It appears that there are some people who’d miss the Friday Comment! Answering! Extravaganza! I actually didn’t think that many people were into it, but I never minded answering questions in the entry, so I’ll put up a poll, and majority will rule on this, mm’kay?
Edited to add: There’ll be entries on Fridays whether there’s a Comment! Answering! Extravaganza! or not.
I had a fairly good day yesterday (really, with NINE little kittens in the house, how can you NOT have a good day?!), but I’ll tell you that the highlight of my day?
NOT walking out the side door and seeing Newt flinging a headless squirrel into the air and then continuing to play with it.
Oh, there was a head present and accounted for – it was sitting over by the chimney with a trail of guts leading to it – it just wasn’t attached to the squirrel.
You know, I know cats hunt and eat small rodents and all, and I’ve accepted that. I don’t love it, but I accept it. But WHY must they leave pieces of squirrel near the steps so I have to carefully avert my gaze every time I go outside? If they’re going to kill it, I think they should have to eat it afterward. Because squirrel guts do not lend a happy air to my day.
That Newt is a hunting motherfucker, though. Between he and Maxi, I’m not sure how there are any squirrels left alive in this area.
Speaking of cats and hunting, I don’t think I mentioned that one day last week Kara was in the back yard, and I glanced out the window and saw that she was eating a mole (we have a horrible mole problem, and occasionally they tunnel into the back yard and that’s about the LAST thing they do). Not five minutes later, I looked out again, and she was carrying something big across the yard.
It was no mole, that’s for sure.
I watched and watched, and just for the life of me couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought it could be a squirrel, but the color didn’t quite look right. Finally, I went outside to see what it was, and what was it? A rabbit. A RABBIT. The damn thing must have wandered into our back yard (it wasn’t fully grown, so must have been able to squeeze through the fence) and met up with Kara.
She’s a pretty fearsome hunter, too.
Sorry, though. I have no pictures of headless squirrels or half-eaten rabbits to share. I know you’re heartbroken.
Tuesday, I had an 11:00 appointment in South Huntsville, a follow-up appointment with the Hematologist who ordered my iron infusion.
Let me repeat: the appointment was for 11:00.
People? What do we know about scheduling doctor appointments? Is it that unless one is desperate, one should schedule appointments for very very very first thing in the morning? I believe that is the number one truth of appointment scheduling. Because what happens when one has an 11:00 appointment with a doctor, when said doctor starts seeing patients at 8:00?
If you answered “Why Robyn, you get to wait for 1 hour and 45 minutes!”, give yourself a gold star.
Yes, I cooled my heels for 1 hour and 45 minutes. They tricked me at first, though – I signed in, paid my copay
[Let me take a moment to breathe deeply so that I won’t get pissed all over about the fact that I paid a $35 copay for a follow-up visit. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Alright, then.]
and I had hardly sat down and cracked open my book (thankyajesus that I remembered to bring a book with me) when the lab tech was calling my name. This gave me a very false sense of hope that I’d be out of the office by 11:15. 11:30 at the latest. She brought me back to the lab and took blood, and may I just say that it was the best and fastest blood drawing experience of my life. I didn’t feel a THING. Then she told me to go back to a second waiting room and wait.
I sat in a small room with several other people, who were all talking to each other, and read. I occasionally dipped into the conversation to see if there was anything interesting going on, but they were talking about some restaurant in Scottsboro, so I tuned back out. Eventually, the other patients waiting were called back to have their vitals taken, and to go to various exam rooms.
I sat and read.
More patients came and sat and chatted quietly to the people accompanying them. Eventually, this woman came along with a huge bag of knit hats.
(Have I mentioned that the doctor is also an Oncologist? I would guess that 9/10ths of his patients are cancer patients. And there I was, sitting there with my low iron, feeling like a – what? Imposter? Like, pardon me, I have LOW IRON, I have to consult with the doctor about my very important LOW IRON. I just stayed quiet and kept my head down so no one would turn to me and say “I have stage 4 terminal lung cancer, the doctor expects me to kick off in a week to ten ::COUGHCOUGHCOUGH:: oh, pardon me, I seem to have gotten a piece of my cancerous lung on your cheek, could you hand that back to me? So I’m about to die. What’s your story?” and I’d have to burst into tears and yell “I HAVE LOW IRON I REQUIRE THE OCCASIONAL IRON TRANSFUSION O GOD WHYYYYYY MEEEEEEEEEE?” and flee the room.)
So this woman came along with a huge bag of knit hats and stopped in the doorway and said “Would anyone like a hat? I knit these myself, I’m donating them to patients of this office.”
I heard “Free hats” and perked up and casually leaned over and looked, and the woman must have had 200 hats in that bag, and they were GORGEOUS. For one little second I thought about asking for one (hey, they were REALLY pretty), but I thought that would be horribly crass (and you KNOW I’d have to come right here and tell all y’all about it because I can’t keep any of my crassness and stupidity to myself) and so I settled back down and continued reading my book.
Eventually I tuned back into the conversation and glanced over to see that an elderly woman had accepted one of the hats, but then she reconsidered and handed it back to the woman who’d made it.
“She doesn’t want to take one just yet,” her daughter, sitting next to her, told the knitter. “She still has all her hair!”
And the lady who’d made the hats, nodded understandingly and then said “Yes, well, it won’t be long, though!”
Eh. Wha? I know my eyebrows shot up so far they were on the back side of my head, and I had to catch my eyeballs before they went bouncing off down the hall.
I don’t even know what the still-has-all-her-hair woman’s response was, because I was still boggled by what the knitter’d said.
I myself would have nodded and smiled understandingly rather than saying, basically, “Hey, just a matter of time! You’ll be balder than a billiard ball before you know it! Oh, and just WAIT ’til the vomiting starts, that is going to be one FABULOUS experience!”
More patients came and went, pages flew off the calendar, I grew steadily more gray. I started playing a game with myself where I would try to figure out what time it was without looking at a clock, then check the time on my cell phone. I was within a couple of minutes most times.
At 12:20, they came and got me, and put me in an exam room. I sat and read and thought about throwing myself out the window. I texted Fred to let him know I was STILL FUCKING WAITING. He texted me back and told me I should leave. By this point, though, an hour and a half into the wait, I was invested in fucking sitting and waiting until the doctor (who was surely in the middle of saving a cancer patient’s life) wandered by.
At 12:45, the door opened. A woman came in and introduced herself as the doctor’s nurse. She sat and showed me the results from the blood they drew the morning I had the iron infusion. She told me that I do not have Myeloma. I had not been very concerned about the possibility of having Myeloma, since I had no idea they were testing to be sure I didn’t, so I felt no great sense of relief. I just nodded and said “Okay. Well, good.”
(I should have said “Can we test for all other kinds of cancer now, just to be safe?”)
She asked if I was feeling better; I told her I’m feeling the same, but since I felt fine before the iron infusion, the fact that I’m feeling the same doesn’t alarm me.
She said it was surprising that I felt fine before the infusion because my iron level was at rock bottom. In retrospect, I’m wondering if my iron level has gone from “fine” to “rock bottom” since I had blood tests before my visit to my weight loss surgeon last January, or if the surgeon dropped the ball.
(I vote that he dropped the ball because have I mentioned I don’t like that guy?)
Anyway, she said that most likely I’ll have to start coming every 6 – 12 months for more iron infusions, I should come back in three months (with lab work done a week before my appointment so they’ll have the results), and probably 3 months after that. UNLESS the lab tests I had done before my appointment yesterday come back with my iron still low, in which case I’ll have to go back earlier for another iron infusion. So if my iron level is still low, she’ll call; otherwise, I go back in three months.
I was so relieved to be done with the appointment and out of there that it wasn’t ’til I was two miles down the road that I thought to be SUPER annoyed by the fact that I’d waited 1 hour and 45 minutes and paid a $35 copay to not even see the doctor, and in fact have a discussion with the nurse that could have easily taken place over the phone.
At least my next appointment is scheduled for 9. Hopefully I’ll only have to wait for an HOUR next time.
And hey – I got some good reading time in!
If I ever have to write that I accidentally squished the Wonkas right to death, you’ll understand, won’t you?
Gus, sleeping….
Veruca and Violet, fighting, fall directly onto Gus’s head, waking him up.
And he gives ME the dirty look. Hey, I didn’t do it!
Nothin’ cuter than a sleeping kitten…
The new guys have been named – go read yesterday’s entry at Love & Hisses if you missed it.
They’re doing very well – I’m feeding them every 4 hours. Well, I say I’m feeding them, but Fred helps out with the feedings that take place when he’s home. Between the two of us, we can get all five of those babies fed in no time flat.
They’re eating a lot, peeing a lot. I’d like to see more poop (did I just say that?!), but they’re doing okay.
The first few days we had them, they’d scream at me every time they saw me. I think they were a little scared by their new living situation and didn’t know what was going on. They’ve relaxed a little, now, and I’ve peeked in to see them playing and exploring their cage several times. Yesterday a ray of sun was shining in their cage, and Keebler was rolling around, stretching, and just generally looking like a happy boy.
I don’t know if all of them are purring for me, but at least several of them are.
Here I go, falling in love with yet another batch of babies. Who saw THAT coming?! 🙂
After feeding, someone’s happy. She was rolling around, stretching, and licking her paw.
I still haven’t assigned names to the girls yet. We call this one “pink” because she’s got a blotch of pink at the end of her right ear. We are SO original.
“HEY! There are BOTTLES in that mug!”
Orange (because we marked on of her ears with orange) crawled out of the cage, into my lap, and demanded a belly rub. She’s going to be a bossy one, I can already tell.
I don’t know why it is, but Hydrox looks to me like a little boy who just got a haircut. He’s a champion eater, that one.
No True Blood adoptions yet. ::SIGH:: Maybe this weekend will be a lucky one for them!
King Terry, atop his pile o’ cat beds.
Princess Sookie, sound asleep. I swear, these Snoozzy kitten blankets are about the best investment I’ve ever made.
Crazy Jake.
Previously
2008: Pictures from around Crooked Acres.
2007: You snooze, you lose. That’s our motto at Crooked Acres.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: (We fat chicks love the buffet, don’tchaknow.)
2003: The gluttony, the sloth, the avarice!
2002: The kitties did not care for the tune, the unappreciative bastards.
2001: How to change a tire.
2000: No entry.
1999: But as I see it, more than 2 cats makes you a weird cat person. Am I wrong? Is it three, or some incredible number like ten?