somniloquence

Wow, very long time since I posted anything besides the last story announcement for intoabar. I keep meaning to post, and then I get seized with ennui or pain or just a general feeling that there's too much to handle. Right now, I'm avoiding dealing with the heatwave we're in, and trying to spend a little time in a cooler space even though it's hell on my spine issues.

I had planned to have a year of health catch-up events scheduled, and was doing somewhat okay about it: had my long-delayed followup colonoscopy in March, and that went well and I have now graduated to being able to go five years in between procedures. It helps a lot because they really do a number on me; I've had people constantly dismiss them to me, insisting it's no big deal and implying I'm a baby, but I'm like, you didn't get cancer the first time you did one, so shut up. So being able to go to a five-year schedule is big, and I asked him before the procedure what the odds were that I'd have cancer again and he said, "You won't get cancer again. Now that we know what we know, you have your colonoscopies and if there are polyps, we cut them out before they can become cancerous." So I thought that was interesting. I knew it was usually slow growing, but I hadn't realized quite how much. It's weird, as much as I learned about colon cancer when dealing with it, I don't think I still really knew much about it at all.

Then I had to get my eyes checked, because I have been unable to see clearly for some time and needed new prescriptions. I have really unusual issues so I cannot just get cheap glasses online, and I was waffling for a long time about going to my longtime eye doctor or the new place up the street, but ended up deciding to brave the awful trip downtown to see my regular guy, just because they know all my weird problems. It's been...challenging, nothing is working out right and I'm having to keep going back and I know they're as frustrated as I am. When I made the appointment, they said I hadn't been in since 2017, and I was sure that was wrong--till I realized that oh yeah, that made sense. A few months after my last visit there, I got diagnosed with the colon cancer, so yeah durr, it had been a really long time.

I got one thing that worked out though--he recommended occupational lenses, or computer glasses, and they kept saying their clients always said they were life-changing. I was skeptical, but goddamn, they really are. You're not supposed to see well with distance with them, but I actually do see pretty well, but for the minute detail I have to see, especially when I'm proofreading, they're a game changer. If you have trouble with computer work, I highly recommend giving these glasses a try.

Then I had planned my yearly exam (and last pap test ever! the only thing good about getting old!), and then finding a new dentist since I haven't been since before the pandemic, but I got derailed by yet another skin cancer on my face. So I have to go in next Wednesday and get my face cut up again, and practically bleed to death, and try to get them to give me legit painkillers without treating me like an addict. So excited.

My physical went okay, even with the lecture about my usual high cholesterol and how I'm gonna have a heart attack or stroke. I have always had naturally high bad cholesterol, but it gets worse as I get older. Shrug. I actually don't care. I have no interest in living a long time. I do have a serious sodium problem, though, in that it's really low because I take a diuretic, and that explains my chronic lightheadedness and other issues.

I had no idea that they had developed vaccines for pneumococcus and hepatitis B. It almost made me cry to get the shots for them--I couldn't help thinking of the years I volunteered at an AIDS help organization in the late '80s-90s, and how prevalent hep B was among the patients. How amazing a vaccine could have been then. And I guess there's also one for A, and while C doesn't have one, it does have much better treatment options now. It's a weird thing to get emotional about, but there you are.

I also finally got my car in for servicing, but alas, discovered some big issues to fix, and then I want to get some things addressed on my house, but I'll have to see what happens with the face surgery. That'll be a lot of money. And my regular client is not paying me, and I'm stressing the fuck out about that. I can't tell if he's just being flakey as usual or ghosting me. But I have some really fun upcoming work two great authors, so that's something to look forward to. Also Blues gets his checkup on Monday, and that always ends in him having to have a dental, so...not excited about that. The universe giveth, the universe taketh away.

I am working on the next chapter of Reverie. I dropped off the face of the earth as far as anyone knew after the last chapter, a fucking year ago in August, and I feel so ashamed. I've only written three things since then, all short stuff, and it makes me feel so guilty that the like three people reading it were left hanging.

Then I got a really weird idea for a kind of 616/MCU canon divergent AU that I think is so dumb and odd that it would have an audience of maybe two people, but I can't stop thinking about it, so I need to complete Reverie so I can tackle it.

Anyways, that's mostly it. Just enduring, waiting till our bridge is said to be reopening in September and going to do things outside my neighborhood won't be an hours-long torture affair, and trying not to melt into a puddle of sweat. How's by you?

Eeeee, it's intoabar sign up time! In just two years, this has become my favorite challenge. Each year, I've got my assignment and then freaked out about finding any kind of story for the characters, but each time it's turned out well, and even gave me ideas to use in crossover fics that weren't for the challenge but inspired by it. I'm struggling with what to request for this year, but I'll figure it out before signups close, I'm sure.

Thanks so much to everyone who said supportive things after my fiasco with getting my first COVID vaccination. What a difference a couple weeks make: about ten days ago, the city announced they had thousands of appointments available, so I sat on it for a while and then decided to go ahead and make an appointment at the mass vaccination site near me, so I wouldn't have to drive off peninsula again during weekday rush hour. (They say our bridge will be repaired by mid-2022, but they haven't even started designing the repairs or picked an engineering firm yet, so...I remain doubtful.) I didn't really trust them not to cancel on me without explanation, but then a few days after that, they announced they were now taking walkups at all the city's mass sites, so I figure that even if they fuck up again, I can just show up somewhere and get the jab.

I still want to get up to the cemetery; I wasn't able to bring flowers with me last time and it would be nice, after all that tough digging around to find the flower vases on both my dad's and my mom and sister's plots to actually use them, but this way I can do it on a weekend when the traffic sitch will be different and the limited routes out of here less crowded.

Thursday I'm taking the feline to the vet, and I'm glad my appointment situation shook out so that I had my second shot on Friday, because I have a feeling I'm going to get the second-shot whammy like most folks I know. I won't be in a state to take the cat anywhere, let alone sit in a hot car for who knows how long while they check him out. I wish they were doing regular checkup appointments, because his teeth are so unbelievably bad, but they're still not allowing people inside. But his arthritis (and the teefs) is getting so bad, he really needs to be looked at. He hasn't been to the vet in well over a year, outside of the emergency vet when he was so sick last summer I was pretty sure he was dying. No one's ever been able to tell me what might be causing these emergency episodes, and I wish I could be in the room with the vet to talk about it--talking on the phone in the car is just...it's not conducive sometimes to explaining things and it's not like Blues can tell them himself.

I've discovered a new health problem of my own, which I cannot afford to treat, like the other health problems I have (horrendous deductible means out of pocket financial bloodbaths). The other day I noticed a sudden new weird little bump on my left palm, and there was like this dent in the hand above it, leading toward my ring finger. It had not been there the day before. I googled "weird bump dent palm under finger" expecting that nothing would come up with such a bizarre string of words, so of course, right away something called Dupuytren's disease (or contracture) came up and my heart sank. I looked at it and was like, yup, that's it, that's exactly what my hand looks like. I'll have to have the doc confirm it, for insurance at least, but it's pretty obviously that. And there's no cure, and most treatments are invasive. Some people only get mild cases, some people have really advanced cases where their fingers contract so much they can't be straightened. Just what I needed, claw hands, especially on the hand that's already so painful from arthritis it's impacting my work.

At some point, I need to sit down and write out thoughts about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but I have such complicated and not always very good feelings about it that I've been hesitant to say much at all. People get so...riled up if you don't unabashedly gush. But I've been asked a number of times what I thought and one person even sent me a tumblr ask noticing that I'd been remarkably quiet about it, so I guess I should say something.

The Oscars were SO WEIRD this year. I don't necessarily mean just because of how they held them to deal with the pandemic, but just...everything else was so strange and off kilter, and I loathed the choice to eschew performance clips in favor of the presenting actors standing there telling the nominee how amazing their performance was. Man, fuck that noise. And it ended so awfully, with the way they set it up under the assumption Chadwick Boseman would win best actor and they'd end the show on an emotional note, but then he didn't, and Anthony Hopkins wasn't even at the London awards gathering location to video accept, so they just went "we accept on his behalf, good night." And once again, Viola was robbed and it's just so infuriating. It was nice to see a lot of great formalwear, but it's not surprising that it was so incredibly low-rated. Also, man I hate watching the show alone, it totally blows. I've been having Oscars parties annually since I was like 20 until very recently, and I couldn't even live text with minim_calibre because she doesn't have live TV but we're still not fully vaxxed yet so couldn't get together. Watching that fiasco alone was unbearable.

Also, Husavik was clearly the hands-down best song, fight me. It's maybe the best best song they've ever nominated, and shame on them for shunting the song performances off to a pre-awards show that most of us didn't even know about so didn't see live.

Keep meaning to post but of course I never do. Part of it is that I feel like all I am is depressed and my life is somewhat out of control, and so there's no fun in reading that, and part of it is that I'm in so much pain all the time that it's difficult. The things I try to do for my back are being undercut a lot by the problems in my wrists and hands, sometimes the pain in my right hand and arm is so intense it doubles me over. I'm probably piling carpal tunnel on top of arthritis, but since I live in a garbage fire of a country where there is no affordable health care for someone like me who is self employed and not currently raking in much dough, figuring out options is pretty limited.

I was going to try some new things--getting a vertical mouse to see if that might help with editing, and trying a keyboard that splits apart into two halves that you can position in a more natural way for the wrists and that has a cord that connects the two halves, but then Blues kitty got sick and now a lot of that's on hold. I was also looking into replacing my sectional sofa with a loveseat that reclines so that I could also find a way to bring work out there and if I'm on something cushy, with a more ergonomic setup and slightly reclined, I think it'd be better. The recliney chair I work in right now isn't as good for writing, so I think an all-recliney situation would improve things a bit. But now...the estimate I got for bringing Blues in last night to the emergency vet was close to a thousand, they kept him overnight and don't really know what's wrong with him but he's a pretty sick kitty.

That's on top of the vet visit two weeks ago, which was $400. And my client is two months past due on my invoice, and and and... Things are not great. A couple people have suggested doing a funding account. As much as that pains me, I might have to. I'm trying to sell a lot of things off but that's slow going, and doesn't help quite enough. (YouCaring got absorbed by the evil gofundme, didn't they? I odn't even really know how people are doing crowd funding these days.)

I'm just waiting to hear from the vet but it's almost noon and still nothing. He had diarrhea for days, then vomiting, and just when I was getting ready to take him in on Thanksgiving, he seemed to come back to life and ate some of the boiled chicken I made him. But yesterday and the evening before he was super lethargic and just seemed to want to sleep, wouldn't even drink water. He's always been a barfy kitty and he seems to get into things no matter how carefully I remove things he could get into, but he comes around after a day or so, once I put him on a sort of fast. Didn't seem to work this time.

I'm not fond of this place, but there's no emergency or walkin vet near me, and I used to take my fosters there for a few years. They never killed any of them, and some of the dogs were in pretty bad shape, but I just never had a good vibe and I always hated going there. Naturally, I got the doctor I most disliked, he always seemed really rough to me--maybe it's a cultural difference (he's Sikh) but it bugged me nonetheless. And I've just never had to leave Blues overnight for anything, and I'm really sad.

Did not help at all that I looked at the claims spreadsheet for the Stucky AU Big Bang that I signed up for and literally no one wanted my fic. The claims had pretty much stopped and no interest; there's still a bunch in the files that haven't been chosen, not enough artists I guess, not enough interest in the rest of us. I really should have just asked if I could drop out; I don't really like the idea of someone being forced to work with me and the person who did "claim" mine eventually probably only did it because they're assigning pinch hitters and such. It feels like "gee, I'm sorry you got stuck with my shitty fic." And maybe if I drop out they'd be happy about it, who knows.

I kept thinking it was a story that would be ripe for art (Steve and/or Bucky in glasses and snazzy suits!), and this'd be a good way to link up with an artist because I'm too cowardly to ask any of the artists I love if they'd be interested in collaborating, but it's turned out to be more demoralizing than anything. Plus the length of the timeline is insanely long, and posting doesn't even begin until next February, what.

T-day was spent mostly cleaning up barf, but I did get a drive-by pieing from minim-calibre, which was awesome, and I made myself some excellent brussels sprouts and some mashed potatoes, so that was okay. I tried to watch some things on Netflix but couldn't get in at all, so ended up defaulting to my favorite watch, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Trying very hard to write on my last follow-up story for Celluloid Hero so I can post as usual on my birthday Wednesday. I mean, almost no one cares about this series at all, but I did say I'd do three more, so.

Today's my least favorite day once again. The date I lost Miss Olive two years ago, and I'm not over it--I think about her every day, and miss her, especially now. I could really use her soft, soft fur and sweet purrs and funny little voice when she talked to me all the time. And it's the day we lost Sandy, which I'm never gonna be over, either. With Vividcon ending next year it feels even more like losing Sandy all over again.

Basically July 19 is just a terrible horrible no good very bad day.

I'm trying to get things done in anticipation of the surgery and whatnot, but it's really hard. Not only is there a lot to do, the bills are starting to come in, and I'm getting really depressed about it. I haven't had enough work so far this year, but even though I suddenly have a bunch of stuff coming in, it's not going to be paid for a while yet. Even with the ACA still hanging on, this country is majorly fucked up about health care costs, and it's pretty easy to go bankrupt even with insurance.

Last night we went to see the documentary Score, about composing music for films, at this teeeny local theatre that was the first art house in Seattle way back in the '60s. I hadn't known it was still in business--it's run by vounteers now, and the lobby is now a restaurant so the actual theatre is about one-tenth the size it used to be. The movie was great--if you have a chance to watch it, you should: there were some really good reminiscences by directors and other composers about some of the legends, and interviews with all kinds of fascinating film composers, plus a glimpse into the process of recording film scores.

My only complaints were one I shared with feochadn, which was that a guy went on and on about King Kong (the first real movie score) being cheesy and stupid, and that the music was the only thing that helped audiences get over the cheesy and stupid, which is utterly, patently false and doesn't understand the audience dynamic at the time the original King Kong was released. And my second gripe was that as they talked about modern scores and unique or avant garde approaches, they interviewed and spent quite a bit of time following the guy who did the utterly forgettable Age of Ultron score instead of spending any time with Henry Jackman, who did the Winter Soldier score, which most people I know still talk about with a certain amount of awe. Especially because I think it would have dovetailed nicely with talking about the "game-changing" soundtrack for the Social Network by Trent Reznor (I'm not one of the people who think it was game-changing, but whatever), and they did talk to Henry Jackman, but only for a microscopically short time. Plus, they didn't list Winter Soldier in his credits, and that was…weird to me. And it's not my own blind prejudice for anything related to Winter Soldier--I've read so many people talking about the amazing things he did with that score, especially regarding the Soldier himself, and it just seems like a huge missed opportunity in the modern section…and instead we got fucking Ultron. I'd defy anyone to remember anything unique or special about the music in that movie. But I still definitely recommend seeing Score if you can, and stay for the credits and James Cameron's dicussion of James Horner's score for Titanic. (It's in a couple cities right now, and rolling around other parts of the country for the next few months--you can find out where on the web site linked above.)

I wish I knew how you find a therapist. I am very lonely and depressed, and there's no one to talk to here, but I just don't know how you go about finding someone you mesh with, and who's competent, and one you can afford (the importance of either can be switched). I mean, I've met some truly shitty people in RL who I find out later are therapists and it's like O.o so the idea of going into this cold doesn't thrill me.

I miss Miss Kitty so much. I can't stop thinking about how terribly she died, and Blues is still so...I don't know. Different. Last night he was sleeping and made this howling noise in his sleep, which he's never done before. He got pretty sick a few weeks ago, though, so I suppose he's just different in a lot of ways. I had to take him to the vet urgently, which meant lots of $$, and his lungs were not looking good. They were concerned he has kitty asthma or heart problems, but the steroid and antibiotic shots they gave him seemed to help a lot. But he's not the same. I know how crazy that sounds, but he's not. I know some of it is health, some of it is missing Olive, some of it is that he's the solo kitty here and he doesn't have competition.

Even though I can't really afford it (I am right now having contractors in to rebuild the south wall of my house, because the siding was peeling away and the underlayer was disintegrating, and wow, talk about beaucoup bucks), I'm making my plans to go to DC again in October. It's probably the last time my friend will be there when I can visit, and then we'll head up to NYC either for one or two nights. Pretty much same thing I did last year. I had so much fun location scouting for Cap2; I won't have quite the same level of fun this time in that respect, but I've made some new acquaintances since then that I can meet up with, so that would be good. Just trying to hold on to one or two things that make me feel like I can keep going.

I'm writing, but it's hard. I just feel like it's pointless, a waste of time.

These are some pictures that black_bird_777 took of Olive a few years ago in the backyard. She was such an amazing kitty. It's hard to sleep without her purring by my head and her little head resting on my hand. Plus she had the daintiest little feet, and I miss feeling them on my back when she'd walk across me.

I know I owe a lot of people responses or comments, about my previous posts and the recent fic, and I'm sorry I haven't done that. I'm just having a really hard time right now. I keep seeing Ollie's broken little body, how mangled she was and how brutally and terribly she died, and nothing really means anything right now. I found a little sleeping kitty statue to put over her grave, and some plants to plant around it, but Blues keeps going over to the spot where I put her body when I was trying to find something to wrap her in, and lying down there. And he wouldn't sit in the perch all week, maybe because she wasn't around for him to chase out of it, and he doesn't seem to really know what to do with himself. We're a pair, because I don't either.

And of course now the horrible heat wave has broken but it's too late, she's gone, but hey, don't have to open the doors to get some air in the house anymore, whatever. I'm slated to leave for Vividcon on the 4th, but I wish I wasn't going. Even though I'm traveling with my beloved killabeez, and we're going in early to Chicago and staying at a posh hotel and sightseeing, I just don't care about much of anything right now and the idea of socializing fills me with dread, plus no one's going to want to socialize with me because I'm not exactly good company right now. I couldn't ask for a better person to travel with though, and I'm sure we'll find fun things to do (plus I get to meet up with my dear devilpiglet, as well).

I'm even going to be cosplaying Rachel Duncan from Orphan Black for the dance party, along with other clone sestras, but I just…all I feel is massive depression. I have gauze and a pencil, am waiting for pajamas to arrive that I pray are going to fit, but all I could find was short-sleeve, plus I wish my hair was still blond, I'm not really going to look anything like Rachel. Still, wearing pajamas for Club Vivid will be easy.

I just miss my girl so much. I don't want to wash my sheets because all the fur where she slept will be gone. I don't want to put her little confiscated dog bed away (every foster dog that tried to reclaim the dog bed for the canine set was met with a swift paw to the snout). Putting away her food dish and her milk dish was the hardest thing I've done in a long time. And I can't explain to Blues what's wrong, and he's really upset most of the time.

My baby girl, Olive, died last night. It's all my fault, I was closing up the house because I'd had the doors open since the house was 97 degrees inside when I got home. She decided that if I was closing up, it was time to go walkabout, I guess, and something attacked her. I tried to get her back in all night, but when it's hot out, she would often stay out all night and show up like, what? in the morning after I'd spent a sleepless night worrying about her.

No need to lecture me about outdoor kitties. I lost the war with her a long time ago, and I've lived in fear of this day. She'd gotten so much better in her old age, content to lie under the grill in the shade on the back deck, or hang out in the window perch next to me while I worked.

She slept on my bed next to my head, and hated Blues kitty so much she tried to move in with a neighbor once. Every morning they slap-fought while I got their food ready. She loved milk more than anything in the world. She loved to play, even at her age, and chase fuzzy wooly balls around, and she talked to me all the time and loved to lick me, especially after I'd put lotion on.

She was my best bud, and I hate myself now for letting her go. I love her so much.

Just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone for the kind comments and support about the cat bite and the allergic reaction. The past week has been...really weird, but having you guys for support made it a lot easier. I completed the IV antibiotics on Friday, and the cellulitis (the infected tissue in my arm from the cat bite) was reduced quite a bit. In the pic below, you can see some pen marks on my arm; they usually draw the boundary of the infection to keep track of where it starts off, and they don't want it to spread past that when you start treatment, mine spread a little farther but not too much, and it definitely had scaled back a lot by Friday. The two right hand puncture wounds were the worst, but the left top one was really gross so I left the Band-Aid on. ;-)



I will continue to take antibiotics for the next week, and most of the redness is gone by now. I wish the pain was gone too -- that part is definitely harder. Anything touching the arm, especially pressure on the puncture wounds, is still just really effing painful, and it's hard to sleep since I'm a stomach sleeper and my arm rests at my side. I'm still taking pain meds and Benadryl to get rid of the allergic reaction, but my joints are a lot less swollen now and the aching and feverish feelings is mostly gone.

The hardest part is that I'm kind of afraid of Blues now. I just don't feel like I can trust him at all, and it's hard coming to terms with the fact that he's no longer my sweet little boy. He was always such a sweet, tender, loving little guy until he hit about three, and then he put on a growth spurt, gaining about four pounds and three inches in length. He also became a bully to Olive, and basically acted like a...frat boy. He was about 80 percent of the time a sweet, fun guy, and then 20 percent of the time an entitled, mean, bullying little shit monster who seems to think Olive and I are here to serve him. He is relentless in his pestering of her, and went from a guy who was always trying to get her attention in a "HEY LADY! LADY, HEY!" kind of way to pouncing on her and biting her neck. She could totally kick his ass, too, but she never does, and I feel so bad for her.

He cuddles up to me in my sleep in the mornings, but there have been times where, since he's a ginormous cat now and a bed hog, I try to move him over a bit and he'll start kicking furiously with his hind claws at my hand, and nipping me. He's never bitten through skin, though, and I think that it's probably likely that he'll do this again, despite the horrible reaction I had and that he was probably hurt by how hard I slammed him off of me. I just...I don't know how to get him to behave; Olive learned really fast that biting at hoomin was not a good idea, but Blues is just apparently incapable of learning lessons. I've picked him up a few times and tried to cuddle him but I just feel really wary of him now. I hate that. Those kitties are the only thing keeping me going and it's terrible to fear one of them.

He also never used to talk, now he sits in the kitchen and endlessly wails to be let out, which I won't do, and that seems to piss him off as well. Arg.

I had been making progress on my Idyll Challenge story. This set me so far back on my book that I haven't been able to work on it (and honestly, it hurt to type, so there was that). I doubt I can make the 22nd deadline.

The past 24 hours have been kind of surreal. Last night I was trying to get my girl kitty, Olive, in the house because she was kind of mad at me for giving her a flea treatment earlier. But I didn't want Blues to get out because it was late at night, and there are coyotes, and ever since Ginny came to live here he's been on a constant freaked out state of alert and it's hard to keep him inside. He had been attacking the door for a long time, meowing and just generally being a pain, so I picked him up and took him to the bedroom. I knew he wouldn't likely come out because of Ginny.

When I was getting ready for bed, he attacked my ankle from under the bed -- I think it's possible I stepped a tiny bit on his tail, but it was just my toes, and not much, neverthless, he really went after me and hissed and snarled. A few minutes later he was at the back door, and so I picked him up to hold on to him while I tried to get Ollie inside. He was just being hysterical, so I scruffed him, which never really works with him (it does on Olive) for some reason, but I hoped it might calm him down. He stopped, but then I switched arms, and was going to hoist him over my shoulder, the surefire way to get him to relax and calm down. Instead, he bit my left forearm.

Not a nip or a quick in and out bite, but he sank his fangs into my arm and then kept increasing the bite. It's amazing how much pounds per square inch those little jaws can create, and when I screamed he started whipping his head sideways, like he was trying to kill my arm. In my blind rage and pain, I couldn't get him off so I only remember kind of holding him up and throwing him across the kitchen and him landing on the floor and sliding across it a couple feet. Kind of like a Jaeger picking up a kaiju and hurling it down. He ran into the bedroom and I went to attempt to disinfect it.

Blood was just pouring out of the two right hand puncture wounds, and dribbling out of the lesser ones on the left. I washed it a good long time and doused it in alcohol and peroxide, but I've had cat bites before and I know about the Pasteurella bacteria in their mouths that lead to infection. Mostly it was just really, really painful. I had a lot of trouble sleeping because everything touching it hurt. Today I had to go return something at Nordstrom and when I was wandering around the store, I noticed that it had gone increasingly red under the Band-Aids, and I wasn't sure if that was because of the mildly allergic reaction I have to adhesives on bandages, or the bruising from his nasty little jaws clamping and clamping and sawing, or if it meant infection.

As I was driving across the lake, I figured by the time I got home and called the doc it would be too late to get in to see her, so I went to the awful urgent care place that's the only medical treatment facility in my area. I had to go there in June for a tetanus shot because I gashed my leg and I couldn't get in to the doctor quickly enough, and they were short staffed and incompetent and I was there for three freaking hours, but today they were a little better and the PA who saw me said "yeah, this is going to require the big guns." The swelling had increased dramatically and the stiffness in my hand was growing, which bothers me since the wound is in the middle of my forearm and not near my hand. The bacteria can destroy tendon tissue in a matter of days -- if you don't believe me, go find the article about a cat bite on Gizmodo.

They want me to keep it elevated as much as possible but that's really hard to do (especially since my workout on Monday was really, really intense on my arms, pecs, and shoulders, and then I had a really intense deep tissue massage in the evening!). I'm trying but, of course, I just got a huge book to proof and it's due in a really short time frame. I have a bad headache, but I'm really hoping it's just stress and not a fever from the bite. Ibuprofen just is not doing it for pain relief. I'm not sure what would, though, right now. And I have to get some acidophilous to combat the intestinal distress I'm gonna get from these super antibiotics the pills are the size of my freakin' thumb).

I'm so angry at Mr. Baby but I'm trying really hard to not let him see that. He used to be my sweet tender little boy until he was about three, and then he turned into this bullying little shit who is often incredibly sweet and loving and then just a complete monster. When I finally stanched the bleeding enough, I tried to get Ollie in again, and he came up to me on the dining table like he wanted me to pet him or something, and I just shoved him away with my hand, which unfortunately made him panic and he fell off the table, so that was awful and I felt horrible but I also just really hated him at that moment.

Then this morning the two of them were on either side of me in bed when I awoke, like most mornings, as if nothing had happened. Ollie will hiss and snarl and go after you a little if she's really pissed, like when I clip her claws, but she has never bitten me the way Blues has. I don't think I'd be alive today if it wasn't for my kitties, but sometimes I just...arg. Animals. Crazy foster dogs, violent cats...who knows what would happen if I ever fostered one of the rabbits we have in our care. I'd have to call Tim the Enchanter.

Hey you guys, the rescue group I volunteer with is up for voting on the 12th for a car in the Toyota 100 Cars for Good program. Motley Zoo, our group, is in desperate need of a dedicated vehicle for bringing animals to adoption events, ferrying them to vets and new families, not to mention to fosters like me. This is kind of a make or break event for them -- they may not be able to continue without another car, and no donations have been forthcoming for them (I'm going to see how it pans out, and if it doesn't work, see if there's something we can do to fund raise in a different way, but the person who runs it is feeling overwhelmed, I think).

Unfortunately, we are pitted against three other animal organizations -- the luck of the draw. There are five groups per day in need of a vehicle up for voting on the site, and while it's really hard to choose, you can vote in the Toyota program every single day if you want, to make sure many different groups get a car. I've been voting for a lot of groups, myself.

To vote for Motley Zoo,

- Go to www.100carsforgood.com (it is run through Facebook, sadly, so you'll need a FB account, but it's for a good cause!! really!!)

-Click the dog icon next to “Motley Zoo Animal Rescue” to expand our profile
-Click “VOTE” which pops up underneath the dog icon
-Click “CONFIRM” to make sure your vote counts!!

There's even a li'l video there, and some of my past foster dogs are in it! Winnie is the little black dog getting her paw prints on the banner (and, um, I'm in it, too but I'm not going to tell where). And if you can pass this along to other people, on LJ or Facebook or Tumblr or wherever, we will be eternally grateful.