Fast & Flurrious
Sep. 11th, 2021 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aLife continues to be a fast flurry of activity.
Cats. We've thankfully not been to the vet for a week now. It took Callisto about two more days to be fully back to her old self, but now you couldn't even tell she ate a lizard (or whatever). She's wildly meowing for food, clumsily leaping into laps, and happily head butting hands. Lucy also hasn't repeated her really weird behavior, but it was always sporadic.
On the downside, I've been constantly administering meds to both the cats. For a while, each day has been antibiotics for Lucy in the morning, and antibiotics and prednisone for Lucy in the evening plus prednisone for Callisto. This has gotten very old. Callisto, at least, continues to be mostly fooled by the pill in the food trick, but Lucy got wise to that, so I've been pill-shooting her for about a week. She has a spectacular ability to spit the pill out even when it's way back in her throat. She and I are also totally over the liquid prednisone she was prescribed. For a while I could hide that in her food too, but these cats are wily, so now it's liquid syringe, and then she goes and hides. Bleh.
At least, Lucy's pilling is done of this morning, and Callisto is back to every-other-day, also as of today. Finally, Lucy is going back to the vet on Monday for a recheck, and we'll need to see if the prednisone is doing any good and if so we *have* to get it as compounded treats, like we had for Cobweb. Because the daily liquid application and the unhappy cat is killing me.
Doors. Because Kimberly has been recovering from her surgery, we haven't been over to my dad and Mary's house for Sunday gaming for the last two weeks, so those Sundays, my dad came over to help me with the spray painting of the doors for Kimberly's closet (the remaining two doors that is, we got the first two, which Kimberly and I had painstakingly painted up the first time he was over). We thought we had them done after last Sunday, but when I reviewed them in the light of day when they were dry, one not only still had streaks, and still had dust.
The dust has been a constant problem with these doors and the *)(@#$*)(#@ Rustoleum 2x paint we're using. My dad was able to diagnose it as something wrong with the nozzles, and so sometimes they spray dust instead of paint. Which requires much brushing off of the doors and sometimes sanding and starting over. So we thought all of our spraying was clean last time, but I found some of the darker dust on one of the doors.
My dad is *great* when he's working with me: he does some of the work and shows me how to do it and then has me do some of the work. So after working on those two Sundays, I feel confident about using his technique to put another coat on the remaining door. I just haven't had *time* to do so since Tuesday when I noticed the problem.
Why not? Well Wednesday was gaming (New Frontiers now on BGA!), and then the other two days had other commitments.
Oahu. Thursday was take-Kimberly-to-Oahu day. Or take her to the airport at least. So I got up early, took her to the airport, came home, worked a little bit, ate lunch, napped, worked a little bit, and then went and picked her up from the airport. I'm sure my day felt very short and hers felt very long.
She was over on Oahu for the follow-up with her doctor on the surgery. All good so far, but the ultimate test will be when she's able to try some walking, and that probably won't really be until after her follow-up appointment, in six weeks.
Water Heaters. Friday I got to help my dad at his house, which we hadn't done since before they had their trip out to California. (I too remember being places other than these islands!) It was a pretty small task, getting a water heater into place and then connecting it and wrapping it. But the getting it into place was tricky because it was about a hundred pounds and we had to get it into a not-quite-big-enough pan without crushing our fingers. Fortunately, he had two pallets and we had our ingenuity. So, we rolled it up on a pallet, and then up on the stand, and then up on a stacked pair of pallets and then from there could maneuver it down into the pan on the stand. Whew. My dad did the connecting, and then we were able to get the wrapping done.
Taxes. Meanwhile, the idiot-tax-demands continue, as Hawaii continues to try and hold us up for a large sum of money that's not theirs because we paid it to California. Last week I got two letters the same day, one from the hospital asking for the second time for a bill that's been paid and one from the Hawaii Tax idiots, saying that the third(!) amended return that I sent them wasn't valid because we hadn't signed the form. Which we had. I told Kimberly that the message for the day was that Hawaiian organizations were really crappy at bureaucracy.
As far as I could tell, the problem was that we'd done what our accountants advised us to, which was sign the new N-11 form that we'd sent in, but Hawaii was upset that the original N-15 which the N-11 replaced, was unsigned. It was a copy of the original form, not an official ammended form! Whatever. Our accountants said: just do what they want. So we gave them some electronic signatures. (This is the whole, replace not-full-year-residents with full-year-residents change that was required because their tax computers couldn't deal with us not being full-year residents last year, since we were only off by a third of a day or so.)
We'll see if that works, but meanwhile yesterday we received the newest missive from Hawaii and it was a threat: they let us know that they were going to start confiscating our federal refunds if we didn't send them their money. That's not theirs. Ugh. )(*@#ing Hawaii.
Biking. But in the beautiful Hawaii category: I had a nice bike ride up at the Kauai Path today and got some nice writing done.
Writing. I again chose some smaller topics this month, to again try to get my work (and my stress) back on track. It's working better this month than it did last month, with our constant trips to Oahu. I finished up the last big chunk of my intended history writing today out at the beach (with editing still needed). That means that if I want I can spend the rest of the month on the elf book for Chaosium (along with my tech writing, of course), and maybe get that close to done. I've already talked with the folks at Chaosium and got a month delay and the ability to go over in word count if I want. So, that's all looking pretty good. (I just have to resist the urge to write a second history for the month, as there's another that would go very well with the first. But If I finish the Elf Pack, I'll again have more time for everything else again.)
Cats. We've thankfully not been to the vet for a week now. It took Callisto about two more days to be fully back to her old self, but now you couldn't even tell she ate a lizard (or whatever). She's wildly meowing for food, clumsily leaping into laps, and happily head butting hands. Lucy also hasn't repeated her really weird behavior, but it was always sporadic.
On the downside, I've been constantly administering meds to both the cats. For a while, each day has been antibiotics for Lucy in the morning, and antibiotics and prednisone for Lucy in the evening plus prednisone for Callisto. This has gotten very old. Callisto, at least, continues to be mostly fooled by the pill in the food trick, but Lucy got wise to that, so I've been pill-shooting her for about a week. She has a spectacular ability to spit the pill out even when it's way back in her throat. She and I are also totally over the liquid prednisone she was prescribed. For a while I could hide that in her food too, but these cats are wily, so now it's liquid syringe, and then she goes and hides. Bleh.
At least, Lucy's pilling is done of this morning, and Callisto is back to every-other-day, also as of today. Finally, Lucy is going back to the vet on Monday for a recheck, and we'll need to see if the prednisone is doing any good and if so we *have* to get it as compounded treats, like we had for Cobweb. Because the daily liquid application and the unhappy cat is killing me.
Doors. Because Kimberly has been recovering from her surgery, we haven't been over to my dad and Mary's house for Sunday gaming for the last two weeks, so those Sundays, my dad came over to help me with the spray painting of the doors for Kimberly's closet (the remaining two doors that is, we got the first two, which Kimberly and I had painstakingly painted up the first time he was over). We thought we had them done after last Sunday, but when I reviewed them in the light of day when they were dry, one not only still had streaks, and still had dust.
The dust has been a constant problem with these doors and the *)(@#$*)(#@ Rustoleum 2x paint we're using. My dad was able to diagnose it as something wrong with the nozzles, and so sometimes they spray dust instead of paint. Which requires much brushing off of the doors and sometimes sanding and starting over. So we thought all of our spraying was clean last time, but I found some of the darker dust on one of the doors.
My dad is *great* when he's working with me: he does some of the work and shows me how to do it and then has me do some of the work. So after working on those two Sundays, I feel confident about using his technique to put another coat on the remaining door. I just haven't had *time* to do so since Tuesday when I noticed the problem.
Why not? Well Wednesday was gaming (New Frontiers now on BGA!), and then the other two days had other commitments.
Oahu. Thursday was take-Kimberly-to-Oahu day. Or take her to the airport at least. So I got up early, took her to the airport, came home, worked a little bit, ate lunch, napped, worked a little bit, and then went and picked her up from the airport. I'm sure my day felt very short and hers felt very long.
She was over on Oahu for the follow-up with her doctor on the surgery. All good so far, but the ultimate test will be when she's able to try some walking, and that probably won't really be until after her follow-up appointment, in six weeks.
Water Heaters. Friday I got to help my dad at his house, which we hadn't done since before they had their trip out to California. (I too remember being places other than these islands!) It was a pretty small task, getting a water heater into place and then connecting it and wrapping it. But the getting it into place was tricky because it was about a hundred pounds and we had to get it into a not-quite-big-enough pan without crushing our fingers. Fortunately, he had two pallets and we had our ingenuity. So, we rolled it up on a pallet, and then up on the stand, and then up on a stacked pair of pallets and then from there could maneuver it down into the pan on the stand. Whew. My dad did the connecting, and then we were able to get the wrapping done.
Taxes. Meanwhile, the idiot-tax-demands continue, as Hawaii continues to try and hold us up for a large sum of money that's not theirs because we paid it to California. Last week I got two letters the same day, one from the hospital asking for the second time for a bill that's been paid and one from the Hawaii Tax idiots, saying that the third(!) amended return that I sent them wasn't valid because we hadn't signed the form. Which we had. I told Kimberly that the message for the day was that Hawaiian organizations were really crappy at bureaucracy.
As far as I could tell, the problem was that we'd done what our accountants advised us to, which was sign the new N-11 form that we'd sent in, but Hawaii was upset that the original N-15 which the N-11 replaced, was unsigned. It was a copy of the original form, not an official ammended form! Whatever. Our accountants said: just do what they want. So we gave them some electronic signatures. (This is the whole, replace not-full-year-residents with full-year-residents change that was required because their tax computers couldn't deal with us not being full-year residents last year, since we were only off by a third of a day or so.)
We'll see if that works, but meanwhile yesterday we received the newest missive from Hawaii and it was a threat: they let us know that they were going to start confiscating our federal refunds if we didn't send them their money. That's not theirs. Ugh. )(*@#ing Hawaii.
Biking. But in the beautiful Hawaii category: I had a nice bike ride up at the Kauai Path today and got some nice writing done.
Writing. I again chose some smaller topics this month, to again try to get my work (and my stress) back on track. It's working better this month than it did last month, with our constant trips to Oahu. I finished up the last big chunk of my intended history writing today out at the beach (with editing still needed). That means that if I want I can spend the rest of the month on the elf book for Chaosium (along with my tech writing, of course), and maybe get that close to done. I've already talked with the folks at Chaosium and got a month delay and the ability to go over in word count if I want. So, that's all looking pretty good. (I just have to resist the urge to write a second history for the month, as there's another that would go very well with the first. But If I finish the Elf Pack, I'll again have more time for everything else again.)