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Monthly Archives: June 2015

mouse tails, ew

Posted on June 27, 2015

Partly I stay up too late because after everyone else is in bed is the only time I can take my armor off and even somewhat relax, but usually I am not relaxing. There are things I need to get done without being bothered (and without bothering anyone else) and those things also get squeezed in when I should technically be holding down the bed. Like dishes. What is the point in running the dishwasher when people are still eating? And someone is always eating. Also, it is very discouraging to spend way too much time clearing the piles off the kitchen table and then, as soon as I sit down, someone comes in and puts something there. So, although I know it’s poor sleep hygeine, I do tasks late at night.

One other downside is, I am never actually done. I finally crawl into bed, not because I’m half-past tired, but because I feel ready to collapse. Then I usually have to get up again at least once because my OCD convinces me I need to check the stove knobs one more time to make sure none have gotten bumped and that the house is not filling with gas.

At some point late in every night there is usually an OH CRAP moment where I realize there is something I needed to do that isn’t done and can’t wait, some urgent thing that I had temporarily forgot but that my stupid brain is now serving up to me as a convenient dessert. Last night there were two. I had forgot to wash my CPAP cushion, and I had forgot to fill my pill sorter. So I did both those things.

I hate filling the pill sorter. For one thing I am always reminded–chaCHING–of how much this shit all costs. For another, the dogs want to mill around my feet, and Oliver wants me to feed him. He has three feeding stations. One is in the laundry room, and one on my desk. But I keep the Keep door closed at night to keep Tyrion safe from Artemis the ckatten, so Oliver also has dishes on the kitchen table. I know that is gross, but he is old and gimpy and not very vertical anymore. He still tries to jump, but sometimes misses. All three feeding stations are in places where dogs can’t hassle him (or eat the food) and where he can get up in increments, via the kitchen chairs in that room, or via a folding chair I have provided in the Keep. (My desk chair has wheels, so it is not appropriate for incremental leaping purposes.)

So last night I let both dogs and Oliver out around 1:00 a.m. and set up my pill sorter and then let them back in. They hadn’t gone out long because it was raining still and again, and had been waiting in the garage for readmission. And then, just as I was about to shut the door, here came the ckatten, who proceeded to drop a dead mouse on the floor right next the line between the living room carpet and the kitchen tile.

Both dogs run to sniff at it.

I looked for the broom and dustpan, both of which were missing from their usual spot by the door, so I dart into the galley part of the kitchen and snag a saucepot off the stovetop where I had set it to finish drying overnight after taking it out of the dishwasher so I could run a second load.

I raced back to the throng and slammed the pot down over the mouse, but not before noticing it was not dead. It was doing that tail twitch thing that I know so well, both from Oliver’s younger days and another cat I had named Rikki Tikki. Rikki was always and forever bringing live rodents in and turning them loose. Often Hannah would get them while they were in the tail-twitching stage and finish them off by tossing them into the air and chomping them like Cobie does with a Stuffeez. Once Hannah flang a sodden slobbery dead mouse across the room and into my coffee. SPLASH.

Anyway, I thought I would use the dustpan to scoop up the inverted pan and the mousebody both, take the whole shebang outside, and release, even though releasing a tail-twitcher is a crapshoot. Often they die anyway. Sometimes the cat just re-catches them anyway and polishes them off. (Oliver’s MO.) But sometimes they recover–maybe they were only faking? or maybe they were only in shock–and streak off into the sunset…or your house, depending on how successful you are at relocating them before the recovery occurs.

But that plan was a no-go, because as I mentioned, I couldn’t find the dustpan. I have one of those long-handled ones you can use without bending over, and which allows you to remove nasties like rodent carcasses without getting your hands too close. I know it is unreasonable that I have Tyrion yet despise other rodents. It’s the tails. I hate rodent tails. Especially when they twitch. My skin crawls at the sight. So I try not to hate on wild rodents, even though they carry disease and yadda yadda, but then I see their tails, which kind of lash around like worms, serpents, or tentacles, and I’m all, ICK GAG FREAKOUT. Kill it, kill it with raid, kill it with fire, KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT.

I try to overcome that because I know it is unreasonable, but the best I seem to manage is to not set the house on fire because there’s a twitching tail in it somewhere.

Getting back to the dustpans, I also have a regular short-handled one, but it’s downstairs because I only ever use it for sweeping up litter around the litterpans. My feet and legs have been tremendously swollen this week, and the stairs? At going on one-thirty in the morning? No, sorry.

I snarled at the ckatten who was up on the kitchen table polishing off the canned food I had given to Oliver, and which she had chased him off of while I was distracted with the mouse. Why are you up there eating cat food while a live mouse twitches under a saucepan in the middle of the floor, you hellcat? I poked her, and she jumped down and started sniffing around the pan.

So what I did was, I stuck a box of soda on top to weigh the pan down, wrote T-Moth a note, and went to bed.

Then I realized he would not see the note until he had tripped over the moused-up boobytrap in the kitchen doorway, so I got up, wrote him a note, and taped it to the bathroom mirror where I could hope he would see it before he stumbled over the boobytrap, possibly releasing the mouse into the house.

The note apparently worked, because he left me one of his own. It said, “I tried to get [the mouse] but it was STILL ALIVE. Ran into the garage. [The ckatten] followed it. Sorry.”

So this is one of those stories with no satisfying ending. And yet, this is the end.

Have a good idea today.

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Posted in Critters and Varmints |

thankful thursday on sunday

Posted on June 14, 2015

Because I whined on (thankful) Thursday…

Zor’s new job.

Money for groceries.

My dentist and her crew, who have treated me with utmost care and respect, and that…

My extreme dental adventures are almost over. Only one more visit! And then I will become a normal dental patient. Well, maybe not. I don’t think I’ve ever been normal. Maybe “ordinary” is a better term.

Long phone calls with my mother.

My blue tie-dye shirt. My docs probably think this is the only shirt I own, because I wear it when I am stressed. It is like a wearable blankie.

Air conditioning. And fans. Because I never did like hot, and one of the recently increased medications causes increased sensitivity to hot.

Our mechanic, whose affordable brake job just saved Me, Berta, and a disney-colored deer.

Bonnie at Mr Handy, who told Mr Moth how to fix our dishwasher with a hair dryer.

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Posted in Diary | Tags: gratitude |

put a big C on my chest because…

Posted on June 11, 2015

I am a super crab today. First off, I–queen of compression socks–couldn’t get my compression socks on on the first attempt, and then I couldn’t get them on on the second attempt, either. Now I have one on correctly, and the other on wrong, because I got sick of the entire thing. I was hot and sweaty before I even got out of the bedroom. UGH.

Like a stupe, I bought black compression socks, because I thought they would look more interesting. I failed to take into consideration that, GOT notwithstanding, summer was coming. And it has arrived, early and gross.

I realized my error about a week and a half ago and ordered some white compression stockings online. Once again, the post office has allegedly lost my order. It’s amazing how often this happens between the time a shipping lable has printed and the time the post office receives the package. I mean, you’d think occasionally something would get lost after being scanned in at the USPS. You’d also think that things would occasionally be found again. Is there somewhere a big room full of lost ebay and marketplace items?

Yeah, I think I’m being bullshitted.

Anyway, they’re supposedly sending “another” order. Not that I believe they ever sent the first one. [Epithet here.]

Second off, plumbing issues in the kitchen. Mr Moth is working on it, but it is beginning to feel never-ending. It is making him crabby, and crabbiness ripples outward.

I have to hand carry Horton’s memory card to the HME company because the envelope didn’t arrive in time for me to mail it in and have the data sent to my pulmonologist by Monday, and I am really sick of medical crap taking over my life. I have other stuff to do.

I’m pretty sure the latest medication changes are what is making me feel like a rug, and I’m not happy about that, either. First medical stuff sucks the life out of me, then it uses up whatever energy I have left plus 1d4.

Snarl.

I turn fifty tomorrow.

Happy birthday to me.
Rhymes with the BMV.
Where they give me a sticker
In exchange for all my money.

So add the BMV to my list of errands. Also, as mentioned above, it is hot. Berta’s air conditioning is permanently borked, as in I refuse to pay more than I paid for her to fix it. So I get to cook in my black socks while running errands.

I’m crabby but not quite hateful, so I still hope everybody has a good idea today.

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Posted in Diary | Tags: grump |

soldiering on with horton

Posted on June 7, 2015

Sleeping with Horton is no picnic, but it’s not a constant struggle anymore. Or perhaps I’ve just got more used to this level of struggle. Nothing epic happens in any given night, just annoyances that seem relatively minor, mostly related to mask leaks.

I’m not sure if the mask leaks because my face is fat, or because my head is fat and the headgear rides up, or because my pressure is high. My guess is a combination of all three, but with an emphasis on the headgear riding up. I think next time I get headgear I will ask about the larger size.

The sites all say that having the mask on too tight makes leaks worse, but I started loose and gradually tightened until the leaks stopped. Well, they stopped in that there are no leaks when I first put on the mask. Then, at some point during the night, the shenanigans begin (usually). Whistling, burping, farting. Joy.

So an example of an, oh, lets call it a micro-disturbance, is, the mask shifts and starts to whistle. Kelly thinks it’s calling her, so she jumps on the bed and sniffs my face. I try to pet her, and accidentally pet Oliver, who claws me.

Yes, I know I could kick all the animals out of the bedroom, but if you know me at all, you know that isn’t going to happen. Overall, I sleep better with them in the room. Hopefully they will get used to Horton eventually…and by they I mean Kelly. He doesn’t bother anyone else, although once or twice Cobie has awakened me walking under the hose. He’s actually very good about ducking and going under the hose and not just ramming through; he was trained on Xbox controller cords.

Yesterday I read (somewhere, wish I could remember where to give credit) that if your mask springs a leak in the night, pull it completely off your face so the seal can reinflate, and then reposition it. I had reservations about this. For one thing, MyAir takes off points for mask removal, and I care ridiculously about getting good grades on MyAir. And for another thing, I have the thing cranked so tight, it’s quite difficult to pull the mask completely away from my face. But I tried it, along with pulling the headgear back down, and it seemed to help.

Waking up to adjust kind of irritates me, though…but my brain is working better so I suppose it’s all worth it. I almost beat my husband at Words With Friends yesterday. Almost.

I am so looking forward to the day when sleep in general and Adventures With Horton don’t dominate my thoughts. This stuff is geting teejus even to me. But until that day comes, have a good idea!

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Posted in Diary | Tags: cpap, health |

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