Random Sadness and Stress.

OK, so, this has been a really stressful month for me. There's been a lot of stuff going on on a personal front, which I won't get into here because the part that's mine to work through I'm not willing to share with anybody besides the few who already heard it all (and I'm probably going to be working through it for a LONG time; there is a lot of anger and sadness and all kinds of other negative emotions happening in my body right now). And the parts that aren't mine? Well, it's not really my place to share them; and anyway sharing wouldn't HELP the situation, and might, in fact, end up making things worse, sooo... radio silence it is.

In the let's see how much we can pile on to make life otherwise difficult category... well, let's see. Both vehicles have been needing work. The Jeep has, well, mushy brakes, but DH said they just need to be bled a little and they'll be fine. Well, OK, but that's not really something I can do for myself, so I'm gonna have to take it in somewhere. & since the brakes make me uncomfortable I won't drive the kids, so I haven't even so much as STARTED the Jeep in a couple of months, sooo...the battery's dead. & when I tried to jump it...well, let's just say it was a massive, monumental failure. Theoretically we have a charger somewhere; I may try that later, but if it doesn't work...well, I've never actually had to remove/replace a car battery before. So that will be interesting.

Since it's a (theoretically) quick & easy fix -- the brakes, anyway -- I want to get that done before I take the minivan in, because I have a feeling (a sinking feeling deep in my gut) that it's not going to be as easy a fix. It has been making this weird clunking, almost grinding noise. Not all the time, just on left turns. And not ALL left turns, just those where I his the gas pedal partway through the turns. So. In case it turns out to be long & involved, I want the Jeep working so I can still do grocery shopping & run errands & pick up kids & all that fun stuff.

Speaking of errands...

One errand I think I'm going to have to run is to take my cat to the vet. He's about 15 years old, and he's been kind of showing his age lately, getting slower and skinnier. But over the last couple of days he has gone seriously downhill. He's gaunt, he doesn't seem to eat or drink, he has bladder control issues, and he can't quite seem to make it if he tries to jump up on anything higher than my knee. His coat looks ungroomed, and he's...It looks like he's bleeding from random places. Like his gums; and his sleep-gunk is all bloody-looking...I think my poor old man is going into renal failure. And I cannot get him a vet appointment, and even if I can, if I'm right, there's nothing that can really be done, so I'm going to be losing my very dearly beloved friend. And it's killing me, because I have no one to hold me and hug me, except the kids. And when I talked to them about it, they just wanted to know how soon we can get a new kitten because "We should have an even number of pets, Mom. I prefer it that way."

So. Yeah. I'm here. I'm coping, barely.

I will admit to wanting to drop the kids on my mom and run away. If she didn't live so far away, I probably would.

It occurs to me that I have mentioned the kids (a.k.a. the Ravening Barbarian Horde -- doing great, btw, the boys are lounging around in their underwear all day until forced to get dressed, just like Daddy, and the girl is grounded for taking a foray into my seldom-used stash of make-up when she was supposed to be cleaning the bathroom she shares with her brothers) and the books (hoping to get around to a couple of reviews this week; I'm participating in a couple of group reads over on Goodreads, and of course have done some fairly copious reading besides that. I'm better at keeping up with reviews on Goodreads than I am here...) but the cats haven't made much of an appearance yet. Except Stella -- the grey thing up and to your right. Her story will come one day. But first, the gorgeous black mini-panther (which, yes, I know, is not an actual type of cat. Per Wikipedia, it's a melanistic type of another large cat -- here in North America, that would be either a jaguar or a cougar. And "melanistic" refers to the atypical all-over dark pigmentation. See, you learned something. "Any day in which you learn something isn't a complete loss." --Belgarath the Sorcerer, David Eddings.)  (Detour over. I promise.) *Aaaanyway.*

That black --mostly; you can't see them all in the picture but he had three patches of white on his throat, chest and belly -- kitty is Gumbo. When I was in high school, my mom found him in a ditch by the side of the road. She took him home, bathed him (several times, to get rid of all the dirt and blood and ick), and committed the ultimate indignity of taking him to the vet. He was pre-weaned, so we ended up feeding him baby formula with a medicine dropper for a few weeks. Luckily, Mom works at the local college in the science department, so she just took him to work and he rode around in various people's lab coat pockets until he was weaned. He also had a broken tail, and it was amputated almost completely. He went from a scrap of black fur in the palm of my hand to a hugely muscular nearly 20 pounds of cat, with 2 inches of tail. You know how cats' tails poof out when they're angry? Imagine a big cat with a bottle brush on the end of its spine. Too funny.

Gumbo was, to me, the best cat ever. We bonded over baby formula, and he decided I was his Human. He would attack anyone else (especially if they dared get out of bed after dark) but me, he snuggled. His favorite place to be was snuggled down the length of my side with my arm around him and his head on my shoulder, purring till I fell asleep. He also had a little trick: when I was sitting he'd climb on my lap and stretch upward till he could snuggle his head under my chin. I would put my fingers against his throat to feel the vibrations as he purred, and when I spoke to him, he would put his paw up agains my throat in the same gesture. Sadly, when he was about 2 years old, I went away to college for my freshman year. A week or two before I left, he disappeared. I was a little worried and upset, but not too much; he had been known to go off on his own before, usually when stuff was going on (family vacations made him angry!). Sadly, that was the last anyone saw of him until I had been gone about  6 weeks, when my dad found his poor body behind a trash can in some undergrowth. We're not entirely sure, but suspect he was hit by a car and suffered internal injuries, and hid himself away to lick his wounds. No one else was as close to him as I was, but we all still miss him. His fur always had this wonderful smell, like fall leaves.

Love you, kitty!