Dinah

There's something wrong with Dinah. On Thursday morning she didn't come downstairs with me when I got up, which I thought was strange, but didn't really think anything about it. I went ahead and put food down for her, but when Bob got home in the afternoon, he said it was still there. She didn't eat anything that evening, either, or Friday, and we started to get worried. She's started lying in the chair in the bedroom, which she doesn't normally do, rather than sleeping in bed with us, or she sleeps in the basement.

Yesterday, Saturday, when I got up I carried her downstairs, but she wouldn't eat, although she drank some water. She's lost weight, and she's unsteady on her feet. I had to go out yesterday to get my hair cut, and while I was out I bought some little cans of special, "gourmet" cat food to try to tempt her with (this is all sounding horribly familiar).

I got her to eat a little cream cheese off my finger last night, and Bob suggested we get some lunchmeat-type meat and see if that sounded good to her, so we went to the grocery store at 9:00 last night and bought sliced turkey. She wouldn't eat it, but she ate a little more cream cheese, and then she went down to the basement. I didn't sleep very well, I was worried about her. This morning I woke up and she was standing in the bedroom, heading for the bathroom to get a drink of water, I think.

I went in there with her, and waited while she drank, then carried her downstairs and gave her some catfood. It was a minced chicken and tuna dish with quite a bit of liquid, and she licked off all the juice, drank some water, and headed back for the basement. I went down and slept with her for a couple of hours until Bob got up to go to work. He got her to eat a little more, then when she headed for the basement again, I picked her up and sat her on my lap and petted her until she laid down, then sat there with her for about two hours until I had to get up to go to the bathroom. I tried to get her to stay in the chair while I went to the bathroom, put some laundry in, and got something to eat, but she wouldn't. She went upstairs to the chair in the bedroom.

The blanket from the bed in the basement had gotten wet--we had water in the basement this week, which is another story--and I had washed and dried it. I took it out of the dryer and rushed upstairs and put it on the bed, then picked her up and put her on it, thinking she would enjoy the warmth. She didn't seem to care much one way or the other, but she finally laid down. She's normally a talker, but she'll hardly say anything now, except a little pitiful cry when I talk to her.

I'll call the vet in the morning and see if I can bring her in. I suppose it could be something fixable, but we just can't spend a fortune on her like we did with Pyewacket, nor do we want to. Bob has said all along that we let Pyewacket linger too long, and he doesn't want to do that with Dinah. Not that I'm sure she's dying, but man, like I said, this all seems so familiar.

Project 365:

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Project 365

One of my resolutions for 2010 was to take a photograph every day. I joined an iPhone 365 group on Flickr, I installed an iPhone app called Project 365, I set up a Flickr set, and I've been posting the photos on my iPhone blog--all actions intended to keep me interested and involved, and to help me keep my resolution. So far, so good.

Here are the first 13 photos (click each thumbnail for fullsize version):

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Quiet evening

I went out to see my parents today, and my sister came by for a little while, so that was nice. I had lunch with them, then I came home and made sour cream chicken and carrot salad for dinner. Now I've got laundry going, Bob's upstairs watching television in his office, and Dinah is snoozing in the chair in the corner of the bedroom. A nice, quiet evening.

As soon as I finish writing here, I'm going to go upstairs and hole up in the bedroom and read Under the Dome on my iPhone. I'm about halfway through it, and really enjoying it.

It's apparently supposed to warm up some this week, so the several foot high piles of snow may melt sooner than we thought. I just hope that it doesn't get bitterly cold again before it dries up, or we'll have ice instead of snow, which I really don't like. I can deal with the snow, it's ice that scares me.

My picture-a-day Flickr set is growing. I've been playing around with quite a few iPhone photography apps. The two that I'm especially enjoying are Best Camera and Hipstamatic. This is a photo of my parents' house taken with Hipstamatic. Isn't it dramatic?

Next week I'm going to do a post on my iPhone blog about all of the various iPhone camera apps. The difference in the two I just mentioned is that with Best Camera, you take a picture like normal, then apply various filters to it. With Hipstamatic, you're taking the picture through the app, using different virtual lenses and films. I like them both, but I kind of like the randomness and unpredictability of the Hipstamatic pictures. My obsessive-compulsive self, though, is thinking about making a cheat sheet so I can remember exactly what effects each filter, lens, film, etc., produces.

Here's a portrait of Jojo that I made using Best Camera filters:

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Resolutions

I've always made New Year's resolutions, but seldom kept them. It was an exercise that was doomed to failure. This year, instead of resolving to do things that I'm pretty sure I won't actually do--eat healthier, lose weight, clean the house more (not that I ever resolved to do that), etc., I decided to resolve to do things that I would enjoy doing, along with a couple of things that I should do, but that aren't that egregious. My list, so far:

• Use reusable bags more
• Eat more cookies
• Watch more movies
• Read more books
• Write more
• Burn more candles
• Send more birthday cards
• Get more sleep
• Drink more water
• Take more pictures

Use more reusable bags: I resolve to use them for every grocery store trip. I bought four big canvas bags at Target a few months ago, and I've gotten pretty good at remembering to get them out of the trunk and take them in with me. I've also got a few nylon bags that can be folded up pretty small, and I always have one in my purse, as well as a couple in the car.

Eat more cookies: That one just means, don't worry about what I'm eating, don't be too serious. Have more fun.

Watch more movies/Read more books: A reminder to relax more--to get off the computer once in awhile and read a book, to relax, put a movie in the DVD player, and not work all the time.

Write more: I just submitted my journal to Amazon to be published in Kindle format, so if I expect people to pay $1.99/month for it, I'd better write a little more often. That's one motivation.

Burn more candles: This is sort of a "use the good china every day" resolution. I enjoy candles, but sometimes it seems like kind of a waste. I resolve to stop thinking like that, and do things that I enjoy, like burning candles, without worrying about the relatively small expense.

Send more birthday cards: I used to be very good at sending birthday cards and gifts to all the nieces and nephews, but in the last couple of years, I stopped. Part of it was because I almost never got a thank you card, or even a mention of it at all. But that shouldn't be a reason not to do it. So all of the nieces and nephews will get a card with a five dollar bill (or a Target gift card) in it this year. I already sent three!

Get more sleep: I tend to stay up way too late. Sometimes it's with intent--if Bob has to get up at dawn to go to work, I usually stay up until I'm sure he's asleep so I don't wake him up. But sometimes that's just an excuse. I resolve to get up and go to bed when I get sleepy, not to fall asleep in my chair or on the couch. Maybe that will make it easier to get up in the morning. It could happen.

Drink more water: This is the one that's health-based. I don't drink enough water, and I know that if I did, my skin wouldn't be so dry, and of course there are other health benefits as well, so I'm going to give it a good shot. I just have to be aware of it. I drink quite a bit of iced green tea at home in the evenings, but I don't always think about it at work.

Take more pictures: The iPhone has a pretty good camera, and I love taking photos with it. Lately I've gotten interested in photography apps that modify the photos in interesting ways; the most interesting, to me, are the ones that mimic vintage or toy cameras. I'll do a post with examples soon. I've committed to taking a photo a day, and created a Flickr set for them.

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Snow, snow, snow

I worked until around noon on Christmas Eve; it had started to snow very lightly. I left the office and ran a few errands--picked up some prescriptions at Target, got a coffee shop gift card for my father-in-law, bought some gift bags at the drugstore. By the time I got home at around 3:00, it had started snowing harder.

I mixed up a couple of batches of Chex party mix and got those in the oven, then started putting together some spinach dip, which is what I always take to holidays at Bob's parents' house. We had put up the Christmas tree the night before, and I had made about 8 dozen miniature cupcakes; I had left them out to cool, so I started frosting them while the party mix cooked.

Once the cupcakes were frosted, the party mix was out of the oven and cooling, and the spinach dip was in the refrigerator, I started wrapping presents. Bob was working until 7:00, so I figured I needed to get in the shower by about 6:00 to be ready to leave when he got home. By 6:00 I was hearing reports of dangerous driving conditions, but since Bob folks live extremely close to us, I wasn't worried about getting over there.

But my sister called and wondered if we were going to be able to get out to my family's Christmas on Christmas day. We were going to my brother's house, which is quite a ways away, and we needed to swing by and pick up my sister on the day, since she was having car trouble. My parents had already said that they didn't want to get out, even if someone came and picked them up. They were concerned about walking on the ice and snow, and I didn't blame them a bit. But it wouldn't really be Christmas if everyone except them was at my brother's.

We decided we'd talk on Christmas morning and figure out what to do. Then my mother-in-law called and asked when we were going to be there. I told her Bob was working (his dad knew that but hadn't told her), so we wouldn't be there until at least 7:30. She wasn't sure when everyone else would be there, but she said she'd just see us when we got there. When Bob called to say he was on his way home, I told him he might call her; he called me back and said that his dad had cancelled Christmas -- he didn't want everyone out on the roads.

It made sense, and I wasn't exactly surprised, but I had all that food . . . And I had all of my mother-in-law's gifts. I had done the shopping for his dad, wrapped everything, and was going to deliver them that night. When Bob got home, I said I didn't mind going out, but his mother wasn't going to have any gifts on Christmas Day. He said, well, he would just go over there and take them, so I threw a pair of sweatpants on under my robe (I'd taken a bath while I was waiting to see what was going to happen) and put together a bag of food--a plastic bag of crackers, a container of spinach dip, a pie plate full of little cupcakes, and the traditional Christmas Eve boiled shrimp that Bob had fixed the night before.

We drove over -- they live only a couple of miles away from us -- delivered the gifts and snacks, and came home to have our own Christmas. On Christmas morning I got up and called my sister before I started cooking. It looked like we had gotten about a foot of snow, and we agreed that it didn't make sense for everyone to get out on the road and risk having an accident, that we could always get together later. So I called my sister-in-law and asked her if she was okay with that, and she said that was fine, that maybe we could get together later in the weekend.

So we just had a quiet, low-key day at home, watching Christmas movies and snacking. In the middle of the afternoon our neighbor called and said that she had tried to leave, and had gotten her car stuck behind Bob's in the driveway (we share a driveway). So we put our coats on and went out and helped her dig her car out, and got it back in her garage, and Bob decided to go check out the road conditions, and go by Quick Trip for some soda.

About a half hour later instead of showing up at the back door, he rang the doorbell at the front of the house. He said that when he got home, there was a different car parked in the driveway, and he couldn't get to the garage. He said he didn't want to park on the street in case the snowplows came through, and guessed he'd go park in a church parking lot a mile or so away, and walk back. I said hang on, I'll get my coat and follow you over and drive you back, and then realized if he couldn't get in the driveway, I couldn't get out.

While he was gone, I got a call from the other neighbor saying that she had come home and hadn't been able to get up the driveway to her garage. I told her not to worry about it, that surely the lawn care people would show up and clean the driveways the next day. Bob had to be at work at 6:00 the next morning, so he had to get up early and walk to his car before he could drive to work. He was aggravated, but what could he do?

I kept checking throughout the day, but the car stayed there in the driveway. There are four households that share the double driveway, so none of us could get out. There wasn't anywhere I needed to be today, but I didn't want it to go on any longer. When Bob got home and the car was still there, and the snow plows hadn't been through, he said he guessed he was going to have to shovel the drive and get her out.

I came out, too, and we had maybe a third of the long driveway shoveled when the snowplows showed up. When they reached our driveway I ran in the house and called our neighbor and said she needed to get out there and move her car, that we had shoveled a path around it and the snowplows needed to get in and finish the drive.

I'm still not sure what we're going to do about Christmas, but at least I can get out of the driveway now.

The sentiment on the Christmas card yesterday, "Happy Merry Christmas," comes from something my nephew, who has Downs Syndrome, used to say. I think it was the Christmas version of "Happy Birhday."

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