adventures of a crazy cat lady

thanks, everyone, for all your happy thoughts and support for Binkley. :) he made it through the surgery! he's home, and has already been eating!

his throat was clear, and so were his sinuses. (they really didn't think that was the problem, but they needed to check while he was under.) once they got through the gum issues, plaque buildup, and crap, they saw he did have several rotten and loose teeth, as was suspected. and the really bad ones were on the left side, which is the side he was favoring. in all, he had 5 rotten or broken or loose teeth pulled. (the loose teeth weren't a problem yet, but the idea is that we don't want to have to do this again in 2 months when they might become a problem, ya know?) the rest of his teeth were cleaned, and things look good. at least for a cat that's 19.

for now he stays on the pain medication and antibiotic. hopefully he will continue to eat better as his mouth feels better. he still has the iv in his leg, so in case he doesn't eat they can give him fluids quickly. I should be able to take him back in a couple days and have it removed. (Marsha said I could remove it myself. but as much as I've done medically with shots and things, I don't think if I'd know what I was doing enough to take out an iv.)

omg, I'm running out of time! there's just so much left to do! I had things so much more together before Origins this year. now it's the day before GenCon, and I've barely started to get ready! all the planning has been in my head, and very little has been done physically. ack! most get things done tonight! and use more exclamation points!

it saddens me that I still can't post to dreamwidth from work. I don't think it works well with our browser (IE6) since nothing displays right, and you've basically got a big white screen and you're guessing where the 'post' button might be. I don't have the option of updating or downloading a new browser, so I'm kinda screwed there.

but yeah, I wrote this Tuesday night at a write-in, and I was going to post it yesterday at work. but that didn't work out. then I fell asleep last night. yay sleep! but that makes this kinda old. oh well. yesterday and today in this thing refer to Monday and Tuesday.

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getting very tired of playing phone tag with the doctor’s office.

so I hurt my foot somehow while I was at Origins. don’t know what I did or what’s wrong. just know it hurts and when it started hurting. and I hurt it bad enough that I went to the doctor the day after I got home. I’m not one who goes to the doctor much at all. but I called and scheduled an appointment for that Monday since I was already off work and it was hurting that bad. I couldn’t get it with my doctor until July 6th, and since it was June 29th, I really didn’t want to wait a week. so I accepted an appointment with another doctor in the office. though I wonder if I had waited for my real doctor, even though I would have been in pain for a week, if the rest of the mess would have been avoided.

long story short, we’ve been trading messages and test results back and forth. and the doctors’ office can’t seem to call the correct phone# for me. I told them I’m not allowed to have my cellphone at work, so they have to call my work phone until 3pm. after that they can call my home phone or cellphone. and yet they KEEP ON CALLING my home and cellphone during the day. it’s infuriating. because then I have to call them back and sit on hold forever and still not get any answers. because after sitting on hold I get the receptionist who takes my information and questions, and puts a note in the doctor’s box. then the doctor’s nurses call me back AT THE WRONG PHONE # the next day, and since I’m not there, they either hang up or leave a message for me to call back to get the answers to my questions (instead of just leaving them in the message). if they called my damn work # like I asked UMPTEEN TIMES, I’d actually be there to get the message in the 1st place. (and for the record, I have checked the box on my file saying they can leave messages about my health.)

yesterday was especially infuriating. last Friday I had gotten 2 different messages on my cellphone during work, saying that if I was still in pain to make another appointment. still in pain? why the hell would I still be calling and badgering them if I wasn’t? so I made an appointment for yesterday. I went straight to the doctor from work, only to find out the doctor had called in! and they had called my HOME PHONE while I was at work, wanting to reschedule! WTF!

so I demanded to see a doctor – any doctor – then. they gave me a doctor I hadn’t seen before, but hey, it was someone to listen. I got a new anti-inflammatory medicine, a new, expanded note for work (that will prevent a repeat of the horrible error of my being forced to work on the floor (not my regular job) last Saturday for 6 hours – not good, me limping around unloading semi trucks), and a promise that someone would call me today (presumably at the CORRECT phone #) to schedule an MRI.

of course, they didn’t call today. I called the office right before they closed, wanting to talk to someone about the MRI. my call got transferred to Scheduling, who told me very nicely and apologetically that they wished that nurses didn’t tell patients they would get a call the next day. that they have to make the appointments in the order they receive them, unless they are a rush and handed to them personally by the nurse. this is all perfectly understandable to me. only mine wasn’t given to them as a rush, despite the fact that my work is restricted pending the MRI appointment, and the Scheduling Lady said mine should have been a rush.

so since it was the end of the day, she said she would put my chart on the top of the stack. due to my insurance, she has to call them (the insurance) and get permission for me to get an MRI, then she will call me to schedule it.

here’s to hoping the insurance company says yes. I’m am SEVERELY SHORT on funds, and it’s only getting worse. and with me on desk duty at work, I’m not allowed to work overtime unless there is seated overtime work to do. so I might be missing out on the work this Saturday (I’m already missing out on the overtime during the week this week). and money would be a good thing. besides the umpteen other bills looming largely, and the roof which is going to give me a nervous breakdown, now the MRI will be between $600-$800.

at this rate I need a 2nd job.
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as an update, Scheduling Lady did call me (at the correct phone#!!) yesterday afternoon. I have an MRI for Friday night. yay!

idiot neighbor kid update

so the idiot kid from down the street with the motobike was running jumps through my yard and driveway. I went out to stop him from tearing up my grass again. he had stopped in the idiot neighbor kids' yard. so I went over there to talk to him, and ended up talking to the idiot neighbor kids about my window as well.

as predicted, they swear they had nothing to do with it. they (and 2 of the random adults that came out of the house) even started to tell me about a break-in further down the street. and about how someone tried to break into a friend's car in their driveway. this conversation was happening, btw, while people were screaming in the front room of the house behind them. the windows were open, and it made it hard for me to hear them over the argument.

I'm not saying someone didn't try to break-in to my house. but if they did try, I have a few questions. this happened while I was gone yesterday between 5:30pm and 10pm. it doesn't get dark here now until about 9:30pm. and my neighbors sit out on their porch all the time. so that left the thieves 30 minutes of darkness and neighbors in full view of them the entire time. and they broke the window, but didn't go in at all? I know my basement is creepy as all hell, but you break the window to break-in, and you don't go in? if it was a matter of fitting through the 10x20 inch window, it can be done (as the random adults next door claimed it was kids doing the breaking-in (but not the idiot neighbor kids though)). wtf. if any of this is true, they fail as thieves.


eta -- young idiot neighbor girl kid just came over saying her mom wanted to talk to me. so I went over and talked to someone that I now know is the mother of at least 2 of the idiot neighbor kids. (I found a parent!) the mom then proceeded to tell me about a guy in a red truck that was in my driveway during the day yesterday, and knocked on my side door. she says that's the only person she saw over here.

then we started discussing what the 'crime scene' looked like. and after hearing that, she said she thought it was the kids as well but that they had probably been too afraid to tell them. she said it wasn't right, and if I did ever find out it was the kids, I shouldn't have to pay for it. I told them that fortunately Dad had been able to take care of it. so yeah. she was very nice. well, mostly. she did tell me that she's home all the time, is always sitting on the couch in the front room, and is incredibly nosy so she's always watching my house. I feel like that's a little creepy, even if it's kinda our own weird little neighborhood watch system.

she also told me she likes it when the lights on the side of my house come on 'cause they're so bright and they can see when they're out in the front yard at night. I told her they're on a motion sensor, so I would hope she would realize that if my lights are even coming on it means that one or more of the idiot neighbor kids are more than likely over here. and they shouldn't be that late at night!

she did tell me she always tells the kids to stay out of my yard. (I'm not sure they're listening to her much on that.) but she seemed like she would enforced things. especially after she asked me if I could tell if kids had been in my yard/landscaping, and I told her about the rose bush. she sounded ticked, and thanked me for telling her about that.

so I don't know what to think now. she said the same thing I was thinking, that you don't want to think that people are trying to break-in to your house. especially something so random as to smash the window during the day, and not even get in. and she said we would go with the theory that the kids *had* done it. so, I was like, huh, okay. we'll see what develops over the next few days. I gotta tell ya, I'm more than a little freaked about the fact that I'm going out of town this weekend. I hate that all my critters will be here alone. Mom and Dad should be over here a lot though, since Binkley needs many feedings per day.

I'm feeling rather annoyed today. I know part of the reason why, but I didn't think it would cause this general bad mood I'm in.

randomness…

--was watching the NBA playoffs last night, but I fell asleep. I woke up at 12:30 ‘cause someone was screaming "HELP ME" at the top of their lungs. the game had been on TNT, so the game was over and "Law & Order" was starting. so yeah, it was the tv. all I know is I woke up in a sleep fog wondering if my crummy neighbors were killing each other.

--they’ve banned streaming media at work. so no more ESPNRadio. it’s day#2 of no Mike&Mike In The Morning, no Tirico & Van Pelt. that hurts. I really miss listenting Scott Van Pelt in the afternoons. I usually only got to hear half his show anyway ‘cause of my work schedule. I guess I’m going to have to start downloading it as a podcast. I tried to download yesterday’s show at home this morning so I could bring it to work. but it would only play, not save. to save I think I had to go to itunes. I don’t use itunes. hell, I don’t have an ipod. I have a generic mp3 I bought at Big Lots for less than $20. it works, and that’s all I need. and I don’t wanna pay itunes for a daily radio show I could possibly listen to for free. so either way, I’m without my ESPNRadio and all streaming media at work.

--pringles should be bought 7 cans at a time. *munch*

--eta: dreamwidth really doesn't work on my browser at work. ack. the screen is all screwed up. I can't enter moods or tags 'cause the options aren't there. I was only able to change my icon 'cause I refreshed until a random blank dropdown box appeared which just happened to be for icons. I can only enter tags by editing tags after I post. (and now looking back at past replies, all icons have reverted to my default icon. wtf?)