A letter to Janey.

A little background here:  When Gina died, a very sweet daughter of a dear friend wanted to cheer me up, so she made me some things.  Her mama, however, is baaaad about mailing things on time (not that I share that trait *averts eyes*), and I just got it yesterday.  I'm going to keep a few details private just to keep the girlie safe, but anyone who knows me well is going to know who this precious kid belongs to. If you don't know me that well, just enjoy the utter sweetness of this gift and know that someone out there is raising a good, kind girl.

Dear Janey,
I got your mail yesterday and thank you so much! It sure took your mom long enough to mail it, didn't it?  ;-)  I was thinking about Gina yesterday and missing her, so your gifts came at such a good time and made me very happy!  I loved your letter and am glad you liked your Hello Kitty stuff and your dancing flower. I have one in my window, too, see?  Every time I saw mine, I thought about y'all and that you'd like them, too. Glad I was right!

 The picture you drew was excellent!  It actually looks a lot like Gina did.  :-)

Your letter just made my day!  You write very well, by the way...lol, about as good as Jake and he's 20!

But I have to tell you, I LOVE my magnet best.  

A kitty in a heart with angel wings...how perfect is that to remember Gina by? It's just beautiful!

I took a picture of my fridge to show you I have many magnets and stuff all over it, but decided yours needs to be right out in front.  Your letter is under your picture so I won't lose it.  :-)

I just can't thank you enough to doing something so nice for me and hope you don't mind that I've shared it with everyone here so they can see, too. I also hope you don't mind that I snagged a picture of you to add on so everyone can see the sweet girl who did such a thoughtful thing. I hope I get to meet you in person some day and give you a big hug!

Isn't she beautiful?

XOXO,
Lisa

Raising Jake.

Some background you should know...I've caught hell from my family for how I've raised Jake since he was born.  From not vaccinating (he is now, so spare me the silly emails), to unschooling and then homeschooling, to teaching him to not base his choice of who he loves on a set of genitalia, but rather on a person who treats him like he's the best thing ever and who makes him laugh, feel special and feel safe and who inspires him to feel the same....yeah, I've caught a lot of flack. But, the fact is, I knew early on he was different.  No, not brighter or "gifted", I've never been one of *those moms because every kid is bright or gifted in their own way...no, I've just chosen to embrace his oddities instead of trying to pretend they don't exist.  He's 20 now, and I'd not change a bit of that. I won't ever have a kid with some big title or retirement plan, but I've got a kid who knows he's free to dream as long as he works hard to make those dreams real and you know what?  I'm happy with that.

Tonight, this morning, whatever you want to call it, at this very moment, Jake is at the Vampire Ball, performing his original music.  He's been swarmed by fans (lol, albeit it probably less than 100), had many photos taken and is signing autographs.  He's living his dream, even in small form. Would I love him to go to college or do something to further his education someday?  Of course I would, but not now.  Not at the sacrifice of what he's having tonight.  There's time for that later but this?  Won't wait. How many of us can really, honestly, say we've lived the dream we had at his age?  I can't. My parents insisted I be more practical and I gave up my dreams but swore to myself I'd never do that to my kids.  "They" say we always want better for our kids than we had and I do...I want him to have nights like tonight and am so very, very proud of him that he's worked hard enough to have even this much.

Someday, when he's older and has more responsibilities in life, I hope he can look back on tonight and feel good about himself.  I hope he can not have resentment toward me or what he feels he could have been, had he just had the support. I hope the rest of our family can someday, somehow, realize that for *him, I'm doing the right thing in not forcing college or (God help me, *never) the military on him.  I want him more for Jake; I want him to have no regrets. I want him to live his dream.

Lol, he looks scary tonight, hmmm?  This is not the kid in blue velour pajama pants I usually have running around the house drinking apple cider vinegar in apple juice because he's read it's healthy, playing with the cats and watching Dancing With The Stars with me (he's rooting for David Arquette)...looks can certainly be deceiving, can't they?  Yet, it is the same person. I hope people read this, see him, and realize that.

I'm so, so proud of him right now.  Always.  And I have no regrets about how I've raised him, even if it's hasn't been "normal" and even if he's not what's considered to be "normal".  More power to us both for flipping off "normal" and being *real.  And mostly, let's just hope he keeps an eye on his drinks tonight.  Argh!

** Edited this morning to add:  Welllllp, he learned a harsh lesson about following dreams last night.  After all that, the venue had scheduling issues and several performers, Jake being one, didn't get to perform.  He's so upset and I am for him, but it's still a good lesson. He might even appreciate what he *did get to experience in, oh, 20 years.  ;-) **

Random thoughts and a deal on razor blades.

Let's tackle the razor blade thing first...Jake needed new razor blades today, sort of urgently, since I'd bought the wrong ones the other day and he was leaving today (more on that in a bit).  Within a mile radius, we have a Publix, Winn-Dixie, CVS, Family Dollar and Walgreen's. He wanted Schick Quattro Titanium blades and Walgreen's had the regular Quattro blades on sale for $8.99 but the Titaniums were $13.99.  For four.  Yes, *four.  Razor blades are one of those things that make my asshole pucker up when I have to buy 'em, but hey, he's going to be gone a long time and I decided to suck it up. At the register, however, even the Titaniums rang up at $8.99.  Yay!  But to make matters even better, this purchase got me a printed coupon for $5 off my next purchase of more than $5.  So, basically, I can go spend $5.10 and only pay 10 cents.  Or, alternately, I got $13.99 blades for $3.99 and will pay for something I'd buy on sale there anyway.  Probably nail polish.  Anyway, with the purchase of *any Schick Quattro product, men's or ladies', and even the disposable razors, you'll get the $5 coupon for a future purchase of anything.  This is a deal worth sharing.  :-)

So, yeah, it's 3am and about 2 hours ago, Jake left out with a friend to spend an undetermined mount of time in Ft. Lauderdale.  He will be back long before Thanksgiving, but that's all either of us know right now.  I will miss him fiercely but am glad he's getting to experience a new area and see if it's a place he might be better off living in.  Don't get me wrong, I love my kid and hate the idea of him moving, but this area offers nothing for him now. Just nothing. He has to move away to have a future and at least Ft. Lauderdale isn't that far away.. But here I am...kidless, alone, feeling sort of giggly at the freedom of it all.  I"m such a piss-poor empty-nester.  Oh, and his friend?  Is cute.  And a little...um...prancy.  Hmmmm.  :-D

So here I sit, it's past 3am and I'm having a glass of wine, bleaching my shower grout and trying to keep Tucker the cat from breaking in and licking the bleach. Does anyone else have a cat that loves bleach?  Obviously, I'm going to be leading a wild life while Jake is gone, lol. I think tomorrow (fine, *today, whatthehellever) I'm going to make myself a honey-do list and share it.  Maybe I'll even keep myself honest with pictures.

For now, I'm going to try sleeping in my bed.  It's been over a month since I've slept in it.  My back objects to being flat, I have issues with being on the far end of the house and so I tend to sleep in my recliner and Jake takes my bed since it's a full size and no one is in it.  Still, in celebration of being freeeeeee and alone, I'm going to sleep there.  I put fresh sheets and a fresh coverlet on, have a lavender tart melting and am going to try it without a TV, since my TV in there died. Wish me luck.

Goodnight to everyone.

(PS:  I'm not bothering to proofread this so ignore any typos)

Passive-Aggressive Scrabble.

Miss Arse and I play Scrabble on Facebook and she usually beats my ass, too.  When we have an argument or she's in a foul mood about something, she starts new games even though we have several going and plays mean.  I just opened up a new game and apparently she has something on her mind...
 

 
Click it to make it bigger.
I love how she wishes me luck...that's my clue it's about to get ugly on the Scrabble board.  By the way, check out my letters.  Can you guess what word I played back?  :-D

It's the old lady's birthday!

Nope, not mine or Miss Arse's.  ;-)  It's Ginger's birthday! Now, I'm not ordinarily one to celebrate cat birthdays (much), but when a cat turns 19 it seems to me it ought to be acknowledged and Miss Ginger is 19 today!  Coincidentally, had I remained married to Jake's dad, we'd have been married 20 years ago today.  But let's stick with happy things and celebrate the sweet old, bony furbag that is Miss Ginger.  She's absolutely the most agreeable, kind, accepting and tolerant cat that ever lived and is happiest in a lap, having her belly rubbed. Or eating.

She does not like it when you wake her up, though, lol.  See, Ginger's deaf now and a year or so ago was diagnosed with Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. That's just a fancy name to say she's sort of senile now...kitty Alzheimer's. It doesn't really bother any of us, least of all her, and provides for some amusing times. She will eat imaginary things off the floor (yes, they are imaginary, I'm sure!) and just chomp and chomp, then swallow and look very pleased with herself.  She's stopped grooming so I have to brush and wash her up daily.  She's become fiercely attached to some objects over the last few years and she will randomly kitten call and we have to get one of them to her quickly or she'll get so upset she gets sick. One is her feather duster, which she's actually loved for many years.

We named him Dusty. I don't want to talk anymore about that.  :-P

Lately, though, she seems to find the most comfort in my remote when she's all discombobulated.  She will seriously snuggle it and relaxes like a baby with a pacifier...so sweet.  The remote doesn't have a name, by the way.  Perhaps her oddest, and only aggravating quirk she's acquired with her senility is that she's completely forgotten she's supposed to pee in her litterbox...

...instead, she pees in a towel lined, galvanized bucket in my bedroom closet.  Trust me, I'm not thrilled with this at *all, but what can you do?  It was that or have her peeing on whatever struck her fancy at the time.  At least I know where the pee is now, you know?  She generates much laundry, so it's a good thing I love her. By the way, those shoes?  Jake's.  *nods*   Back to sweet Gingie, 'cause it's her birthday, the CDS also causes her to do random and daring things she's never, ever done before.

Like this. This game lasted until she lost her footing one day and broke a fang tooth inside the bowl.  I really hope this kind of stuff never happens to Miss Arse.  Or me.

So, happy birthday to our silly old Poogie.  We're so glad we've had her for 19 years and hope we get to see one more together, at least.  And just because I've shared some fairly unlady-like, unattractive pictures of her...

...here's proof that even an old lady can still be beautiful.  :-)

Destination Unknown.

We all say we'll never be like our mothers, but then most of us turn out that way anyway.  I said it and meant it. I just sent Jake off on a spur of the moment road trip with friends.  They have no idea where all they're going or when they'll be back, only that one stop will be somewhere in Georgia since one friend wants to go back there to live.  The others, including my sweet son?  Will journey on to wherever a 12 year old Mercury Tracer and Facebook friends of friends with spare couches takes them.  I armed him with a Walmart bag containing rice chips, Vienna sausages, Little Debbies and plastic forks, plus made sure he has his ID, two types of phone chargers, Claritin, an "in case of emergency" card, insurance card and $50.  Adventures are fun, but I'm not funding them beyond some necessary money.  Oh, and I gave him instructions on how to find a Western Union, just in case.  Who knows where he'll go, what he'll see, and who he'll meet? How exciting, to just *go and see where the road takes you, though...what a cool thing to do.  Soon enough, he'll be at an age where responsibility looms large and doing things like this won't be possible, not with the same sense of freedom.  I just know it'll be a grand adventure, one I'm glad he can go on and one I wish my mom would have supported me going on at 19.  Between us, though, I'm so worried and nervous. 

It's a big, scary world out there and after all, he's still my baby.  *sighs*


Update:  Not an hour after he left, he texted to tell me they're still in town, tired, and may just start out in the morning...could I leave the door unlocked for him in case he comes in?  Lol, really?  Me and my friends would have slept in a rest stop 10 miles from home, just to not go home.  My son, he's obviously not a good adventurer.

Beatrice's herpes...an update.

Now *there's a post title not many people would put up, hmmm?  ;-)

So,  we've been busy around here.  Y'all remember Bea was tentatively diagnosed with Feline Herpetic Keratitis, no?  The options we had were basically that or cancer, and apparently they look very much the same.  So, she responded okay-ish to her meds, I saw a little improvement happening slowly, and then I woke up to this in my face one morning.

Sad, sad, little Bea face and her eye looked awful, just overnight.  I mean *bad, totally clouded over, lumpy, red patches...bad. Bea was very unhappy and Mama here was pretty panicked.  We headed into the vet, where the poor thing didn't even insist on being in her carrier with her invisibility cloak on.  They put her on the scale and she just stayed there.  She was just a pitiful little girl.  :-(

Our vet was not happy at all with how her eye looked and cancer was mentioned a couple of times as something that now needed to be considered.  So, with a referral to an animal ophthalmologist (who knew those even existed?) in hand, we went on a 100 mile round trip to get a biopsy done and see what was really going on.  Luckily, Beatrice is a great traveler, thanks to the fact I've tossed her loose in the car for short trips to drop Jake off places since she was a baby, but she's never made a trip like this before.  I took half of one of someone else's Xanax, Bea wore her invisibility cloak in her carrier and off we went. I took no pictures of the next part since I was:  1)  a basket case;  2)  wary of taking pictures with one hand and driving with the other, considering the Xanax factor;  3)  trying to not vomit.  We get to the ophthalmologist's office and it's good...dark inside, no other pets but for an old, quiet pug with cataracts, so no real dogs to scare either of us...it's good.  They take her in, burrito wrap her and, in no time flat, have the biopsy done and we're left to await the results. They had to scrape that sad eye, but once again, Beatrice showed off her manners and was proclaimed one of the sweetest cats they've ever dealt with.  Apparently, I have the Eddie Haskell of cats here.  ;-)  After 15 minutes of waiting room hell,  we go back in and the doctor gives me news that nearly makes me pee myself with relief...no cancer.  Yay!  On top of herpes, she's got Eosinophilic Keratitis and it's unusually aggressive, it seems.  On that link, see the eye of that cat?  That's exactly what her poor little eye looked like, but hey, it's not cancer and I was so damned relieved, I almost couldn't stand it.  We got her new meds, many meds, lol, and got our asses out of there.  I swear, I don't know if she sensed my relief or what, but once in the car, she pawed to get out of her carrier and I figured what the hell...driving in downtown rush hour traffic with a loose cat in my lap and a loose Xanax in my body sounds like a fun thing to do.  I opened the carrier, she climbed out and assumed her favorite spot for car rides...partly on me, partly on the armrest, watching the world go by.

She was all "Let's go, Mama!" so off we went, garnering much attention at traffic lights. It seems people don't often see cats in cars, lol.  It went very well until we got on the interstate and a semi passed us, rocking  the car hard.  She looked at me with pure terror in her good eye, belly-crept over the gear shift and back into her carrier. The rest of the way home, this is all I saw.  :-D

Yes, I took a picture while I was driving.  So sue me.  How could I not document that bit of cuteness?  Here are the new meds...9 drops a day, which she's become accustomed to and doesn't fight anymore, plus two things for her food.

 

The miracle drug has been the Prednisolone Acetate (steroids) and is, ironically, the exact stuff Miss Arse has to use daily in her cadaver eye  the rest of her life.  These two tickle me with their twin medications.  Anyway, just one week into our new regime and just look at the pretty eye that's showing back up again! By the way, I balanced a bag of treats on my head to get this shot. I'm slightly ashamed of that.

It's still got a long way to go but it's just got a thin cloudy layer on it now, no lumpy stuff, no red!

I surely do love this goofy cat, in case that's not obvious.  I know, you couldn't tell, could you?  You're shocked. *nods* Part of why I'm sharing all this, though, is because it's easy to initially miss or dismiss these conditions as nothing serious and, in fact, it can be very serious for your cat.  Not all vets can diagnose it, either, as we found out, if it's aggressive, and since it does mimic cancer in appearance.  It *is fixable, though, and do not be put off by the potential cost of a specialist.  I'm not one to typically talk money, but the entire visit to the ophthalmologist, including the biopsy and all of her meds, was under $200.  Yes, it's a lot of money but not nearly what I feared it would be and not what a lot of people might fear and put off until something bad has happened.  Luckily, I didn't put it off because seriously, who wouldn't want that face up there to be so happy again?  ;-)

Also, totally unrelated, but I'm going to be messing with my blog some later. I don't like the layout anymore.  For whatever reason, I can be a situational 'tard and just realized that hanging around with the whole MWOP/BWOP bunch and having a little sheep(le) dragging dead like that looks like I'm some radical anti-MckMama person and, in reality, I just thought it was cute.  But yeah, I need to change it. I might even go private for a day to get it in order, but I'll be right back!

(Edited:  Good God, I connected the "cadaver eye" link to a cooking post.  Fixed *that!)