Dumb Cats and Cute Kids

Almost immediately after I clicked "Publish Post" last week, I got up to check on my cat Doug becuase he was scratching himself. A lot. It was annoying, and I wanted to check him up close to ensure he wasn't bringing fleas into the house. What I discovered was a large, abscessed puncture wound in his side that he was scratching and licking. It was fucking gross, y'all. I immediately thought three things:

1. How had I not noticed this?! It was pretty obvious--especially since the fur around it was ostensibly gone. And it was gross. Did I mention that?
2. I needed to get his stupid ass to the vet ASAP to have it looked at.
3. I KNEW this kind of shit was going to start happening when we started letting him roam around outside, But what choice did we have? Keep him inside, meowyling and pacing and occasionally pissing on stuff to show us how mad he was? Or let him outside where he can roam, be happy, roll in the dirt, and potentially get injured. Sigh.

Got him in the vet that morning. And $320 later they'd examined him, sedated him, cleaned his wound, dosed him with antibiotics and put a fabric cone on his big, dumb head.

Behold:

Ugh. Luckily, he's been pretty tolerant of the damn thing and his wound is healing nicely. I take him back to the vet today to hopefully get his stitches out and cone removed. He'll be outside rolling in the dirt again by this weekend. Bastard.

Meanwhile, Diane has become obsessed with getting in the linen cabinet in our bathroom and sleeping on top of the towels.

Remind me again why I have these animals?



Getting more and more excited about the writing workshop in Portland. I got to meet a fellow Austinite who's going to the workshop as well. She's pretty great--my age, teaches improv, writing a novel. I'm looking forward to getting to know her better and having a familiar, friendly face there with me. The main thing I need to do now is to get my manuscript ready and submitted by 5/31. This will be the version that gets "workshopped" so it's very important that it be in good shape by then. Which means I've got a shit ton of work to do between now and late May. When will I find the time, people? I mean, I can barely find the time and energy to blog once a week these days, and when I do, it's at 5:00am in the morning when I've been unable to go back to sleep after a 4:00am trip to the bathroom.

Let's see...what else....

Oh! Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of The Geej's "Gotcha Day". And in celebration of that, here's a photo I took on Monday of the little toot:

Other than the fact that our deck is in serious need of a re-sealing, what do you see in this picture?

I see a child who as recently, and seemingly overnight, gone from "little girl" to "big girl", what with that long hair, those long limbs and her very self-aware posing for maximum cuteness.

I see a girly girl who is very concerned with what she wears (seriously?! It starts this early?!) but not old enough yet to eschew hand-me-downs (that dress is one that we just received from friends in a big batch of hand-me-downs received on Sunday--she was "modeling" it for me).

I see a whipsmart child who is headstrong and willful at times and very unsure and self-conscious at others.

I see a serious goofball.

I see my crossroads.