"A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes..."

Well....i kinda hope not! Last night i had a crazy dream. Apparently i am an undercover spy. I was at home and suddenly had the knowledge that an assassin was coming to kill me....only i couldn't find my gun *anywhere.* I was frantically running around the house looking in all the closets, under the beds, under couch cushions. All the completely normal places a spy would put their gun. Perhaps it fell between the couch cushions alongside my Tivo remote? At this point the assassin has shown up because he's shot at me a couple times but for whatever reason is preoccupied and hasn't actually been able to kill me yet. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my gun so it'll be a fair fight. Nice assassins do that, you know. I yell across the house to Jake, "Where's my gun?" (hey i didn't say this was a logical dream) and he tells me it's hidden in the fridge. I rip open the refrigerator door and am throwing things all over the floor desperately trying to find my gun, but it's nowhere to be found. I yell "I can't find it! Where in the fridge?!" and he responds (in an annoyed voice) "It's in there! Just look for it." I assume that's about the time the assassin decides i'm taking entirely too long to retrieve my gun and i get shot because then i wake up. I can't believe Jake let me die because he couldn't be bothered to tell me where he hid my gun!!

I'm guessing the Jake part came about because whenever he's playing Warcraft and i ask him a question he either ignores me or gets all annoyed and makes a grand gesture of taking his headphones off so he can hear me. But why was i a spy with a bounty on my head? I haven't watched Burn Notice recently...

I would totally suck as a spy, and there was probably good reason for Jake to hide the gun because i would be more dangerous to myself than to an intruder with one. But i was like Sarah from the tv show Chuck...only a little more clumsy.

Why Is Everyone Sick?

There's a lot going on medically this week. My friend Jenny is 31 weeks pregnant and is currently in the hospital. She's been having high blood pressure and low platelet counts. The doctor suspects Abigail will make an appearance this week, but we're praying she can stay in utero as long as is safe for mommy and baby! I can't wait to meet her though.

Tomorrow we go for Dala's thyroid checkup. They'll have to do bloodwork and stuff so i doubt we'll know anything for a couple days. I'm still conflicted about what treatment to pursue. And now i'm wondering if i need to get Anakin checked. Now that Dala is eating "normally" (i guess?) i've noticed how much more Anakin eats and how he begs for food so much more. He's definitely not losing weight though; if anything he's packing on the pounds! Dala also seems a lot less active now...she lays around and sleeps a lot more. I'm trying to figure out if she was more active before due to the hyperactive thyroid and is therefore now normally lazy, or if this lethargy is excessive. I really need a veterinarian friend....

Tuesday I go with Grandmom to find out what's going on with her enlarged ovary. They did an ultrasound last week and we're meeting with the doctor to find out the results. I'm praying it's nothing bad. To add insult to injury the appointment is at 9:45am. And we all know how much i just love mornings.

Bad Mood

This is just not my week. After enjoying a week of vacation i started back to work. Nothing especially bad at work, i just have the my-vacation-is-over associated depression. It just seems like all the stupid little things *really* annoy me easily at both work and home. So in the midst of my foul mood my Grandmom went to have the CT scan she gets every 3 months. She's been in remission from pancreatic cancer for a year and a half now, which is virtually unheard of. Pancreatic cancer has almost a 0% cure rate (hence the scans). Well everything is still looking good as far as that is concerned....except that now the doctor noted that she has an enlarged ovary. And the most likely cause for this in a postmenopausal woman? Ovarian cancer. First she had those fever and chills "spells" that sent her to the hospital over and over. She recovered from that. Then they discovered she had HepB. We just got that under control. And now this? She goes for an ultrasound tomorrow and will find out next week what's up. I just hope it's some weird fluke or something completely unremarkable. We can't take much more of this!

Dala is doing really well on her thyroid medicine. We've discovered that her chewing off her belly fur was most likely related. Ever since we've got the thyroid issue under control she's stopped chewing it and the fur is growing back. But the food! She's gone from eating and eating and eating....to not eating enough! Now when we feed her the little Fancy Feast can she'll barely even eat half of it. We're going back for her checkup at the beginning of next week. I'm really stressed about the stupid radioiodine thing. I keep flip-flopping about what i want to do since she's doing so well on the pills and why fix what's not broken? But they aren't a cure like the iodine...

Anyone want to go for a spa day? :P

A Picture of Ally and Lucas

Things That Make Me Giggle

Jake is constantly complaining about my OCD habit of *always* having to have a bite of what he's eating or a sip of what he's drinking. Seriously, it's so bad even *i* notice it. And i do it every day, all day long. But it's ok because he's my husband and knows this quirk so he just pours extra drink or whatever. Well tonight he made me my own piece of toast while he was making his midnight breakfast....only *he* took a bite out of mine for once. And it was the best part! I love the middle :(

Dala's thyroid medicine is definitely working. She's gone from eating a whole can of food and begging and begging for more.....to eating only a half can of food and begging for more. She now knows that she gets a tuna snack (a spoonful of tunafish) to take her medicine, so she just stops eating canned food when she's full enough and starts begging for her tuna! So tonight i picked up her plate and kept it. An hour later when she was begging for tuna i put her canned food in front of her...and she turned up her nose at it. But since she needed her medicine i made her tuna and she ate it right up. THEN she begged for more food. So i gave her the canned food again, but she snubbed it again. She wanted dry food this time! *sigh* I had forgotten that she's picky when she's not starving from an over-active thyroid. We go next week to see where her levels are at and discuss the radioiodine.

Tonight was also play time.

Here's my version of playing:

And Dala's version of playing. (She looks bored but that's just because of the flash. She actually shredded my invoice paper and attacked the invisible bugs in the box.)

Are Toes Really That Important?

I hope not because i can't seem to stop severely injuring them. It's not like i've suddenly become clumsy...i've been that way my entire life! Anyway, this time my pinkie toe is all black and blue from slamming it into the cat scratching post. I know when i was an intern on rotations i got a bone density test and it was really bad....i guess maybe i should take a calcium supplement or something.

My computer has driven me nuts with it's slowness to the point where i finally broke down and ordered a new video card and power supply. My old card (a Nvidia 7 series) is outdated but i didn't think it was *that* bad. I hope this fixes the problem because it's about the only thing other than RAM that i know how to change. It arrives Thursday and i can't wait!

TV's new fall season starts in less than a month! There are some really good new show prospects and i can't wait. If only i had a new tivo...

Vacation

I am officially on vacation for a whole week! We don't have plans to go anywhere so i'm taking this time to clear my Tivo, read some books.....and get addicted to Warcraft again thanks to Ally. I'm also staying up way too late, but that's nothing unusual.

I think we're going to pursue the radioiodine treatment for Dala. From everything i've read it's the best solution. We'll do the pills for 3 weeks to get her thyroid levels down to normal and make sure she doesn't have any kidney problems, then we'll take her to get the treatment. I called the specialist vet and found out that they'll only have to keep her about 4-5 days, so at least she won't have to be gone so long. BUT.....i also found out that for 2 weeks after we bring her home i have to stay at least 3-6 feet away from her at *all* times because i'm of childbearing age. Does that mean i can't even pet her or hug her when she comes home?? I'll have to research that more. Anyway, because of this and in combination with the whole swine flu thing, i guess i'll skip a month or two of trying to get pregnant. And by "skip" i mean i'm not doing all the craziness of ovulation tests and saliva microscopes and stuff. I'll track my temp just to see if my cycles are getting any more normal, but that's it. Watch me "accidentally" get pregnant now, that would just figure.

Little Brothers Are Engaged!

So Jefferey got engaged a few months back and I just found out that Phillip proposed to his girlfriend (and she accepted) yesterday! Awww, they're growing up so fast. Here is Kristyn's new ring...he did a great job picking it out because it's gorgeous!

Vet Visits Suck

I hate taking my poor kitties to the vet. They know as soon as the cat carrier comes out and they put stick all 4 feet out in every direction to avoid going in it. Lately Dala has been eating....and eating...and eating! She'll polish off an entire can of cat food and then immediately beg for more, yet she's losing weight. I suspected she might have a thyroid problem so we took her to the vet and sure enough my suspicions were confirmed. She most likely has a benign tumor on her thyroid gland that's the source of all her problems. I'm conflicted on which treatment to go with, though:

1) Medication that is very cheap but I have to give her a pill twice a day every day for the rest of her life, plus periodic blood monitoring.

2) An injection of radioactive iodine that requires no surgery or anesthesia and has relatively no side effects. This is (95% of the time) a cure and only has to be done once. The drawbacks? It's really expensive and she'll have to stay at the hospital for 1-2 weeks and we can't visit because she'll be radioactive.

My vet recommends the radioactive iodine. I have to say i'm leaning toward that option but the thing that bothers me the most about it is having to leave her alone for that long. When Anakin got his first urinary blockage they kept him at the emergency vet for about 36-48 hours. When we visited him less than 24 hours into it he looked so awful it scarred me for life. He had a cone around his head so he couldn't pull out IVs, and he was sooo sad and depressed looking. He wouldn't eat anything (and he lives for food...it's his favorite thing in the world). I guess he thought we had left him there because he perked up the second he saw us and ate his food. I felt so awful i made them release him early and told them i'd monitor him at home. Leaving Dala with a bunch of doctors and needles for a week or two while she's radioactive and not being able to explain (obviously) why is going to be ten times worse. And i can't even visit or negotiate an early release? Man this is going to suck...

Gray Hair

"By age 50, most people can expect 50 percent of their hair to be gray..."

I get all my news and other information from AOL's welcome screen. Today i just read an article on the Facts and Myths of gray hair. Did you know that white people start getting gray hair in their 30s?! That's entirely too soon for me! I thought gray hair didn't come until waaay later. And i've never really thought about it, but the article also says gray hair is harder to dye. This news is no bueno.

Facts and Myths on Gray Hair

Tivo

They announced in August of last year that Tivo and Directv are teaming up again to make an HD Tivo Directv box. I was sooooo excited! I've been stubbornly refusing to get HD tv because that would require me to no longer have a Tivo and instead have to use Directv's crummy dvr. But now my giddy excitement has turned into months and months of waiting with no new news. The latest? "Sometime in 2010"....I mean, really? It's not like this is new technology, it shouldn't take 2 years to develop!! Anyway, i just signed up for Beta trials on Tivo's website. I have no idea what exactly they beta test, but i'm hoping since i'm one of the dwindling few who still have an old-school Directv Tivo box that i'll get to beta this new one. Maybe. Hopefully. Fingers crossed! Now all i have to do is wait to get an email.....*if* they decide to let me test anything.

I Miss My Fluffy

A lot. :*(