I'm just counting the days until my doctor's appointment on 9 July. *sigh* I need to sit down and count out my remaining meds and see how many more days I need to go half-dose on. My pain levels are up, I'm not sleeping well, and the house looks like hell. Mentally, I've got a list of things I'd like to get done, but physically I'm just kaput.

The ferrets are out and about right now---and they are wild. I'm worried about how much Theodore is getting picked on, so I'm trying to keep an eye out for him. I found a neat new toy I want to buy the ferrets. Take a look:

If you click the image, it'll take you to the site that sells them. I want one of these for the ferrets. Aren't they awesome? And from my reading, it is good for their mental stimulation and for their muscles.

I'm still knitting. I'm mostly working on lace right now. I do have a couple pairs of socks on the needles (most of them are hibernating). I'm about half done with the second sock in a pair for Randy. As for the lace, I've got to finish the previous clue for GoddessKnits Spring Mystery Shawl and then do the clue which came out on Saturday. I'm also struggling to cast-on and begin GoddessKnits Anniversary Shawl---it's a pi-shawl and the center start is a bit fiddly. I've already changed from the KnitPicks yarn I'd purchased specifically for this shawl, to some gorgeous 10/2 Tencel I bought from Yarntopia Treasures on Etsy.

That's about all the update I've got for today. I need to attempt to get some laundry done and maybe kitchen clean-up too.

I've spent the last few days trying to get more of my yarn stash photographed and entered into Ravelry. As I spend more time knitting, I've learned to recognize yarns I won't want to knit socks with (yes, there are a few) and I added them to my Stash-->trade page on Ravelry. Now I can start connecting the yarns to the projects I have in mind.

In the midst of all this photography, I've been taking pictures of the pets doing fun things and even some pictures of knitting. I use the term "photography" at it's most amateur level, despite some little trade tricks I picked up growing up with a photographer. I'd love to create one of these:

That would make taking pictures of my knitting so much easier. For now, you get pictures like this:

That's my work on GoddessKnits' Spring Mystery Shawl. You can click on the pictures to see them larger, if you'd like. I'm using Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/8 in "Bottle Green" (I bought a whole cone!) with a Czech glass 6/0 seed bead mix called "Oceanic Mix" from Beadaholique.

When I'm not actually knitting these days, I'm being entertained by my zoo:

Click on any of those images to see the flickr page for them. I'm trying to add descriptions as I go---but there's been a lot of uploading lately! I'm up to 90-some odd yarns in my stash now. Wow! I'm debating whether I should put my roving in there as well. I mean....it is stash, right?

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here or now, but Randy's boss from the Racket is coming to ASU to work with him at the Mars Space Flight Facility! I'm totally excited about that: we'll get to hang out with Chris and his wife! (Note: I know her name, you might know her name, but on her blog, she posts as "excruciatingly" and on her husband's blog, he always calls her some variant of "the wife". Despite her being a big blogger in Savannah, I sure don't want to be the one who puts her name out there for the world to write down! *grin*)

Privacy is an interesting concept in this day and age, isn't it? I always think about it when some news program is running "stock footage" of certain people-types for health or social topics. Like the videos of overweight/obese people when new findings regarding weight come in. They always show these really heavy people minus their heads. Do the video guys who go out and film this have to get permission to use the footage or does it fall under some "freedom of expression"?

If I know you in real life and I want to blog about something you and I did together, am I intruding on your right to privacy? Here on my blog, I use real names for everyone I do name, so I try to stand in the shoes of anyone I might be talking about and see if I'd mind that kind of information going on someone's blog. Perhaps my father wouldn't like what I said in bad news and good news, but I spoke to him and told him what I'd written--just told him, 'cause I'm not expecting miracles and progress here.

Anyway, chime in in the comments with your thoughts on privacy and blogging (I'm sure that topic's already been done to death by others.... now it's my turn!).

I expected to spend Tuesday morning running errands, starting with a visit to the veterinarian. Octavia wasn't looking too good over the weekend and we called first thing this morning for an appointment with our old vet, Dr. Wells in Tempe. This evening, Octavia died in her cage. I wish I knew more.

On Friday, she was up on my desk a number of times, trying to steal my dinner. I remember picking her up and putting her down and not noticing a thing wrong with her. Saturday, she crawled out from their hidey-hole under the dishwasher and looked so....I can't put my finger on it, but "normal" is definitely not the word. She hid again right away, before I could grab her. Later that evening, I saw that her bum was pretty nasty---she's always had a little "prolapsed rectum", which tends to make her messy---so I gave her a really good bath. She was so quiet and calm!

Now, Octavia and I have come to terms with her need for the occasional "bum bath", so we've got "an understanding". But this calmness went beyond her usual acceptance of necessity. And then her fur got fully soaked and I saw she was thin. Her pelvis bones were poking harshly. I could feel her spine, her ribs. When did this happen? Am I reacting more to how thin she looks 'cause she's wet or is she really, dangerously thin?

Randy agreed with me and we watched her on Sunday. Sunday afternoon, she needed another bum bath and was again docile. I felt she was dehydrated. We keep a bowl and a bottle in the cage and two bowls on the floor, plus the fountain urn they like to drink from. No shortage of water, so what's going on? I noticed she was grinding her teeth some too. That was too reminiscent of Maya's poor health prior to her death.

This afternoon, I saw her run from my closet to another spot in my room and there was spunk in that run. I thought she might be doing better and had Nicky bring her to me. She let me hold her. Closer inspection revealed severe dehydration. She lay in my arms, apparently asleep...but I could see she wasn't doing well.

In a moment alone with her, I spoke to her. "If you want us to fight, we'll fight for you. But if you want to let go, it's okay. You don't need to stay for us." There was no change. Later, I learned Randy told her the same thing around 7pm.

At 8:41, Nicky was putting another ferret in the cage and discovered Octavia was gone. She'd been gone long enough already for rigor to set in and her body was cold.

As I write this, we've already taken her little body to the crematorium we use. We'll get her ashes back in a week or so. And shortly, another rainbow will appear at the top of the page.

Good-bye, sweet little hellion-girl. Say hi to Max for me.

We lost our brief battle with little Maya Ferret tonight. After an overnight stay in the hospital, we'd thought she was doing better. But, as today progressed, it became evident she wasn't digesting the food and fluids being pushed through her. She was starting to cry in more pain and our new vet felt it was time for us to face that tough decision.

I gathered the family together at the vet's office and we cuddled Maya. She seemed aware of us and that made it so much harder. A part of me wanted to say, "See? She's fighting and she wants us to fight too."

But our vet felt she was unlikely to make it through the night and we'd regret not having given her a peaceful ending for the faint hope of improvement (all the while, leaving her in pain). In the end, I leaned on Randy's advice more than I think I ever have in these tough pet calls---I knew I was too close to think clearly, but he knows how I feel about being humane without giving up for purely financial reasons.

She slipped away very fast, once the drug to stop her heart started into her IV port. I watched her little back feet relax---she'd had them pulled up against the pain in her belly---and knew exactly when she was gone.

We took her home and let everyone say good-bye to her. It's a crucial step which I believe is even more important with ferrets. I'm concerned about Theodore since he was so attached to her. I used to look in the cage and see the two of them curled up together all the time. He protected her, playing rough with her and teaching her how to play with other ferrets. She could tackle him to the point of making him screech---the only ferret who could do that to him, despite his being three times her size!

I put a heart-to-heart call across the Rainbow Bridge tonight for Maxwell to be ready and waiting for her, to welcome her to the perfect playland for ferrets. She only knew him a couple of days before his accident, but there'll be someone there waiting for her. Plus, Zoë will be there too. And Heinlein.

This had better be IT for 2008. I am NOT doing this all through this year again. I'll accept the crappy birthday, in return for that concession: no more pet losses this year.

Post drafting, Day 1: Well, it's currently around sunset on the 17th of February and we've slept in our new home two nights now. In the meantime, there's been some struggles... Grab a cuppa joe or your knitting, it's been a bumpy ride.

First, the movers arrived on Wednesday, the 8th as expected. They loaded (and loaded... and loaded!) us up and I messed around with some cleaning in the kitchen while I waited. This is our third move with Graebel, so I know the drill: I have to be on-hand for the driver and his crew of movers while they load and I have to sign off at the end of the loading on all they've done.

As I look back on the whole week+, I wish I'd worked harder that day, but I was exhausted... and looking at a week and a half without my Kingsdown bed. So, Wednesday afternoon, Randy took us to lunch when the movers were done and then I dropped him off at work. Next challenge: gather the most important elements which we'd be packing in our car for the 2100 mile trip and check in to the hotel.

Bluffton sucks. That said, I was extremely pleased with the Holiday Inn Express there in Bluffton. They are pet-friendly... and I paid less for a handicap-accessible (I guess it's called "an ADA room") room. We had enough space to set up the Marshall's playpen we've had for close to a year now. (Note to potential buyers of this pen/matt: The vinyl matt is safe against their constant digging/scratching but not against the pee/poop! If you must protect your floors, spend a couple dollars on a clear shower curtain, lay it under the vinyl matt and continue with a normal set-up. Worked perfectly for us.)

Back to the Townhouse from Hell: Nick and I got to work "bright and early" on Thursday with all the cleaning. And by Thursday night, I was beyond my limits, exhausted and truly no longer caring. Friday morning, the carpet cleaner came and did a really miraculous job on the carpets. I used ChemDry, which is now owned by HomeDepot. I was thrilled with the initial team that came out but they called their boss and he finished the job---sorta. The first team still had to go back upstairs to vacuum and the boss never did it. The only place I was truly disappointed was the stairs: they were soaking wet! The ChemDry machine was too big/bulky to really do the full job on the stairs.

Unfortunately, the incredibly clean carpets now revealed how much more cleaning we had to do on the baseboards. Ugh. More Work. A quick call to Randy had him on the way to pick us up and we dropped him off at work. I had errands: some ferret toys (I packed them all and the babies were bored!), new toilet seats (those were kinda cool but expensive) and a wrench for the disposal. While out, Nick and I wanted to get lunch and we found this place called "Blue Coyote" which we'd never been to before. Of course, in true fashion, it was amazingly good and we wished we'd known about them sooner. Really good and fresh guacamole. Nifty plates. Cool decor. Would have made living in Bluffton less painful.

Randy departed work early on his last day---what a cool boss he has!---and joined us at Blue Coyote. This meant we could get to work at the townhouse and finish early and get a good night's rest. Right. 11pm and the final straw: Randy couldn't get the dryer vent re-connected and needed to buy another one. He decided to do that first thing Saturday, bring the very last of the stuff we were packing in the car (!) and quit that place forthwith!

Saturday morning, I felt/heard him moving around in the hotel room and got up as he left. I began organizing and packing and trying to go through the room for any items belonging to us. While I was doing this, Randy called to tell me about his struggle with the dryer vent. We'd always had a bit of a humidity problem when drying laundry. The master bath backs the laundry room and the cabinets in the bathroom would get really warm and humid, as though the dryer was venting into it. I mentioned it to the D R Horton representative who did the one-year inspection. According to him, this well-built (note: sarcasm) D R Horton townhouse was designed that way.

Well, according to Randy, the vent in the wall connects to... nothing. So, after all the physical effort to get the darn dryer vent connected the night before and then buying a new connection kit on Saturday, he left the townhouse with the dryer sitting out in the hall.

Then, after a good Holiday Inn Express breakfast, we began loading the car. While doing that, in the wild-and-wooded area off the parking lot, a fire started. I was about to call 911 and report it, but Randy thought it might be smarter to go in and have the hotel call it in. After two years in South Carolina, he still hadn't adapted to their slow-and-casual way of doing things. In Arizona, the threat of wildfire is serious business---and with recent fires in the southeast, one would think it was similarly serious in Bluffton as well. Several minutes later, as I headed back to the room for another load, a hotel employee was coming to the door.

"Yeah, John, there's a fire out in the wooded area." Her demeanor was real nonchalant. I heard through her radio John's reply: "I'm calling it in now." That ended up being about 5 minutes after I was set to call 911---and in that time, the fire had doubled its width in one direction. An employee came out with a large fire extinguisher, but the time for that was long past. We were finally loaded up and heading out as the first fire engine showed up on-scene. We passed another one headed to the scene as we left.

Two hours and change later, we arrived at Mom's. Randy and Nick needed showers and I needed to get to a Jiffy Lube before we hit the road the following evening. Mom went with me and managed some Knitting In Public, but my hands were too sore from all the cleaning I'd been doing. One oil change and tire rotation later, we headed back to Mom's and piled into her car (we had the moving guys take the back bench and the second captain's chair in the second row, so we could put a platform Randy built for the last move) and went to Al-Amir's for a late lunch / early dinner.

We visited with Mom and her friend Ron, had a wonderful meal of ham-and-pineapples-with-cherries, lima beans, carrots and Irish potatoes (yum!) and finally, it was Sunday evening and time for us to hit the road. We planned to travel from Columbia, South Carolina to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (well, Chickasha, OK actually...) in one massive push across the country. I'm not sure how, but we did it. We checked in to the Holiday Inn Express in Chickasha, OK... and found the room hadn't been cleaned yet. sigh We were so exhausted and just wanted to set the furbabies up in their playpen so we could clean up their cage.

Randy and I finally grabbed something to eat at some place called A&E Grill, which was so-so. We took dinner back to Nick, who'd been too tired to go out to eat. A quick night's rest, breakfast, pack the babies and luggage back into the car and get on the road. This time, I took the wheel and drove us across the rest of Oklahoma, the narrow part of Texas and just shy of Albuquerque (about an hour east of it). It was a very windy drive, but some MadLibs and a fun word game which Nick suggested helped. (The word game: Start with a word, each player makes a single change to the word, go until there's no progress to be made.)

Randy took over before we reached Albuquerque and we grabbed some DelTaco in Albuquerque itself. I would have liked to just crash then, but we had a reservation we couldn't cancel in Scottsdale, Arizona for that night. So, we pushed on. And on. And on! Finally, at about 2 in the morning of the 13th, we made it to the Holiday Inn Express in Scottsdale... only to learn that our reservation was for the following night! And she was booked. And surly. Finally, she found a double-booking she could clear up and got us into a two-queen suite. We got the babies in, got them settled... and crashed.

I didn't sleep well and Randy had been feeling the edge of a cold since Oklahoma. But we were up bright-and-early. A breakfast---the worst Holiday Inn Express breakfast so far, despite the $180/night room fee---and Randy and I hit the road to handle business. We drove out to the house we were about to sign lease papers on. We finally got in touch with our rental agent and he agreed to meet us at the house. We had time for lunch----yum, Garcia's! Adam let us in the house (which has a for-sale sign on the front lawn and two lockboxes on the security screen door) and we walked through it for the first time. Frankly, I'm no longer surprised this place didn't rent sooner. It was poorly represented and the massive spaces were ill-described.

From the entry (which is a double-door entry), there's a sunken room to the left (two very tall steps down) which measures 18 feet by 13 feet. It's just long enough for our two Galant desks (minus their half-round ends) and we're hoping to put a futon up against the long side of the desks, to create another seating area for watching tv in here.

From the entry, if one passes the sunken room we've dubbed "the office", there's a very large half-bath with an old-style toilet (the kind where the tank is mounted up on the wall way above the toilet). Then, past the half-bath is a double-door entry to the master suite. It's huge. One wall was designed for a king-size bed: it fits just between two wall outlets which are each followed by a narrow vertical window.

(Most modern houses I've seen stick one outlet on each wall and that's it. Now, if two people sleep in the same bed, that's at a minimum, two clocks and two lights, which is four outlets, right? Sheesh. Planning people!)

The master suite continues with an amazing walk-in closet with a skylight. This closet is set up galley-style: a rod on either side. There's a lower shelf across the end and really deep shelves above the two rods, plus some corner cubby things and a really neat shoe-shelf for my shoe-whore of a husband. grin It was really humorous seeing his shock at the quantity of shoes he has!

The master suite wouldn't be complete without a bathroom. This one is your basic two-sink, toilet and shower/tub. Only, it was last updated in the 70s or 80s sometime. At least it's a tile floor and not linoleum. Yeah, the whole upstairs is tile, except for the master bedroom/closet and the sunken "office".

There's a dining "room" just off the entry, which faces the french door to the basement. The kitchen/breakfast nook/great room is beyond the dining room. The kitchen has been upgraded recently with granite counters (the kind with an annoying mirror-particle scattered throughout) and features a really tall "turret" roof with three windows at the very top. Puck would love it if we mounted stepping shelves for her to get up to one of those windows! There's a ceiling fan over the kitchen, which I'm sure Randy will love once he's recovered enough from this cold to cook.

The great room also has a ceiling fan... and a really attractive beehive-type fireplace set up on a tall hearth. There's a shelf which runs the width of the room which Randy thinks the ferrets will be able to climb up on, but there's a fireplace screen which sits right in front of the opening and should prevent problems. There's a laundry room just off the kitchen, which connects to the two-car garage. My washer and dryer will be here on the 18th.

There's a small pool in the back yard, orange trees in the front and back yards, a storage shed in the back yard and an RV gate with room to bring one in and park it.

The downstairs has 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, all cleverly dealing with the need for two exits in the event of a fire or other emergency. One of the bedrooms is carpeted and has a pretty low ceiling with a ceiling fan. The other two bedrooms lack ceiling fans, but their ceilings are still too low to assemble Nick's loft bed. For now, his mattress is on the floor and he loves his new room.

Post-drafting, Day 2: I've kinda blended the tour with the move-in, which happened on Friday. And here it is Monday, the 18th and I'm writing this up, wondering when I'll be able to post it.

Yes, UPS screwed us again. I had my Qwest DSL/Broadband/whatever it's called set up to be on and here by the 13th. By the time we had our stuff delivered and our desks assembled and computers set up, I wanted to be able to jet online and catch up. Well, thanks to the three (yes, one got added...) lockboxes on the front door and the place being vacant, the UPS guy decided we'd moved, so he sent the package back to the sender. And we couldn't intercept it. We picked up another modem at Fry's Electronics... and can't get it to connect to our service. So, I'm sitting here typing this up, having gone very close to two whole weeks with no internet connection... I'm in major withdrawl here. I have no clue what's going on in the world.

There's only a ga-zillion things I want to check out right now. The tax assessment for this house. The locations of various preferred restaurants of choice. The nearest ATT store, so I can bitch someone out about changing my contract without giving me a choice to tell them to f-off! The release dates for the next book in about 5 or 6 series (I'm plowing through books right now). I feel like crap (spent the night fighting a fever and trying not to hack up a lung), am sick of take-out/eating out but no one here feels up to hunting down real plates, let alone cooking. The 1700 books I've catalogued and boxed are sitting in the great room, still in boxes. Hell, my keyboard tray still isn't installed on my desk yet. And I want to install some lights under my desk to light up my keyboard 'cause I still haven't seen a lighted/wired keyboard I like as much as the cordless one I have now.
(Well, perhaps one, but it's $80 or $100!)

Post-drafting, Day 3: I've been working up this post in bits and pieces, as I feel up to it. My keyboard tray (only recently lamented as un-installed) is now in place. My sinuses are driving me bat-shit-loco right now, between the sneezing, the runny nose and the nasal congestion.

There's one other thing I'm looking forward to my internet connection for: checking out the records on the house we sold in Queen Creek... Yeah, we stopped by there on...Saturday, was it? (The days are running together with this damn cold.) Get this: vacant. Not only vacant, with a lockbox, but stripped. Every light fixture, every appliance is gone. Even the mega-sized peephole we installed in the front-door is gone, leaving a gaping hole in the door. The yard looks like it hasn't been maintained in a number of months. I must admit to a high degree of curiosity here... What the hell happened?

Considering how much Queen Creek has changed, they might as well have re-named every street. They ripped out Rittenhouse Rd, which used to be a very straight NW-to-SE running road. It curved a slight bit to the south as it neared it's end, but not much. Now the damn road looks like a freaking spaghetti noodle. And the number of major chain stores going in mere miles from our old home is nothing short of stunning. It doesn't bode well for my own hunt for a piece of land to "get away from it all" (while still being local enough for Randy to work).

And finally, at the near-end of Day 3 of drafting this darn message, I'm actually in the form on my blog page, adding this last bit in... The modem arrived this afternoon and it took Randy over an hour on the phone with Qwest Tech Support to get it running. Fortunately, it seems to be quite the speed demon. Now, if I can just stop sneezing (and blowing my nose) long enough to type and do some web searches...

Of course, should I mention the expected secondary absence as I catch up on Ravelry? grin

If you're prone to a weak stomach, you may want to pass this post right on by.... I know I have trouble with things like this!

Dr. Bink will talk with us in detail about the surgery when we return for the suture-removal 14 days after the surgery. So far, Elijah is eating and drinking well, sleeping a lot...and starting to look really bored. We hold him and cuddle him when we can, but I think he wants to be up and playing. Fortunately, he knows his limits well enough right now and isn't really ready to be running and jumping just yet.

As for me, I've found myself with some enforced no-knitting time after a mis-understanding between Horatio and me. He turned to grab his rubber toy and instead got my thumb. Unfortunately, when a ferret is scared, they clench their jaws down, instead of release! All four fangs sank into my right thumb. When Randy helped me get Horatio free of my thumb, Horatio slipped and his fangs sliced across the palm of my left hand. The hand is annoying, but the thumb is the worst. It's been numb on the tip since the incident.

I tried to work on cleaning the oven out last night and managed to get my thumb bleeding again. Since then, some of the dead skin has begun to toughen up. Where the skin splits, it catches on sweaters and other things. So, I'm trying to keep it covered now.