Not Redeeming Itself

Last Monday, we spent the day mostly doing nothing. Around 3:45 pm, we decided to go get drunk as I was in a bad headspace about Max. We headed out to a bar we've been to once but one that I love. It's almost impossible to get into, as it's super popular ($5 pints of hand crafted beer), but we figured that the bar didn't open until 3 pm, we would be there by 4pm, we should be fine. We weren't - it was already standing room only.

Instead we headed up to our poison bar, and drank the afternoon away there. We enjoyed the music, not being in the apartment, and had some snacks. Afterwards, we headed back to our normal bar for 1 drink before going home and ordering in tacos.

The rest of the week was a wash because 2012 sucks. I went into work on Tuesday and it was a very long day getting caught up from being unexpectedly out. On Wednesday, a friend stopped into my office and said she wasn't feeling good, and par for the course, something blew up with my project. We got the project under control, but the sick part was passed onto me.

Thursday was a 16 hour workday, as I was in the office at 5:45 am to be part of one of the worst launches - we launched everything turned off, and various teams still managed to screw things up. I worked all day long, trying to get our weekend plans lined up, get testing for our Monday release finalized, etc. Because I was still there, I joined the 2nd half of the launch, which as hard as it was to believe, went worse than the first half. And finally, at 10 pm that night, I drug myself out of a building, hopped into a cab and headed home. The good news was this was the first day I didn't cry about Max. The bad news is it was because I was so exhausted I had no energy to cry.

Friday was a long day as the sick had fully caught on. I have a massive sore throat, I can't stop coughing, my head throbs, I'm hot and then cold, and my nose is on full on run mode. I worked all day, dealt with several last minute issues on Friday, and got home around 8 pm. And then yesterday, I left the apartment at 10:15 am and headed to work. 8 of us came into the office to finish up testing, and we all worked until 6 pm. And now we are signed off. We launch tomorrow. I'm not excited about this at all, and that is not sarcasm. Last year when we launched my big project, I was a bundle of nerves. This year, I simply do not care. 2012 has taken my beloved cat, killed my ankle (it's still not fully healed), given me a massive head cold, and is now making me launch this project.

Tomorrow it's back to the office at 5:45 am to turn this project on. If things go okay tomorrow, I'm going to meet Blondie to celebrate. However, if they don't, Blondie and I will have to wait to celebrate until next weekend.

Today was spent sleeping as I'm still sicker than a dog. My voice is obliterated, my nose is raw, and my throat hurts so much that even breathing makes it worse. I'm hoping things get better and get better fast. I feel completely beat down right, and the year is only 2 months old.

In better news, a big happy 1 day early birthday to Mrs Pooh! Hope you have a great day tomorrow!

--K

FUCK YOU 2012

Our absolutely beloved, adored cat left this planet on Thurs, Feb 16, 2012. He was the best of the best, a sweet, loving, social kitty, without a bad bone in his body. While we knew he was older, we thought we still had 3-4 more years with him, and it hurts so fucking much that we didn't.

I had taken Max into the vet in December, and he had been cleared for everything except possibly something wrong with his brain. We didn't run the tests at that time, because I didn't want to know about it if he did have something wrong with his brain, and also, he had gone blind so I contributed a lot of what he was going through to that. Well folks, guess what? He had something wrong with his brain.

I came home from work on Wednesday, and noticed that he was lying in bed, but kind of propped up on 1 leg. He's not normally an in-bed cat (unless we were all in bed together) so I immediately knew something was up. I started to pet on him and he just looked really out of it - his head wouldn't turn to follow my voice, etc. I got changed out of my work clothes and went out to ask Blondie how long Max had been acting funny. When I turned around, Max was at my feet, so I picked him.

Max let me hold him all night. We tried to get him to drink some water out of my water glass, which he normally loves to do, but he wouldn't. He put his head in the glass, but didn't drink - I don't know if he forgot what to do, or was just too tired to drink. We put some soft food out, and while normally he would go to town on it, he just drug himself in a circle in front of his food plate. I think I knew then, it would be his last night.

We also happened to notice that one of his pupils was back to normal sized. Normally both were fully dilated as he's blind. But one had shrunk back down to a normal cat sized pupil. I called my mom and she mentioned stroke, so Blondie looked up stroke, and sure as shit, we knew immediately Max had stroked. We decided to keep him comfortable (it was late at this point) and call our in-house vet in the morning as soon as she started her office hours (she works from the building and comes to your unit).

At 2:30 am, Max seized. He was still in my arms and it woke me up. It was minor, about 30 secs long, but his breathing was rapid for 5-10 minutes after. He seized again at 4 am. And at 5:50 am, he managed to pull himself out of my arms, and seized against my feet. Blondie came out early and I started crying as soon as I saw him b/c I knew in my heart that Max was going to have to be put down. Blondie held him while I showered (around 7 am) and Max seized while I was in the shower. We made the decision at that point just to go to the vet's office as we knew our in-house vet wouldn't be able to do the proper diagnostic care. We called at 9 am, the vet could see us at 10 am, and at 9:10 am Max seized one last time - it was the worst one. Every seizure was worst than the last, and at that point, we don't know when he ate/drank last. He was completely out of it, I just kept hugging on him and telling him I loved him.

We got to the vet, gave him our papers that had the seizures tracked, and the look on his face was on one of "guys, this is BAD". He sad that a cluster of seizures, getting worse in intensity, meant his brain (see the December visit) was the problem. There was nothing they could do - they could try to get the seizures to stop (no guarantee on anything), if they could get the seizures to stop they could run MRIs to see what was the problem (no guarantee on anything), and if the MRI run was successful, there was no guarantee that his problem would be curable.

Blondie and I made the agonizing decision to give our Max a peaceful send off. We stayed with him and loved on him until it was done. He had no idea what was being done to him, the only time he lifted his head from 5:50 am seizure until he died was when the put the needle into his leg to sedate him - he pulled his head up at that point and tried to look down his body and then immediately put his head back down. He died around 10:10 am.

The pain that I feel is intense. I'm absolutely heart broken. My fuzzy buddy, with his mean mother fucker face (persian cat, he always looked angry even though he wasn't), isn't here to get his loves and pets. He's not here to talk with me (he was the chatterbox of the 2 cats), or snuggle with me in bed at night. I keep thinking he's going to walk on up, and when he doesn't, it makes the heart ache even worse.

Tigga knew something was going on. He knew since December when he started keeping his distance from Max, and by default, anyone that loved on Max. On Max's last day, around 6:30 am, he sat down about 5 feet from us, and stared at Max until we left. He didn't hiss or growl (his normal thing to do to Max) but just watched. And since we came back without Max, he's been a loving caring cat, he's the one who wants the loves now (he gets them) and he's the one that constantly has to be on someone. He knows Max is gone, and he knows that Blondie and I miss him terribly. I predict Tigga is going to rapidly become the most spoiled cat in the world.

The other news from the week is that my PA friends and their 2 kids came into the city on Friday. We went out with them all day long, which helped my head a little as I couldn't cry in front of them. We saw the Intrepid Air and Space Museum - a huge aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum. The boys loved it (the boys = the 2 kids and Shaun). Afterwards, we walked up to Times Square for ice cream, before catching the subway to FAO Schwarz. We saw the giant piano from Big (only $250,000), I got my picture taken with a full-sized replica of Johnny Depp from Pirates done as legos, and then I saw an old-timey Play-Doh Barber Shop set! My mom hated that set b/c you had to poke out the hair holes with a toothpick when you were done playing, and us kids always managed to "be busy" when it was time for that. After FAO Schwarz, it was back to Times Square to see M&M World, before hitting up our fav mexican joint for dinner. Then it was home to bawl my head off as I had held everything in all day. Saturday, I refused to leave our house, and then yesterday, we went to see "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark" on Broadway - 70 million dollars worth of suck. Blondie and I can't figure out how they needed 70 million to make the play, but I will say the flying scenes with Spidey and Green Goblin were pretty cool. Afterwards, we went for cajun before coming home to watch TV in bed.

I have today off, and I'm going to spend the day drinking, missing Max, and crying. If you have a pet you love, give them extra special hugs and kisses from us today. If you don't have a pet, then give someone you love extra special hugs and kisses from us today. And if everyone can just tell 2012 to go fuck itself, I would be really grateful.

To my buddy Max - wherever you are - I miss you so fucking much. I hope that you have no breathing problems where you are, that it's full of milk and tuna juice, and that you've found Murphy, Bianca, Bad Cat, Baby, Geechy Toes, Bee, Harry, Sassy, Bella and all the other pets that have gone before you to play with. I love you.

--K

The good and the bad

Super Bowl Sunday ended up being a good day. After Blondie took off for his guy meet-up prior to the SB, my bar friends texted. They had gotten a new puppy and were up in my building friends apartment, so I went upstairs to meet the puppy. I hung out there for a bit, before going back to my apartment to get ready for SB. I ended up at the bar first out of everybody, and just relaxed until my friends started to get there.

The Giants won, which was nice. Go NY team! But the best part was that Blondie and I bought into a pool before the game started, and ended up walking away with a 32" flat screen TV! I've been wanting to get a TV in the bedroom for months now, so this was perfect for us.

That was the good. The bad happened on Monday. I was waiting to cross the street to head into my office bldg on Monday morning. Stepped down off the curb, straight into a pothole (the same pothole that's been there the entire 2 years I've gone to work), and twisted my ankle something fierce. If it wasn't for the van parked along the curb that I fell into the back of, I might have broken my ankle. As it was, I hit the back of the van so hard that 5 people stopped to make sure I was okay.

I caught my breath, the entire time thinking "oh shit you dumbass, now you've done it". I tried to put some weight on it, and it just f'ing hurt. I hobbled into my bldg, got to my desk, and peeled my sock off to find absolutely nothing. It wasn't swollen, it wasn't black and blue. It just HURT. All day long I was in misery, and finally I took my sock off again around 3:30 pm, and sure as shit, it had puffed up BIG TIME. I went home early, and the 7 minute walk from the subway took over 20 minutes as it was shuffling steps. Blondie helped me get it iced, but it was too late - the next day when I woke up, I could hardly walk and the ankle was swollen and completely bruised.

Because of that, the week was definitely low key. It started feeling better around Thurs timeframe, but it's still swollen today. I took the week off from working out (Mon-Wed, I couldn't have done anything anyway, and Thurs-Sun, I was scared to do anything b/c of how swollen it is). I felt like I could've worked out today, but woke up really tired and the last thing I want is to step wrong on this again. So I'm going to work out tonight when I get home from work, when I'm awake and alert.

Blondie and I really didn't do much of anything this week. We mostly took it easy, watched TV, and stayed in. We did a massive grocery shop online on Saturday, before going out for perishables. We watched it snow Saturday morning for a little bit - I like to watch the snow as long as I don't have to go out in it. And that's it. Lame. Everything's lame man.

Keep your fingers crossed that this workout tonight goes okay. And that I can start running again tomorrow morning. A week off of my half-marathon training program is a bummer for me, especially as my runs the week before I did this were so good.

--K

Good One

Isn't it a pleasant surprise when I have a good week? As opposed to my typical "shitty", "bad", "craptacular", "any other adjective that is the opposite of good". It was a good week - a long week, but a good one.

Blondie's sis came back to stay the night last Sunday. She got in, and we putzed around for a bit, but then headed out to our favorite mexican restaurant - I love this place. It's a tiny little place, you walk by it and don't even know it's there. She and I both had some sangria, and we all ate the hell out of our food. BTW, you can add cactus to any meal there - we tried it one night when we were both a little blotto - and so good. We add it to everything. "Carnitas in red sauce with cactus please", and "Chicken in chipotle sauce with cactus please" - those are the orders we always give.

Monday was off to work again - things are starting to slow down with my sucky project, but it's still suckity suck. Just like last week. Blondie and I cooked an excellent meal at home that night - chicken, brussel sprouts, and rice. We eat out so much, that I crave home cooked food - and that meal did it for me. Hit the spot.

Tuesday, work again, but then we headed out to the bar on Tuesday night. They had drawn the Super Bowl squares and we wanted to see what numbers we had gotten - 1 and 6 (I can't remember what team has what number). But keep your fingers crossed that we see that at some point. We ate dinner there, had many drinks, and caught up with our bar friends and our bartender. A really good night.

Wednesday was low key. We cooked in again - made fajitas/tacos, and beans with chorizo. We shoveled it all in record time. When we left TX, we swore we'd never eat at chain restaurants again. Then we moved to SF, and there were no chain restaurants, so all we craved was, you guessed it, chain restaurant food. And now in NY, what I find myself truly craving is food cooked by us. I never thought I'd get tired of eating out, but it happened.

Thursday was a bad/good day (only 1 of these in a week is a good thing). Things blew up for my project on Thursday night, but it turned out some of my coworkers were around late, and we were able to talk through what happened and come up with a pretty good solution to the problem we were having. Also, I work with teams cross country for this project, and I've been feeling pretty shitty about how I'm doing in this role - my boss ended up forwarding me an email on Thurs night that the SF team had sent to her telling her how much they appreciate my work, and how hard of a worker I am.

Friday was a long day - I didn't feel right when I woke up, and couldn't shake the feeling all day. I felt like my eyes were swollen to little slits (they weren't), and I couldn't stop sneezing/yawning. I must've had 5 cups of coffee on Friday to no avail. I drug my ass home on Friday night, we ordered food in, and then we somehow found the strength to rally. We headed over to our bar and met up with our bar friend, before catching a cab to the West Village to see my other bar friend in her cabaret/burlesque V-Day show! My friend is such a good singer and performer. And I love seeing her troupe come together for these shows - these guys have a dream, and they are actively pursuing it. It makes me so happy to see them fighting to do what they love.

Saturday was a blah day - I felt pretty hung over. As tired as I was on Friday, I still managed to put down a Manhattan and 6 beers. And Blondie and I are trying to eat right again, so our meal on Friday was small and healthy. I made the decision to move my long run to today, and just did a regular workout on Saturday. We ordered in a late breakfast (egg whites, turkey, brocoli, and tomato omelet; fruit salad) and then made a very healthy dinner (pork chops, sauteed spinach, potatos) while watching Fast Five. I like the Fast and the Furious series pretty well, but Fast Five sucked. The "pulling a safe" scene at the end had me rolling my eyes so hard I'm sure people in Jersey could see me.

Today I woke up, felt uber tired (I can't seem to shake this) but made myself go down to the gym anyway. I made it the entire 4 mile run without stopping to walk (SQUEEEE!), and then headed out to run errands (cashing checks, pedicure). Blondie met me after my pedi, and we headed to a local argentinean restaurant for lunch. We split a roasted chicken, and beans, and I had tuna ceviche and Blondie had empanadas for appetizers. We're home now, relaxing before we head over to our bar to watch the Super Bowl tonight. I'm rooting Giants, just so I can go to a ticker tape parade. But honestly, I don't care who wins - which means I will really enjoy the game as I'm not freaking out like last year that the Packers wouldn't pull it off.

Everything else is good. Blondie is actively working out again since his neck is healed - which is awesome news. Max is blind as a bat, and follows me around like he's a dog always wanting attention. He gets it. He rides with me everywhere when I'm in the apartment - I pretty much carry him around at all times. Tigger is an ass - I don't know what crawled up his butt, but he pretty much hates everyone and everything. I like making him mad by resting my head on him (not full force, just putting my head lightly on his belly) - he hates when I do this, and just lays there rumbling and growling. It makes me laugh.

Workouts this week were GOOD - 14 days down, 70 days to go. It's still a pain in the ass to get myself out of bed in the morning, but know I feel better when I do workout, so I've been trying to just remember that when the alarm goes off.

Monday - Strength Day - P90X Shoulders & Arms
Tuesday - Run Day - 3 miles in 39:16 (shamefully slow - walked part of it)
Wednesday - Run Day - 2 miles in 23:52 (ran it all, 11:xx min miles!!!! Below 12 min miles is awesome for me right now) + weights
Thursday - Run Day - 3 miles in 38:15 (walked only 2 mins of it) + weights
Friday - Rest Day (knocked this one out of the park)
Saturday - Cross Training Day - Insanity Pure Cardio disc
Sunday - Run Day - 4 miles in 49:32 (RAN IT ALL!!!!!!!!! Still very slow though) + weights

--K