Love you Patches

Today is a sad day for me, I had to take my cat Patches to be put to sleep. She had the sweetest disposition in the world and I miss her terribly, I was so lucky to have her!!!

xoxoxo to Patches....

And a big thank you to the best vet facilities in the entire world - they were so nice and so kind, the doctor was so wonderful, I couldn't have asked for more on such a terrible day. I highly recommend them:

West Chester Animal Hospital, 1140 Pottstown Pike, West Chester, PA 19380
(610) 696-3476

Beauty Lies in the Eye of the Beholder

Yeah yeah, so I thought I would post an update on my facial peel from earlier in the month (also known as: How I Learned to Love Putting Acid on my Face).

I got the peel on the tuesday before Halloween. If only I had planned better, I could have used it effectively as a halloween costume. But that night (halloween) was the last night I would put makeup on for about a week, maybe it was more. That weekend it started.......you know.....

the

peeling.

At first it was just a little bit, around the corners of my mouth. Then it spread, around my eyes, my cheeks, my chin, my ears, my EYEBROWS. Did she pour acid onto my eyebrows and ears? I didn't really recall that from the spa appointment. I could feel my skin crack when I opened my mouth!!!!! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! I'm so disgusting! What is wrong with us as a society that we would do stuff like this to ourselves?????

I stayed in all weekend, I looked like I should have been in a burn unit and really I probably should have gone to a doctor or something. My face was so HOT it burnt the back of my hands when I would press them against my face. I put washclothes in freezing cold water and just pressed it against my face. I popped advil like candy for the anti-inflammatory stuff.

Nothing worked.

And I had done this to myself.

Back to work on Monday, sitting in my darkened office. Now people liked to joke around with me, ha ha, how's your face? At least I know now I could get any cosmetic procedure and it wouldn't freak out these guys I work with. Their wives have trained them well.

I learned to wash my face in the morning...ahhhhhhhhh, that got all the flakes of skin off, then all day, NO TOUCHING OF THE FACE! No TOUCHING, no scratching, no rubbing, no matter HOW MUCH IT ITCHED. Because if one touched the face, then it started falling off. Then that night, speed home from work and ahhhhhhhh rub the washcloth on my face while I washed it. But not too much, because then the face would get all hot and irritated again. Repeat this cycle, day after day.

I'm a slow healer. And my skin was pretty mad at me.

Finally, the beginning of the next week I had a meeting at work with other companies we partner with, and thank GOODNESS by then it was safe to put the makeup back on.

And I have to say......my face (by then, two weeks later) was sooooooo smooth and wonderful. Maybe....... it wasn't so bad after all and I should get more peels. In the future. Maybe by somebody else. Maybe. And if I bring that up to any of you, remind me of this. Please. Because I probably will do another one, I'm good like that.....

So anyhoo, on another note, a friend of mine just went and got eyeliner tattooed on her eyelids.

Hmm.

Once you get past the initial feeling of gut-wrenching revulsion concerning the idea of needles poking at your eyes repeatedly and in a permanent manner.....

maybe that's not such a bad idea.

I'll be monitoring her healing process closely because I sure would love not to have to put on stupid eyeliner anymore. I really hate putting on makeup because you have to do it every day. Every day! Every single day! Otherwise, people would see what you really look like!

Of course, now the guys I work with know what I really look like, and they still talk to me, (even when I had pieces of skin falling off my burnt face) but really they don't count. They are all techie engineery types who talk about physics and math stuff like I talk about how much I hate Speidi and how much I'm rooting for Britney. They have no idea what's normal anyway. I could tell them anything.

:-)



more animals

"I love cats because I love my home, and after a while they become its visible soul."

Well, my cat Patches does not seem to be doing so well, and I am twisting myself in knots about what to do, if anything. She was doing SO well after the surgery at the beginning of october, she was running up the stairs with me seeing if she could trip me just like the old days. But then the friday before last I suddenly realized she wasn't doing much, as in all I ever saw her doing was sleep, and if I did catch her going up or down the stairs, she did it reeaall slow. And she doesn't jump up or down onto or off of things anymore, she seems to jump up okay, but jumping down she makes a little noise. What that means is that she hasn't been sleeping with me at night for the last several nights. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, since I am not the deepest sleeper, but the fact is, I miss her and I'm worrying about her, and I don't know how she feels for sure since she can't tell me.

:-(

I think her quality of life is mostly okay, her eyes are bright, she purrs when I pet her, she absolutely without fail will come down the stairs if I open a can of wet food (which of course I have been every day now), she seems to be grooming herself, it's just like she suddenly became a 20-year-old cat overnight rather than a 9-year-old one.

I was wondering if maybe she fell while I was at work one day, but I don't know. I checked her all over, didn't find anything obvious that looked out of place, no bones sticking out, no biting me if I touched her somewhere. But she seems like her left back leg is a little sensitive, she just makes a little noise at me if I touch it. Arthritis? How could it come on so suddenly? And then I worry that maybe the cancer just spread aggressively somewhere internally, I just don't know. And of course I hate to torture her by lugging her over to the vet again so soon. I'm afraid that the day I do that, it will be her last day.....

I adopted her May of 2000 from spay and save, I think they must have really underestimated when they told me her age. Or maybe this is it. Poor little thing. She has the best personality in a cat that I have ever come across, so sweet, doesn't hold a grudge, purrs like a little motorboat, just wants to be petted and loved (and fed wet food), and she loves (loved) sleeping next to me in bed with her head on my pillow too. I hope she's back sometime.

I feel like a dork agonizing over her quality of life, because after all, she is not a human, she's a cat, but I am responsible for her and I don't want her to suffer needlessly just because I don't want to be without her.

Poop poop poop.

Poop.

"You bet your sweet bippy. "

A million years ago when I was little I would spend the summers at my grandparents house. I would stay up late to watch Night Gallery on channel 17. I loved Night Gallery. One that always stuck in my mind was one were a lady was given a pin that looked like a bug and eventually of course it ate her up, but what stayed in my mind was one of the last scenes that showed this huge fake bug the size of a small buick (now that it had eaten her) crossing a misty road late at night. It was one of the silliest things I'd ever seen. But I still loved Night Gallery. I always thought that meant I would automatically love Twilight Zone, since it's still Rod Serling, but no, Twilight Zone just doesn't always do it for me.

There, I said it.

I'm sure I'm going to be kicked out of some club, but it's true, I prefer the cheesy technicolor horror over the black and white cheesy morality plays. So shoot me. I still love Star Trek, Tales from the Darkside and Twilight Zone the Movie, okay?

But actually my point about Night Gallery was that before it came on, I had to sit through re-runs of Laugh-In. So there I was, what, 9 years old, sitting in a darkened living room, 10 inches from the TV screen (which is still how I enjoy watching tv), sitting through Laugh-In, getting the more obvious slapstick jokes, but having most jokes whiz past my ears. I probably actually got more of them than I had any business to, because I also grew up reading my Dad's old Mad magazines, so I was way more familiar with the counter-culture of the 60s and 70s than most normal 9 year old girls. Then again, I never was normal. :-D Thank goodness!

So I know what sock it to me is, I know what the fickle finger of fate is, I know about the judge, the guy on the tricycle, and the nazi guy.

And joy of joys, I found some of it on youtube! Yay youtube!!!!!