Roach Motel Extended-Stay Suite

Today, friends and neighbors, we are mourning the loss of Ralph. Ralph was with us only a few short years but his familiar presence was known by many who passed his way. On any trip up that dark, musty stairwell Ralph brought a little ray of sunshine into our day.

Before I tell yall more about Ralph, I’d like to talk about laziness. Now I’m not here to cast stones. Oh no. Anyone (especially the Spouse and my parents) can relate many a tale about my own laziness. I may not be Queen, but I am at least a minor Duchess when it comes to being lazy.

Along with laziness comes cleanliness. Don’t worry... I’m fastidious when it comes to my own bodily cleanliness so we won’t head down that scary, smelly path. But I do lack motivation when it comes to cleaning up my own abode. I think a lot of you will agree with me that cleaning house is the pits. I’d rather go down a sliding board made of razor blades and land in a bucket of salt that have to clean house.

Ok, it’s not THAT bad, but you get the idea. I do have a tendency to let things pile up. But usually after the third time I throw away the same dust bunny or pile of hair I’ll go ahead and break out the vacuum. (It’s weird, but I think those things crawl out of the trash can at night when we’re asleep.)

Which brings me back to Ralph. You see, Ralph is a roach. A dead roach. A dead roach what’s been lying on the fifth step in a stairwell at work. For years.

He didn’t magically reappear numerous times after being thrown away. It’s just that no one has ever made the effort to throw him away. No one. Not even the cleaning crew or a regular maintenance guy.

Sure, I’ve often thought, as I trot up the stairs to the soda machine for a 20 ounce Mountain Dew first thing in the morning, “Gees, I guess I could get a tissue and just pick that thing up and throw it away myself.” But, like many other human beings in the building that also use the same stairwell to get their morning caffeine jolt, no one else has made the effort, either. So Ralph has been lying there, belly up, since 2003.

Actually, I’m not entirely sure about the year, but I’ve been there since 2001, and I remember first encountering Ralph about a year or so after. He coulda been there longer and I just didn’t notice until later. And his name may not even be Ralph. It coulda been Edward or Howard or Bart or even Hortense. Hell, he coulda been female. But we don’t know. And we’ll never know. Because he’s dead. AND HE’S BEEN LYING ON THE FIFTH STEP SINCE 2003!

Last Friday, since it was right before another nice 4-day holiday weekend, I was feeling frisky. I got a Post-It and jotted upon it: “Hi! I’m Ralph the Roach and I’ve been here since 2003!” and stuck it on the wall just inches away from Ralph.

I fully expected that Post-It to remain another 5 years. Man, was I ever disappointed.

This morning one of our customer service gals comes over and asks, “Do you all know who put the note over the roach in the stairs?”

At first I was slightly shocked because she didn’t automatically assume it was me, knowing some of the crazy shit I do around there. But I slowly raised my hand in response.

“Well, he’s gone. The note, too.”

*blink blink* Wow, Post-Its are some powerfully shit, aren’t they? Fucking roach lays there for five years and all it took was one stupid Post-It note to get him thrown away. Must be magic or maybe some benevolent nighttime office fairies that swooped in and carried him off to Roach heaven. Wow... I wonder if that works in other ways? Instead of putting your tooth under a pillow you could put a Post-It note over something you want removed.

Shit, I’m gonna try that at home. Maybe if I put Post-It notes all over the house, the benevolent nighttime house fairies will clean this place and the Spouse and I won’t have to do it.

Or maybe Post-It notes will keep the killer dust bunnies from crawling out of the trashcan at night. Either way it’s worth a try.

Random thoughts and links, part 108

Now this is your Grandpa...

This is your Grandpa with a webcam.

(Links are NSWF-ish. Apply eye bleach as necessary.)

Broken Kitty Update

Broken Kitty

The nightmare started Friday afternoon when I came home from work. Gilligan was laying in a corner, curled up in an awkward position. His ears were hot, his nose was hot.

When the Spouse and I tried putting him in our laps he would stay only for a little while, constantly squirming and twitching his legs like he could not get comfortable.

Running thru our brains were possibilities... Did he eat something off the Christmas tree that's now lodged in his innards? Did he eat a bug that's made him sick? Has he fallen and hurt himself? Is it arthritis?

We assumed it must be something digestive so we decided to see how he was in the morning. If nothing had passed and he was still acting weird it would be off to the Vet we would go.

So guess where we spent our Saturday morning?

The whole time I was thinking it was something digestive but after an exam the Vet started mentioning scary things like heart disease, a thyroid imbalance and this horrible condition called Aortic Thromboembolism, which is basically a blood clot cutting off blood and oxygen to the lower legs.

They took blood and an EKG, sent us home with some morphine for Gilligan's pain and promised to call us as soon as they got the test results back.

Altho he wasn't his usual self Saturday, he would at least eat a little, go up and down stairs and use his litter box. And shake paws. Just like a dog. That's the one thing Gilligan always does for me when he feel fine is shake paws.

But Saturday night he kept crawling under the Christmas tree and would not leave. Out of frustration we moved the damn tree to another room and locked the door but he still went back to the same bare spot on the floor, laid down and would move. He did not sleep with us in our bed, either, which is very unsual. He ALWAYS sleeps with us.

Sunday morning he wasn't doing too good. He was having trouble getting up and when he did walk his hips and legs seemed hunched over. The Spouse and I had errands to run during the day and when we returned home around 3:30pm things were bad. Very bad. Gilligan would not get up. We tried giving him some of his moist food (the kind of food he normally will tear your face off to get to) and he wouldn't get up. We even brought the bowl to him and he would not eat. We tried bringing him some water. When he did finally get up to take a drink he sat at an odd angle and howled. It was a howl that broken our hearts.

The howls did not stop and we were frantic. I found the Vet's card and on the back it had the number for a local Animal Emergency Hospital. I called and explained the situation and the gal at the other end send to bring him in.

The few horrific minutes of mapquesting directions to the Hospital, trying to print out a map, and bundle the howling cat into a towel sent us both into tears and howls of our own. Halfway there the cat managed to settled down. While we sat in the waiting room he seemed calm, which may sound alright, but it's not him. When Gilligan goes to a new place he's one nosey son of a bitch. He has to wander everywhere and sniff everything. The fact that he was huddled in my lap with no interest in exploring bothered me more.

While we were in the waiting room, our regular Vet called to report the bloodwork and EKG were normal. Great, but that still doesn't explain why our cat is still broken and making horrible noises.

Finally, after 2 hours, we got to talk to an Emergency Vet. She, too, was gravitating toward this awful blood clot scenario. Even tho his feet were warm and his toes were pink (indicating good blood flow) she noticed his calf muscles were tight, like from lack of oxygen. He was also dehydrated from not drinking anything all day.

All we could do was leave him there under their care, allow an IV to be inserted so they could hydrate the poor thing, and wait until morning when the UltraSound Tech arrived so they could look at the cat's heart and aorta.

So we went home. Alone. No cat. You may now (if you haven't already) insert some seriously sad violin music here.

We did some internet research on this Throm-Bomb-O-Lism (or whatever he hell it is) and the more we read, the more we lost hope. This is a serious fucking thing. It happens most often in male neutered cats, ages 4-9. (Gilligan is 7... we think... he was adopted and the rescue group that had him may not have been accurate on his birthdate.)

The numbers and cases of this condition are scary. The recovery is not good at all. The mortality rate is bad.

Devastated is not a strong enough word for how we felt. For 3 hours all the Spouse and I could do was sit and weep. Hell, we even, as awful as this sounds, started discussing what we will do if Gilligan is beyond hope.

This morning was terrible trying to go into work. My brain just wasn't on it. Neither was the Spouse's. I called the Hospital twice to check on his condition, which was stable but not much change.

After not hearing anything about the UltraSound, the Spouse couldn't take it any more and skipped out of work and went to the Hospital to visit him.

He called me and told me that Gilligan was a little more alert and was walking around. There was an occasional howl or two but nothing like it was 24 hours before.

Then he called me back around 2:30pm with these words: "He fell."

"WHAT?!"

"Gilligan fell and hurt himself. His heart is fine. There's no blood clot. He's injured himself from a fall."

In a fit of tears and giggles, we both rejoiced that the stupid little beast had fallen.

I, too, skipped out of work immediately and raced to join my Spouse and our boy. The Vet (the 3rd one we've seen) explained that the UltraSound showed a normal heart and no clot whatsoever. Gilligan had been more active today, altho still loopy from the mophine. He had simply suffered some kind of injury to his back or hips Friday while we were at work. So we have no idea what he did.

So, after a anti-inflamatory injection, and a nice bill totalling over $1,000 (for the initial visit and the Hospital stay), our buddy was returned to us.

Riding home in my lap in the car he was very calm but as soon as I pulled into the driveway his head went up and the meowing started. When he got in the house he ran (yes, RAN!) up the steps. I put some of his favorite food in his bowl and he devoured it, even licking the outside of the bowl. He's helped himself to several trips to the dry food bowl and he's ventured up and down stairs a few times, too.

Besides the fact he's still not 100% himself yet, the only other weird thing is his tail is not working. It's just sorta hanging like a wet rope. Even if you pick it up it falls limply to the floor.

The cat has done busted his ass. So he's still broken. And he has a bald band on his arm from the IV and they shaved his belly for the UltraSound. So he has a big, bald pudge. But he's not in pain anymore and he's home... alive...

So, how was YOUR weekend?

I'm such a geek...

We did it. We've been talking about it for about a month.

I first saw the beauty of the new iMacs a few months ago, right before the Apple Store opened in Loserville.

Then the Spouse made noises about how nice it would be if we had another Mac and we could both surf the web at the same time.

Then Webhamster mentioned how easy it would be to hook up a router to our internet source.

Then a few days ago the Spouse's hand-me-down G3 iPod croaked. Well, it didn't really croak, but the battery is shot. I was trying furiously to get his music uploaded to it... going 50 songs as a time... and still it was being surly.

So the Spouse made noise about how nice it would be if I got a new 160gig iPod (for ALL the crap I keep finding on the web) and he could get my current 60gig iPod to replace his dying one.

And, well, our 5th anniversary WAS Friday. And since we didn't buy individual gifts for each other...

So after a hefty purchase at Apple, and a stop off to Comp USA for a router and an ethernet cable long enough, and several hours last night and a few today moving over files and re-establishing connections, and waiting thru updates and various syncs, here we are, basking in the beauteous glow of the new iMac (350gig hardrive, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) with the older, yet still dependable, iMac behind us.

See? Even the cat is happy. Now he has TWO laps to choose from when he hangs out in the office with us.

The Christmas Wrong

It started today. Today I entered Dante’s 9th circle of Hell.

The Christmas music got started by my supervisor. The day before Thanksgiving. And from here on out, for the next 4 weeks until December 22 I’ll be forced to listen to her limited yet never-ending playlist of Christmas songs.

Never mind that I’ve told her, politely, that I don’t like Christmas music. My brief stint in retail in my youth caused that. No, never mind that I have repeatedly told her I don’t like Christmas music. That’s just too fucking bad. I get a mean-spirited laugh, then told that I’m a Scrooge and the music plays on.

The same tired old 15 or so carols we all know and loath, repeated over and over, each time by a different artist: Elvis, John Denver, Frank Sinatra, Dolly Parton, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole... Over and over and over.

We didn’t listen to Christmas music at my house when I was growing up. Yeah, I sang them in school. And yes, we still celebrated Christmas even tho we were a non religious family. We just didn’t drive ourselves silly with repetitious, inane Christmas carols. My Christmas-music-lovin’ supervisor was shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you - to discover that I had never heard the Andy Williams Christmas album, and that my parents didn’t own it.

That’s because my parents had taste. I grew up hearing the Beatles and the Stones, not Andy Williams or, gods forbid, Pat Boone.

What makes it even worse (yes, it gets worse) are some of the quirky, non-traditional songs that get tossed onto these Christmas albums. Songs like “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)” by John Denver or “Hard Candy Christmas” by Dolly Parton are extremely putrid.

Don’t believe me? Go google the lyrics for both. You’ll see what I mean. These are songs that burrow under your skin and make their way into your core, lay eggs and then die. Those eggs hatch later and the Christmas-Music larvae devour your soul.

These songs cause me to lose the will to live. These songs make me want to grab something sharp and just start stabbing.

Thank the gods I have a metric fuck ton of music on my iPod. Looks like I’ll be getting a lot of use out of those earbuds for the next 4 weeks.

It sounds sick, but I’m actually looking forward to going into work Friday. Yes, I really do have to work on the day after Thanksgiving. But that’s ok. Everyone else in my department took the day off. So it’s just little ol’ me. All by myself. With no Christmas music. At least for that day.

Bliss. Until December 22.

A Thanksgiving to remember

The Spouse and I survived another trip to the world-famous Jungle Jim's up in Ohio (in Fairfield, just north of Cincinnati for those of you considering the roadtrip). We even dragged my parents along and wore them out on the 2 and a half hour excursion from one end of the store to the other.

Jungle Jim's is known not only as an International Market, but as being one of the largest (if not THE largest) grocery on the North American continent. Not to mention, they also have the nicest restrooms in the U.S. (and the port-o-potty doors are pretty damn cool).

Another thing that makes this place so amazing is the weird and wonderful selection of unusual foods you can find. Below are just a sampling of the things the Spouse and I picked up:

Mexican tamarind candy
Hot 'N Spicy nori snacks
REAL Cranberry Fool
Dundee Marmalade from Scotland
my Blenheim Ginger Ale (which I can no longer find anywhere here in Loserville)
2 pounds of frozen crawdads (just thaw, heat and eat!)
Haggis. In a can. Two of them (THAT'S the Spouse's purchase, not mine)
Oh, and a turducken

Other things you can get there that we decided NOT to purchase:

from the Meat department - elk, kangaroo, bison, ostrich and goat. They even had elk burger patties.
Pickled pig's feet
Cracklin'
Chocolate covered ants and other bug candy
bug snacks - Crick-ettes and Larv-ettes. In a variety of flavors (bar-b-que, sour cream and onion, chedder, salt and vinegar)

But back to the turducken.

A while back on Food Network I saw a program about turducken. It's a cajun-inspired delicacy that consists of a deboned chicken rolled in stuffing, then stuffed into a deboned duck. Then THAT is rolled in stuffing and stuffed into a deboned turkey. And the stuffing is cajun-style stuffing with spices and sausage and other cajun goodness. And if the elk and kangaroo mentioned earlier doesn't freak out my vegetarian friends, I'm sure the turducken has them running for the hills.

Anyway, the program mentioned that these things are usually special ordered in advance and can get quite pricey. But I thought, "Damn, I would still like to try one."

So the other day the Spouse and I were making our list for the Jungle Jim's expendition and I casually mentioned, "Ya know, we oughta look for a turducken. If any place other than Louisiana would have them, it'd be Jungle Jim's."

In all seriousness, I didn't expect to find one there. Really.

But low and behold, as we were making our way thru the meat section, past the goat and bison, there, in a small box, was a turducken. I gasped. The Spouse gasped. I grabbed the box and looked it over. Sure enough, it was a real turducken. I was just about to load it into our cart when the Spouse exclaimed, "Look! There's another one!"

And there, in a much larger box, was a much larger turducken. Fifteen pounds of bird upon bird upon bird. And it was ours. For $79.

Yes. We really did spend $79 on a turducken. But dammit, you only live once (well, some of us are all for the reincarnation bit, but if I came back as another person, I may not have a chance at a real turducken experience). And Thanksgiving is coming up. And we're doing it at our house this year. So it looks like the Spouse and I will be serving oven-baked turducken for Mom and the Dads.

And no, you cannot deep fry a turducken. It has to be oven cooked. So the one Thanksgiving ritual of all the men standing outside in the cold, gathered around the large vat of boiling peanut oil and turkey will not be happening.

But until then, our turducken stays lovingly tucked away in our freezer, awaiting its moment of glory when it can bask in the glow of the pre-heated oven.

And a good time shall be had by all. Unless the Spouse breaks out the canned Haggis.