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.

Summer Thanks Giving…

Every summer L and I do a full Thanks Giving meal. It's my favorite meal, and I suppose if ever faced with “last meal” choices, this would be it. We cooked a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, stuffing, rolls, cranberry jelly and mini spice cakes. I really didn't want a heavy pie or cake, so I made these little spice cakes simply powdered with sugar. The recipe has sour cream in it, and the cake is really tasty. I spiced mine with vietnamese cinnamon, chinese five spice and star anise. Yumm!!! I did something a little different with the sweet potatoes too—used the star anise there. What a difference that makes. It really cuts the sweetness down from a syrupy style to a spiced taste. I use fresh sweet potatoes, brown sugar, spices and a little butter. I top it all with marshmellows and cook until tender.

After my birthday breakfast, L and I went antiquing—I've never before done that—and I found a cake plate with cover. It's something that I've always wanted but have never found before. Since this one is used, it was super cheap. Here's the spice cake presented in my new cake plate. Just look past those stupid water spots!

Hometown Tourist…

This past week L and I celebrated my birthday by spending the day in downtown Tucson. It gave me a great opportunity to be a tourist in my own town, snapping pictures with my new digital SLR camera. Our first stop was the famous Hotel Congress, where John Dillinger stayed shortly before being caught by the local police without a single bullet being shot.

The sign, as seen from the southern side of the hotel.

One of the coolest things about the bar area, where we had breakfast is the penny floor.

A close-up of the Hotel Congress penny floor.

I enjoyed the repetition of forms in the bar chairs. I also really like the
convenience of the little hooks for your handbag underneath the bar.

I had the Eggs and Gunpowder breakfast, which is a big bowl of roasted potatoes,
two poached eggs, cheese and turkey chorizo.

L had the Eggs Chipotle & Borracho Pork. Both breakfasts were excellent.

After breakfast we drove up A-Mountain, which really is not very large compared to the mountains in the background of this image. But it provides a great vantage point of my little town. In this picture you can see the downtown metropolitan area and the U of A campus in the background. The mountains on the far side are the Catalina Mountains, which are about 9,000 feet high.

Finally, L treated me to an ice cream birthday cake, and yes, put all 34 candles on there. Wow! That was pretty crazy.

Fluids, needles and more…

Did I say giving sub-q treatments was easy? Where the heck was the real me? OK, I'm pretty squeamish about intentionally hurting my friends, family, pets, whatever. Plus, that needle is frickin' huge!

First round by myself went OK, but Ash jumped into my lap and pulled her needle out. D'oh! I decided to give her a rest and try again later this evening with L's help. It went smoother and she got the necessary fluids.

Cats, Bikes and More…

So with Ashley's new medical care, trading to a scooter is now out of the question. The bike will be up for sale today through Motorcycle Traders Magazine. Also, no vacations for a while as Ashley adjusts to her daily regiments of Sub-Q treatments and feeding her as much as she wants. It's official though. I have a dromedary for a cat. When you give the fluids it creates a weird little bubble on her back until the fluids are absorbed into the body. It looks a little bit like a dromedary's hump when it is low on water. Weird! Her little foot was swollen yesterday until I was able to take off the bandage for her IV.

By the way, I'll have to hook up her fluids at home; not nearly as ooky and difficult as you'd think. I feel I could now give a shot to a person. Maybe someday I'll post a pic for the non-squeamish.

I now have two very spoiled cats. I can no longer leave the dry food out for them because they don't want Ash eating any of the higher protein food. So now, whenever Moses is hungry he comes to me where I keep his food in a closed container. This is going to get busy!

Oh, and now she's sleeping under the covers. That's new. I thought I was going to totally squish her last night.

The Vet Hospital…

A quick note; Ashley is staying one more day in the hospital hooked up to IV to get her numbers in as normal range as possible. She comes home tomorrow as long as everything goes well.

Thank You Cards…

Here are two of my latest Thank You cards. I made these using images cut out of an old botanical calendar that I have. My biggest weakness is my lettering, which I am working on the most. My favorite thing to do is add dimension with foam sticky pads. Here, I have elevated the illustration for added impact.