the kitten (I don’t know why I insist on calling her “the kitten”, she’s 10 months old now) was walking around with her left eye completely closed. I called and made an appointment to take her to the vet, and all yesterday afternoon and last night, she didn’t play much, preferring to lay on me and sleep. This morning, her eye was open more, but she was still squinting, making like Popeye. The appointment was at 10 this morning, and just like last time, the problem was that she had eyelashes growing in such a way that they were poking her in the eye all the time. The vet managed to pluck all the offending lashes from the inside of one eyelid, but when it got to the other eye, she started fighting, and they couldn’t get her to hold still. I had to leave her, so they could sedate her and do the plucking. This did not make me happy, ’cause you KNOW she’s going to remember who dropped her off at The Place Where They Stick Things Up My Butt and Hurt Me. Hopefully she has a short memory, though, and will only associate Fred with that place, since he’ll be picking her up on his way home. I can only hope. So, Fred hasn’t had any processed sugar in something like three or four weeks. He’s diabetic – I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that – and he was watching TV one night, and they showed an older black man on one of those reality shows about paramedics or emergency room doctors. The man was diabetic, and they showed his foot, which had toes which were all black and rotting off, and they were going to have to amputate. That was all Fred needed to see, and no sugar has passed his lips ever since. A couple of weeks ago, he bought the Anthony Robbins weight-loss tapes, and he’s lost about 20 pounds since. Though I’ve been listening to the tapes with him, I’d been not nearly as good about sticking to good-for-me foods, and thus haven’t lost much, if any, weight. Tuesday, he stopped by his doctor’s office on our way over to his mom’s house to drop off her Tony Robbins tapes, since the scales at the doctor’s office are much better than the scales we have at home, and he found that he’d lost 8 pounds since the last time he’d weighed, 6 days before. Now, don’t be emailing me and telling me he’s losing too fast. He was worried he might be and talked to his doctor, and she said he’s fine. Anyway, later that evening, he called and told his father how much he’d lost, and his stepmother snickered “Is he trying the multi-year plan?” Is it just me, or is that pretty fucking rude? After that, his father told him that exercising in the pool, which he and I have both been doing, is not “real” exercise, and that walking is better. Why do people find it necessary to be so freakin’ negative? I mean, I’m not thrilled that he’s losing weight and I’m not, but I have no one to blame for that but myself. It doesn’t mean I’m not happy for him that he’s losing weight, because I am. Which reminds me – we had an argument the other day over whether eggs are a dairy food, or a protein. Y’all email me and give me your opinion on that, would you? I say it’s dairy, he swears it’s like meat. His mother agreed with me at first, then changed her mind and said it’s like a meat on a diabetic diet. Anyway. In the local mall, there’s a stand that sells clear vases full of water with glass marbles on the bottom, a plant on the top, and a Betta fish in the water. They sell them for something like $30, and Fred’s stepfather put the same exact thing together, paying retail for all the pieces, for $12. Today, I was in the grocery store, and they have two or three of them at the customer service desk, only in one of them there was a crawfish instead of a Betta. It was pretty neat-looking, actually. Reminds me of the pet store in Rhode Island I was checking out, and along with the usual goldfish and other varieties of fish, they sold small shrimp. I had a vision of raising my own shrimp for food. But they don’t make fish tanks big enough to hold enough shrimp for me…]]>
06/22/2000