very much). I used the can of compressed air to teach them what was and wasn’t acceptable behavior, and now they’ll snuggle up against me and sleep, but don’t wake me up or attack my feet.

As soon as they hear me wake up and roll over in the morning, though, they’re all crawling on me, purring, and asking for love. The girls, especially, love to have their morning pettings, and would probably lay there all day and let me pet them. They’re such sweet monkeys, those Peppers.

Everett and Lucy, on the platform in the front room.

What I love here

is how Lucy’s expression

never changes. She’s like “Do you SEE what I have to put up with?!”

Sally, hanging out across the room on top of the bookcase.

“What?”

I love the attitude. I swear, she is just the sweetest thing.

I like how you can see the difference in their eye colors.

Sally, not impressed.

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This basket is always occupied. Sugarbutt has taken over for the time being. If he’s not in it, Corbie is, or Newt, or sometimes even Jake or Elwood. They love the basket, is what I’m saying.

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Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: Happy Friday the 13th!
2008: “We wouldn’t want to detract from the beauty of the muddy cat footprints on the counters. But you don’t need to worry. That’s not a maggot.”
2007: I need a nap.
2006: Mystery solved. Just call me Nancy Drew.
2005: No entry.
2004: Molasses runs in her veins, I swear to god.
2003: No entry.
2002: My life? Complete again.
2001: Do I want to go sit through an eternal PTA meeting, listen to endless amounts of people babble endlessly? Um, no.
2000: No entry.

One lucky person will win $50 to spend at MrChewy.com! Go enter for your chance to win before 11:59 pm Friday!

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Not a lot of pics today – my photography assistant has had to work late the last few days (the nerve!), and so I have gotten no action shots since this weekend. SOB.

But that’s okay, at some point he’ll be home when the sun is shining, right? ‘Til then, admire some Peppers when they’re NOT flying through the air or stalking da bird.

Everett’s got the grumpies.

I love his white whiskers so very much.

I used to have two bucket litter boxes in front of this fireplace area in the front room, then I decided to try a bigger one made out of a huge storage container. I wasn’t intending to make it be a covered one, but I thought I’d try it and see whether the cats would use it or not. Turns out the older cats don’t care for it, but the kittens think it’s AWESOME. That’s Everett on top, supervising Sally, who’s using the facilities. I’ll probably switch back to the buckets, because they’re less of a pain to scoop. How thrilled am I to have litter boxes in the front room? SO not thrilled. Would you believe that there was a time when we only had four litter boxes, and they were all in the laundry room. SIGH. Those were the days! Now we’ve got them in the laundry room, the guest bedroom, the front room, the upstairs bathroom, and the foster room. Some days it feels like I do nothin’ but scoop!

Lucy, hanging out on my desk.

She’s such a sweet girl.

Everett has a new skill. I’m thrilled by this, I’m sure you can imagine.

This is where the Peppers like to spend their days. The girls are on the cat tree, Everett’s on top of the bookcase.

Sally, annoyed.

Everett, ignoring.

Sally again. See the green around her pupils? So pretty!

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Miz Poo, the old lady, hanging in there. She’s a mess, but so so sweet.

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Previously
2011: Now if Friday would just GET HERE already, I’d be happy!
2010: I don’t know how on earth we’re ever going to dig out from under all that.
2009: No entry.
2008: Which of your cats, if they were human, would you actually want to hang around the most?
2007: I judiciously left off the “You fucking motherfucking asshole.” part.
2006: And then the spud said “Is he trying to go to Narnia?”
2005: I’ll take my anonymous life, thank you.
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: “What?” he said. “I WASN’T geeky!”
2001: No entry.
2000: Tomorrow, I’m going to go see Dr. Judy for my ear, out of which I still cannot hear anything but constant white noise.

One lucky person will win $50 to spend at MrChewy.com! Go enter for your chance to win before 11:59 pm Friday!

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Did I mention that I had my yearly appointment with my gynecologist last week? It hardly seems fair that I had my uterus and ovaries removed and still have to go see her every year. Stupid ovaries; one of them was adhered to my bladder by endometrial cells. Or kidney or some other organ in the area, I don’t even remember anymore. Probably my bladder. That’s in the right area for that to happen, right? I swear to you, I have zero clue where any organs in my body are located. She could have told me it was stuck to the inside of my left eyelid, and I would have been “Yeah, I feel like I’ve heard of that happening…”

Of course, seeing as how I’m on the estrogen patch (and OTC progesterone cream), I have to go back and see her once a year so I can get a prescription for the patch. I’m not sure I’d be so ready to go see her every year if I didn’t need that prescription, so it’s probably good that I do have to go see her for it.

Between the appointment in early January with my Gastroenterologist (my lab numbers looked so good he said I can go to seeing him once a year instead of every six months), my appointment at the end of January with my Primary Care doc, and my appointment late last week with my Gyn, I do believe I’m done for the year with doctors.

Except that I just remembered I need to make an eye appointment. Maybe I’ll put that off for a few months. I’m pretty sure I’m about at the point where I’m going to need reading glasses (ohhhhh how I laughed when I was a kid and my parents had to hold something at arm’s length to read it. Who’s laughing NOW, Young Robyn? ‘Cause it sure as shit ain’t Blind Old Robyn.) and ugh. Given that I can barely walk from one side of the house without misplacing my ass, I’m not looking forward to needing to keep track of reading glasses.

I know, I know, get a tether (or whatever the fuck it’s called) and let my reading glasses hang around my neck when I don’t need them. Only, do you know how many times a day I almost hang myself by the headphones cord to my iPod? Oh, that drives me crazy.

Anyway.

I had an appointment with the surgeon who performed my gastric bypass (we just passed six years since I had the surgery!), but a week before the appointment, his office called. They said that he’d retired, and they were going to reschedule the appointment with his partner, who was taking over his practice. So I rescheduled the appointment, and then when the office was closed I called back AND I CANCELED IT. Oh, yes I did.

I find it exceedingly odd that he up and retired with very little notice (his name is actually on the answering machine message at the office), given that he can’t be older than in his mid-50s, if that. It makes me curious as to what the real story is there. What it DOESN’T make me want to do is keep going back to that office. For the past six years, I’ve dreaded my appointment at that office. I’ve actually seen my surgeon’s partner before, and if it’s possible, he has even less of a bedside manner than my surgeon does. My PCP can monitor all my important blood tests, and if there’s something that needs to be done – if I need an iron transfusion (which I haven’t in two years) or whatever, she can refer me to the pertinent specialist.

I am aware that I need to do a six-year update at OneFatbitchypoo. I’ll get to it when I do. I have to tell you, I’m not much interested in OneFatBitchypoo anymore and I have to force myself to update over there (which I haven’t done in a year, so there you go.) There’ll be something up by the end of the month. Probably.

So, there you go. The state of me: healthy. A bum shoulder (hate physical therapy), crappy vision, but my blood pressure is so fantastic it makes triathlon runners gnash their teeth in jealousy, my cholesterol is super-awesome (did you know I eat a scrambled egg every day for breakfast? Sometimes two if I’m hungry and they’re small.), and I don’t look a day over 63 1/2.

I call that good enough.

Last year at this time, I was gearing up for my breast lift/ upper arm lift/ chin lift surgery. The year before at this time, I was gearing up for my hysterectomy (in retrospect, I suspected I was going to come out of that goddamn surgery without my ovaries. Stupid endometriosis.). This year, no surgery. 2012 is the Year of No Surgery.

(Every time I say that, I can feel my appendix getting ready to burst.)

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Sally and Everett (pardon the blur), keeping watch on da bird.

I need to make a video – that Everett gets some serious hang time when he jumps.

Jumpin’ Sally. I love the look on Everett’s face, like “Wait. I’m the only Pepper who’s allowed to jump around here!”

Lucy comes over to check out the form on these jumps.

Everett takes a break from jumping to show the correct waltzing form.

Everett senses that for some reason, he should feel annoyed…

“What is it that has me so annoyed right now?”

“SO annoyed.”

Does Alice look pleased with herself, or what?

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Alice, fangin’.

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Previously
2011: Here, have some more exclamation points!
2010: Petsmart kitties.
2009: “IF I GET PIG SHIT ON ME, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!”
2008: Please don’t tell me she’s a flighty mess in real life.
2007: She became entirely liquid somehow, and flowed through my fingers and across the room, ending up under the bed.
2006: I think that the next thing Apple should create is a cell phone/ iPod player.
2005: Yes, I use the same kind of lotion as my CAT.
2004: No entry.
2003: Anyway. Enough about my underwear.
2002: You’ve been warned, skank hos out there who would swoop down upon my husband in his grief and get him to marry you.
2001: Yeah, that’s me, not giving a shit if they can see me or not…
2000: Really, what other journaller will thrill you with pictures from the litter box?

One lucky person will win $50 to spend at MrChewy.com! Go enter for your chance to win before 11:59 pm Friday!

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New one over at Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza! Spoiler: we made Lemon Squares this week!

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Good lord, WHAT a weekend. We spent all weekend dealing with getting the hosting on all our domains switched over, and waiting for the nameservers to propogate and all that. Things might still look odd at Bitchypoo, but hopefully that’ll resolve in the next few days.

It was a gray and rainy weekend, but at least it was warm. I ended up switching from a hoodie to a short-sleeved t-shirt Saturday afternoon, and wore one all weekend long. I am certainly not complaining about this mild winter – our utility bill was the least it’s been for January since we moved into this house, and in fact it was about half of what it was last January (last winter was really cold – I think this winter is definitely making up for the cold and the snow we had to suffer through last year).

Hmm. I really have nothing of interest to say about my weekend because nothing particularly exciting happened. We just hung out. Did a few things around the house. Vegged. And messed around with moving my sites to the new host. Exciting, no?

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The good news: Clay was adopted Friday night! That means that all the Sons have been adopted and I have no kittens at Petsmart!

Everett, Lucy, and Sally Peppers will be here for another two weeks, and then we’ll start rotating them through at Petsmart. Hopefully the two black cats who are already there – the bear cubs – will be adopted by then. The adoption counselor on Saturday, Lisa, said that at least two people said they don’t like black cats. One of them said that they’re “boring.” Jerks.

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More good news! Do you remember Mary Margaret, who we called Maggie?

(I hope you realize that that’s a rhetorical question I ask, just so that I can show some pictures of her from when she was here!)

She came to use in mid-March, pregnant. I expected her to birth those babies at any moment. I decided that all her babies were going to have Irish names, because I was so sure she’d have them on or around St. Patrick’s Day.

She waited almost three weeks. This was her the day before she birthed those babies:

I was so sure she was going to have her babies in the middle of the night when I would be asleep and thus not able to witness the miracle of birth – but she had them on a Saturday morning!

One of my favorite baby pictures. That’s Finnegan.

She birthed six babies, five boys and one girl.

Hee.

She was a fantastically wonderful momma, and when I brought home three little girl kittens (Clove, Coriander, and Cilantro) who were probably taken from their momma too soon, Maggie took them on as her own without a second thought.

This was not an unusual sight. Maggie let all six of her babies AND the three Spice Girls nurse way past the time when she should have cut them off. Sometimes we’d lock her away in the foster room so she could have a little time to herself. But she didn’t like to do that for very long, she was always concerned about what her babies were doing and whether they might need her.

When the babies were three months old, Maggie and five of the six (Ciara needed to stay with us for a bit longer because she wasn’t feeling well) went to Petsmart. I had to put a note on Maggie’s cage (she was in a cage by herself and the five kittens were in another cage) so that when the cleaners let the cats out to play, they’d keep an eye on Maggie so that the babies wouldn’t nurse. Lisa told me that she looked away for a few seconds, and in that time one of the babies latched on and was nursing, and Maggie was totally allowing it.

Good with the babies, was our Maggie.

Maggie was at Petsmart for about two weeks when she was adopted. I was honestly surprised that she was adopted so quickly, because it was the middle of kitten season, when adults tend to sit at Petsmart for weeks and weeks while everyone adopts the kittens. I had already made sure that Fred knew that if Maggie was at Petsmart for a month, she was coming home for some R & R. Then off she went, to her new home!

I tell you all this so that I can tell you that late last week I heard from Maggie’s dad! So without further yammering on my part, here’s the update (and some pics!) on Maggie.

Alex says:

When we adopted Maggie, Sara (my girlfriend) and I already had a cat named Tucker. We’d had Tucker for over a year. He’s an orange tabby. When we went to PetSmart, we chose Maggie because we thought that having a big brother would offer her a chance to be a kitten since she lost that being a mother so young. The first week, of course, was rough, but eventually, the hissing stopped and now they are good siblings. They antagonize each other from time to time but all in good spirit.

©Alex R.

Thank you so much for the update, Alex! I had no doubt that Maggie’s new family would have to love her, because she was one awesome cat when she was with us – and that was with six (and then nine!) little kittens demanding an awful lot from her. She was always calm and so very good with them.

Don’t y’all love a happy ending?

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Saturday night, I decided it was time to let the Peppers stay out of the foster room overnight. I’ve found that once kittens get the run of the house, it takes about two weeks before they start balking at being shut away for six hours. Since I have no desire to chase down the Peppers every night, I decided I’ve give them what they wanted.

They were pretty wild and my feet were attacked several times over the course of the night, but they’ve learned to respect the can of compressed air (I don’t even have to spray it in their general direction, just pick it up, and off they run). I’m sure that as time goes by, they’ll learn to behave themselves and let me sleep. I like my sleep, you see, and I don’t really put up with being harassed at night. They can harass me all they’d like during the day, but NOT at night, thank you very much.

Sweet Miss Sally. Aren’t her eyes neat?

If you look closely, you can see my reflection in her eye.

Corbie and Everett keep their eye on da bird.

Sally does, too.

Miz Poo even jumped in for a swipe!

Flying through the air with the greatest o’ ease.

He’s flyyyyyyyying!

Corbie and Sally observe.

::thlurrrrp::

Always attentive when da bird is around.

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It’s a Newtie in a sink.

“What? Where am I SUPPOSED to take a nap?”

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Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: They did not care for Jake and Elwood, is what I’m saying.
2009: Pigs = stomachs on legs.
2008: At one point I turned around to say something to Sugarbutt, who was sitting by the screen door leading to the back yard, smacking at the cat door, and I saw every single chicken sitting on the back steps, staring expectantly at me, hoping I’d send some food their way.
2007: God. That sounds just like a herd of elephants, I thought.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: I DON’T KNOW YOU, I CAN’T CHAT WITH YOU, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE.
2003: Pictures found.
2002: That’s just the kind of sucky slacking emailer I am.
2001: You know, if I had ANY self-control at all, I’d wait to buy these books ’til they come out in paperback.
2000: No entry.

Yesterday I had an appointment with my primary care physician. I have to see her every six months, I have blood drawn the week before I see her and we discuss the results and if I have any other issues, I bring them up at that point.

This time around, my blood work was fine, though my B12 is low (it’s in the normal range, but lower than it should be considering that I take a supplement regularly). I got a prescription for intranasal B12, and she’ll recheck my levels again in six months. My cholesterol is excellent, yay!

The main reason I was looking forward to seeing her this time around, though, was because my left shoulder’s been hurting. I honestly don’t know when it started, but I believe it was some time after I had surgery in October. It doesn’t constantly hurt, and it doesn’t affect my day to day life, but I can’t reach very far over my head without pain and if I reach out to the side at a certain angle, it hurts like a motherfucker.

So she sent me for an X-ray (remember the days when getting your shoulder X-rayed meant a trip to a special place? Now they do it RIGHT in the office, and that is just way too freakin’ cool. Hell, my doctor’s office actually has their own lab, too.) and there were no signs of bone spurs (which was my fear) and no signs of arthritis. She poked around at my arm and determined that it was a soft tissue/ tendon issue. Then she had me move my arms around like a goober (well, she wasn’t all “Be a goober!” because that’s my default state, of course) and she said that the limitations on that arm were significant enough that she’d recommend a trip to the physical therapist.

They made an appointment for me with a physical therapy center for Wednesday, and off I went with my prescriptions and stuff. I stopped and dropped my prescriptions off at the pharmacy, and by the time I got home – 15 minutes after I left the doctor’s office – I had a message waiting for me from the physical therapy place asking me to call. As it turned out, they needed to change my appointment to this afternoon instead of tomorrow, which works just fine for me. I’d like to get this painful shoulder nonsense done and over with, please.

Speaking of the pharmacy, they put a pharmacy in right down the road from our house. In fact, I could step out on the front porch and see it from there. It’s right next to the dollar store, and while I never would have expected a pharmacy to open up in our tiny town, I’m glad that it did. The pharmacy I’ve been using, which I will not mention the name of but it’s located in my favorite grocery store, employs this BOY that I don’t like. He’s jokey and weird and I always want to smack him right upside the head because he thinks he’s HI-larious and he MUMBLES (oh, shut your face, I know I’m old and probably going deaf, but excuse me – YOU WORK WITH THE PUBLIC(X) AND I CANNOT BE THE ONLY OLD AND DEAF PERSON WHO VISITS YOUR PHARMACY, YOU FUCKING WHIPPERSNAPPER) and I just DO NOT LIKE HIM and so I am thrilled to have a pharmacy so close that is staffed by adults and that I can support a local business.

Now, if they’d just put in a pet store right across the street, I might never have to leave Smallville again.

PS: I adore my doctor. My only concern is that she and my gastroenterologist are both the same age as I am. Which is going to be interesting when we’re all 85 years old.

PPS: According to the informational flyer I got from my doctor about the intranasal B12, one of the signs of low B12 is “beefy red tongue.” I don’t know why, but that made me giggle. Then I said to Fred “Is my tongue beefy?” and he said “No, it’s just big-boned.” HA.

Playing with the feather teaser in the hallway – and Miz Poo gets involved!

And here comes Sugarbutt.

Got it!

Check out the fearsome claws.

Sugarbutt gets involved. The look that Everett is giving Suggie cracks me up. It’s very “Hello…. NEWMAN.”

I can’t stand how gorgeous Everett is.

Sally gets involved.

I wish Lucy had made it into this picture!

Spanky would like to know just what it is you want.

“I don’t know who keeps ripping up that scratcher, but it ain’t me.” Uh huh, sure it isn’t.

Previously
2011: No entry.
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: “Wouldn’t it just suck if I popped my contact out of my crazy zombie eye and my cornea popped off with it?!”
2007: Spring, where art thou?
2006: No entry.
2005: Hey, can you eat raw kale?
2004: No entry.
2003: My whole life is a vicious circle, really.
2002: No entry.
2001: I mean, what the fuck did I do?
2000: Yeah, I know, woe is me.