Farewell Mrrrpp

Earlier, when I started this post, I had all sorts of snarky things in my head to say.  It was Wednesday, the world seemed to have gone mad yet again, and I was feeling …  well, like something was going to happen.

the Handsome Boy

I don’t want to feel that way anymore.  I just want to go back to this morning.   It’s wasn’t a perfect morning.  Heck, it wasn’t even the best morning.  It had good bits though, and I want those back.

Most of all, this morning, Mr. Kitty hadn’t been injured.

He didn’t need an emergency trip to the vet.

Most of all, he didn’t need to be put to sleep because he’d suffered severe spinal nerve damage and had lost all sensation (and function) from about the middle of his back, down.

The vet wasn’t sure if it had been the result of a blood clot or an injury caused by a car or some other violence.  Because of the damaged nerves and his heart murmur, she didn’t see a good chance of recovery from surgery.  He couldn’t eat or drink…  he’d lost function effectively below the waist.  He could purr and cry softly at me.  He could panic a bit about the overly friendly pittie at the vet’s office (who stayed well away, but was close enough to smell and therefore was a possible threat).  He was still able to be comforted by a scritch behind the ears and be pissy and unsettled when the vet or her assistant touched him.

He was himself right up to the end.

Fluffle and Mr. Kitty

But, for the record, there is little that feels as wrong as those last loving touches that you give your pet as the vets are giving them the sedative and the barbiturate shots.  I know he felt no pain, but I also know he was mostly gone by the time I was able to say good-bye.  I know that’s standard procedure, I know our vet and she is wonderful and wanted him to suffer as little as possible (despite the nerve damage, he was suffering because of lost function), but…  I wish I’d been able to be with him before the first shot a bit longer.  I know he knew I was there for a moment–he tried to fight the sedative pretty hard, constantly opening and closing his eyes, trying to focus on me a few times when I spoke to him, his ears flicked slightly.  But the drugs are meant to be strong, and he wasn’t going to fight his way through this.

Why is it the animals that cause us the most grief are the ones we become the most attached to?

I think that as Flufflepuff comes over and begs for hugs.  I think both he and JuJuBee are missing their window companion.

Au revoir, Monsieur

Now onto normal Wednesday affairs…

The WIPpet

No fancy WIPpet maths today.  Six sentences.  It’s your choice whether that’s for the 6th month or for the addition of the 1&5 of the date.  And yeah, I stepped back a few more pages yet again in the Unnamed Story.  At this rate…  I’ll be reposting stuff.

Can any of you guess who Alanii is speaking about?

Alanii snorted. “I’ve seen what his lovers look like, Atyriia. That man doesn’t know anything about seducing a woman gently. His wife had been an ale wench. She’d been the only woman to ever share his bed and not leave it covered in bruises. And only because she could pick him up and throw him out of the room if she needed.”

Enjoyed that  bit?  Well, then head over to the WIPpet linky and visit other WIPpeteers. A shout out and hugs to Emily Witt for hosting the hop these days.

The ROW80 Check-in

I don’t have much to say today.  Things are…  well, until today, things had been on track.  This is the only writing or writing related activity I’ve done today though.  Studying up on what drugs are actually used in euthanasia  for cats is the only reading I’ve done.  Hanging out on Facebook and trying to lose my head in other people’s lives is the only interaction I’ve achieved.

Mostly it has worked.  I wrote this post.  I had other plans to write about today.  Maybe Sunday…  Maybe I’ll post a Friday Photo on my other blog…  I don’t know.  It’s too far ahead to plan now.

Sunday, Lovely Sunday

I know that’s not the way it’s supposed to go since I just finished a course on the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, but…  I like my version better. Especially since this has been a pretty good day so far.

It’s a rainy day, but not one of those drown you in mud rains nor even one of those hovering drizzles that reach into every layer of clothing you own without offering the consolation of a solid dunking.

A real rain…  just heavy enough to soak into the ground and nourish the roots, just heavy enough to hear plit-plattering on the window, just light enough to leave rain drops caressing petals and leaves…

Rain and Fountains at Blenheim Palace

A heavier rain than I remember from my days in England, but only by a small touch.  It is certainly grayer here.  I’d be curious to know why.  Perhaps it’s because of our location on the Hardiness Zone scale…  No—I just checked, and we’re actually 10° closer to the Equator here in Southern Albany Cty than we were in the UK.

Elevation does it again.   Add on over 600 more feet, remove the effect of being surrounded by water…  We’ve lived in this house for 15 years now, and I still find it remarkable that  we can drive to Albany in 30 minutes, but it takes an extra week and a half minimum for plants to catch up with those in our NYS Capitol.

Hmm…  well, that was definitely a line of non-sequitur.*

And so is this…  now is time for:

My ROW80 check-in and weekly assessment

General Assessment first…  It’s been another damned awesome week.  A few more migraines than I’d have preferred, and definitely with far more kitty panic than anyone needs…  but in all other ways it has been a great week.

The question of whether it’s been awesome enough to inspire me to add on something new though?  I’m still thinking “not yet”.  This is why:

• Goal: working through three chapters weekly of James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure (including exercises)
• Progress: still detoured, though Syd Field’s Screenplay is sitting untouched too; I’ve done other reading, but between my classwork and getting my wordcount in for the CampNaNoWriMo, I wasn’t doing diddly about this goal
  
• Goal: catching up in my local critique group (including submitting something this week)
• Progress: group is was on hold for the month of April, and I still haven’t submitted anything
  
• Goal: typing two pages a day of old notebooks in
• Progress: on track
  
• Goal: (VIG) Write new words daily! (the Five Sentences thingie)
• Progress:  I thought I was getting All The Words, but yesterday I found proof.  When I went to collate everything I’d written this month for my CampNaNo project (and this isn’t including words deleted because I was also editing work), I didn’t have to include any of the 37 handwritten pages I’d held in reserve.  I’d set myself a 30K goal for this Camp, and cleared the month with a total of 46K.   Am I ready for the 50K JuNoWriMo this year?  Oh.. yeah!
• 

  It’s dry inside, Mom

  Not Goals but Progress Anyway:

  1. Dropped the ball after 112 days of Duolingo last Sunday.  I’m back up to seven days again, but it was hard to lose all that progress (and the bonuses that come with a long streak).
  2. Being school vacation, there was a lot of Boodle time this week. I admit–I glutted myself a bit. No regrets.
  3. This was also the week of missing cat, surprise dentist appointments, and curious financial errands (several visits to our insurance company for policy rewrites and adjustments). The good news? Mr. Kitty is home and sitting on the deck-rail all soggy and pitiful (on purpose, trust me… he could sit under the picnic table and stay dry, but it’s harder to watch for when I move from this chair and just might be heading to the door to feed him); no new cavities this time for me (the Boodle has the start of one on one of his permanent teeth); and in all this juggling, we’re finally not spending a month’s salary on insurance each year…

And lastly, I’m still flailing wildly on my goal to do something creative every day.  Since that’s a new goal I’ve made absolutely no progress on in over two weeks now, I think I need to attend to making that work before I go further.

Still, there’s a lot of progress there, a lot of joy and some surprises…

As I said before, it’s been a pretty awesome week.  Kind of like today and the rain (see?  I did have a point hiding in there somewhere!)

*  Anyone who has conversed with me over Starbucks’ drinks is all too familiar with the way my mind wanders aimlessly from thread to thread in this way.  Hope you enjoyed the journey.  😀

Got Time For a Quickie?

Short one today, all y’all.  The hubby and I have a lunch date with friends, insurance paperwork…yadda yadda. There’s all the time in the world it seems…

…just after everything else is done first.

So here’s it all in a nutshell.

This has been an incredibly crazy, yet oddly productive week.  I’m on track with everything except my new “creativity goal”, but since the Boodle is home from school this week and there’s been a shift of focus there, I’m not too bothered.

What is bothering me is that nagging surety I’ve lost a friend.  Mr. Kitty, the last of our feral cats turned to cuddle-bum and window serenader,  hasn’t come home since Sunday.  Worse yet, since I’d been desperate to sleep in on Sunday for some huggy-dozing time with the Leader of the Opposition Party, it was the Boodle that fed Mr. Kitty, not me—I’m actually not sure he was here on Sunday at all.

All I can do is hope that if he was caught by someone (some group has taken up catching ferals nearby because we had had the male version of the feared cat lady down the road for years, and he finally lost his home and the cats have run rampant).  I really hope Mr. Kitty was trapped by such a group and not taken by coyotes (so far the nearby roads shows no sign of a kitty-corpse).  He’s lovable, affectionate, wants to have a forever home (which is something I could have never given him because of… things).

But this, and so much of this past year when I wasn’t blogging because life was cray-cray, is why I picked the title I did today.  Maybe it wouldn’t have helped if I had gotten up on Sunday—maybe he was gone already—but I wouldn’t have this regret that I ‘wasn’t there’ when I could have been.

It was the same when my grandfather died in December…  we hadn’t gone to see him because we’d been fighting cold and sickness after cold and sickness, and he had a very compromised immune system.

One of my best friends died in December…  we’d set plans for a lunch date in January ‘after the holiday crazy was done’.  It was a freak thing, but…  now I eat sushi and cry a little (kind of happy tears, because they are great memories, but still).

And my grandmother died a few weeks later.  I got to spend some time around Christmas with her, but then Rod’s death and disasters at the Boodle’s school…

It seemed like so much to take a day trip to Syracuse just for an hour or two of visiting.  Maybe next weekend I’d have ‘more time’…

No.  There was no more time.  There is no more time.

So, yesterday…  when I invited Elizabeth Anne Mitchell to sprint with me and she couldn’t because she had a meeting in ten minutes at work, I decided I was making a change for myself at the very least.  I texted her back “Quick, write two sentences!”

I mean, there’s always time for a Quickie….