Still alive…

yeah. Still alive. Once I fall out of the habit of regularly updating, it is so hard to get started again. Several times, I though, I need to update. I want to update, but then it was already fairly late, and so much time past. Makes me wonder if I have enough time because sleep is important too. And then I don’t end up updating, and even more has happened.

Not that I live such an exciting life. Far from it. I go to work, come home, play with the computer, write for my SIMs, play Facebook games, snuggle with the Ladies, go to bed and repeat it all again the next day.

One minor, major thing…. this is the last entry that I will cross post to blanhe2.missingd-x.com, because Codexed, now has an RSS feed that you can add to your feedreaders instead! WOOHOO!! It has taken a long time, but there it is! If I don’t cross post here, at missingd-x.com, it will also not show up on a friends-list anymore. That syndication was what I had set up for blanhe2feed. I am no longer (and haven’t been for some time) a paying member of LJ, so can not create a new feed. If someone wants to create it for me, feel free, just let me know what it is, and I will cross post that so anyone exclusively following me at LJ will still get to see it then.

Sooooo…. after this entry, I will solely be at codexed.

In the mean time… I managed to survive September, despite my assistant / program coordinator being on honeymoon. In total he was gone for 3 weeks (gotta love those 30 vacation days we get in Germany every year). The first two weeks I sort of managed… but by the third week, I was fading. I started to wonder how I managed the workload on my own for 11 months before he started. Badly, I guess. It didn’t help that on the Monday night of that third week, I was given my annual flu shot (without the piggy vaccine, thank you very much). I didn’t fall ill, but I could tell my immune system was having a hard time (despite it not being a live-virus).

I have been making cards again, now that my craft room is finally finished enough for it, and I managed to organise myself and my stuff in it enough. I hadn’t realised how much I had missed it. The Ladies have been doing quite well, all in all. I went back to the vet with Saavik as ordered after about 4 weeks. I said it seemed to be going ok, not worse in any case. I did mention that she seemed to be going off her food a little. So the vet suggested halving the dose of meds she is getting for her tumour. Five, six days later, she was having big trouble peeing. I felt so bad for her, by the sixth day it was Saturday and no vet, so I decided to go to the higher dose again, and she recovered quite quickly. About 10 days later, she had to have her next ultra sound, and based on how bad she’d been peeing the week before, I feared that it was worse… it wasn’t! In fact, it looked MUCH better. The vet was sooo happy! And so was I of course. Instructions were to keep her on the dose that I was giving her and come back by the end of the year for another check up.

She seems happy and not suffering, of course, after throwing up yesterday, the food with the meds, and I wasn’t sure if she’d actually eaten the meds the day before, she struggled majorly again this morning with the peeing, so I gave her the meds in a bit of milk this morning, and by the evening it seemed to be improving again. It does seem to have a direct affect and quite quickly, so I think I will continue to give it to her in a bit of milk, since I am sure with that that she’ll take it all. The meds can be hard on the stomach and bowels apparently. So far, so good, and I hope she will stay happy and not suffering for a long time to come!

Saavik has been VERY snuggly since last weekend. She’s up on top of me four, five times per evening, for 10-20 minutes each time. Much more than before I drove to NL for the weekend. It was sooooo good to see the family, and especially Mickey, again! He is sooooo cute at 4 months!

He had been having some major problems with cramps, and it turned out that he is lactose intolerant. So Sandra has to be very careful with that she eats and drinks. No more cow milk and cheese for her. At least for the time being. They also found out that he had a slight misalignment in his neck and one in his lower spine, after those were corrected he has been a much happier baby. He had been crying a lot, especially with those cramps. It certainly has eased up a bit for Ton and San as a result. All they need now is for Mickey to start sleeping through the night better.

As for my health… hard to judge. I was doing reasonable, but this last week has seen me struggle with tiredness a lot again. I felt worse than the week before, and was coughing and had more of a runny nose than the week before. Thankfully, I was able to sleep in on two days… sleep till 8 am, get to work for about 8:45, have breakfast while reading emails at work . That allowed me to sleep for 9 hours on week days… and I needed it. This weekend, Friday night, 9 hours. And yesterday, I found 4 more of the 16 mg prednisone tablets from last year. Good timing! I had actually made a long to do list, I tried to split the tablet into 4 pieces, managed only 3, so I took the larger of the three yesterday morning and actually felt normal! That tells me I am not well… if I have to take 6-7 mg of a steroid to feel ok. I promptly slept 10 hours last night. To my amazement, I didn’t wake up until 11:30 this morning! Thankfully, it was only 10:30 because Europe went back to normal winter time. I took one of the two smaller pieces, about 5 mg I suspect, and still felt pretty tired. I didn’t get much done today. I plan to take the other piece tomorrow. I do have an appointment with my GP tomorrow after work.

And that brings me to my last topic… that gastric banding letter. With Krisz’s help I wrote a kick ass letter. And I still haven’t sent the damn thing! I need to put an eating journal to go with it (if I don’t that is the first thing they will ask for, they did last time, 2 years ago). I am not sure what is holding me back. The fact that I have to publicly admit to some stranger that I need help losing weight. That I can’t do it on my own. Of course, there is the fear of the rejection of it. I am regaining the 10 kg I lost twice already this year. I am so sick and tired of it. I don’t have the energy to worry about what I eat or not eat. Yet, I can barely walk, my asthma is worse at the moment, my knees ache. I look a mess, I barely fit into my clothes and I can barely get any bigger ones…. what is holding me back? I know the Doc is going to ask me about the letter. I had promised to do it back in early September. We are now approaching November and I still haven’t gotten off that fat bum of mine to get my act in order.

Posted in family, felines, food, musings, weight loss, work musings | 1 Comment »

Ms Spock is absolutely crazy!!!!

Certifiable… Nuts…. I am at a loss of words how to describe the latest antics of Ms Adventerous… She has NO FEAR!

Yesterday, after having spent most of the day outside, both Ladies came in and I closed the door around 6 pm, I fed them and the idea was that they would stay in now. In my bedroom, I had opened the one window as far as it would go to get some lovely fresh air in… What I hadn’t realised was that the bedroom door wasn’t quite closed properly, and Ms Spock is clever with doors that aren’t shut properly.

Saavik doesn’t know what to do with them, but Spock will try and sometimes succeed depending on how well the door is shut… So, I am sitting in my command chair, feet up, laptop on my lap, working on a SIM report I think or some Academy stuff… in any case, all of a sudden, I see this ball of fur coming down… not landing on the patio furniture that is directly below the window, but on the patio….

Ms Spock even walks to the patio door to show she is ok, when I open the door, she walks away, indicating she is not interested in coming back in, every time I try to entice her she walks further away…. she stayed out till 9:45 pm….

But MAN…. my bedroom is on the 1st floor (US 2nd)… to get on the window sill, she had to climb over about 30 cm (1 ft) of window (the part that doesn’t open), and then she couldn’t half walk down the wall, cause then she wouldn’t be able to get far enough away from the wall to avoid the garden furniture…

I had sort of considered in the past that if she got out, she’d go on the window sill and then maybe on the neighbour’s 1.8 m (6 ft) high fence and down that way… but no…. this crazy cat jumps from a height of 3 m!

I went upstairs and found Saavik on the inside of the window on the sill looking at me with that look of “I know she is nuts, you won’t see me do something that stupid”. I took her out of the room and closed the door (properly this time).

The result was having trouble sleeping last night, it was such a shock to actually see her do that, Ms Spock is the same idiot that tried to jump through the tilted window and got stuck paralysing her right hind leg… that she didn’t have a permanent injury on that is more luck than judgement, and then she does that. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that fur ball coming down again…

So, yeah… 5.5 hours of sleep, struggling to get out of bed in the morning, arrived at the office just after 7:30, thankfully had enough time to go to the canteen and grab some breakfast to eat at my desk to lead a meeting with Korea at 8 am…. I’ve felt pretty much shattered all day. Thankfully, the early start also meant I could go relatively early.

Anyway, I have another 8 am meeting tomorrow with Asia Pacific, so I should get my butt into bed and hope for better sleep tonight!

Posted in felines | 1 Comment »

Overdue as always…

Nothing new there. I just keep runing out of time, and as much as I want to write here, sleep is way more important. I’ve almost forgotten that I had a week off… I’ve been back at work for two weeks now. I am still well pleased with having an underling, I can work on other things and have a chance of doing everything I should be doing. I will be a bit of a shock to my system when he goes on vacation end of next week.

It was nice when my sister, BIL and Meike came by, it was lovely weather. I took some pics of the visit, but not that many. Meike is getting sooo big! She will be 7 in November. And I am having trouble believing that it is September already. What happened to this year?

Anyway, before they arrived, on the Friday I had a big effort upstairs, tidy up, get stuff out of the way, finally put the doors in the wardrobes, and put some curtains up in one where I can’t fit the doors in anymore (these are old, second hand wardrobes). It made my bedroom look much better, less like a supplies store. The hobby room was all but done as well. I still have some stuff to do, even now (since I continued there last weekend). That is now in a state that I can hobby again! WOOT!

I also reinstalled my back up computer, the idea was to be able to get it to talk to my printer here upstairs. And it had been doing some weird stuff anyway. I finished the re-install last weekend, and than ran out of time to install printer. Below a pic of the hobby room…

So, instead of having one big desk for my computer, to craft at, and to have stuff dry… yeah right, no space for all that. I now have a desk for each. And nearly everything that used to be in open racks is now in drawers or the old wardrobes.

The other big, and sad news is that I took Saavik for an ultrasound at the vet’s about 10 days ago now. She’s been having issues with blood in the urine and signs of bladder infections since late April. It was improved since then, but still not ok, and there kept being blood in the urine. The poor girl was soooo brave. she had to have her belly shaved:

And then one of the vet techs held her rear paws, I held her front paws, and on her back, while the vet and he other vet tech did the ultrasound. She was sooooo brave! Just lay on her back, looking around, of course scared, and not keen on it, but she just let us do this. The news is not good. Kidneys are ok, but there is a lump in her bladder, right by the exit. And the lining of the bladder is also not ok. It looks very much like a tumour. This is causing the problems with passing urine and the blood that is in it. Basically, there is nothing much that they can do about it. It can not be operated, since you can’t really replace a bladder in a cat.

The vet said that I could go to a clinic somewhere and have it biopsied to be sure, but in the end, that is all it does. And I decided that wasn’t worth it. It would just put Saavik through a lot of hassle and make her very scared when apart from the occasional issues with passing urine, she is a happy puddycat. So, instead I have medication for her, I have to put it in her food every day. The vet also said that they had a dog who had the same, but far worse (ie, his whole bladder was full of tumours and he couldn’t pass urine anymore), they put him on the same medication, and two years later he is still alive and happy, not suffering. So that is what I am going to do with Saavik. Keep her as happy as I can, give her lots of snuggles, lots of loving and see how long she can survive with the meds.

Despite being very broke at the moment, I have a few expenses coming up (of course that happens when broke), I have to get the Peugeot through the bi-annual inspection, that has to happen on a weekday, and in the Netherlands (this is my brother’s car that I am borrowing for the time being, so Dutch registered). This while one of my bosses is on vacation, and my underling goes on vacation and it has to be done before October 3rd. Thankfully…. we have a work’s council meeting next Friday, that means we can not hold our weekly team meeting, and thus I can take the day off. BUT… my parents are on vacation, my brother and SIL and Mickey are on vacation…. I won’t arrive till late on Thursday night, so I can’t really stay at my sister’s either, they have to get up early on Friday. Which means besides the expense of driving to NL and the inspection as well as oil and filter change, I have to pay for a hotel. I found a cheap one, 50 euro, but still. Anyway, I will drive home after having the car back, and then still have a full weekend, which is nice!

Then end of October, Louise is getting married, I have been invited, and will be going. I will also combine it with a trip to my chiropractor, if I am going to be in the UK, I may as well see Pippa! I can hardly walk at the moment thanks to a misaligned pelvis. That really sucks! I love walking. I considered flying, but the best price for flights was 135 euro, add hire car and fuel, I decided to drive. With the Peugeot on diesel, I can do close to 1000 km (600 miles) on a tank of diesel (if I don’t drive too fast), and the ferry was 85 euro only. It does mean at least four nights in hotels, maybe 5. Again I have been able to find relatively cheap ones, but it does still add up. Then again, I haven’t been away at all for vacation this year. All I have done is spend a bit of time in the Netherlands with my family. So, even if only from Friday till Wednesday, it will be nice to be away.

I tried to be crafty today, in between getting the printer to work… I have several cards to make, a wedding card for Louise, a birthday card for Esther, my mother and Meike…. I need to start on the Christmas cards. I did look in some of the magazines I have for inspiration… but man… I had creative block! I just didn’t know where to start or what to do. It has been SOOO long (11 months or so) since I did anything crafty… the big white paper is sooooo scary.

Anyway, the printer is working, so that was good. I have been eating a ton of crappy food today. That is not good. And now I need to go sleep! I have another sinus infection and was prescribed those horse sized antibiotics again. At least I managed to get those BEFORE I went down with fever. At least it explained the headaches and exhaustion of the last two weeks…

Now sleep! Good night!

Posted in House, crafts, family, felines, food, photos | 1 Comment »

Productive….

Yeah, finally I managed to get off my butt, only thanks to half a prednisone tablet, I only have one half left now. But I needed a boost to get moving or I would spent the entire vacation on the couch.

So… yesterday I finally did a major hoover downstairs. I’d been sweeping etc, but not as thorough as I was yesterday. I must have hoovered up half a cat in the process too! I went into all the nooks and crannies, did a very thorough job on the piece of carpet I have under the dining table (probably where most of that hair was), AND the couch, where the Ladies love to sleep. It looks sooo much better!

Then in the evening, my sister called asking if I was home this weekend, when I said yes, she said they wanted to come over! So, yeah, that will be nice! It looks like my sort of rant (too big a word for it) after the baptism worked. It also has given me a definitive target to get my act together on the house! I had wanted to do more today, but struggled to get started. Ended up totally forgetting my dental appointment until another piece of tooth broke off. For some reason I kept thinking today was Tuesday. Which in itself was a bit disappointing to realise that it was in fact already Wednesday!

My other productive thing today was that I put up the outside light! YAY! And needed too! It is getting dark earlier, at 9 pm it is dark basically, and Spock was still out, and didn’t want to come in… she was also spooked by a fireworks that was going off. I had Saavik inside, so had to keep the door closed or she would walk off, and it was almost impossible to see if Spock was in front of the door wanting to be let in. A couple of times she was there, but then got spooked again and would run away if I went to get her.

In the end, I put a pillow in the hall way and locked Saavik in there, then left the patio door open and after about 10-15 mins Ms Spock wandered in and I could close the door, and let Saavik back in again. It was a bit unfair on Saavik, but I didn’t know what else to do. So… that spurred me on to put the light up today. I also did a big grocery shop.

In between, I have started watching the X-files. I have them all on DVD, and I thought I had watched the majority of the episodes of the early years in particular. I started on Season 5 and out of the 20 or so episodes, I had seen less than 10 of them! So, yeah, good move to watch them!

I did make a start on the letter for the surgery, using an example I had found on a German website that supports weight loss surgery. I adapted it where necessary. Tonight, I added more to it, I need to get that looked at by someone to make sure I haven’t made a total mess of all the grammar etc. Then I need to sort out the ‘food journal’ that they asked for last time. And then it can go off in the post.

Posted in House, family, felines, weight loss | No Comments »

Letter writing to do…

to send to the health insurance along with the huge letter of recommendation I have from the surgeon, to get gastric banding approved. I keep putting it off. I hate asking for money, and that is what I am basically doing. And I hate the fact I have to admit that I am not going to lose this huge amount of weight all on my own. I need help and I hate asking for it. Bah.

Yet I know I need to do this. I keep proving to myself that I need the gastric band as a back up measure for when I go off the rails with losing weight. It will stop me from eating in large quantities. I keep proving to myself that I am a classic yoyo dieter. I lose weight and then regain more of it.

The other thing I have to explain is why I asked for it in 2007 and didn’t follow through on it. They asked then for a food journal. That brought me to WLR and I promptly lost 20 kg in 5 months. Of course, in 2008, I gained 30 again. I started again in January, lost 12 kg, regained 11 of it before I restarted and I have lost 7 again. The amount that has to come of is horrendous.

Add another thing that I am uncomfortable with, I have to write it in German, and although I am pretty much fluent in German verbally, I am NOT comfortable writing in German, and not half as fluent then. You will see all those little grammatical errors I can ignore when speaking. I hate looking stupid, and I hate it when I see badly written English… so I hate it when I know my written German is equally bad.

But I know I need it. Bah.

Posted in weight loss | 1 Comment »