Sunday Update - Week 5

Five weeks into 2021.  I'm trying to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.  So, basically, nothing new.

I'm not currently in writing mode, so don't expect any of that any time soon.  As for editing, I pulled my head out of the mire and got back to work.  I'm at 48% done with my first round.  Pages and pages of notes accumulated.  Some of it as simple as adding or deleting a comma.  Some of it as deep as rewriting whole scenes.  (Just the note to do it, not actually rewriting it yet.)

As for marketing, Dying Embers goes on sale Wednesday to celebrate its book birthday on Saturday.  Just the one book this time.  It'll be 99c/99p through the 16th.

Once again, I only finished one book in reading last week.  It was a REALLY good one, though.  I'd totally recommend it.  (And it is in Audio format, for them what does that.  Warning: if you follow the link, the description has spoilers.  Damn them.)

In baking news, I made a meatloaf (recipe below) and a batch of drop biscuits.

On the activity front, I cleaned and organized three times and walked once.  Eh, it's better than nothing.  Weight 182.2.  

It's been almost two weeks since we lost Kira.  It's still pretty hard to not wake up thinking I have to feed her or take her to the litterbox.  Or to look for her when I get ready for bed.  It still throws me when I walk into the office and she's not laying on her bed.  And to not look at her dishes and think that she needs kibbles.  Yes, her dishes are still out.  So's her litterbox.  Seeing those spots empty would be sadder than having those things in place right now.  I've been obsessed with thinking about dogs.  I need to stop that.  We can't have a dog right now, for most of the same reasons we couldn't get one before.  With the exception of not wanting to stress out Kira.  I still don't have the time, the patience, or the fundage to have a pooch.  I'm being an adult here.  Sometimes being an adult sucks, but it's better to be one than to regret not being one.  Once upon a time, I had two dogs and in retrospect, I never should've gotten them.  I didn't have the time to devote to them.  I know better now.

Okay, I think that's it for me today.  How was your Week 5?

Recipe:

Meatloaf

1 - 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 tube saltine crackers (crushed)
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese (the dry stuff)

Preheat oven to 275F.  In a large bowl, combine all ingredients but the Parmesan - using your hands to squish it all together.  When it's all combined, squish in enough Parmesan to make the mixture dry enough to form a ball - usually about a quarter cup for me.  (The wetness of the mixture will depend on what grade beef you use, how much beef there is to mushroom soup, how big the egg is, etc.  Too wet a meatloaf won't hold its shape, hence the Parmesan.) Spray the inside of of whatever baking receptacle (I use a blue glass casserole dish) you're using with non-stick cooking spray.  Bake for 2.5 hours uncovered.  Slice and serve.  Great hot.  Awesome cold for sandwiches.  Also yummy inside a grilled cheese sandwich.

Sunday Update - Week 4

Week 4 of the 2021 siege.  Just when you think it can't possibly get worse, it says 'oh, yeah, watch this'.  

No writing.

Sunday night, I couldn't sleep, so I got back up and worked on editing.  I adjusted the first 5 pages so Duke sounds more like himself.  Then Monday hit and nothing else got done.

I read one book last week.  I picked up ten new paperbacks at the thrift store, though.

In baking news, I made a batch of Oatmeal Raisin cookies, but this time I also added chocolate chips.  They're pretty yummy.  Then yesterday, I had the urge to bake and a box of yellow cake mix, so I gave Hubs the choice of either yellow cake with white frosting or coffee cake.  He chose coffee cake, so I made that.  I think I've posted both those recipes, so they won't be here.  If you want it and can't find it, let me know.

No activity.  No weight change.

I did a lot of running around this past week.  The vet Monday.  The bank, post office, convenience store, and thrift shop on Tuesday.  Then north for smokes Thursday.  Then south for groceries and another stop at the vet (Kira's ashes are home now) on Friday.  Then northwest to take all her unopened cans of food, etc. to the local shelter yesterday.  I probably put about 250 miles on the car last week.  Blerg.

One day, Hubs and I sat down and watched Citizen Kane together.  Neither of us had ever seen it.  (I thought I had, but I hadn't.)  I know it's supposed to be some cinematic masterpiece, but meh.  

Other than that, I played a lot of poker.  I went over 24 million, then lost back down to 23 mil, then came back up then went back down.  It was one of those weeks.

The world further descended into madness.

Yesterday, we had some weather fun as storms with rotational winds popped up and appeared to be headed this way.  We heard the thunder and saw the warnings, but all we got was the rain.  Whew.

Today, I hope to pull my head out and get some work done.  We'll see how the day progresses from here.

How did your week go?

Thursday This n That

Have you heard about the literary agent who got fired for simply having accounts at Parler and Gab?  Sounds like the lead-in to a joke, but it's not.  She had accounts at those conservative social media sites, and she lost her job for it.  I've known for most of my writing life that the publishing industry was rife with leftists, but I never would've thought they'd cancel someone over it.  Shun them, maybe.  Ignore them, definitely.  Blacklist, possibly.  But to actually shitcan an employee for their beliefs?  Anyway, being a mulish sort, I created a Gab account yesterday.  And I went to the literary agent's page there.  She became a member this month and had exactly one post which was a call for romance writers to submit their manuscripts to her.  An agent asking for manuscripts?  How could she?  Burn the witch.  I thought we were supposed to have something called 'Freedom of Association' in this country.  Huh.

I woke up this morning expecting to have to feed Kira and take her to the litterbox.  I expect it'll take quite a bit of time for that to stop.  

Oh, I contacted the local rescue shelter* to ask if they would accept a donation of all of Kira's perishable things - food, etc.  They're happy to have it.  The food I ordered that shipped the day before Kira passed, arrived yesterday.  When I put all the food together, there are 85 cans worth - 48 new and the rest recently purchased to try and find something she would eat.  (The same thing happened at the end of Max's life.  Lots of cans left. Which we gave to the vet to distribute.)  Those should help keep some shelter kitties happy for a few days at least.  Plus, there's an unopened bottle of Cosequin, a nearly new bottle of dry shampoo, and some kitty kibbles which they might or might not want.  I'll take it all over there and what they don't want, we'll bring home and throw away.  We're keeping the leftover litter because we can use that to clean up spills and provide traction.

I spent some time at the shelter website yesterday, looking at dogs.  No, we're not getting a dog any time soon.  But it made me feel better.  

If you didn't know, I mentally 'adopt' certain animals at the shelter and root for them to get adopted.  They are 'my dogs' until they find homes.  Right now, they are  Jerry, Pluto, Roan, and Sour Patch (He's my favorite right now.  The look on his face!)

Yesterday, after I wrote the post, I shuffled books around and made space.  Although, if I pick up any more NF titles, I have no clue where I'll put them.

Okay, I think that's quite enough out of me.  Got anything on your this n that list today?

*If you're interested in supporting them, they're The Haven of the Ozarks - a no-kill shelter.  Alternately, the place Kira actually came from is here.  If you decide to donate in memory of Kira, don't bother telling them - neither place would know who you're talking about.  I thinks CAWS actually called her 'Smoky' or something like that.

A Greater Void

In the summer of 2003, I got the idea that we needed a cat, so in the days leading up to Owl's birthday, I went online to some local rescue sites.  (Local being the Salt Lake valley at the time.)  On one website, I saw two cats that sparked my interest.  One was a yellow tabby and the other was a gray and white.  For one reason or another, I called the rescue agency about the gray kitten.  Her picture made her look like she had the right kind of attitude.

Within a week, the rescue agency brought the kitten by my apartment to introduce us.  The woman set the kitty down once she got inside, and before the 'meet and greet' was over, I knew.  I asked the woman if she could just leave the cat with us, wrote a check, and we had this tiny, slim kitten.  

The woman told us the kitten had been left with her siblings in a box outside the pound, sans the mother.  The pound tried keeping the three-week-old kittens alive with wet cat food.  The rescue agency swooped in and saved them.  For ten weeks, this particular kitten had been fostered in a home with dogs.  Now she was with us.

We had no idea what to name her.  I made a list of possible names and narrowed them down and let Owl choose.  For the first few days, her name was Calliope.  But that didn't suit her.  She then became Kira.  

We went back 13 weeks from the day we got her and chose May 7th as her birthday.

When Hubs and I were talking about getting married, I told him I had a cat.  His reaction: Oh.  He wasn't against cats, per se, but he wasn't a big fan either.  It wasn't too long before she could be found curled up on his chest sleeping.  She won his heart without even trying.

Born in Utah, moved to Colorado with us, moved to Missouri with us.  She hated the moves, but she rolled with the new locales.  She was a cruiser-cat.  Totally laid back.  The easiest cat in the world to own and love and care for.

Kira passed on yesterday, January 25th.

In the end, we chose to let her go.  It was time.  She was tired and old and was ready to sleep.  She always did like sleeping best of all.

Kira was one hell of a cat.  She will be sorely missed.  Writing this post yesterday evening, I was struck by how surreal it is in the house with no Kira.  

These last few weeks were trying on us all.  And a great deal of our time was spent thinking about her, tending to her, carrying her around... doing our damnedest to return her to health.  It just wasn't to be.  And now that she's gone, the void is greater than I would've imagined.  

The house is quiet in a whole new way.  She was never a vocal cat... unless it was dinner time... but you could hear her breathing... and snoring... somewhere in here at any time of the day.  

Her things are still where they always are and there they'll stay until they start to disappear by dribs and drabs.  Sometime soon, I will take her uneaten food to a local pet rescue, along with any of her other things they might be able to use.  Paying them in kindness for the kindness a rescue agency in Utah showed her.  

We won't be coming home with a new pet.  It's too soon.  It might always be too soon.

Seventeen and a half years is a long time to be with a pet.  A friend.  A furbaby.  Kira Kitty, Queen of All She Surveyed.  

Soon, her ashes will come home and she'll have an honored place on one of the shelves.  Like Max does.  Except I can't put her next to Max.  She hated Max.  She would consider it a personal insult to spend eternity next to him.  Goofy cat.  

Best cat ever.

Goodbye, Kira.  Thank you for being part of my life.  Our lives.  You'll be in our hearts forever.

Life with an Elderly Cat

Kira is an old cat.  Next month, she'll be celebrating her 16th birthday.  Which makes her 80, according to Purina.  I've had her since she was 13 weeks old.  Which means I've had her about eight months longer than I've had my husband. 

Here are some things I do to make her twilight years the best they can be.

- I give her Cosequin.  If you're not familiar with it, it's a joint supplement similar to glucosamine for humans.  It certainly helps with her hips.  Because she's not only old, but also hefty, she has hip problems.

- I have the house set up so she never needs to jump up on the beds.  I bought pet stairs for the master bedroom and I set up a bunch of plastic tubs as stairs for the bed in the spare room.  We lift her if she wants lap time.  She has never been one for jumping on tables, counters, etc. so that's a non-issue.

- We let her do whatever she wants to do, for the most part.  Don't mess with the old lady cat.

- She gets urinary tract formula pet food.  Which comes in these too-big bags that she takes too long to eat so it gets stale and causes its own set of problems.  So I've started portioning the bags out into gallon baggies and storing them in the freezer.  When one gets low, I defrost the next one.  That way the food always stays fresh.

-  We give her purified water.  Our tap water is extremely hard and I was thinking it was contributing to her UTI problems.

- She eats whenever she wants.  Right now, we're on a can of Fancy Feast four times a day - most of which gets thrown out.   The Cosequin goes in the third can, because that's the one she eats most of.  She also get about a third of a cup of kibbles before bed.  She grazes on that throughout the day.

- I put fish oil on her food twice a day.  It helps prevent constipated-kitty.  Use a pin to poke a hole in the capsule and squirt it on her wet food.  One capsule in the morning, two in the afternoon.  She prefers salmon oil.

As she's gotten older, there are now a few things I have to do to make her life easier.  I carry her and set her in front of the litter box because sometimes I think she's not exactly sure where it is or whether she needs to use it.  Sometimes, I have to encourage her to go inside.  If she then needs to use it, she does.  Sometimes she goes in and then comes right back out, but I'm okay with that.

If she needs anything, she isn't shy about letting me know.  She lays on the kitchen rug and meows until I attend to her needs.  The problem is figuring out what she's asking for.  If I've already fed her, then it's probably time for fish oil.  If she's already had food and fish oil, she probably needs to use the litter box.  If none of the above, she either wants pets and loves or she wants me to carry her to bed.  I pet her and love her and then put her on the bed next to her flannel pillowcase.  She loves the flannel.

Playtime for Kira consists of her laying on the floor next to her toys and occasionally batting at one or grabbing hold of one and biting the hell out of it.  Sometimes we'll get on the floor with her and shake a stringy toy, which she'll bat at vigorously - as long as she doesn't have to chase it - until she's bored.

She's the reason we don't have a dog.  She's also the reason why, after we lost Max, we didn't get another cat.  She prefers to be an only furbaby. 

Her life is good.  How much longer we have with her is anyone's guess.  They say if I put her on a diet, she'll live longer.  I think the stress of going on a diet will do more harm than good.  (And the stress of having an unhappy cat around the house certainly wouldn't do us any good.)

What are some things you do for your pets?  Did you ever think you'd do some of the things you do?