Category: Fostering

So, I had my second post-op appointment with the surgeon yesterday. I was scheduled at 3:30, and we got there right on time. We only had to wait a few minutes, and then we were back in the exam room. The nurse helped me undo my binder (and then pointed out that it was on UPSIDE DOWN, how embarrassing. I blamed Fred, of course.) and took the dressing off my incision line and proclaimed that everything looked good. The surgeon came in, looked me over, gave the nurse the okay to remove the drain, and told me to come back in three weeks.

The nurse removed the stitches from my bellybutton (and I was glad that it was numb, because she apparently did a lot of digging), removed a couple of steri-strips from the back part of my incision, and then prepared to remove the drain. When Fred had his drain removed at two weeks, it apparently hurt. A lot. A LOT. Which he told me repeatedly, both at the time, in the years since, and most often after I had my own surgery.

So when the nurse clipped the stitches holding the drain in place and I knew she was going to be removing the drain, I immediately exuded about a gallon of fear sweat. I told the nurse that I was scared BECAUSE OF FRED AND HIS BIG MOUTH and she gave him a dirty look (he told me later it was a dead ringer for the Mister Boogers “het” look) and then she told me to take a deep breath and she pulled. I could feel the part inside as she pulled it out, but just faintly, and it didn’t hurt at all, and then we discussed how Fred was a big baby and men experience pain (LIKE BIG BABIES) differently than women do.

She told me I had to wear the binder for another three weeks, then I can move on to a panty/ girdle thing. I should wear the girdle as tight as I possibly could, and wear it all the time. Once there’s no more drainage, I can wear a t-shirt or tank top under the binder to prevent irritation. I think I’m going to hit Target or Wal-Mart in the next few days and see if they still carry those very thin tank tops in the women’s lingerie section. As hot as it’s been, I’d like to wear as little as possible.

I got the okay to drive, too, by the way, and will be heading out here in a little while to check the PO Box and to stop and pick up a few (light) groceries.

When we got home, I immediately stripped down and went upstairs to take a shower, shave my legs, and shave my armpits. HEAVEN. I stayed in the shower for a long, long time, then dried off. Fred put some light gauze over my incision line (there’s still a bit of drainage in spots) and then cinched me into my binder.

The binder, by the way, looks like this.

So, Fred took a picture of me when we got home. Keep in mind that I’m still holding on to about 10 pounds of fluid, so I’m swollen. Also, I’m wearing my binder, which is not a thin garment. He took the picture and when I looked at it, I said “I feel a lot smaller than I look in that picture!” Ah, well. Story of my life!

By the way, since I had this surgery, I am utterly amazed at how often my bowel functioning is asked after. It seems like every time I turn around, someone’s asking. I’m surprised the mail lady hasn’t demanded a color-and-consistency report. For the record, they’re working just fine and didn’t give me one moment of trouble. I know that hydrocodone constipates some people, but apparently it’s not an issue with me, thank god.

Every now and again over at Flickr, someone points out the fact that one of the kittens has an orange leg and it kind of looks like they’re cobbled together from spare parts. Actually, each of the three girl kittens has an orange leg, which I think is kind of neat. Inara’s the one with the super orange leg that looks like it came directly from an orange tabby, but Kaylee and Zoe have their orange mojo going, too.

We’ve decided, this weekend, that we’re going to set Kaylee Kara up in the guest bedroom during the day on Saturday and Sunday. This’ll give her a little time away from those bratty kittens, I can see how the kittens act when she’s not around, we can introduce the kittens to some of the adults in the house (particularly Tommy) and see their reaction to strange cats, and hopefully I can see if Zoe is eating solid food, just not in front of me, or if she’s still exclusively nursing. I know they’re all still nursing, but I think it’s more a comfort thing for them than an actual need for nutrition. Like I’ve said, I’ve seen all the kittens except Zoe eat solid food.

The funny thing is that when I go into the room with a plate of canned food, Kara and River belly up to the plate. The three girl kittens take turns walking up to the plate, sniffing at the food, and then every one of them scratches at the floor around the plate to try to cover it up. Apparently that kind of canned cat food just isn’t their thing. It’s so cute I want to squeeze them to death.

“I just want to apologize to Josh’s mom, and Mike’s mom, and my mom. I am so sorry!”

“Because it was my fault. I was the one who brought them here. I was the one that said “keep going south.”

“I was the one who said that we were not lost. It was my fault, because it was my project.”

“I am so scared! I don’t know what’s out there. We are going to die out here! I am so scared!”

(More kitten pics over at Flickr.)

I don’t know where Miss Momma was hanging out before she came racing through the house asking to be let outside, but there was apparently a lot of dust and cobwebs there. Which doesn’t really narrow it down any.

Previously
2007: Y’all don’t fuck with Sheriff Twitty, now.
2006: I wanted to turn around and yell “NO I DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING! Get out of my ROOOOOOOOM!”, like a grouchy teenager.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: Fred always says “You blame EVERYTHING on the fact that you’re about to have your period, having your period, or just HAD your period!” Well, duh.
2002: 26 things you may not know about me.
2001: No entry.
2000: Why, oh why, does writing snotty letters amuse me so?

So, on Thursday May 22nd, despite the fact that we were going to leave the house at 5:45 to be at the hospital by 6:30 which meant I could sleep until 5:15 and still have plenty of time to putter around the house before we left, I was wide awake before 5:00. Fred was, too, so he came and lay down next to me and we talked until 5:00 had come and gone.

I spent some time with Kara and her babies, scooped the litter boxes, and then showered and got dressed. At exactly 5:45, we left for the hospital.

On the way to the hospital – in addition to the 145,000 times he’d said it in the week beforehand – Fred said “We could just cancel the surgery, you know!” and I said, as I had every single time before, “No we can’t, we’ve already paid the surgeon!” and he said “We could dispute the charge with the credit card company!” and I said “And then I would still have this big apron of skin and fat around my middle” and he said “I’d still love you!” and I snorted and said “SO?”

We got to the hospital exactly at 6:30, for we are punctual people, and then I checked in (which was just a matter of going into the registration area and getting my bracelet with my name and surgeon’s name on it, since I’d apparently pre-registered the week before when I had my bloodwork done) and then we sat in the waiting room and cooled our heels for, I don’t know since it’s all kind of fuzzy now, an hour and a half?

(And those of you who noted that we were in a fancypants waiting room, yes indeedy – that is one nice waiting room and hospital.)

Finally, my pager went off (when you check in, they give you a pager and when it goes off, you go back to the desk and someone is there waiting to take you back to where you need to be) and they took me back, told me to get undressed, started the IV, and then paged Fred back to keep me company. I think that from the time they took me back to pre-op to the time they took me off to be operated on it was about an hour and a half, but it went quickly.

Unlike the time I went in for weight loss surgery, I was having no butterflies at all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t looking forward to the surgery, but like I’ve said before, the only way to the other side is through it, so I was ready and willing to get this show on the road.

While we waited, Fred hemmed and hawed and wondered just what the hell he’d do while he was in the waiting room, and finally I just told him he should make sure they had his cell phone number and go home. The surgery was expected to take 5 or 6 hours, and there was no earthly reason why he should hang around the waiting room when he could be home amongst his chickens and pigs. And it’s not like I was going to be awake to care where he was – or as if, he could DO anything if the surgeon ran into trouble.

(“My god, she’s crashing! Get her husband in here to do compressions or something! I’m sure he’s seen ER once or twice! Have him do a tracheotomy next door while he’s at it!”)

(Fred told me that part of the reason he wasn’t too worried about the surgery is because none of my major organs were going to be involved, just skin and tissue, which makes sense.)

The surgeon came in at one point to draw on me, and it was fairly uncomfortable to be standing there naked in front of a kneeling man who was drawing on me with purple marker, and he was pretty vigorous with the pinching and squeezing of the fat, but it was over quickly enough. What was funny to me was that they kicked Fred out of the room while the surgeon did his thing so Fred couldn’t sit there and laugh at me the way I laughed at him when he had his tummy tuck. Poor Fred, stymied out of a chance to laugh at me!

I was rolled back to the operating room and various people introduced themselves to me, and a couple of the nurses reassured me by telling me that they’d be with me during the entire operation. Which I found very sweet, but I wanted to say “I don’t care if y’all switch out every five minutes and bring strange nurses off the street, let’s get going!” Of course, soon enough things went fuzzy and I went under.

I think I was under for about six hours, which I’m pretty sure is the longest operation I’ve ever had – and I’ve had (counting…. knee, c-section, endometriosis removal from c-section scar line, cold cone biopsy, tubes in ears, weight loss surgery, gallbladder surgery) seven surgeries in my life. I’m pretty sure I remember dreaming during the surgery, but I don’t remember what I was dreaming about. I think it involved Disneyland.

I was in Recovery for about an hour, and I’d doze off, then wake up and look around. The nurse offered pain medication once or twice, but since I was feeling no pain, I turned him down. At one point I could hear the nurse across the room on the phone with Fred (I found out later that they’d called and told him to be back at the hospital at 2, then didn’t finish up surgery and come out to talk to him ’til about 3:45). The time in Recovery went pretty quickly, and then they rolled me to my room.

Fred came into the room and then they kicked him out so they could empty my drains and catheter bag (I loathe the goddamn catheter. And it’s not that it hurts or is in the way (especially when I’m just laying there), but the very idea of that goddamn catheter causes me emotional pain) and then the nurse was offering me something to drink, and the only thing I could think of that I wanted was water.

By that time it was about 5:30, and Fred stayed and gave me water and told me what the surgical nurse had told him in the waiting room (that she thought I’d be very pleased with the results, that she thought I’d probably go down about two sizes, and – this is what I liked hearing the most, and that I made Fred repeat at least three more times – I had a LOT of muscle mass.). I thought that they’d be getting me up to walk around fairly soon, then Fred talked to the nurse, who told him that they were going to bring me dinner and then get me up and moving, so I told him to go ahead and go home (being out that close to dark makes him nervous because there are chickens to be put up!), and then I dozed off.

They never did bring me anything to eat (which was okay with me because I wasn’t hungry at all), and then I asked for something for the pain around 8 or 8:30. They gave me Demerol and then I was hiiiiiiigh. I know I made a phone call or two, but I don’t think they lasted long because did I mention I was hiiiiiiiigh?

I spent the night dozing, and at one point that damn automatic machine that was hooked up to take my blood pressure every so often started beeping, and when I say beeping, I mean not the normal beeps of a machine working the way it’s supposed to, but rather like an alarm going off. It was seriously pissing me off, and I called up to the nurse station a couple of times, and when no one came after a while, I started pushing buttons, and I figured out how to turn the alarm off.

THAT’S RIGHT, I DID. DON’T LECTURE ME. I assume if I were on the verge of death, someone would have come running in to save me.

The nurse eventually came in to see what was what, and she decided that the alarm had gone off because my blood pressure was so low (I myself think it went off because the blood pressure cuff was in a weird position) and she went off to call the doctor. Before she left, I asked her if she could hand me my cup of water and she was all “Nope, you’ve gotta get it yourself. You’re scheduled to be released at 6:55, you need to get moving!” and I was all “I’m scheduled to be released at 6:55? Hot damn!” Because we’d figured I’d have to sit around and wait half the morning, the way we did when I had weight loss surgery.

By 5:30, I didn’t want anything but to go the hell home, and I would doze off for five minutes, wake up and look at the clock, then doze off again.

Fred showed up around 6:30, and then eventually they removed the catheter and disconnected my IV and I began walking. Fred and I made a circuit of the floor, I rested for a few minutes, we made another circuit, and so on. I felt like I was moving around just fine, thank you.

The surgeon stopped by and I had to get back in bed so he could undo my binder and look at my incision (they kicked Fred out for this, for some reason). This was the first chance I got to see my stomach, and I was all “That gross bloated thing is supposed to make me HAPPY?” The surgeon gave me some instructions (fuck if I remember what they were), and said I could go home.

At some point another nurse came in to change my dressing, and Fred got to stay for that and he was all “Wow, you look amazing!” and “You’re so flat!” and “You’re all curvy!” and I was all “OKAY, I GET THE IDEA, ARE YOU SAYING I WAS FAT BEFORE, YOU BASTARD?”

(No, not really.)

The dressings were changed and I was sitting on the edge of the bed and I started getting nauseous. This was the first time I’d felt nauseous at all, thank god, because the anesthesiologist gave me a pill before the surgery, put a patch behind my ear, and put something in the IV during surgery. But now I was feeling seriously nauseous, and when they told the surgeon, he couldn’t prescribe something for them to give me at the hospital, because I’d already been checked out on the computer. So they gave Fred all my prescriptions, including a suppository for the nausea, and he went to a nearby pharmacy to have them filled.

While I waited, the nurse gave me saltines and a Mountain Dew (while I was waiting for her to come back with the crackers and soda, I actually gagged and tried to throw up three or four times, but given that I have a tiny pouch of a stomach and hadn’t eaten anything in, oh, 36 hours or so, there was nothing to throw up), and I ate the crackers and sipped at the soda, and it helped a bit. Fred got back with my prescriptions, so I took the suppository and went into the bathroom and let me tell you, I’m not giving you any details, but when it’s difficult to move around the right way, that’s not an easy thing to do. But I’m a superstar and I got the job done (and no, I was NEVER going to ask for help with that, thank you, I have my boundaries), and then with Fred’s help I got dressed.

Finally, I was out of there. We made a few stops on the way home (since I was going to be on a prophylactic dose of antibiotics, I figured it’d be a good idea to eat a container or two of yogurt every day to help stave off a yeast infection), and then we were home, and I don’t remember what I did – probably kicked off my shoes, took off my pants, and went straight to the recliner.

It’s kind of all a blur right now. I know I spent the day in the recliner, watching TV and probably snoozing. Fred and I watched TV that evening, and at bedtime we went upstairs and he put a folding chair in the kitten room so I could go in there and see them. They did NOT whine and sob and cry about how much they’d missed me, the brats. What they did do is try to climb up my legs, and given that I was wearing a shirt and was bared-legged, you can imagine how much that hurt.

Fred went to bed, and I went to recliner, and I spent the night dozing and waking up to flip through the channels, then dozing off again, over and over again.

Y’all don’t need a day-by-day description of the recovery process, I don’t think, so suffice it to say that I hit some milestones: By Sunday I was (slowly, carefully) getting down on the floor with the kittens because sitting in the chair and trying to grab them as they raced by was proving to be too hard. It’s much easier to grab them when you’re on floor level, and also, it’s much easier for them to sit in your lap and use their sharp little claws to rip at the fabric of your pants, little brats (I’ve started wearing the same pants and t-shirt every time I go into the room, because otherwise all my clothes would be covered in little holes). In the early hours of Sunday morning I was so uncomfortable with sleeping in the recliner that I tried to sleep on the couch (on my back with pillows under my knees), and I was okay to lay there for a little while (unsleeping), but when I went to get up, it felt like I tore something on my side and so I frantically went upstairs to wake Fred up so we could take my binder off and he could look me over. Turned out, I was fine, nothing torn and bleeding.

Monday was probably the worst day for me, emotionally and physically, and I teared up several times during the day. I just couldn’t get comfortable physically, and I felt like I was going to feel like a great big bloated tick for the rest of my life. By Tuesday, though, I was feeling better and have felt pretty much better every day. It helped that, Thursday night, I was able to spend the entire night in my very own bed (on my back with pillows under my knees) and I’ve been sleeping like a baby ever since.

I’ve been doing dishes and the occasional load of laundry (it’s not terribly physically taxing to put clothes in the washer and transfer them to the dryer and then let Fred fold them and put them away), I made pizza dough in the breadmaker on Friday (Fred makes a fabulous pizza, believe you me) and some of the dinner-making has reverted to me.

The one thing I wish I could do (and cannot, I’m not even going to try so don’t lecture me) is vacuum the house. Because Fred has run the vacuum a couple of times, but not nearly often enough for me.

When I have surgery next year (“My GOD,” you are saying, “MORE plastic surgery? Who does she think she is, Crazy Joyce Wildenstein?”, and you just shut up. I need a breast lift, chin lift, and possibly my upper arms done. Yes, NEED.) the absolute number one thing I’m going to do is hire someone to come clean once a week.

Ten days after surgery, I am still swollen as hell. That’s normal, I’ve read that it’s not until about six weeks out of surgery that the swelling is pretty much gone. Fred talks about how flat I am and how big a difference there is, but I have to say that I’m not seeing it yet – maybe because I’m wearing this binder all the time (which is not actually as annoying as I expected it to be).

To my utter amazement, the surgeon told Fred that he removed about 11 pounds of fat and skin during surgery. The day before surgery, Fred and I made our “official” guesses – I guessed that he’d remove 23 pounds, and Fred guessed 18. I actually guessed low, because I’ve always heard that skin and fat weighs a lot less than you’d guess. The day I got home from the hospital I weighed myself and I was up eight pounds from the day of surgery. It dropped about four pounds a few days after that, but as it currently stands, I’m up 3 – 4 pounds from where I was the day of surgery. That, my friends, is some fluid retention.

I ended up with one drain and one pain pump (which pumped Marcaine into my abdomen for three days after surgery), and I had one drain and the pain pump removed last Wednesday. The remaining drain output has dropped to almost nothing, so I fully expect that it will come out at my next post-op appointment this Wednesday. Once it’s out and I’m cleared to FINALLY shower (I’m sponge-bathing every day with copious amounts of soap and water, but nothing cleans like a shower), I’ll most likely be getting dressed in real clothes every day instead of wearing a nightgown all day long. I look forward to life going back to some semblance of normalcy.

I know y’all have a lot of questions – I’ve kept your commented questions, and will answer them all on Friday in a Super Special Comment-Answering Extravaganza, you lucky lucky people.

River has decided that he’d rather kinda like to be out of that thar kitten room. He’s not terribly aggressive about it, but after I’m done visiting in the kitten room, he tries to scoot out the door and since I can’t reach all the way to the floor at the moment, he’s gotten out of the room several times in the past few days. If I just stand there and wait, he realizes pretty quickly that he’s in a new, scary situation, and he huddles against the door and runs back inside if I open the door.

Yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to take him around “visiting” a couple of our cats. I carried him downstairs and let Miz Poo and Newt sniff him, but he was so overwhelmed and scared that I took him right back upstairs. He rewarded me by leaving a gouge across the top of my chest.

I deserved it.

(pic) A bowl of Zoe.

More kitten pics over at Flickr.

(pic) Spanky say relax.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: “I like cheese, just not on a salad.”
2003: Now, how motherfucking stupid does the man think I am?
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

Last night, I spent the entire night IN MY BED, and I got some decent sleep. You’d think I’d be feeling particularly fabulous this morning, but even after sleeping from 9:30 last night to 7:30 this morning (with some awake times, of course), I still feel like I need a nap. I guess the fact that it’s really only been a little more than a week since I was sliced and diced means I might still be healing and need to rest, y’think?

I had a lot of pain yesterday during the day, but it went away in the evening and there were actually a couple of times when we were watching TV that I forgot I’d had surgery. I mean, once I had to get up out of the chair I remembered quickly enough, but it was nice to have a little time where there was no pain and wooziness and just general discomfort.

The kittens are now 6 weeks old. I weighed them this morning, and except for River (who weighed in at 2 pounds, 2 ounces), they’re all under two pounds still. Between the fact that they’re not all two pounds yet, not quite weaned, and Zoe hasn’t completely gotten the hang of the litter box (she peed on a cat bed right in front of me yesterday!), I feel secure in saying that I’ve got at least two more weeks before I have to take them in to be spayed and neutered.

I always forget what bitey little brats they are at this age. They’re so MEAN. But at the same time they’re so freakin’ cute that I’d probably let them gnaw through my carotid artery without a fight as long as they occasionally stop and put their soft little paws on my face and sniff my nose.

Such a little lunatic.

Lots of kitten pics over at Flickr.

Previously
2007: “I’m so happy,” he said. “That if this were a movie, in the next scene you’d be raped or killed.”
2006: No entry.
2005: Every time I type in “u” instead of “you”, I die a little inside.
2004: No entry.
2003: What happens if you put a box on the floor?
2002: “Where was it, Bessie?” he asked, trying to draw me into the trap with him, so he could perhaps trip me and then run away, leaving me there for her to latch onto.
2001: What do you s’pose a realtor’s house looks like? I always assumed it’d be a real showplace, with everything just so, all appliances gleaming and so on.
2000: Every time I blow-dry my hair, it sounds like the phone is ringing.

I didn’t sleep worth a shit last night. I was an idiot and decided to take a hydrocodone at bedtime because I’d done that Monday night and slept pretty well (and also had some cool vivid dreams). It didn’t help at all, and finally around 3 am I laid back on the couch with a bunch of pillows under my knees and though I didn’t sleep, I was comfortable enough to stay there for about an hour, and then when I got up, I was finally able to get semi-comfortable in the recliner and doze for a few hours.

I had my first post-op appointment today; poor Fred had to drive half an hour from work to come get me and then another 45 minutes to the plastic surgeon’s office; this living out in the country isn’t always the fun and games it appears to be.

During surgery, the plastic surgeon (or rather, I guess it was the anesthesiologist who actually did it) put a post-op pain control pump in. It was this one, and it was automatic and continual, and was expected to run about three days – basically, it pumped marcaine (from the same family as novocaine, I’m assuming) into my abdomen.

For the super-curious out there, Fred took a picture of me the day after surgery when the nurse was changing my dressing. I don’t think it’s terribly graphic, and after all, it’s a camera phone picture, but you can see what my front side looked like, here.

I didn’t have to do anything but find a place to put the pump, and since I was wearing a size 2X men’s button-up shirt, the pain pump (which looked like nothing so much as a baby bottle to me) ended up in the shirt pocket, and the drains (Jackson-Pratt Drains, two of them, one coming from each hip) ended up one pinned to either side of the front of my shirt.

The pain pump emptied about mid-day Monday and after that, it was nothing but a nuisance, always getting in the way, always popping out of the pocket, just a general pain in the ass, and I couldn’t wait to get rid of it. (I expected that as soon as the marcaine ran out, I’d be in excruciating pain, and while there was the occasional twinge, it wasn’t bad at all. In retrospect, though, Monday was my most uncomfortable day thus far in terms of feeling swollen and bloated, and I wonder if any of that had to do with the marcaine running out. It seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?)

The drains weren’t annoying to me at all – when we got to the plastic surgeon’s office, the nurse said “Would you say that the worst part has been the drains?” and I said “The drains aren’t bad at all. It’s this damn PAIN PUMP and the horrible inability to sleep that’s killing me!”

I have been dreading, since the moment I woke up after surgery, having those drains removed. Fred, four years after his tummy tuck, will wax poetic on how horribly annoying and painful those drains were, and how much it hurt to have them removed and so on. And because I like to spend lots of time worrying and dreading, I’d been doing that, and you know what? It didn’t hurt at ALL to have the pain pump removed. It didn’t hurt at ALL to have the drain removed. I didn’t feel the removal of the pain pump at all, and just barely felt the drain being pulled out.

The nurse cleaned my incision, put antibiotic ointment on it, and showed Fred how to dress the incision line without using quite so much tape. Then they put my binder back on, and Fred and I were on our way.

I go back next Wednesday, presumably to get the other drain out. I still can’t drive, so I’m housebound for at least another week. I’m sure by this weekend I’ll be begging Fred to take me places to get out of the house. Wonder if I can convince him to go see Sex and the City? (HA.)

Bad thing: I can’t take a full shower ’til the other drain is out, so I’m still sponge-bathing and washing my hair in the sink. Bleh.

Today’s good things:

1. Now that the pain pump is gone and one drain is gone, I can pin the other drain to my binder and instead of wearing a men’s size XXL button-up shirt, which is what I’ve been wearing ever since I got home on Friday, I can wear a nightgown. The shirt was comfortable enough, but I felt like I was walking around with my ass hanging out, even though Fred assured me I wasn’t. Nightgown is much comfier.

2. Now that I have only the one drain, which will be tucked under my clothes, I don’t have to worry about the kittens puncturing anything and blood spurting all over the place.

3. Did I mention that I did not go one single day without seeing those kittens? Friday I went up to see them and had to stay in a chair because I couldn’t get on the floor. By Sunday I was getting down on the floor (very slowly and carefully). Now I’m back to seeing them as often as I want. Fred’s still taking care of the litter boxes (and btw, the kittens celebrated my surgery by starting to poo in the litter boxes because THEY ARE GENIUSES), but I’m taking care of everything else. I might have gone a wee bit overboard yesterday morning by crawling around on the floor with a hand vacuum in the foster kitten room. (DON’T LECTURE ME.)

4. I’m off hydrocodone completely and on a pain scale of 1 – 10, I’m at 1. If 1 is “no pain”. Is 1 “no pain”? Because it seems like zero would be “no pain.” I get the occasional twinge, but nothing worth bitching about – and given that I’ll bitch about anything, no matter how small, that’s saying something.

Someone asked if I was going to do a detailed entry about the surgery and recovery. I plan to do at least a brief overview of the surgery and recovery (let us all take a moment to guffaw at the idea that I could EVER be brief), and I think I’ll probably be up for getting that written over the weekend and you might expect that Monday.

Until Monday, I will likely keep posting occasional quick blog-type posts from my cell phone like I’ve been doing. Hopefully after Monday, the regular weekday posting schedule will resume.

Always on the verge of snapping. Never quite goes over the edge.

Giggling Zoe.

Tigger makes him guffaw.

Tons of (captionless) kitten pictures over at Flickr.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: Today I’m still burning with curiosity, and I wish I’d asked anyway.
2002: So yes, the vacation rocked.
2001: If vacation pictures aren’t your thing, I’ll see ya tomorrow.
2000: I’m so so SO glad to be home.

We just finished disc 4 of Heroes, season one, and tell me this: Is Niki’s horseshit “power” going to manifest itself as something more interesting EVER, or will she just continue to be a freakishly strong multiple personality? Because I like Ali Larter, but Niki’s “power” is BO. RING. (The other night when she broke a billy club in half, Fred said “I’d say that qualifies her as strong.” Indeed.) If Niki and Jessica manifested themselves in separate bodies so that other people could see both of them, that might be kind of impressive.

Holy mother of god, this is the SLOWEST DAY EVER. If this next 24 hours would just up and pass, I’d be eversograteful.

After poking around Flickr, I found that you can actually send a cameraphone picture to Flickr, which will in turn post it to your blog. Therefore, before I leave for the hospital tomorrow, I’ll set this page up so that several entries can be shown on the same page, and I will surely post a couple of times from the hospital while I’m waiting to go in for surgery. I’d show Fred how to do it so he could post from the waiting room, but he’s not into that sort of thing.

We have to be at the hospital at 6:30 tomorrow, which means we’ll need to leave, I’m guessing, around 5:45ish. Which means I’ll probably get up at 4:30 so I can scoop the litterboxes and take my shower and snuggle with the kittens before we go.

Odd thing, I’ve had this itchy patch of eczema on my arm that’s been driving me crazy for a week or so and it just wouldn’t go away. I used Dial Antibacterial for the past couple of days (instructions from the doctor, use antibacterial soap on the areas that will be operated on for three days before the day of surgery. Ordinarily, I use Dove in the shower.) and the patch hasn’t bothered me since. Hmmm.

Shirley asked in my comments yesterday if I’d still be able to play with the kittens after surgery. I don’t see that there’s any way I could stay away from those babies much past Friday. If I can’t get down on the floor, I’ll make Fred drag one of the recliners in there, and they can climb up into the recliner and snuggle with me. I can’t imagine being in the same house and not spending time with them, it would drive me crazy. As far as I’m concerned, my incisions will be covered with a binder/ corset sort of thing, so they can bite and scratch at me all they want, and if it gets to be too much, I’ll put them in timeout, the little brats.

Oh, and LeighC asked how long I’ll be in the hospital. It’ll be overnight, so I’ll be released Friday morning, probably first thing. It’s technically an “outpatient” procedure, which means I’ll be in the hospital 23 hours. Less hospital costs if it’s not “inpatient”, I guess.

Yummy things I have recently cooked:

Quick Shrimp Po’ Boys. I found this recipe in Real Simple magazine last summer and thought it looked good enough to try, so I ripped it out, stuck it in my pile of recipes-to-try, and forgot about it until recently. We had them for dinner Friday night, and they were really good. I haven’t had a lot of Po’ Boys in my time (which is kind of surprising to me, since I LOVE shrimp), so I don’t know what “real” Po’ Boys entail, but these were certainly good and worth having again. My only gripe is the amount of bread. I loathe a sandwich that doesn’t easily fit in your mouth (insert (HA HA) disgusting sexual innuendo here), and I think next time I’ll buy a baguette, remove a lot of the bread from the middle and see how that goes.

Monday night I decided to make pulled pork (also known as “Barbecue”, here in the south) because I’d recently seen this recipe. So I put the pork butt in the crock pot as soon as I got up Monday morning, ignored it until a little after 3:00, then pulled it out of the crock pot to shred it. I was dreading this part because I figured it was going to be a pain in the ass, but not SO, my friends. That stuff shredded very, very easily. It took me just a few minutes to shred it, I drained the fat from the crock pot*, mixed the shredded pork with Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ sauce, put it back into the crock pot, and Fred was so hungry an hour later that instead of having it with corn on the cob and yellow squash as I’d intended, we just made sandwiches with the stuff, and it was DIVINE.

We had it again last night, and I said to Fred, “Next year, we can have shredded pork made with OUR OWN PIGS, and we can serve it with coleslaw made from OUR OWN CABBAGE and maybe with a side of bread made in OUR OWN BREADMAKER!” We’re having it again tonight, and I don’t doubt that Fred will have it again for dinner tomorrow night. It makes a LOT, is what I’m saying.

I think this stuff is best saved for Fridays for us, though. I hadn’t realized just how fatty pork butt is (the obvious escapes me sometimes) and I did scrape off all the fat I could see when I was shredding the pork, and I did drain the fat out of the crock pot, but it was so damn good that there must have been 63,000 grams of fat per bite of the stuff. SO GOOD.

And while I’m talking about food, a few weeks ago I made a batch of Not Yo’ Momma’s Banana Pudding, and instead of slicing the bananas, I cut them up in small pieces (like small cubes), and it was really good that way. Next time, I’m going to break the graham crackers up into smaller pieces, too.

*The liquefied fat from the crock pot went into a bowl, and when Fred got home, he dumped it over some leftover moldy bread and fed it to the pigs and they LOVED it. These pigs, I’ve gotta say, are coming in handy as garbage disposals on legs.

That goddamn mother chicken, I swear to god. She is the dumbest, least caring mother on the face of this goddamn earth, or at least on Crooked Acres, and since I have the BEST MOTHER EVER upstairs in the kitten room who will fuck you UP if you mess with her babies, I know whereof I speak.

The chicks are itty bitty and as such, can easily hop through the fence to the other side. This is generally not an issue, because Momma Chicken clucks as she moves along, and the babies hear her and stay with her and if any protecting needs to be done, she does it.

So yesterday morning I was outside filling up the bird feeders, and as always, when the flock o’ chickens saw me, they ran over to the fence and looked hopefully at me, because after I fill up the bird feeders, I give the chickens a scoop of bird seed and they pick out what they like and leave the rest for whatever birds come along.

(pic)

As I filled up the bird feeders, I glanced over and saw that the baby chickens had gone through the fence between the chicken yard and the back yard. Momma Chicken, rather than GIVING A SHIT about her babies was acting like what she is – ie, a stomach on legs – and was standing looking at me and hoping that bird seed would be forthcoming and she was nowhere near her babies.

I looked over in the clump of dead daffodils, which is where Joe Bob likes to hang out, and noted that he wasn’t looking at the baby chickens, was instead looking at the entire other side of the back yard.

I finished filling up one bird feeder and walked toward another, and glanced into the back yard again and realized to my horror that Joe Bob had seen the baby chickens and was low, crawling toward them, and moving fast.

“Joseph!” I said in a stern voice. “No!”

He acted like he couldn’t hear me, a favorite trick all the cats have perfected, and he kept on going. Momma Chicken didn’t even glance toward her babies.

“Joe, NO!” I yelled, and started running toward him. He kept going. “JOE! NO!” I bellowed, and I threw the bird seed scoop at him. It landed near him, he ran off, and the baby chickens stood there and looked confused. FINALLY, Momma Chicken remembered she had babies, and she clucked at them and they ran back into the chicken yard.

I recovered the bird seed scoop and tossed a scoop of bird seed into the chicken yard, all the time swearing up a storm and telling Momma Chicken what a useless dumbass she was.

She didn’t seem to much care about my opinion of her, though. Grrrr.

Fucking chickens.

(pic)

Yesterday morning I went into the kitten room to hang out with them before I cleaned out their litter boxes (since the plain clay litter just falls apart when it’s peed upon, I find it easiest to just dump out the litter every morning and replace it with fresh), and as I sat there in my nightgown, River took it upon himself to climb up the sleeve of my nightgown.

I imagine that in the operating room, the surgeon’s going to say “Why is she covered in small cuts [I originally typo’d “small cats“. HA!] from head to toe?”

(pic) Is it just me, or is there an element of “IN YO FACE!” in this picture?

Today’s uploaded kitten pics can be seen hither.

On the table, the dining room table, the Suggie sleeps toniiiiiiiiiight!

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: We’re off to Memphis.
2003: Possum #2.
2002: Mean mommy.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.