Alice Audrey

I’ve never had a cat catch a cold before. At least, not like this. I’ve seen them sneeze a time or two, but all day long? Totally new to me.

So first it was Diana. A week ago she started sneezing. A lot. We kept an eye on her, hoping whatever had her sneezing would go away on it’s own, kind of like we do with the humans in the house. After a week, I called the vet.

Turned out we did it exactly right. the vet didn’t want to see her any sooner than that because it was too likely to resolve itself. But one look at her, and “upper respiratory infection” was the diagnosis. He gave us a prescription of antibiotics and sent us home.

I gave her the first dose right away. As soon as it was all in her, I let go, and she bounded across the room like a gazelle. She went three feet of the floor for six feet in a single bound, then right out the cat door. The next day I gave the medicine. As soon as it was in, she bounded across the room, then boomeranged right back past me. The next time she only made it across the room.

It’s working, and not just in having more vigor. Her sneezing is almost gone.

Now it’s Icarus who is sneezing.

Last Thursday I mentioned a note about a video on Mr. Al’s desk. Well, here’s the note, somewhat modified by Mr. Al.

It all started with The Girl’s friends. It seems most of them have become devotees of the movie The Princess Bride. She’d heard so much about it that she wanted to see it. I knew we had a copy of it, but I didn’t know where.

We went through the piles and piles of video tape in the living room to no avail. I left the note asking Mr. Al had seen it on his desk. The next day, the note had been moved to the dining room table along with the tape, which turned out to have been in storage.

Leave it to Mr. Al to turn it into a joke.

Last Thanksgiving my family and I sat around the dinning room table and talked about what each of us wanted for Christmas. This is a regular event which tends to be harder on the person who is asked what they want than on those asking. Yeah, most of us aren’t kids anymore. If we want it, we just buy it.

I tend to be a bit flippant in my response to that question. One year I said I wanted a life. I received the board game, the cereal, and worms. Hey, they’re living. One time I said I wanted jack sh*t. I received potting soil. On this occasion I happened to be working with food, and I irritably said I wanted elbow room.

Well, it took a while, but The Girl came through. She glued elbow macaroni to a tissue box with a window and a door cut out of it. Elbow. Room. Yeeeeaaaaah.

It’s a this and that kind of weekend. I’m not really focused on anything in particular, just this and that. For instance, I’m still trying to figure out what kind of post I should use to preserve the comments on my welcome page. I thought maybe it would be this one, then I changed my mind.

We celebrated Easter with a personal egg hunt. The kids talked me into it. I get a package of candy eggs and scatter them around, then see if the kids can find them all. I wasn’t going to bother this year, but The Girl really, really wanted to do it, so I went ahead. The Boy tried to sound nonchalant about it, but he was quick to come downstairs to participate.

Continue reading This and That

My mother-in-law died last weekend. She was quite old and had suffered poor health for many years, so it came as no surprise. Still, the final blow was fast. She had an aneurysm that reached critical point. Judging from the size, the doctors say she had probably suffered from it undiagnosed for many years. They refused to operate. Apparently even a healthy young body might not make it through the operation. From the moment she went into the hospital until she died was three days. It could have been minutes or months.

We can’t afford to send the whole family out there right now, so only Mr. Al went to the funeral. The kids hardly remembered her and have not shed a tear. They had already said their goodbyes a few years ago when we went out to visit her specifically for that purpose.

Unlike with poor Jack, my mother-in-law and I got along very well. During her husband’s funeral I became her emotional support, and basked in a special place in her heart from then on. She was a sweet old lady who never really had any idea where I was coming from. I have cried a little. But this loss isn’t devastating.

Mr. Al has been out there for most of a week now. We keep in touch with email and text messaging. His comments have brought me into that world as much as I need to be. I don’t know if I’ve been supportive or not. I just tell him I love him and otherwise act normal.

So I’ve been in this weird place. It’s not really grief, but it’s not exactly happy either. Some of my posts probably reflect that. Sorry about that.

You know you’re getting old when you need more than one pair of glasses. I guess I’m getting there because I’ve had it with my “progression” bifocals and I elected to get distance and reading glasses. Now if only the suckers had some common ground that included my computer monitor. No such luck. Apparently I need a third pair of glasses for the difference.

It all started when my old glasses fell apart in my hand. I had just washed them and was drying them when the plastic frames broke in two places and the left lens popped out. I’d been needing a new prescription for a while anyway, so I got the fastest appointment I could swing and placed my order.

I love the new distance glasses, but considering I probably spend eighty percent of my day looking at my computer each day, they aren’t cutting it. the part that burns is that I told the optometrist I was concerned about the distance available on the reading glasses. She fobbed me off.

So I took the reading glasses back to have them remade for computer distance. They still don’t cut it, though it’s better. Then, I was washing the reading glasses a few days ago… You can guess where this is headed. Yep. The nose piece broke off. I have a nasty suspicion they ended up in the garbage, but i didn’t see them there when I dug through, and now it is already gone.

I’ve pretty much decided I need progressive lenses anyway because I spend waaaay too much time switching between glasses. If they still have the lenses from before, I’ll have those put in again so I can at least see my beads and embroidery thread clearly.

So, sometime today I need to get my reading glasses fixed, and order a pair of progressives. Wish me luck!

The Girl is still loosing baby teeth even though she’s already in high school. She lost one recently that had us worried. It spontaneously broke.

It wasn’t smashed or jostled or anything. The only thing is that it dried out. Seems to me a tooth shouldn’t fall apart just because it gets dry.

We took it to the dentist and asked about it. She said she had no idea why it did that, but she wasn’t concerned because the teeth in The Girl’s head all looked fine.

I guess I won’t worry too much, but it still seems strange to me.

We’ve had some unusual visitors lately. They are scattered all over town.
Ok, I’ll admit, deer aren’t really all that unusual out here. The woods are full of them, and you see them on the highway entirely too often. But generally you don’t see them wandering around from yard to yard downtown. In fact, I’ve gone years without having a single deer wander into my yard.

This year they are all over town. I have no idea why. It hasn’t been that harsh of a winter and hunting season is long over. Have they decided to reclaim what humans took from them well over a hundred years ago?

It’s probably a population boom. Most of the time the hunters keep them in balance, but now and then you get way too many of them. It only takes a few years for their population levels to get totally out of hand if you don’t watch it.

The Girl took one look and the deer wandering down our block, and elected to come home via the alley and back door. I don’t blame her. These are wild animals. You can’t expect to get too close without getting hurt.

And here I thought the grizzly bears and mountain lions in Glacier and the national forests were getting bold. What next? Moose? Oh wait. That was last year.