Status Update plus Music: She Cries Your Name

It's been a busy weekend and I'm weirdly off-schedule and strung out, but that's kind of par for this time of year. The boys are about to be finished with school, Beautiful Wife is eyeballs-deep in finishing her grading for the semester, and I'm wishing I'd put in for some time off. (I am putting in for some time off in January when the boys go back to school, though.)

We went to go see the trains down at Northpark Mall on Saturday, and that was fun -- at least, the trains themselves were fun. I love all the little details in the landscapes, all the funny little Easter eggs that get put in the models. (I'd have some pictures to share, but I gave Secondborn my phone to play with on the ride down, and he left it in the car, so... no pictures.) Traffic was insane, parking was even crazier, and we timed it poorly enough that we wound up missing Firstborn's music lesson. Oh, and Beautiful Wife decided to come with us, which to my mind kind of defeated the purpose of the exercise (which was to give her some time with the house all to herself, because grading). Still, I think we handled it pretty well, it was just a lot more stressful than it should have been.

I still recommend seeing the trains if you're in the area, just not on a Saturday afternoon.

I'm so not ready to start this week, but here we are so here we go. I hope the rest of you feel more combobulated than I do.

Now, here's Beth Orton with a rather haunting little number:

Music: I Want the World to Stop

Belle and Sebastian:

The sum of my life's wisdom

The sum of my life's wisdom, compiled:

1. "I hope to God I'm making the right decision under the circumstances, but who the hell really knows?" is a succinct summary of the entire experience of being an adult.
2. A big part of being a parent is never having time to just go hide in a hole and freak out.
3. Parenting always comes back to the poop. It never really *stops* being about the poop, especially with pets. There is no escaping the poop.
4. Frying pans without fires are few and far between. (I might have stolen that last one.)

This... this is the legacy and the lore that I will share with my children, and my children's children.

Pet Health Update

So, the vet looked the cat Astrophe over and declared that as far as she could see, his only real problem was that he was constipated. He's been given some fluids and an enema. (If I have to know that, you do too.) We're basically supposed to keep him hydrated and dose him regularly with a little bit of Miralax.

So I did make the right call, which is a profound relief.

Also? Once again, parenting is all about the poop.

Pet Health Problems

I hate making decisions about elderly animals, and I especially hate that I find myself in a position where I have to weigh money along with love and even morality. (You should take the previous sentence as a trigger warning.)

Our one remaining cat is an elderly black-and-white tuxedo-kitty named Astrophe. I originally found him as a half-grown kitten under a bush in east Texas. He's been with us through two apartments, moving to a house, the arrival of Firstborn and then Secondborn, and their entire childhoods. (Firstborn, at the time of this writing, is twelve; Secondborn is eight. They are very attached to the cat.) He is sometimes an annoying kitty, as he's prone to meowing loudly in the middle of the night for reasons the rest of us can only occasionally decipher, but he's also very affectionate.

For about the last year, he's been showing his age: he doesn't move as fast as he used to, his legs don't always support him the way they used to, he sometimes has trouble pooping, and he's taken to a diet of easy-to-digest-for-older-cats kibble balanced with semi-liquid foods (gravy, bisque, and something labelled "wet cat treats"). When you hold him, he's all skin and bones, with only fur for padding.

And as of yesterday morning, he's also leaking. Specifically, he's leaking some kind of fluid from his butt. It looks watery, but with some blood in it. A bit of looking on Google suggests that it's probably an issue with his anal glands, which might be relatively simple to fix or might require anything from antibiotics up to surgery.

If it's surgery, or even expensive antibiotics, we can't afford it. If it's something else, or if he has other health issues as well, then... we very probably can't afford it.

Unfortunately, I need to be at work today and my beautiful wife is teaching classes and trying to wrap up grading for her semester, which means the only way to get the cat looked over immediately is to drop him off. The cat hasn't been out of our house in at least three years; leaving him at the vet is probably going to freak him out. But I don't want to wait until Saturday; waiting could easily turn a simple problem into a major issue -- plus, the vet would have less time to look at him on Saturday, even if we could squeeze an appointment in.

So, despite some serious misgivings, I've dropped the cat at the veterinary clinic and asked the vet to call me once she's had a chance to look him over and has some idea of what we may want to do next. I have no idea if that's the right decision, and I hate that feeling. And I hate the fact that Can we afford to have him treated? is such a big concern, even though the immediate follow-up question is Even if we can, are we sure we should?

It may very well be that we'll end up putting him down. He's a very elderly cat, and it might be kinder to him. But we'll have to see what the vet thinks, and if it does come to that we'll schedule it for a time when we can be there with him. And in the meantime I'll just keep reminding myself that I'm making the best choices I can with the information and resources I have, and that sometimes all you can do is try to find the less-bad outcome.

This would all be a lot easier if I could put Astrophe on my insurance alongside the boys.

Music: MainFrame

I'm going to be tied up with a software upgrade (on a test system, thankfully) all day, so in honor of my pain I'm going to share this song from the "Earworm" mission in the Claptastic Voyage DLC for Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel.

Sorry/Not Sorry.

Dallas World Aquarium

It's the beginning of December. Beautiful Wife is busy grading, and has thereby discovered her mutant power of being surrounded by spikes of spirit energy that stab anybody who gets too close or otherwise attracts her attention. She needs time -- and solitude -- so she can make some progress, but the campus is closed on Sundays and there aren't a lot of other places to go. What to do?

Well, for my part, the answer was "bundle both boys into the car and flee the house!" Only we needed to stay fled for, I don't know, at least five hours. Twelve would be preferable. So... where to go?

Yesterday's solution was the Dallas World Aquarium. The boys have been there before, but it's an amazing place to walk around and there's always something you didn't notice before. (Secondborn: "Look! I found a secret door!" ...Which the staff uses to access the cages, but yeah: pretty cool. Not nearly as funny as having a manta ray swim up behind him in the Great Glass Underwater Tunnel and scare him right off the ledge, but pretty cool.) (Firstborn, meanwhile, wandered around pointing things out to anyone who got in range like some sort of miniature museum guide: "Look! The vampire bats are cuddling while they hang from the ceiling. They're soooo cuuuute! Cuddle-bats! Look! Right up there!")

So, y'know, it went pretty well. And it did keep us out for a good five and a half hours, though some of that was travel time.

Anyway, next Saturday I'm taking them to the Dallas Zoo if the weather holds. I'm going to see if I can gather my father on the way, and if any of you who live nearby want to join us, well... drop me a line, we'll make an outing of it. (The comments here work fine, or if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you can send a message that way.) Being the crowd-averse person I am, I'll be aiming to get there when it opens at 9:00 a.m. so we can get started before it really fills up. (Or maybe, if the dark gods favor me, it won't fill up.)

Onward and upwards! Nothing but good times ahead!