Sweetpea Manor Musings

Suddenly, I'm ravenous, even after I've just eaten a nice, well-balanced meal filled with crunchy roughage. I'm craving starches and fats in a big way. I suppose it's because it's autumn but as a human that works the night shift and stays away from sunlight because of skin cancer issues, how can the Mother Nature have triggered this in me? Isn't it supposed to be the length of daylight that triggers changes for trees and animals? It certainly isn't cooler weather. It's 91 right now at 1pm.

Also, Brindle is just beginning to get his winter fur in. The steroid shot did not make him a body buddy this time. He's been sleeping in my closet instead; perhaps he needs the darkness to grow that magnificent neck ruff?

And to smoothly segue into a related topic, Marie Callender is having a sale on their pies for the month of October. Apparently I am unable to go do my chores until I have a piece of rhubarb. :(

At least the hot weather broke and it's a bit more fall like now. It's such a relief. I went out this afternoon and did a little a pruning and such. Brindle helped of course. He's back in his sink right now. Scooter is actually gaining weight. He was terribly thin and not eating so we tried him on baby food again. I think he ate four bottles in six hours and at a buck a jar...:::sigh::: At least he eats every morsel; we were throwing out a bunch of uneaten cat food. Actually in the week we've been back, a lot of the sharp bony parts have disappeared.

We got our water bill and it's way higher than it usually is, which is odd because we weren't home for a third of the month. Normally we use between 4 and 8 CCF and last month it was 35 CCF. 1 ccf = 100 cubic feet = 748 gallons) So we used 26180 gallons which is over 36 gallons per hour. I checked all the outside faucets, and searched the yard for signs of a water leak. Nothing. When I was sleeping on Friday there was a pounding on the front door. Let me think...shall I jump up and answer the door in my nightie? No. Later, I found a work slip from the Water Co. that a man had been by to check out the meter and had found it accurate. Obviously, our bill had sent up a red flag. So, where the hell did all that water go? I went down to read the meter myself. WHOA! Inside was the biggest, lethalist black widow spider I've every seen. She was upside down displaying her scarlet hour glass. She looked exactly like this but even more deadlier:

http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/black-widow-spider-picture.htm

And she had two enormous egg sacks hanging in her web.

Today, I went down and sprayed the meter housing with a bug killer. I think she liked it. She certainly didn't die immediately or even act sick. I'll go back in a couple of days and see if she's still alive. And read the meter again. And if we're still using huge amounts of water, I'm not sure what we'll do. I'm kinda hoping someone rip us off somehow while we were away and there isn't a leaky pipe buried under the concrete driveway. :(

I'm still trying to catch up on the backlog on the Tivos. I was very glad the way NCIS and Bones went (the writers set some wrong things right.) Boston Legal...how I love Alan and Denny. :) Supernatural has been very impressive; I love the scary angel and the last ep was excellent. Dexter, Dirty Sexy Money, Ugly Betty and CSI have all been excellent. And Criminal Minds has been wonderful. I'm very intrigued to discover what the theme this year will be.

Shows I'm still behind in: House, Pushing Daisies, Heroes, Without a Trace, The Mentalist, The 11th Hour and Primeval. Shows I've jettisoned because there's too much to watch are Lost, Fringe and Smallville. Trace and Primeval are teettering.

First off, Hillary gave a fantastic speech. I hope you got a chance to see it. And it's painfully apparently she should have been on the ticket. There's a lot of big reasons why she should have (which I won't go into) and I have to say the only reasons I can come up with why not have to do with hurt feelings and jealousy. Come on, it's a political office; you have to deal with people you don't like if you want to get things done. Oh well....

Brindle. He spent four days in his kitty cage refusing to come out because he didn't want his medicine. He'd sneak out and race back if he caught him out. Sunday, he decided he wanted the bathtub--while I was taking a bath. He sat there looking stern until I vacated it. Wanting the lie on the cold porcelain means it's time for his flea meds again so we did give him that. He's gone out for a few hours in the evening and is slowly getting his strength and confidence back. Oh, and I'm taking him for a check up in one hour.

Our refrigerator is two years old and now it's having temperature instability. Turns out the extended warranty I bought will come in handy. We have an appt for Friday after noon so hopefully I can catch a couple of zzzz after work before they show up. And hopefully the freezer will keep things frozen til then.

We called at 10 and Dr. J said he was stable, had eaten a little, and there hadn't been blood for awhile. Tests were all negative except for the liver enzymes of AFT, ALT and the globulins (must look those up.) He felt that, yes, Brindle had eaten something that had inflamed his GI tract and he'd send him home with meds to help him heal up. He said to call back at 2 and if he was still stable, he'd be released.

So, I just called and he's good to go at 4pm, just after a scheduled injection. I'll pick him and and then we'll have to leave immediately to go to Walking with the Dinosaurs down in Anaheim. Not the home coming I would have wanted for him but there you go.

So good news except for seeing what the bill will be. But he'll be fine and that's all that matters.

Suddenly about 3:30am, Brindle started vomiting. First it was the food he'd eaten two hours before, then it was white foam. When it started to be blood tinged, I called the vets. I was in the car with him by 4:10am. At the vets, he was very compliant and purred, which is completely not him. The vet was talking about hospitalizing him, giving him anti-nausea meds and hydrating him so his system could rest. When he vomited a large puddle of mostly blood, she looked alarmed.

So, they've got him for a day or two at least. The consent I signed had four types of drugs, blood tests, IV bags, X-rays and this and that. *HALF* the payment in advance was $1044. I told her he'd been outside today so he could have eaten a bird, or maybe eaten a poisoned rat (well, there are rats around and we have two sets of new neighbors, so it's possible.) Or just been poisoned.

The vet said I could call in an hour or two. Dr. A, the vet I grew to despise, is no longer there.

Needless to say I'm worried sick. Hopefully, it was just a bad tummy ache, horrible nausea and he ruptured a small blood vessel from vomiting so hard.

I'm at home trying to catch up on the tv shows of this week. Bones was funny. "Phalanges!" I don't know why that makes me giggle but it does.

Boston Legal. The two best moments were the cows running away and Denny knowing he couldn't give up Alan to move. That's such a wonderful show. :)

Criminal Minds. Huh. I like JJ's squeeze. Does this mean we'll see more of him? Best moment was the end when Morgan, Reid and Prentiss revealed somethings had not been a secret. Heh. And Reid was also clued in so he's not too oblivious.

Oh, I did manage to catch Craig Ferguson last Saturday in DC. I thought he did really well and boy, was that ever a tough crowd.

Um...still needing to watch SPN and Doctor Who. Looking forward to those.

Handmark had a two for one sale and I bought a few more games for my Lifedrive. And finally got them loaded on. I'm such a technophobe. I still haven't broke down and bought an iPod.

Scooter has taken to waking me up at noon, and when you sleep from 9am to 4pm that is the middle of the night! Pet me, feed me. :::sigh::::

But then Thursday, he didn't wake me. I thought, "Cool. He's passed that." But then when I got up, it turned out that Mom and shut the door, leaving the poor blind and deaf cat outside for about six hours. She knew she hadn't seen him and was unconcerned about his absence. I found him asleep in the courtyard and he was quite disorientated when I picked him up. Didn't seem to know me. It took a few hours before he started acting more normal.

The clock is ticking, poor thing.

Oh, when I got up on Wednesday, there was Brindle laying on Mom's trousers at the base of the toilet. Heh heh. He took possession of them and wouldn't give them back so she had to abandon them. He's a funny cat. He's still got them in there. If we took them away, he's just take possession of something else.

And my ebay swimsuit came. It's okay. I'm so cheap that I'm fine if it's not my color and the, eh, superstructure upstairs could be more supportive. I'm only gonna wear it for a few days at the MediaWest hot tub/pool. Half price makes me smile. :)

Then I need to get a Mother's Day gift. What are all you getting for moms?

Or Finally Finished with the Flist!

To recap my week, three icky days at work. Work, work, work. Only 15 minutes here and there to read fic on my PDA. Yes, I try to read smut at work. *G*

Friday was chores and tivo catch up. I have been enjoying the last few SPN (though someone needs to be fragged in the worst way.) SGA was entertaining again with a nice Rodney/Ronon moment. And I look forward to expansion on the surprise.

Friday night I spent search the net for info on FiOS/Tivo slash so to speak. Um...I totally missed the tivo deadline for transferring lifetime membership to a new tivo because FiOS said they didn't have service to the house. The more ads I saw, the more it bugged me because they dug up my front yard to put fiber optics in. Finally, I talked to real person and after a week she got back to us to tell us that our address had been miss-entered in their system and we can get FiOS. The consultant called when I was asleep and Mom signed us up--and she had no idea what she'd signed up for. I called up on Friday and found more info and it seems like a good deal. She said their DVRs were as good as Tivo so I ordered one of them and then spent most of that day and night researching what I'd ordered.

Saturday I awoke and knew the Verizon DVR wasn't gonna cut it. My query to the tivo community helped me to understand what I'd need to set things up the way I want them. And then I spent the rest of the day with my ol' SG friends and they showed me how to cut a song for a song vid. Yay!

Sunday I spent watching the Oscars, letting the Brindle the crabby tabby use my foot for a pillow and catching up on the flist. Yay! Oh, my friends gave me Xmas gifts from Hawaii. One thing was a little satchel of Maui Zowie catnip. Brindle has been licking that all night long, the little junky. He gets high and thinks it's kinda fun to make the monkey people squeal by using them scratching posts. :(

Tomorrow, I'll call Verizon and get that FiOS thing straight, I hope. It will bundle the Net at 15/2 Mbps, our phone (with unlimited calling) and the TV with HD (and all the channels I could ever want, even HBO and Showtime) for $149. That'll cut over $50/month off our bills. Supposedly everything will be fast and pretty and all that. But having to research all this has made me feel like I worked half the weekend. Now, I'm kinda grumpy. All snapdragony and PG-13. Shit, damn, hell! Where did my weekend go?! *g*

So, I think I'll risk my lower limb and sneak past the cat to go to bed and read Madhouse. At least I'll be warm there.

Oh! I just finished Torchwood's Adam. I really liked that one. Cool.

Huzzah! The roof--and sky lights--did not leak! Wow, that's the first time in about ten years that sky light didn't leak and as it was right above the computer, it really is a wonderful thing.

It did rain quite a bit over the last few days, but today is glorious. The handy man guy came out 15 minutes early and replaced the door knob. Currently, he is in and out putting weather stripping on it and doing some other jobs. His buddy had to go home because he had the flu. But I'm just really happy to get this stuff done and by someone who shows up on time.

Last week Brindle had decided to be quite the cuddle bug and wanted to be out in the living room between Mom and I. He'd climb into our arms and when he got too hot, he'd lay between us. When the work on the house started, he fled to under Mom's bed. Now he's staying under there, only slipping out for a quick bite, looking for all the world like a someone lost behind enemy lines, sneaking out of his foxhole for emergency provisions. Mom and I have decided he has PTSD and when something stresses him, he reverts to a bunker mentality. Last night he snuck out and I grabbed him, and hugged him until he relaxed, but then he demanded to sit in front of the monitor and gnawed at me until I turned the computer off. Bossy boots.

Oh, I was playing with Tivo to figure out if I'd be able to watch the Jane Austen stuff that starts this Sunday on Masterpiece Theater (I can if Desperate Housewives isn't playing.) I found AFN (armed forces network) and that was fascinating. They talked about solar flares, and many other things, very in depth.

1) Step away from the computer.

2) AFTER I memorize the dyi pages on how to change out the door knob on the front door.

3) Buy replacement part and replace part.

4) do laundry

5) clean bathroom

6) leave kitchen floor til tomorrow. *g*

BTW, yesterday the neighbor put up a big chain link fence. I was a nosy neighbor and found out the coyotes have been standing on their block wall eying their little dogs even when the people are outside with them. Thank god they hadn't lost any of their critters. They've 3 small dogs, one shepard and Oscar the cat--the kitty that been giving Brindle slaps and scratches, I think. I like Oscar; I just wish they'd get a long better. Brindle should give up on being the tough guy because he can't back it up. He just can't back it up.

Heroes was pretty good, but I think Journeyman pulled ahead tonight. Journeyman was very well written and very intense. I loved it!

In Heroes, I think they've done too good a job on making Silar an evil villain. The show's moving along and I'm enjoying it and then there he is. It brings my enjoyment to a stop. My hackles rise and I get too focused on wanting him gone.

I went shopping this afternoon and bought some catfood, stuff and Xmas lights. These new ones are led, apparently only using 5 watts of power. To quote the Ideal Bite n/l: "Burning 10 strands of lights with 100 lights per strand, eight hours per day for a month costs $175 for incandescent bulbs vs. about $1 for LED mini-bulbs." Now I just need to put them up over the porch.

The flamingos in the neighbor's yard are gone. That's too bad. I guess they were a practical joke after all.

And Brindle's doing well; he's going out in the late morning (he's not an early riser,) and coming in at night. He's has a bit to eat and then races to his latest sleeping spot (a chair in the breakfast nook.) The Santa Ana winds and low humidity have given him perpetual bad hair and considering he's a long hair with his winter fur we are talking really bad hair. *g*

Oh, and Momma Coon and her three babies are outside as I write this. :)