Mustard is gone

He stopped eating Friday, so I brought him to the vet Saturday. They kept him overnight to get him re-hydrated to do blood work. He perked up and ate food last night, but today he went back down again. Not eating and barely moving. The bloodwork came back that his kidneys were failing. So I made the decision to let him go. 6:14 p.m. today September 17, 2017.

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Mustard has congestive heart failure

So here it is, the end of June and for the year I was going to pay off my debts and finish the house improvements, I'm not doing to well on that score. In May, I had a termite swarm inside my house so now I have a three-year contract with Orkin. Mustard had his annual check up, lost weight since he had stopped eating. I thought it maybe due to needed a Senior formula food. He's 13 years old now, which according to the chart in the vet's office means he's the equivalent of 68. I started him in Iams Active Senior and he woofed it down.

By June, Rizzo the car has a suspicious rattle that sounds like I lost a another strut. Thanks to boneheaded financial decisions on my part, I have to push it getting repaired until July.

June 14th, I came home with steaks. Mustard has stopped being interested in his food again but is all over me to get some beef. Yell at Mustard for trying to trip me. Heard and felt sound in my teeth. Thought "Oh shit, I've chipped one" and ran to the bathroom. The bridge on my right side fell out. The back anchor tooth is broken off at the gum line. Most of what's left of my canine that is its front anchor point comes out of the crown. I've lost count how many of these bridges have destroyed my underlying teeth and fallen out. I knew they wouldn't be able to glue back on and I was completely leery of losing my virgin front tooth like I lost the one on the left and one of my back molars in just a few years (if that long). Thursday, the first words the dentist tells me after looking at the X-rays, "I think implants are the way to fix this."

What I would use a time machine for: Go back to when we started the bridges in my mouth and suggest just three implants for the missing teeth we wanted to hide. Give undergraduate college me the knowledge about Primal and Paleo eating and how mashed potatoes and white bread and sodas were what will pack on the pounds. Fly on an airplane before deregulation of the airline industry happened. Go to the future when everyone is aghast over how stupid Americans in the 2016 - 2017 election cycles and petition to live there.

So by July 21, I have everything worked out for the dental implants surgery-wise and financial-wise. My check-in with my endocrinologist could have been better, but that was my fault for not eating properly or exercising. We came up with some solutions and I'm incentivized to work on them because I'll heal faster if my blood sugar is under control.

July 23: came home to Mustard having labored breathing and alternating between hiding from me and just laying down in the room I was in and not moving. He refused to eat the canned cat food, which has never happened before. I mixed together dry and canned Thursday night and he ate that. Saturday morning, we're at the vet's office at 8am. Mustard can't be bothered my the usual fit he shows them.

So the diagnosis ended up being fluid in his lungs from congestive heart failure. He's home now with two prescriptions to take that don't cost a fortune and an appointment next week to see if the prescriptions need to be tweaked. He ate, peed, and drank water once I got him home and now he's hiding from me again. I have no idea what his life expectancy is at this point, so I have to remember to ask that with the follow up visit.

Right after that I'm scheduled for a well woman's check up and probably my first mammogram. Then the week after that, dental implants. Then I should be able to perform bill catch-up on the next payday.

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2017 Resolutions

How best to sum up 2016?

It will be a while before this image gets old.

Since I fell off the keep people informed of what’s going on in my life goal, I’m going to go through 2016 in personal events for an overview to figure out my 2017 resolutions and plans.

Back Bedroom Remodel:

Started in December 2015 after my new roof was installed. I figured it would be finished in a few months. Now it’s January 2017 and I still don’t have a back bedroom or a living room. 2017 Plans: Finish this project.

March 2016 Flood:

This event has been overshadowed by the August flooding. Personally, I found my back porch still leaked with the new roof and raked out the ditch in front of my house to help the drainage, which was then attributed to the hard workers who maintain our parish roads. (Thanks, Mom.)

Mustard’s eye:

In May, Mustard’s eye got scratched and then infected. There was only a thin bit of membrane holding it together by the time I got him to the veterinary ophthalmologist, but he saved his eye. By the end of June, the cone was off and his eye is fine.

Front and Back Porches Refresh:

So this spring I discovered the carpenter bees drilling nests into my new back porch rafters. They had also drilled into my front porch ceiling and rafters. I got the back porch rafters painted by May 30th, but painting the front porch got delayed due to summer monsoons and smaller projects to make the spaces pretty and functional multiplied every weekend. In October, it finally dried enough for me to finish the major painting (front porch ceiling and the columns on both porches). Poisoned the carpenter bees and then spray foamed the holes. Finished trimming the spray foam snot and painted over that in November. Then I moved onto refinishing rocking chairs. 2017 Plans: Finish this project.

August 2016 Flood:

I watched the waters rise and finished insulating the back bedroom. Luckily, my family and I were not affected. However, my mother’s friend Irene was flooded and was then put on hospice. My parents took her in and we rallied to work on her house in spurts.

Irene’s House:

We cleaned everything in the house, but not before Irene died on November 19th. The clean-out officially ended December 4th when All Hands Volunteers showed up and gutted the house. 2017 Plans: I’ll be roped into dealing with the contents of the out buildings, but I don’t forsee having to take off work again.

Money Annoyances:

So Mustard’s eyes surgery and two unexpected car issues pretty much tapped out my savings and left me in debt to my father (buying building supplies didn’t help either). So this weekend found me very disconcerted about my finances. The money I earn means I shouldn’t be in a mad, penny-pinching scramble every payday. The next step will be to analyze my spending habits to see where I can cut back. 2017 Plans: Stick to my budget, pay off my debts, reward myself when goals are met.

Basically my 2017 plans are to finish the outstanding projects I have started. Of course once I wrap something, a new project will take its place. For example, when I move the back bedroom stuff into the finished back bedroom, I have a new TV to mount on my wall and must replace the entertainment center to do that. By the end of the month, we’ll see how much progress I’ve made on them.

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Friday and aftermath

Drive home thoughts

Blogs may not get done at all. My supervisor is a nice lady when she's not supervising. As a supervisor, she is a paranoid, anal-retentive twit who hates to see us enjoying the day or with time on our hands. She'll stand up for us at the same time refusing to get something that will make our jobs easier. I still don't know how these halves reconcile at night.

She says all I'm doing is playing on the Internet. I can't keep my notebook on my desk because that is playing on the Internet.

What it is is bullshit. I'm doing my work and it shouldn't matter that I write a sentence between every five lawsuits. But because we don't do any work unless her eagle eye is on us (in her mind anyway), it matters. I've been dwelling on it the whole way home and now I'm crying and I'm blaming hormones. But it's still bullshit.

Aftermath

I went to Chad's that night, but stopped at a gas station on my way there. A beautiful orange tabby kitten stopped following the drunk he was with and followed me back to my truck. With visions of street pizza kitten in my head, I went back inside with him. The drunk didn't want him, so I took him. His name is Mustard. It appealed to my sense of the absurd. Adopting him also got me out of the funk that the earlier news had put me into.

I'm going to smile and nod and pull it out at lunch. Or when we finish the stupid lawsuits (I estimate three weeks at the max) and she's fuming we have nothing to do.

Newsletter and updated Library go out tonight. Unfortunately, I don't have a new story. I'm too tired to keep working at it and tomorrow I have to help lay new floor down in my mother's house.

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