Texty

In the past four days:

Good:

-Had our first proper intake meeting yesterday with the adoption agency counselor we'll be working with. It went quite well, I think. She seemed to like us. Next step is getting the home study together. Should have that wrapped up within the next month.
-Killed time between appointments yesterday by wandering around Pike Place Market. Haven't done that in years. Came home with tons of awesome from DeLaurenti's and other food purveyors.

Sorta good:

-Finally got a new job. Start Tuesday. Sort of my old team, but under a different boss, working on a different product, and doing something with more editorial/writing stuff. Less button monkey = probably won't want to set the place on fire. It's a 12-month contract. Not sure if I'll finish that out. Depends on how well I like it and how long we're waiting for a birthmom to pick us.
-Money, CV fodder and something to keep me occupied during the wait = good. Extremely fucked-up timing in the short term = bad. See below.

Bad:

-Got a hard-drive-mangling virus. Necessitated a reformat, which meant scrambling to back up data. Just barely starting to reconstruct the machine now.
-Called in the washer repair folks for the THIRD time, since the thing still wouldn't properly spin.
-Found out I have "mild but significant" hearing loss. Will be fitted for hearing aids Monday.

Worse:

-Penny went into sharp decline, and we decided to let her go. In-home vet was here just a few hours ago. It was peaceful and kind, and I'm glad I was able to be with her, but I'm pretty shattered. Also, all grieved out at this point, having lost four cats in five years. Glad the remaining two are young.
-Khaleesi, freaked out by Penny, decided to pee on the bed last night (this is very unusual for her--she's normally quite well behaved.)
-This woke M up, so he's had 3 hours of sleep.
-I've not had a full night's sleep in three days, either, due to raging anxiety induced by all of the above.

I really wish my body could handle alcohol, because I'm tempted to spend this entire weekend very, very drunk.

Went out for a bit this afternoon to go buy her some treats and other miscellaneous stuff, as well as a nice litle proper hidey hole for her (bettter than trying to stuff herself under the couch!)

Came back and got it all set up, and then this happened:



You can imagine how astonished and happy I was. I've been so worried about how skittish and shy she is, and have been patiently working with her for hours over the last few days, trying to get her to understand that she's home and loved, now, and I think it finally paid off. She explored a bit more after that, and also came out and finally met D tonight, too, so things continue to improve.

She still has yet to get to know the other two, much. Penny's locked up in the same room, and they've been investigating each other a bit, but not to great ends so far (not surprising; Penny is a cranky, get off my lawn sort of little old lady.) And Otter we won't be putting in the mix until we're sure Khaleesi is strong and confident enough to deal with the furry little tornado. Still, this is major, major progress, and I couldn't be happier.

I think I've discovered one of the reasons I dislike working full-time--or, more specifically, why I dislike working this particular schedule (10-6): Because I'm on Pacific time, by the time I get off work and get home, half the people I want to talk to are already asleep or close to it. Other left-coasties are still up, o'course, but as most of my fandom peeps are at least three hours ahead of me, I'm finding myself with little time to talk to them these days, dangit.

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I also don't have time during my workday for such things anymore. I'm enjoying having a lot more hands-on work on the site, but it's a hell of a time sink, and that, plus my former news and gallery production stuff, is absolutely draining me. I'm finally ramped up enough with the new stuff that I can get it done fairly quickly during the day, but it took a while to get there, and it's still taking up half the day. I haven't had more downtime than 10-15-minute breaks here and there for the last two weeks, and it's starting to grind me down.

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Doesn't help that I seem to be nursing the world's most stubborn, low-level cold, which M has had for a few weeks before I finally got it. May be a mild flu virus, since there's a fever with it (though I got a flu shot, so it'd be milder still.) It's annoying as hell, though. Headaches, exhaustion, nose issues, etc. I have so little free time as it is that losing precious hours to the extra sleep I need right now is bugging me like crazy.

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Said free time is especially important to me because the new gig has so little opportunity for creative stuff that I'm going slightly mad, wishing I had more time to write or vid or do something generated in large part by my own imagination. I'm good at what I do here and I enjoy being paid well for it, but damn, it's soul-sucking for a creative person to just be pushing buttons like this. I'd hoped I could do NaNo this year (albeit cheating a bit, as I was just going to work on my novel) but that's not happening. Poo. I did manage to squeeze in a couple hours' fic writing last night, however, and that felt really good. Slept better than I have in days, even though I didn't really get the full amount I usually need.

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The other thing I haven't had free time for is properly grieving the loss of my dear Fammy. In a way, I sort of let her go a few days before we actually did so. I knew she wasn't going to last even before we got the cancer diagnosis, and that pretty much sealed it. Unfortunately, I found that out at work, and what few moments I had to digest the shock and grief were cut short by my boss showing up in my office, and I haven't been able to sit down and really get through it since. In a way, this has been good--distraction helps--but I'm also still living with this small-but-gnawing ball of sadness that I can't fully process yet. Maybe sometime this weekend I can do so. Dunno.

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I have about a thousand things I'd like to say about the election, particularly how depressing it is to see how misinformation, downright lies and willful ignorance has permeated large chunks of our culture, but it'd just make me more angry to think about it. I did write something on my political journal about it, though, and the bright spot in addition to that is knowing that most of the more horrid racist, sexist, homophobic, poor-hating crap is coming from older folks who are rapidly becoming eclipsed. The big challenge, really, is getting younger voters to actually put their decent opinions to work by voting. Far too many of them just can't be bothered, or are so disillusioned by the cacophony that they're avoiding politics entirely--when that should be what rallies them to fight harder. It shouldn't take a charismatic rock star (new hotness) to motivate people to do their civic duty. The vicious circle (Government doesn't represent me, therefore I'm not going to participate in government) just gets worse every year if we can't step in and disavow people of the notion that government is some faceless monolith and not, y'know, us.

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Don't know yet whether I'll be able to make that UK event in February. Hoping I can figure it out soon, as the deadline for getting ticket refunds is coming up.

Test results are back. Pervasive cancer. Not treatable.

I don't know for sure how much she's suffering right now, but I think it's enough that we're just going to spend a couple more days with her and then let her go.

First week back at the new/old job went fairly well. Adapted pretty easily to the changes, which includes a lot more hands-on editing than before (I'm actually editing raw XML files now--eep!) Made a few little mistakes here and there, but otherwise it's been like riding a bike.

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Most everyone's been happy to see me again, though there's still no real socializing going on there. It's just not that kind of office, for one, and contractors aren't really part of what little social grouping there is. S'OK, though. Means I don't get pestered much, either.

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My official contract goes through Jan. 28. There's a very, very tiny chance I could get a week or so off after that, which might allow me to go to that UK event the following weekend. Of course, then there's the issue of finding the money to do it, which is still a problem.

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Some of this might be somewhat mitigated by an idea I had on the kid-obtaining front. I don't want to jinx it by saying too much before I know whether it's possible, but I realized that there's one avenue of the getting-me-preggers route that we hadn't totally ruled out, so I'm going to see if my fertility clinic will consider it (since they won't consider IVF for me.) Even if we had to do multiple rounds of this particular thing, it'd still be cheaper than the adoption, so we definitely at least want to look into it.

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On the Fammy front: Some bad, but mostly good. She's not only still around, but she's been downright perky lately. We were still having trouble getting her to eat much, so the doc gave us a prescription for an appetite stimulant, and that seems to have done some good. She's still not really eating a lot, but it's more than before, and more than that, it's pretty clear she feels better. She even begged to be let out of the theater this morning, and spent the day roaming the house. We still may need to get her in for an ultrasound and liver biopsy, but I think I'm going to spend the weekend monitoring her to see if she continues to improve before we put her through that.

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And speaking of the weekend: I seem to have been bitten by a vid bunny. I know I said I wasn't going to do any more fanworks for now, and I still may not finish it, but I do want to dink around with it at least a little bit. I don't otherwise have weekend plans and I still want to stick close to the house for the cat, so I may as well muck around with that.

Fammy's at the vet, at least overnight. They're going to pump her full of IV fluids/nutrition and see if she bounces back at all. But the vet said it didn't look good. I'm trying to stay positive/keep my mind off of it, but honestly... I'm not hopeful.

Then I started poking around with money stuff, trying to figure out the best way to pay for this (undoubtedly expensive) treatment, and got slapped in the face with the fact that our cashflow is currently in negative territory. The reasons why are complicated, and mostly due to unexpected expenses, but it does mean that every dime of what I make with the new job is going to have to go to pay off some bills so we can get that monthly payment money back out of the budget.

Which means--you guessed it--no money for the adoption, yet. It's going to have to wait until I get a contract extension. I'm currently only scheduled to go through February, and I'll probably get another three months after that, but I don't want to count those chickens, so we won't be able to get anything started that direction until we know we have that money coming in. So we're looking at March at the earliest before we can even make the first call.

So, yay, me.

I wish I could tolerate alcohol, because I'd really like to be completely trashed right now.

Just a bit more than a week left before I'm back to the cube grind again, so I've been doing what I can to knock out stuff on my final to-do list.

***

Chief among these tasks is health stuff, for me and for the kitties. In my case, I had a sorta physical with my GP, doing some followup screening on the big possible kidney issue thang we were looking at last year. I went off of a couple of meds when we were trying to figure that out, and I wanted to go back on them again, so I decided to get another screening. Waiting to hear back on bloodwork, but the doc seems to think I should be fine. Now to just get in to the endocrinologist again.

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Got Penny in yesterday for a geriatric screen. Last time she was in (at the old vet), they seemed to think she had a heart problem. This time, however, they said she just has a mild murmur--no need for an ultrasound or anything. Yay! They also said she looks really good for her age (15) and she's a good weight and her teeth (the ones she has left) aren't even in bad shape. Bloodwork all came back good, too. There are two problems: The ongoing dandruff/heavy shedding thing, which they said might be solved with an amino acid treatment and some glucosamine supplements to handle some arthritis, and... she's basically blind. Not just cataracts, which is common with her age, but she apparently has detached lenses. Eep.

This kinda explains a lot, though. If she's having trouble seeing, no wonder she's upset with Otter trying to play with her, and starts yowling at night when she can't see anything at all. Might also explain some of her litter box issues, too. If she can't easily see if she's about to be pounced on, she might feel more comfortable going near the box instead of inside it, so she can dash away more easily. Poor wee thing.

Bummer that she has that issue, but with the rest of her health being basically good for a very old kitteh, she should be with us for at least a couple more years, and I'm very glad about that.

***

Trying to squeeze out what we can from the last bits of good weather, so we took a couple of blue-sky hours this past weekend to go drive around Pt. Defiance park. Neither of us had ever been there before, so it was a nice little trek. M did some geocaching and I tried to do some birding, but didn't get very far because it was a bit too crowded for them to not go off and hide. We did get stalked by some raccoons, though. Seriously: It was creepy. We were driving along, minding our own business, and every 100 feet or so, there was a new raccoon--or maybe it was the same one!--staring at us as we drove past. Like, actually staring. Making eye contact with me and everything. Creeeeeepy!

Hoping we get at least one more good weekend day soon. This dreariness is starting to get to me already.

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Somehow managed to lose my debit card in the last week or so. This is the card I use for just about everything, including most of my regularly scheduled autopays, so losing it is a giant pain in the patoot. Waiting to get the new one soon and then will likely have to spend an afternoon cleaning all that up. Fortunately, we haven't had any evidence that it was actually stolen or anything.

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Still have a few more fanworks planned before this is all over, but got a couple more done: A new video and a fun little crossover "episode" thing with Primeval/Eureka/Warehouse 13. And it doesn't even have porn in it. Oooh. ;)

Once I'm done with those, however, I'm going to be back in passive-fan mode for a while. New fall shows are starting up, which is cool, but I don't really feel compelled to be active in those fandoms, so I'll prolly be dialing down the participation in general. At least until the new series of Primeval airs in January.

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Also still working on the novel, believe it or not. Lots of research done in the last few months. Yes, the actual writing has been sporadic, but I'm getting the ducks in a row for some of the larger-scale mythology, language, accuracy and setting issues, which matters quite a lot for everything else to work as it should.

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Updated Flickr stuff. Still have a backlog to get through, but there are a few more recent pics there.

Realized that I've been using this journal for a lot of bellyaching lately. My basic, non-angsty life stuff has all been posted either on Twitter or FB. Oi. Might have to do more of these kinds of posts to make up for all the self-absorbed, maudlin shit.

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That big, yellow ball in the sky has finally started visiting us poor folks here in Puget Sound, and it's brought some nice personal energy with it. Yay. Of course, helping in this endeavor is the experiment I've been doing with my Wellbutrin: I accidentally took a double dose a couple of weeks ago, and had one of the best days I've had in months. So I did a double dose again for a few more days, to see if it was a fluke: Nope. Felt really good. Then I went back down to my regular dose for a few days. Felt craptacious. Sooo. I'll be seeing my doc again soon to see about getting me upped officially. I hadn't been taking a bigger dose before because I had anxiety and insomnia issues with it, but this time, it was mostly manageable. I probably won't go the full double dose with the increase, but upping it at all might be interesting.

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The sun and the mood have helped me be somewhat productive in the last several days, even aside from the fandom stuff. Actually did some writing and research on the Novel of Doom, did a bit of Real Cooking, and have left the house to do running around. Oooh. Real world. Scary. ;) Today's efforts included a trip to a nursery, where we picked up some edibles: herbs, tomatoes, a couple of different kinds of peppers, strawberry and cucumber. Will be getting those into the ground in the next couple of days. I may well kill them off--I'm still not much of a green thumb--but I figure I'll give it a go.

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Kitty update: We're slowly switching them over to a hypoallergenic food, and it looks like it's working: Fammy hasn't been barfing nearly as much as she used to. Hope that solves the problem. Now if only Penny would use the litter box properly... Sigh...

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Having entirely too much fun on Twitter. It's (obviously) not the place for substantive conversation, but watching the rapid-fire repartee between clever, wordy folks like actors and writers is ridiculously entertaining. It's like some of the best TV, only immediate and for free. And getting in on it on occasion makes it even more fun (I suspect the Primeval scriptwriter who's now following me is probably in over his head, but... ;) )

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Andrew/Primeval fandom stuff has been slow, lately. No new stuff (and nothing expected for another month, at least) so it's just fanworks and random discussion keeping up right now. Which is fine. I've been needing a bit of a break from that, plus there are all the new summer shows starting up soon to keep me occupied. fanbitch may well have content other than Andrew-related fic sometime soon. Oooh. ;) Still hoping he shows up to Dragon*Con, as was rumored, but even if he doesn't, I'm really looking forward to it. Lots of fun stuff going on there, and I'll know several folks who are going. Should be entertaining, though I hope I don't die in the ATL heat.

Relaxing during my last half-hour of work today since I'm mostly just monitoring the (very slow) wire at the moment.

Today was a much different experience than the rest of the week has gone, simply because I was so much more here, mentally speaking, than I was when I was so worried about Otter.

Of course, the little bugger is still worrying, but for entirely different reasons, now. I swear, having him bite my ankle as I left the villa this morning was almost comforting.

Thanks again, btw, for all the support when I was freaking out earlier this week about him being gone. I know some folks think of pets in general--or at least cats--as something that just comes and goes, but my furbabies are family members, and I really do kind of go to pieces when one of them is even sick, so... yeah.

But now he's back, and I can concentrate on the job--not that it really needs a lot of that, seeing as how it's very deja vu.

( Same monkey, more buttons )

Still waiting to hear back about whether our counter-offer is being accepted (or declined, or counter-countered or whatever) by our potential buyer. We were supposed to hear back sometime today, but no news, yet. Not sure if that's a good or bad sign.

More newsy postings later on this eve. For now, I've killed enough time, so I'm going home!

End of day 2, and still no Otter.

On the one hand, the other roaming cats around the complex are still roaming and still plenty healthy, so if he's sticking somewhat close to home, he's probably OK.

On the other hand, if he hasn't come back at all in this time, I'm not sure he recognizes this place as home.

I'm holding out some hope that he's just being the crazy teenager he is, and running around like mad getting some jones out of his system, and he'll come back eventually. And it could be that he's been by during the day when neither of us have been here to let him in. But... If he doesn't come back by the end of the week, I'm going to have to accept that he's gone.

I am most definitely not ready to face that, though.