Roasted nuts

It's been hellishly hot this week. The day before yesterday was 110. Hideous. No rain at all. We are in what's considered a serious drought.

Where I come from, water mains tend to break in the winter, because the ground around them freezes. Here, they break in the summer, when we are in a water crisis, because the ground around them dries out so much that they shift and then rupture.

Great!

Anyway, things aside from the horrible summer weather are fine. Dave has felt very little further chest symptoms since our adventure in the hospital last weekend. This is very good news.

Dance rehearsals have been intense and sweaty. Performance is on 8/6. Still have one more week of rehearsals, on Tues. and Weds. Dress is on Tues. Still have to finalize what the heck I am going to wear for FOUR different dances in one show.

I have never performed more than two, or at the most, three, in a show. It's exciting and challenging!

I feel like I've made some friends by joining this dance troupe, but my original OKC teacher, the one with the fancy studio and the stuck up dancers, sent me a message and asked me to come back.

I guess I will wait and see what happens with the group I am in now. There is speculation that it may be dissolved after this upcoming show because the director is tired of doing it.

Plus, the director is not really trained in middle eastern dance. From what I can gather, she learned what she does know about this form of dance via her experiences with the Society for Creative Anacrhonism.

She has not ever mentioned the name of a middle eastern dance move, or rhythm, or instrument; and appears to only know about 4 or 5 dance moves.

I got to see video of a dance show from a few years ago, and ALL of the choreographies the troupe performed at that time were identical moves in a different order.

Thankfully, the 4 numbers we are performing next weekend have been updated by our "new blood" coming into the troupe, with our new ideas.....but if it were not for us, I am pretty sure things would still all look the same.

Time will tell. I am just grateful for the chance to perform again, and that I have been getting a great work out with our having rehearsal twice a week since May.

Thanks to my new friends in the dance troupe, I have my first massage client in 9 months tomorrow, and one of the other girls wants to purchase a gift certificate.

Yay!!

No other new news right now. Just trying to survive the hellishly hot weather, and get through to the dance show!

home again home again

dave is home, taking a much needed shower.

new regimen of drugs, and no -- cardiac related or otherwise -- explanation for the chest pains, so we are going to do some upper body massage (good thing i am a massage therapist), and i am going to teach him some stretches, so that the upper body muscles are relaxed and loose.....we'll see if that ends these strange symptoms.

doctor said return immediately to normal activity, maybe lose 5 to 10 pounds, stick to the south beach diet phase three, (which has already pretty much been our diet since i got here and brought it with me--i've been following it for years)......and maybe not quite so much alcohol......and come see him in a month, unless something happens before then that warrants a sooner visit.

in other words, it's all good!

update before bed...

talked to dave....they took off the nitro patch that was causing the severe head ache, gave him some pain reliever, and he was feeling better but completely exhausted.

he's asleep now, until they wake him for the next interval of blood collection.

i am off to bed....more news after this is all over.

dave update....

We got up and got ready for work this morning, but Dave said he didn't feel well. I asked "HOW do you not feel well?" and he said he was having pressure and chest pain that radiated up his neck and down his arm.

SO, we went to the ER instead of to work! After 3 or so hours in the E/R, they admitted him.

(and i am so tired, i am not going to worry too much about caps and punctuation, sorry)

a little back story—dave had been talking about firing the doctor he had been going to, whom he met by default when he had the heart attack in Dec. of 09. this doctor seemed very quick to do procedures that cost a lot of money, and was also very difficult to understand, too busy (7 hours late for dave's angio—which was probably an excessive procedure— a year ago in april), and often impatient.

BUT, we went to the hospital we went to today because we assumed that his doctor was still affiliated there. one feels more comfortable with a familiar doctor, if available...am i right?

turned out that he is NOT affiliated anymore...so, we got someone else who dave liked a LOT better! he's still difficult to understand, but he sat down next to the bed, and explained everything fully, carefully, and comprehensibly.

the new doctor is FAR more conservative, and willing to work with medications and correcting balances before doing invasive procedures. the old doctor would have had dave in the cath lab with a tube in his artery in a new york minute.

ANYway....my poor baby has an insufferably bad headache from the nitroglycerine patch that has been on his chest all day. he has had some repeat chest pressure, and they gave him morphine for that this afternoon, but had not given him any more by the time that he sent me home. he also had a horrific bout of heart burn and nausea in the afternoon into evening, so that he did not want his dinner.

he is really quite miserable, but very little of it has to do with the chest pains that brought him to the hospital to start with.

the cardiologist seems highly confident that the discomfort that brought us to the hospital was NOT heart related. they are doing observation with blood draws every 8 hours to be certain of that, but so far, there have been no indications in the blood tests that a heart attack has or is going to happen.

the doctor did not yet discuss any possible other tests (ultrasound or other imaging), and said he would be back by in the morning to see if dave can come home. he would come home with a new arrangement of prescriptions to see if that keeps the discomfort at bay. the doctor says if it does, for 3 to 6 months, then we're home free.

but, tonight, he is in the hospital and feeling very ill because of the drugs they are giving him now...so please continue to send him peace, calm, and healing.....

(and i could use a little of that calm stuff, too....gonna try to rest.....)

....and there she goes.....

Grimalkin goes back to the shelter tonight.

We can't take it anymore.

She attacked Jack at 2:30 this morning, and again around 5, because he had the audacity to set foot in the bedroom.

This is JACK's HOUSE, dammit!

We have decided not to even try to adopt a different kitty.

As much as we both want multiple cats, Jack has been through hell with this attempt, and neither of us wants to stress him any further. He's just so sensitive, docile, and submissive, we hate to have another adoptee come in and do the same thing to him.

He will be a solo kitty here for the rest of his days.

He is twice her size, but would not stand up to a fly, and she has been going after him viciously. He even laid down and made "play with me" sounds to her a couple of days ago, but all she wants is blood.

I am sad about Grimmy, in a way, because I had bonded with her. She was so cute and sweet with us humans!

She slept by my feet every night, and she has a wonderful purr, but she beats the crap out of my boyo, and that's not acceptable.

have mercy

if the little weather thingie in my phone says it's 109, i am guessing it's probably more like 111.


addendum....yep...turned on my car, which is parked in the shade under the carport...it's exactly 111.

i also spotted a little bat flying about crazily who crashed into my willow tree. i spritzed him with water, which he spread his wings for and licked greedily off of a willow leaf, but then he fell to the ground. i think the heat is killing him, poor thing.

for seeeester....

easy peasy....just so you remember to try this.......drunken strawberries (or drunken peaches)

slice ripe, juicy fruit into a bowl
sprinkle with sugar
sprinkle with triple sec/gran marinier/other orange liquer (for peaches, use white rum)
toss to cover all fruit evenly

allow to set for about an hour

serve over vanilla ice cream, or just as is.

Here she is!

So, this is Grimalkin..... these shots show off her pretty face, and interesting markings and coloring.

They do NOT show how much of a BITCH she is around Jack!! We're really hoping that they can get along eventually. Jeebuz.....

mini Staycation

The changes in my job have created a lot of stress for me, and I have been getting very fed up with it lately.

I have to earn every minute I get to take off from work if I want to get paid for that time off. Even for holidays, as I have talked about here before.

I had banked enough hours to take a few days off to make the 4th of July weekend into a mini vacation (less than a week off of work, but the longest break I have had since starting), while reserving 2 days' worth of hours so that there's something in my "paid personal leave" bank in case I need it.

So, Tuesday was my Friday! Dave gets tons of paid time off, so he is off too.

Wednesday started out with Dave accidentally dumping his entire cup of coffee on my lap top computer. Then I had to go to the gynecologist. Oh what fun.

BUT, after that, we went and adopted the kitty cat Dave had picked out after looking at the adoption centers at all of the area PetSmart stores.

I don't have any pictures of her in my computer yet, because my computer was taken apart and left to dry for a couple of days!

Fortunately, the computer seems to work okay.

Anyway, she is a petite long haired calico with muted colors. Weighs in at 8 pounds.

She's very pretty, but seems to have allergies or something. Her eyes tear.

At the moment, she is running around like a wild cat, so she seems to feel okay! Her rambunctious play is bound to draw Jack out, and maybe they'll finally duke it out and establish some ground rules.

At first, she innocently approached Jack, but he was pretty well freaked out, and hid. Then, there was late night yowling, and they retreated to their hiding places, effectively separating themselves for the first full day she was here.

More late night yowling, and no progress the next night, but yesterday, they started coming out into the same room at the same time, and mostly now SHE is the one who is rejecting Jack.

Jack has wanted to be friends since yesterday, and she's having none of it.

The good part is that there was no late night yowling last night for the first time. So there's hope.

Oh, and she could not care less about my old cockatiel. This is good news! Her being in pet stores, and fostered at different houses, has probably desensitized her to such things as birds and people coming and going.

We have gotten stuff done during our time off, too. The office will be painted before we go back to work, we have decided! Then, all of the painting will be done!

Also got the last window shade for the bedroom, and a humming bird feeder.

The best part about this little break from work is that I have been sleeping pretty well at night....save for the yowling cats....

A couple of people sent me text messages that they elected me employee of the month, too, during my break.
Nice!
BUT....Given the fact that I was perfectly content with my boring A/R clerk job, and they went and loaded me up with some of the worst crap in the office because I actually WORK....the person who dumped all of this work on me so she could make more money should have nominated me 2 months ago, when I REALLY could have used it.

But she didn't.

My work load doubled, hers was cut in half, and SHE was the one who got the raise.

Anyway, I was employee of the month once last year, too. All it means is that I get 2 hours of free time off (which is what I could have really used during moving time), get to park in the special parking spot, and am eligible for employee of the year. Employee of the year gets half a day of free time.

Whatever.

Doing my best to stay disconnected from work during these 6 days....it's been good.

Oop~ yep, there they go.....screaming, hissing cats! Hope they get over this phase before our time off ends!