Tuesday, August 16, 2005 , late at night

Dog in My Footsteps

This book arrived in my hands through one of life’s serendipitious moments—I was browsing BookCloseouts.com during one of their sales, and I saw a book called, Dog in My Footsteps: More stories of a vet’s wife (by Chrystal Sharp).  My brain immediately perked up—dogs?!  vets?!  stories?! —and of course I ordered a copy.  When it arrived I took a quick peek at the back cover and there were mysterious words on it like “East Cape”.  I felt a bit disoriented because the book seemed to assuming that the “East Cape” would be very familiar to me, and then a lightbulb went on.  South Africa!  So, I was getting a book of stories by a vet’s wife which featured dogs and took place in South Africa, and I felt all those things were good, and I began to read.

It’s such a trite description, but the book turned out to be “delightful”.  I think that’s the best word for it—it was charming and funny and unexpected and very real.  It’s the second book in a series of three, and while I didn’t have benefit of reading the first book, I didn’t think I was at any disadvantage.  The chapters are sort of stand-alone, but the book reads as a whole and the events are chronological.  I learned a lot about life in the more isolated areas of South Africa (it made me want to take a vacation there), and grew very fond of the vet’s wife, the vet, and their ever-changing menagerie.  Though not particularly wealthy, they’re very kind and take many unwanted cast-offs in the form of dogs, cats, and even penguins, and they have a genuine love for the individual personalities of each, even the troublemakers.  The most entertaining aspect of this book is that the pets occasionally talk to the author, just making little sarcastic comments or observations, and it’s pretty familiar to readers like me who know that all pets, especially the cats, love to be mouthy. 

There were three difficult things about reading this book.  The first was that I had to learn a new, albeit small, vocabulary, because of words like “bakkie”.  I know now what a bakkie is, ha!  The second was that the pets pass away at an alarming rate, although it’s really not unexpected if you think that the author and her husband are adopting many older animals who otherwise couldn’t find homes.  It’s tough to read when the deaths come in groups, though—I was reading in bed at night, and when a cat died, I thought, “Oh, that’s sad, I’d better read another chapter so I can go to sleep without those sad thoughts in my head”.  But in the next chapter, a dog died.  And then a cat died again.  I was up until three in the morning one night just looking for a reprieve from the rainbow bridge.  The third difficult thing about the book is that the author has written two other books and I can’t get them!  It’s as if someone is holding the perfect piece of chocolate cake just out of my reach and taunting me with it!  Amazon.com does list Chrystal Sharp’s first book, “If the Cat Fits”, but has no copies in stock.  They don’t list her third book, “In Fool Flight” at all, but I found it listed on Amazon.ca (where it’s also out of stock).  Neither title is listed on Bookfinder.com.  My only option right now is to order from Kalahari.net, where the price of shipping would make each book cost about $37.

I really know very little about the author except what I read in the book, but I know she suffers from lupus.  I also read that her husband, “Dave the vet”, recently passed away, which saddens me.  There’s a small photo of her on the Penguin Books South Africa website: Chrystal Sharp.

I may end up giving Dog in My Footsteps: More stories of a vet’s wife away in my book contest next month.  That’s just how much I loved it and want everyone to read it.  If you know of anyone in South Africa who could help me get copies of the author’s other two books at a cost less than a month’s mortgage payment, please have them give me a shout!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/16 at 11:26 PM
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Cats and cantaloupe?  Not so much.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a recipe for a kitty cantaloupe cocktail, a concoction of cantaloupe, yogurt, honey, and catnip that was supposed to thrill cats to the tips of their razor-sharp nails.  After lovingly preparing this recipe yesterday and serving it to four cats of varying ages (all unrelated, too), four out of four cats surveyed say, “Ewww!  We’re not eating that!  Are you nuts?”  One cat didn’t even bother coming over to sniff the plate.  One cat tried to get excited about the catnip but didn’t like the stuff under the catnip, and after a couple of hours someone had licked off a bit of yogurt but left everything else.  So ‘fess up—whose cat is eating this stuff?  Someone is skewing the test results.

Frank has no love of cantaloupe, but he does unfortunately (for me) have a love of chocolate.  I know he’s not supposed to have chocolate, and I’m not giving him any, but if I sit down at my desk with anything chocolately and creamy, say, a bowl of ice cream or a frappucchino, he’s in my face the entire time I’m trying to enjoy it.  He tries to reach into my dish or cup with his paws, and when I move away, he plops himself down in front of my monitor so I’m relegated to just sitting and eating.  No sitting and surfing the web, or sitting and reading a blog—I have to just sit and eat because Frank makes a better door than a window.  Last night he wanted chocolate ice cream so badly he jumped on the back of my chair and tried to climb down into my bowl from my shoulder.  I wonder if he ever got into some chocolate snacks when he was living on the streets?  His nose sure recognizes the smell of cocoa powder (or, if it’s cheap ice cream, “simulated chocolate flavouring”).

I must confess to doing something a week ago which drives vets crazy—I started to wean one of the pets off meds without permission.  I know they hate that, and I don’t blame them, but in this case it was just weaning Frank off Buspar, and I figured it was my choice whether or not to have him on it.  I was also the one who started him on it (again, without permission, which was bad of me), so I felt I was in tune enough with his behaviour to recognize if the tapering was causing problems.  He’s been Buspar-free for a few days now and it’s definitely so far, so good—he’s been very well-behaved!  He’s had a few opportunities to brawl with Jackson and he’s just walked away, and he’s been deliberately non-confrontational with all the pets.  I know cats with behavioural issues related to “confidence” can “learn” new behaviours through medication, and can then retain those behaviours post-medication, and I think Frank has been a good example of that.  He’s such a different cat than when he first came to live with us three months ago—he’s much more calm, more peaceful, and has a really good sense of our household routine.  He’s also much healthier now that his ingrown toenails are fully healed, and his diet is improved.  When we first got him he was very rough-coated and his hair fell out in clumps, but now he’s got sleek, shiny black fur and he’s almost starting to be handsome ;)  Jackson unfortunately continues to have confidence (or dominance) problems, and I’m wondering if we’re just going to have to learn to live with them.  He’ll go out of his way to attack Frank (sometimes jumping down on him from the cat tree if Frank is having a drink of water), yet he also seems very intimidated by Frank and will run and hide if Frank walks into the room.  Buspar just seemed to make Jackson worse in all departments—more aggressive, more assertive—so this mght be something we just can’t change.

I realize I haven’t written an entry in over a week, but it’s been a rough week.  I’m almost completely convinced that I’m just not an Milnacipran kind of girl.  I’ve never felt so horrible when taking an anti-depressant before—I feel nauseous, I have regular headaches, and I’ve got weird, subtle breathing problems, like someone is sitting on my lungs all the time.  I’m sleeping well, but I’m in pain all the time… sciatica, carpal tunnel, pain in my upper arms, throbbing in my heels.  I absolutely can’t get through a day without pain meds unless I’m willing to spend the day doing nothing, because the pain is so nagging that I can’t concentrate to do any work until I get rid of it.  There are two reasons I take anti-depressants—the first is to calm my anxiety, and the second is to provide low-grade pain relief, and Milnacipran is doing neither.  I haven’t been taking it that long (a little more than a month), but I already had a “running start” because I was on Effexor, so I don’t think anything positive is happening.  I hate being in pain.  I hate being tired all the time.  I also hate being fat, and there’s no doubt in my mind that there are about 30 lbs. on my frame that are solely there because of medication.  So, I’m not sure what to do.  I honestly feel that the answer to a lot of my problems is HGH, but injections from my endocrinologist (who thinks they’re a good idea for me) run about $2000 per month.  That’s not going to happen anytime soon.  Nancy’s read good things about the supplement 5-HTP, so I’m tempted to just taper off the Milnacipran and give 5-HTP a try for a while.  I think I’ve got a good awareness of my moods so I’m not any danger to myself or others when I’m not taking anti-depressants, but this is such a hard thing to make a decision about.  I just want to be a normal girl again, even though I’ve been so physically messed up for so many years now (10 years next January!) that I barely remember what being normal feels like.

I do know what feeling normal isn’t—it’s not standing outside in the hot sun in the middle of the day for two hours, which is what I had to do on Sunday morning.  All our plants have been looking a bit haggard for the past week or so, and while I attributed it to the heat, I thought it was odd because it hasn’t been *that* hot.  I mean, it’s hot (maybe 105 or so), but it’s not HOT (over 110).  One of the more fragile plants turned bone dry and while I was checking to see if the roots were still alive, I noticed that the ground around the plant was bone dry as well.  I attributed it to a clogged drip head, so I went into the garage to run a cycle of the irrigation system to check the head and ack, the irrigation timer was broken!  As some point it had developed a short and stopped working, and as it’s not smart enough to perhaps beep or having a warning light or anything, it just sat there in the dark corner displaying “Pwr off” for gawd knows how long until I found it.  And with that, I knew why all the plants looked droopy—it was Las Vegas in August and they had no water!  I then ran around for the aforementioned two hours moving a hose from plant to plant, front yard and back yard, trying to get some water back into everything.  I was especially worried about our Queen Palms, as they were only planted a few months ago and were still fragile.  I was able to figure out that there was a short in one of valves but I didn’t know which one (or how to fix it), but today a repair guy came out and fixed it (5 minutes at a cost of $85, bah).  At least the plants are getting water again.  I’m in the process of looking for a new irrigation controller, one that will TELL ME if it breaks, and one which will keep running the other stations if one station shorts out.  I’d also like one with a remote control, as I’m short and have some trouble accessing our current unit.  I’m considering the Rainbird ESP-4MI, although I’ve read that they discontinued the remote control unit which works with it, so I have to read some more about that.  I’d hoped Consumer Reports would have a write-up on irrigation controllers but no such luck.

Are you looking for a unique gift for that person who has everything yet still has closet space?  Check out my eBay auction for a box of Las Vegas crap.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/16 at 10:35 PM
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Tuesday, August 09, 2005 , evening

Hot Off the Furry Press

I’ve had some interesting bits of animal news in my email recently, so thought I’d post some links to pet-related current events.  Enjoy at your leisure :)

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/09 at 09:01 PM
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Friday, August 05, 2005 , evening

Cat photography tips

I often wish I could take better photos of the cats, because they’re all so darned cute.  I just don’t seem to have the proper technique down for good pet photos, but today I decided to really make an effort to get some good pictures of the kids.  Below, I present a chronological record of my photo session with Derek, without commercial interruption.

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So about this point I’m thinking, “Maybe cat photography isn’t something I should put on my resume.”  Then I decided to harass Chelsea, and she was a much more cooperative subject.  Even though she’s a, well, a potential serial killer, she’s got the most adorable pout:

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I took a few more, and I’ll add them to my Flickr Gallery as soon as I’ve made them a bit more managable in Photoshop.

On a sad note, I received confirmation today from someone “in the know” that Stewie the stray cat, who we took down to the Las Vegas “no-kill” animal shelter in early May, is dead.  I don’t have any details of what happened, but I know that we took him there on May 5th, and on or about May 18th his kennel record listed him as “deceased”.  No one at the shelter told me this, btw—you may recall that I had a little phone argument with them because they wouldn’t tell me why he’d been taken off the shelter website.  You may also recall, most importantly, that Nancy and I had been very clear in telling the shelter NOT TO EUTHANIZE HIM.  He was a sweet cat and a cute cat, and if was in danger of being euthanized, we wanted the chance to adopt him ourselves.

In fairness to the shelter, I suppose they may have come in one morning and he’d dropped dead overnight.  When Sweet Pea died, she did it very quickly and with no warning.  However, I’m highly doubtful that happened.  It seems to me that he was held for a two week period for an owner to claim and then he was put to sleep.  Despite our request that they not euthanize him, we were never called to come pick him up, and we were never called and told if he needed extra medical care.  Really, the main reason we took him to the shelter was because he was such a cool cat, we wondered if someone had lost him.  My assumption is that we’re not supposed to be just picking cats up off the street and “stealing” them, but it appears that our famous “no-kill” shelter doesn’t give us any choice, does it?  We were told flat-out that if we took Frank down to them and he was sick, he’d be euthanized.  We took Stewie down because he wasn’t sick, but he was euthanized anyway.  I’m going to say something I may never say at any other time in this blog, and I want my parents to avert their eyes at this point, because to the Las Vegas Animal Foundation I wish to say a hearty, “Fuck you.”  Fuck you for killing a perfectly wonderful cat, fuck you for not taking 2 minutes out of your day to pick up the phone to save his life.  You’re notorious for killing people’s pets after they’ve been picked up by animal control “by mistake”, and the fact that the city of Las Vegas continues to give you millions of dollars and continues to keep up this “no-kill” charade is merely evidence that you’ve got someone in your pocket.  Fuck you all, I sincerely mean that.  Las Vegas Makes conscious decision to kill more animals than any other city of the same size.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/05 at 08:13 PM
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Thursday, August 04, 2005 , late at night

Shopper’s fatigue

I’m coining a new ailment called “Shopper’s fatigue”.  Frankly, I’m just tired of shopping for Nancy’s birthday—it’s been exhausting (poor me!).  I ended up buying lots of little things, instead of one big thing, so I’m spending my days checking my email for tracking information, and hovering around the front door waiting for UPS to arrive.  Then I gather up the little bundles and try to find a place to hide them.  I unfortunately haven’t been able to find just one spot to put everything, so stuff is scattered all over the upstairs in various nooks and crannies.  I plan to add a bit of Easter flavour to the birthday festivities, and I’ll just let Nancy hunt for her gifts as I doubt I’ll be able to remember where I’ve put them all.  If she’s lucky, her birthday celebrations may stretch on for a month because I’ve neglected to make a list of what I’ve bought, so there really might be odds and ends appearing for weeks to come.  The one thing I’d planned to buy her was a Tie Domi jersey, but that was on hold because it looked as if Tie was going to sign with the Penguins.  Now that it looks as though he’s back with the Leafs, she’s feeling “Maple Leaf angst” (a direct result of being emotionally jerked around by John Ferguson Jr. for 4 days), so she’s officially “Leafs ambivalent”.  So, the jersey will wait for a bit, and we’ll see if she comes around after she gets her first glimpse of Don Cherry’s suit on the season opener of Hockey Night in Canada.

I was wandering around the web looking for information about Scottish Fold cats (I don’t really remember why), and I found this cat who had just been adopted from a rescue place.  His name is Patrick:

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Isn’t he just the most incredible-looking cat?!  He’s like a monstrous guinea pig.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/04 at 11:32 PM
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All In My Head

Remember when I said I was slow to start reading Harry Potter because I was reading something else?  Paula Kamen’s incredible book, All In My Head was the tome keeping me distracted from the goings-on at Hogwarts.  All In My Head has continued to distract me since I finished reading it, as I want so badly to do it justice here that I’ve been worried about how to review it.  In short, it’s an amazing, valuable, irreplaceable first-person account of dealing with the medical establishment while trying to find a cure for a chronic headache.  Just like me, Paula Kamen came from a normal, happy family, and had a normal, happy life, until one day she was hit by a headache that never went away.  In my case I was hit with fibromyalgia, but as Kamen discovers on her path to “medical enlightenment”, most chronic conditions have something in common, and in fact, they might all be off-shoots of the same imbalance in the brain.  Kamen’s headache throws her life into turmoil, preventing her from working as a writer, and sending her to seek treatment from headache specialists to chiropractors to psychic healers, and everything in-between.  If you’ve ever wanted to know about alternative healing methods, you’ll find this book very revealing on just about every topic except Ayurvedic medicine (which Kamen avoids because of the excessive number of Ayurvedic methods which involve vomiting and/or enemas). 

Sadly, there’s no happy ending—Paula Kamen has spent tens of thousands of dollars and been to world-famous headache treatment centers, but she still has a headache which never goes away.  On the bright side, she’s discovered that a number of elements of all the different therapies she’s tried do provide a degree of relief, so she incorporates things like massage and aromatherapy into her daily routine of prescription medications.  It’s a good lesson for those of us dealing with difficult chronic health issues, that there may not be “one” answer, but perhaps many smaller partial answers which fit together to form a whole.  It’s an even better lesson to be reminded that we’re not alone, and that’s one of the reasons Kamen’s book had such an impact on me.  There are thousands of other “tired girls” out there, and we struggle to live normal lives and we blend in, all the while thinking we’re the only ones who are coping with such overwhelming pain and fatigue.

So, if you’re suffering from chronic headache, you may find that this book offers you some ideas and treatment options you hadn’t considered.  If you’re just suffering from chronic anything, I think you’ll find that the book gives you a bit of hope, and helps you feel less alone.  This book is an incredible gift from Paula Kamen to the rest of the tired girls, and I hope you’ll find comfort from it like I did.  Oh, and I don’t want to neglect to mention that the book is funny.  Even though it could easily be a downer of a book, it’s not, so it’s informative and good for a chuckle.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/04 at 12:30 AM
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005 , late at night

Wokking on sunshine

Ha!  It’s a pun!  About a wok!  About my wonderful, new, electric wok, the Breville EW30XL Gourmet Electric Wok .  We love eating Asian food, but I don’t own a wok and tend to just stir-fry everything in a frying pan.  After a particularly unsatisfying batch of stir-fried veggies a few days ago, I decided it was time to buy a real wok.  I figured I’d get a wok pan that would sit on my gas stove burner, because I know from experience that electric woks just aren’t usually up to par.  I did some research on Amazon.com and read a bunch of reviews, and one product really stood out to me—the electric wok by Breville.  Even though it wasn’t what I was looking for, it had great reviews, including one from a professional chef who said he loved it, and that it was “the hottest wok” he’d ever used.  Other reviews commented on how it was better than a conventional wok, and at the great price of $59.99, I was sold.

The wok arrived today and it’s huge and heavy!  It comes with a temperature probe with settings up to “high sear”, a glass domed lid, and a removable base so you can put the entire unit in the dishwasher for easy cleanup.  After giving it a rinse I plugged it in and turned it up to high sear, and gave it a test run with a batch of pad thai.  I’m thrilled to say that it passed with flying colours!  It got extremely hot and did it quickly, it cooked the food evenly without cooling off, and the non-stick surface was excellent.  After the food was done I was able to slide it up over the sides of the wok, directly into a bowl, and there was no mess or sloppy spillage to clean up.  I considered putting it in the dishwasher, but it quickly cleaned up with just some soapy water and paper towel so it’s now drying in the sink downstairs.

My only criticisms of the wok are its size/weight, which might make it difficult to store.  On the other hand, the large size means less mess while cooking, and the weight gives it great stability.  It would have been nice if it has some sort of “hanging handle” so it could be hung from a pot rack.  All in all, a great product though!  If you enjoy cooking Asian food and you’re using a cheap electric wok which never seems to heat up properly, I definitely suggest you give this one a try.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/03 at 11:59 PM
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I finally finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  I’d planned to be finished a lot sooner, but had already started another long book right before “Harry” arrived, and besides, it took me another week and a half to figure out a way past the gargoyle guarding the book:

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I love the Harry Potter books, and the 6th in the series was good enough to keep me up past my bedtime, reading, and to entice me to leave the computer to go read during the day.  However, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped I would.  I’d read some reviews which opined that The Half-Blood Prince was the best of the series, but I found it lacking in the “fun” department.  Hagrid was practically missing from the entire story, and mainly appeared when a very specific plot device was needed about three-quarters of the way through.  I don’t think Professor McGonagall had more than half a dozen lines, and the usual “guest professor” who generally shows up each school year to teach “Defense of the Dark Arts” was pompous and rather dull.  There were cursory appearances by Luna Lovelood (her name should really be “Luna Lovejoy”, no?), and Moaning Myrtle and Dobby the house elf, but they never stayed long enough.  I miss the grandeur of plots like the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and I miss being introduced to new weird and wonderful characters.  I’m also getting a bit blase about the “Harry Potter knows something is going on but no one will believe him until it’s too late” storylines, because after always being right on previous occasions, shouldn’t all the residents of Hogwarts be hanging on Harry’s every word?!

Most people already know there’s a death in the book, but I won’t spoil it by revealing who dies.  Some reviewers have said they wept when the death occurred, but I didn’t really feel anything except regret at the loss of an interesting character.  I’ll give J.K. Rowling props for actually killing a major character, though—it’s not like when she killed off Cedric Diggory.  This is a death which will change the course of book 7.

Speaking of book 7, I’m anxiously awaiting its release because book 6 has ended with yet another “danger” cliff-hanger, as well as some unresolved issues between Ron and Hermione, Percy Weasley and his family, etc.  How many years until book 7?  Will I need reading glasses by then?

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/03 at 05:16 PM
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Tuesday, August 02, 2005 , the wee hours

It’s almost Nancy’s birthday!

It’s Nancy’s birthday on Sunday, and I have no idea what to buy her.  Around birthdays and Christmas we always “suffer” a bit because we’re prolific shoppers through the rest of the year as well, so there’s just not that much left to buy for a special occasion.  Sure, there are always the REALLY SPECIAL things, like Hawaiian vacations, but it’s hard to sneak a couple thousand dollars out of the bank account without Nancy getting suspicious (or pissed off, if we need that money for stupid stuff like, oh, the mortgage).  My other problem is that while I have ideas, I feel guilty if the thing I buy her is also something I can use.  For example, I’ve thought of getting her an Interferential Therapy Unit to help treat her back and shoulder pain, but I’ve got a lot of pain too, and what if I end up getting more use out of it?  That just doesn’t seem right.  I also thought about buying a Flic barcode scanner to use with a program like Book database software, because we’d both love to have a complete, searchable inventory of all our books.  However, it’s a “we” thing again—it’s something “we’d” like, so it just doesn’t seem specific enough.  I had planned/hoped to buy her either a Tie Domi autographed Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, or to put a cool Toronto Maple Leafs wrap on the car, but it now looks as though Tie Domi might end up playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins so that’s the end of those ideas.  Perhaps a big Canadian flag wrap for the car?!  Naw, that would freak out Nancy’s parents, who probably think I’ve brainwashed her enough.  I tried to convince Nancy that we should adopt Muster the Rabbit for her birthday, but oddly enough, she didn’t seem excited by that idea. 

So, with just 6 days until her birthday, I’m rather boggled.  I’ve got a few small things already purchased, but otherwise I might just have to tell her to engage in a day of Internet gambling as a gift.  Not that she’d do that of course, because it’s illegal—I meant to say, perhaps I’ll need to send her to the casino for a few hours.  If any of you have a better idea, please, speak up!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/02 at 12:19 AM
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Monday, August 01, 2005 , late evening

Dog luxating patella

Here’s a link to a page I wrote up about our dog, Cricket, and her surgery for luxating patella.  It’s got photos—she’s so cute in her little legwarmer bandages!  dog luxating patella surgery

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/01 at 10:56 PM
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