Another Trip to the Vet…

Last night I had to take Ashley to the vet again. She has been kind of lethargic lately, and walking very strangely. She kind of weaves and loses her balance when she scratches her ears. I had thought that she might be becoming anemic again, so I took her in last night to see if they could check her red-blood cell count. After a battery of tests, they have determined that her numbers are essentially in stasis with regards to her kidney failure—that's good. But, what about the poor walking?

I believe that her muscle is simply atrophying. I don't know if this has been sped on by the low-protein diet or if it is simply her 17 years that have finally caught up to her. They have recommended adding in Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the form of fish oil to her diet to help stimulate the brain and heart functions.

Apparently there are a few breeds of cats that are prone to kidney disease, Siamese and Burmese among the most prevalent. Because of Ashley's tiny size, vets believe she has some of these cats traits in her genes. I'm not saying you should never adopt one of these cats, but just to know that after a very long life, they may develop this disease—and it's not fun at all. But, she is still very happy, very anxious for us to get up in the morning to feed her, and she enjoys her time with us; which is all I could ask.

Friday Link Love…

EDIT: I am going to delete one of the suggested links: it has become highly not safe for work in the past week and has transitioned from strange and unusual to downright disturbing!

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I wanted to share with everyone some links that make me laugh. Below is a list of some of my favorite sites, but I must say, some are not for the faint of heart—meaning, there is some dirty language in some of these and some rather strange photography. I.E. Don't click the link if you are unsure… but you'll be safe with Cakewrecks and the kitties.

I Can Has Cheezburger: a myriad of cat pictures and a window into the way their minds work
Cakewrecks: The author's tagline says it best, "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."

Spiders…

OK! I am tired of encountering all these darned spiders. First, a pile of black widows in my garage, each one seemingly larger than the last. Then, after a walk around the neighborhood, I saw a large black 8-legger wash down my drain in the shower after rinsing my hair! And last night? Yeah, as I was coming home from a night out, all sleepy and ready to just chill and watch a movie, I step up to my front door, over a thing and then my brain realizes said thing is a frikin' tarantula. Gross. OK brain, fight or flight, fight or flight? At first, brain tried to just shove the key into the door and run into the house. Then it was like, "no way, we run." So I ran back out to the front of the house sure the whole time that the spider had crawled up my pants leg. Finally we went in through the garage door, me making L do a spider check at least 10 times.

By the way, spiders really freak me out. Easily as much as snakes freak out Mountain Mama. Well, big ones do any way, and Tucson is abundant with big spiders. I kept my cats sitting next to and on me the rest of the evening, and L eventually went out to the front of the house to see just how big it was. I heard him through the door making sounds of alarm as he shooed it away from the house. "Jeeze it's fast." "Man, that's big." And so on. He asked if I wanted him to squish it, but of course I did not as it's just doing its thing, eating bugs and whatnot. It's not poisonous so he shooed it into the neighbors yard—the one who lets their dogs run amok and use my tree as their own personal toilet.

I'm not sure I'm going to use the front door for a while, I can tell you that much. When we'd left for the evening we saw the cutest, tiniest lizard on our way out and after my freak out I cried thinking "I bet that thing ate the little lizard!"

A day of photography…

I spent the morning at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum photographing as much as I could. I have determined, I am a terrible photographer. Bad, just really, really bad. But, I try. There's nothing quite like returning back from a full day to find 40% of your photos are so blown out, they look like their sun damaged. Sigh! I know full well that I can just use the full auto feature and the photos will look great, but that's not why I got an SLR. I want to experiment with the camera to its fullest potential rather than relying on the internal computers to dictate my shots.

Driving out to the Desert Museum makes me remember exactly why and how much I love living in Tucson. Going over Gates Pass takes you from the hustle and noise of downtown and into serene vistas of the Sonoran Desert. With every turn you see life—in the cactus, trees and random road runner crossing the street. Hawks and vultures fly overhead in the turbulent updrafts caused by a warm summer day. Far on the horizon and thunderstorm begins to develop leaving a sense of electricity in the air—the florae even turn more green in anticipation. I want to be able to photograph the way I see the desert, but I'm still learning about f-stops, shutter speeds and focal lengths. I've been playing with the camera in full manual mode trying to see how the images come out. Below are some photos from my adventure.