Friday, January 05, 2007 , late at night

B is for birthday; B is for balls

Today was my birthday; I turned 41.  Today was also the day that TJ got neutered.  We got up around 7am to drop him off at the vet’s and then we planned to go out for a sushi lunch before picking him up mid-afternoon.  Unfortunately, our plans got a bit messed up because the weather was bad and we were both exhausted after not sleeping very well the previous night.  We dropped TJ off without incident, went to the grocery store for some necessities, and then stopped by McDonalds for an Egg McMuffin.  We then came home to eat and read the newspaper, but we were so tired that we decided to nap.  Well, the nap turned into a longer nap, then we decided to reschedule lunch for Monday.  I tried to wake up around 11am to shower and get ready to go out, but all I wanted to do was sleep—I felt too tired to eat!  One look at the cold weather (39 degrees plus high winds) and we figured lunch on Monday sounded great.

We were told that TJ was ready for pickup around 2:30, but we’re such slackers that it was 5pm before we showed up to get him.  When we arrived, the vet who’d done his surgery had made me a little present:

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It’s TJ’s testicles in formaldehyde!  It doesn’t get much more thoughtful than that—the vet even drew little birthday balloons on the container for me.  It’s definitely a gift to remember.  TJ’s doing fine, by the way—he’s been a bit crazed and over-active since arriving home, but I think he’s mostly happy.  He keeps throwing himself on us and purring, as if he worried for a while today that we wouldn’t come back for him.  He was sent home with pain meds, which I thought was a bit unusual, but it’s keeping him feeling fine.  He has one last set of shots next Friday and then he’s done.

One of the nicest surprises of the day was TJ’s surgery bill.  He was neutered under an employee’s account (she’s the person who gave us the three kitten siblings back in October), and while the bill was originally $281.50, with the discount, it cost us $66.48.  Someone made a donation of $25 to use to put towards the surgery, so our out-of-pocket cost for this was just $41.48.  Sweeeeeeeeet.  Getting Tie, Scampi, and Bing fixed cost us over seven hundred dollars, but if I’d been an employee, it would have cost about $200 total.  And that’s one of the reasons I want to work in this business!

Fast-forwarding through the rest of the day, we had dinner at the Red Rock casino (so I could have bread pudding), then we came home to watch the movie, “Men With Brooms”.  I also opened gifts—a nice necklace and Hoops & Yoyo stuffed toys from Flippy, a boning knife from my parents, a CD (Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet) from my brother, and the newest Amy Sedaris book, also from my brother.  From some friends in Seattle, I received a great collection of hard-to-find Starbucks teddy bears and collectible stuffed toys, as well as a sushi-making kit.  This should finally be the incentive I need to find a place to buy sushi-grade fish!  I’d love to make sushi at home, especially with salmon.  The gift that really made me smile was a video my sister emailed me of my niece and nephew singing Happy Birthday to me, then blowing out the candles on the cakes they’d made in the Easy Bake oven.

I had a very nice day.  I was a tad emotionally unstable (I have a tough time dealing with Christmas, New Year’s and my birthday all in the span of 10 days, not to mention dealing with them when I’m hormonal), but Flippy was patient with me and humoured me and even watched a movie about curling to try to appease me.  I love Flippy.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/05 at 11:59 PM
The Litterbox • (8) Comments • Permalink
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