oh, vet bills

Three cats, two of whom are in their mid-teens. Fun times. Pix, 14, is in what we think is stage 2 renal failure (it was last year; the bloodwork for this year hasn't come back yet), good eyes, good ears, bad hips. Pooka, 15, is in fine internal condition, but he's got partial (and sporadic) blindness and failing hearing; however, he is smart enough to take the easy path onto the back of the couch, rather than try the 3 foot jump and end up clawing his way up the upholstery every. damn. time. And Louhi, all of 3, still under 8 lbs and likely to remain thus, has tartar issues despite the dry food that is supposed to control that. So she will get a dental visit in the near future, after which I will attempt to brush her teeth myself with those little wholly inadequate toothbrushes. Her mouth is at least big enough now to accommodate a human finger in it. Her temper may be another matter. She's a sweet animal, very amenable to handling, but I suspect she has her limits.

At least we have Pixie back on her meds. We stopped for awhile, because she'd twigged to the whole pills-in-my-food thing. Well. She'd twigged to it when Nous tried to pill her, and stopped coming to get her dinner (or coming near the kitchen at all) when he was the one feeding everyone. Seriously. She'd see him with the dishes and run out of the room and hide, and by the time she emerged, Pooka (who does not suffer from appetite loss) would have eaten her wet food, in which the pill was hidden. Now mind, I could feed her and stuff the pill in her wet food and she never cared because she never actually saw the pill. I am just that good. But it got to the point that she would run away when she saw him him, even if he wasn't trying to feed her. And she only caught him once with the pill. Once.  Breakfast, however, has never been associated with pills, and so Nous can give that to her, no problem.

I don't know. This cat has some issues.

Anyway, now we have liquid meds which I inject into her wet food. In a mere 12 hours, we have seen improvement. This makes me happy. She's destroying the couch and she has some territorial quirks, but she's still been my housemate now for a decade. She is solidly Nous's cat, unless there might be meds involved, but we're friends. She's also the only one who gets table scraps. She does love her bacon.*



*I know it's bad for her. She's in renal failure. She is the lowest-ranked cat in the house, constantly hounded by Louhi and occasionally abused by Pooka whenever he feels like he's gotten in trouble from the humans. Table scraps are something only she gets.

and the death count rises

So the terrorist in Norway was a home-grown, right-wing, conservative Christian fundamentalist. He's blown up buildings and killed close to 100 people, many of them teenagers and affiliated with the liberal party in Norway. A political act of terrorism, in one of the most peaceful, open societies in Europe, one of our NATO allies. The attacks are symptomatic of a rise in extreme right-wing crap in Europe, and that should worry us. It should worry us even more that we have our own right-wing conservative fascist element. Our Christian white-boy terrorists generally confine themselves to bombing women's clinics and murdering doctors, but they have occasionally gone after buildings full of government workers and their children. When they do, we execute them and dismiss them as extremists. Norway won't kill their terrorist, having evolved beyond government-sanctioned vengeance killing capital punishment at the turn of the last century. But they might have a backlash against the kind of xenophobic thinking that produced him.

In an ideal world, or even a self-aware one, the rest of us might be looking at Norway and grieving with them, and thinking that we should be that much more vigilant against the kind of thinking that produces home-grown terrorism and right-wing extremism. 

Instead, most of my fucking f-list in varying social media is on about Amy Winehouse.

the summer of socks and æbleskiver

Which is pretty much my summer knitting project. Well. Projects. Well. Socks and my (blue-bearded) battle bonnet. Well. Socks and my (blue-bearded) battle bonnet and a sweater and something TBD made from that bargain yarn I picked up that's called Irish Coffee and looks neither Irish nor coffee like but is really kinda funky and by funky I mean pretty anyway.

Commas are for people with small lung capacities.

Anyway, been making socks most afternoons and watching Netflix streaming and I have to ask: What the hell happened on Season four of Angel? Were the writers possessed by the spirit of crap? I'm glad I stopped watching at season 2 originally. I have happy memories, which are now so much hash. Which is sorta how I am feeling with True Blood so far, too--not that I have totally happy memories of any of its seasons, but there are moments, most of which involve Alexander Skarsgård. And despite his frequency in this season so far, I am not loving it. I am the anti-love.

Makes me want to rewatch all the Dr. Whos as a palate cleanser. Which, since of my projects, only my (blue-bearded) battle bonnet is done--well, some of the socks are. But not all of them. WHICH, as I was saying--means I have a lot of time left to kill while I'm stabbing strings with sticks and I do love me the Doctor. (9th. 10th. Not sold completely on the 11th yet, but Amy makes up for him.)

And! I have an æbleskiver pan, and not one, not two, but three sources for recipes, and I'm not afraid to use it. Them. Pronouns are for the unimaginative.

Next time, maybe, I will tell you about why Finland is the best place to be a teacher and the US is Of The Suck Like Season Four Angel in that regard. Or maybe I'll be too busy with socks.

relief

I think I've slipped into the valley between 'actually kinda happy' and 'omgwtf stressed,' which means the writing is happening again. And by writing I mean--New Project, not just vignettes to help me work out game plot, and actual words on (not really) paper, instead of pre-writing (which is to say, thinking a lot, usually during workouts and long drives).

Whew.