Crunchy Thoughts

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

It’s like a hurricane outside tonight. Hope Santa is wearing his Gore-tex.

Lydia is conked out but the cats are wild as jackrabbits. No presents were eaten this year though I suspect Renton has had some nibbles of wired ribbon.

We’re all ready for Christmas here. Actually, I think I’m ready for sleep.

I ran up to J.C. Penney yesterday afternoon to pick up a few things. When I got to the checkout counter I was momentarily surprised because the cashier woman strongly reminded me of my mother.

She certainly didn’t look exactly like her but just very specific things cried out to me: the shape of her mouth, her hands and how she had her fingernails done up in the exact same nail color my mom used, she even smelled slightly of my mother. Must have been a perfume.

Ohh, do you know how hard it was to keep myself from going around that counter and just melting into that woman’s arms? So hard.

I give you The Tree, 2009:

Lights: 2600 total, tied for last year

Lydia: surprisingly has shown a healthy respect for the tree thus far; she knows not to touch it — she just gets a kick out of naming what all the ornaments are

Cats: had been at their BEST behavior until the first presents went under the tree; I caught Renton in the act of chewing ribbon not ten minutes after I finished wrapping

Ever since my laptop had a brief stint in an exercise class, it has been tethered to an old CRT screen (and, more recently, a sweet flatscreen monitor Steven scored from work) in the third bedroom that has always been dubbed ‘the office.’ Thus, I have also been relegated to the office whenever I have been on the computer. Ahh, to remember the glory days of cruising the web or blogging from the dining room, couch or the comfy bed. C’est la vie.

So here I am in the office. It’s cold in here right now, pretty boring, and CHOCK FULL OF STUFF. We filled it with Stuff when we first moved in, then when we had to make a bedroom for the impending Lydia we filled it with more Stuff from her room.

It’s amazing what we have in here. I see a laptop bag I can’t use right now since my computer is essentially grounded, a small filing cabinet we definitely use, a larger filing cabinet we’d love to use but can’t find the damn key to unlock the thing, a box of pictures, a huge shelf of books, Lydia’s excersaucer, the old CRT screen that should really be in the basement, Lydia’s infant carrier, a buttload of books . . . and that’s just a sample of what I see in the room itself. The closet is much more fascinating — it’s where we keep our DVD collection, games, and my My Little Ponies, among other things.

What in the world will we do with all this Stuff? It’s all important Stuff that I don’t want to be banished to the basement, but it can’t stay here anymore. We need room at the Inn, so to speak, and I don’t think Lydia will be willing to share her crib come next June.

Another kid? Yeah.

But what shall we do with the Stuff?

You know what would be really tasty right now? Potato salad! Or lemon meringue pie. Maybe some cake. But alas! It is not meant to be, for I have been bestowed with the horrible scourge known as the egg allergy.

I’m no stranger to food allergies — a cashew hasn’t passed through my lips since age six — but I’m almost 30 and having new allergies just pop up is a bit weird, but here we are. I was just peachy until a couple of weeks ago when I scarfed down a scrambled egg Steven cooked up for me and I immediately felt the closing in of the throat and itchiness of the ears that usually has me checking the ingredient list for nuts. I have to pop a couple of Benadryl and end up sleeping it off for five hours. The next day, I take two bites of cake and the whole thing starts over again — what is this rubbish?

At the doctor’s office, they hem and haw a bit about if and when they’re going to do a skin test on me. They couldn’t do it that day since the Benadryl is still in my system, but, by golly, they can take blood from me! Great, I’m an excellent giver of blood, just don’t swab my throat. Deal? Deal.

So in walks the nurse to perform the vampiric service and she is the picture of nervousness. She meekly asks, “Do you have good veins?”

“I have great veins,” I reply. I have never had anyone miss on the first try with me, and I have had COPIOUS amounts of blood taken from me in my lifetime, with between being pregnant with Lydia and Auburn University Medical Center’s bloodthirsty ways. I bet I could take blood from myself. Lisa, if you’re still reading, you should stop now and continue after the Line of Happiness.

Meek Nurse scoots up to me and checks out my right arm, slightly bruised from a (successful) blood draw the previous day (strep throat issue). She goes to the (equally as good) left arm. “I think I’ll go get the pro,” she muses, and leaves the room.

In walks Pro Nurse, who had been fetched from her lunch. She also avoids the right arm and goes towards the left, pokes around for what seems a very long time, then starts thumping me, like she can’t find the veins that I can clearly see on my arm. As I watch in horror, she moves toward the left side of my arm, thumps there, and I can tell my her actions she seems to think she has found a vein that I know isn’t there. She swabs the area with alcohol.

Oh God.

She strikes, but all she finds is pain. She wiggles around the needle a bit (so THAT’s what people talk about) but no luck. She finally retreats, defeated, and I convince her to go for the exact same area that the strep throat people struck yesterday. She has success on the second round. Amazing.

A week later and I am still sporting the bruise from that unsuccessful little stunt.

AND, they lost that blood draw and had to do it again today. Successfully. The first time.

________________________________________

Today I finally got the skin testing for the eggs, which told me what my throat and ears already did two weeks ago. Why is another matter. Like I said, it’s odd to suddenly strike up a food allergy as an adult. I seem to remember being told as a kid that I tested as a slight positive for egg once, so a decidedly temporary condition could be enhancing the allergy.

Since eggs are in vaccines, they did a test to see if I could tolerate the flu and H1N1 vaccines, but it’s a no-go for those, either. They were nice enough to give me a bottle Tamiflu and a “good luck!”

Here’s hoping my weird old body rights itself. Until then, I will definitely miss cookies, nougat, and chicken salad.

Happy First Birthday, Elizabeth!

This time last year, I was fretting about Renton and his constipation, wondering who was going to take him to the vet — unaware of your mother’s caterwauling.

Well, it’s the end of September. It’s time for an unannounced vet visit for Renton! This September’s visit brought to you by copious amounts of barfing.

The barfing has been going on for a while. In fact, I would announce some sort of complaint about it every now and again on Twitter. However, he has built up to his current level at a slow rate of progression. Recently, I looked at Steven, he looked at me, and we both looked at Renton, the carpet, and the large amount of our budget that goes to paper towels and Spot Shot (buy some, it’s awesome). Despite the MediBulk and his specifically-branded, specifically-flavored, highly-priced cat food, Mr. Renton is blowing chunks once daily.

His favorite spot is in the middle of our master bedroom. The second favorite spot is on top of the couch with all its crevices and close proximity to the wall.

On Monday Steven happened to be working from home when Renton had five retching episodes, all before lunch. No more waiting — vet time.

Renton put on yet another good show at the vet’s office. It was time for his annual shots as well. The vet and vet techs were all impressed by Renton’s temper, despite all his warnings and voodoo curses written on his medical file. The vet told him, “Wow, you’re vicious! You belong in Africa — I’ve seen tigers there tamer than you!”

Unfortunately, the vet couldn’t really examine Renton because of said viciousness — they couldn’t even get a weight on him. The vet decided to rule out the easiest thing to treat — worms — by treating for that. If that doesn’t work, he’ll have to come back in for sedation and more testing.

When Steven told me they treated for worms, I knew that couldn’t be it. Hermione had worms once, and I still remember the horrible diarrhea. Renton, though pooping, still is dropping turds that are the weight of a thousand suns. He would probably appreciate some worms.

This morning as we’re getting ready for work, Renton’s belly gushed forth with more of the same. Thankfully I reacted in time to get him on the hardwood. Time for sedation!

Today was my turn to take the Vet Hunter to the clinic. As I walk in, a quiet Renton with Buddy Otter in tow is hailed with a shower of compliments: “Ooh, he’s so pretty!” “He’s so cute with his otter!” “Look at his eyes! Gorgeous!”

He’ll bite your head off, old man.

So into the exam room we go, where we meet a dew-eyed lab tech who apparently wasn’t present on Monday. “Bad cat.” I say. “Real bad cat.”

“Hey, cutie,” she says to Renton, apparently deaf. Renton waits. She reaches across and STICKS HER FINGER IN THE CAGE. Are you mad?! BAD CAT!!!

“Umm, I wouldn’t do that. Do you have some don’t-eat-me gloves that come up to your elbows?” I motion how high the gloves should go on your arm. “You’re gonna need those.”

She yanks her finger out and goes to find the gloves.

The vet comes in with a now well-armed tech and we go back over the history. A more thorough examination is needed, one that Renton will only allow if he’s oblivious, carefree, and totally unconscious. There’s a waiting period while discussions and logistics are carried out. After all, you have to give a very awake, very pissed off cat a shot first before you can poke him even more.

One of the vets that actually was present on Monday walked by and saw Renton. “Hey, I remember you!” Then he begins to regale the other people within earshot about Renton and how this cat ‘got’ him and a tech on Monday (and it was totally just a scratch — this guy has never pulled one of Renton’s calling cards out of his arm before).

We got Renton juiced up with happy drugs, thankfully, without any incident. Towels are excellent things.

Not long after the doc calls back and though Renton’s labs and x-ray are good, he found a lot of little mini-blisters all in the back of his throat and mouth. There’s a name for these things but the word escapes me now. Whatever they are, they can be treated with steroids. Unfortunately, they can come back (it can be a chronic thing) and it wouldn’t necessarily be a cause of the barfing.

Steven had the pleasure of picking up both Renton and the vet bill this evening. Once he got home, Steven said he’s going to start calling Renton the Money Pit.

A few weeks ago Steven and I both got hit with a horrible virus. It was horrendous. I was going to write all about it, but I later realized it would basically be a rehash of what Steven had last February, except I had it as well, and it was worse than before. So that’s about all you need to know. We’re finally better, and though we love the album, neither of us want to listen to Arcade Fire’s Funeral for a VERY long time.

Get your hands up!