Random Droppings

Hey, this thing is still on!

So. *shuffles awkwardly* Yeah, I've been a little distracted lately. And by "lately" I mean a year or so, maybe three or four. Five, tops.

Five is a good number! Let's do that.

1. Still married, yay!
2. Still riding my bikes but not as frequently outside this past year (booo) -- mostly indoors on my trainer.
3. Lack of outdoor riding partly due to the influenza, then a hand injury, then a gastrointestinal virus (lovely!), and the weather -- too hot and too rainy all summer, then really bitterly cold or too rainy thus far.
4. Indoors, though, I'm riding up to 1.5 hours with ease, so yay! Depending on the revolutions per minute, that's roughly 18-20 miles per ride. As I continue, I'll extend the time and then up the speed so I can reasonably ride 50 miles in 4-6 hours.
5. Added a new thing: Tomb Raider -- my first RPG ever, and picked out with the help of hawkwing_lb. Starting out as a total newbie, and now not *just* a total newbie, I'm about 75% of the way through the game. Getting so much better at shooting the bad guys fast enough that I can spend more time exploring for relics, maps, etc. The frustrating moments are fewer and shorter in duration, although the half-hour I spent tussling with the giant Russian and repeatedly missing the *right button* for the proper sequence was so annoying that my wife was worried.
Second 5. Ah, lactose intolerance! How I hate thee! No more cheese, nor yogurt, nor cream sauces such as Alfredo...so now I wend my way to the Asian stores and restaurants. Good thing I already adore the various Chinese cuisines, along with Japanese, Korean, Viet, Thai, the various Indian cuisines, Uzbeki -- now I just have to add in Pinoy, Indonesian, and whatever else may be out there, deliciously dairy-free.
Third 5. NutPods Coconut Creamer, Hazelnut flavor is my Big Find. It's creamy, with a mouthfeel like milk. It goes excellently well on oatmeal. Oddly enough, despite my historic hatred of coconut, I prefer this to any other "milk" out there. Lactaid or other lactose-"free" milks aren't good enough.

I was able to pet him and slip in a needle with some analgesic yesterday, so I repeated it today with a higher volume. After he was sedated, I gave him the overdose of anesthetic, wrapped him in a old shirt, and petted him until he was gone. He was a big, sweet cat with an incurable cancer, and he was loved by all. May he find Marilee again.

Last week, I was on vacation. The FG and I drove to my parental house in the Mid-Hudson Valley, spent the night, and then drove to Bar Harbor, Maine. It was the perfect time to go: no mosquitos, no tourists, cool daytime temps, weather varying from rainy to sunny -- the only disadvantage was the lack of fresh blueberries, the season not having begun there yet. Alas.

On Day One, it was rainy, so we drove around Cadillac Mountain and Acadia N.P., then shopped for groceries and made our own dinner in the cabin.

Day Two, overcast and mild; we walked the sandbar to Bar Island and spent a pleasant few hours climbing over the rocky beach, looking at rocks and taking pictures. We had lunch in town, bought a few things, ran back to the cabin to rest, and then took a sail on a four-master (the Margaret Todd) and enjoyed the sunset cruise. The FG used up the batteries in her camera, then her cell phone, and commandeered my camera at the end.

Day Three, sunny; we had bought a bike for the FG on Monday (could not pass up the sale at LL Bean Outlet) and rented a bike for me. We rode around Jordan Pond, despite all the dratted hills in my way. I had to walk up rather a few of them, but still managed to make it back to the car before the FG, who kept stopping to take more pictures. We took tea at Jordan Pond House, and enjoyed the popovers; then we returned the bike (which I bought as a second bike to keep at the FG's house), and dined in town.

Day Four, sunny; we drove to Northwest Harbor, drove back and forth along Somes Sound (a fjord); around to Seal Harbor and spent a few hours on Newport Cove.

Day Five, sunny; we did a last bit of shopping for the families, finished off as much of our food as possible, repacked the car, and got ready to leave. This was the same day as all the tornadoes in Maryland, which bemused us.

Day Six, cloudy to rainy (the weather drifting northwards, but less dangerous), we drove from Bar Harbor to Boston, to visit my brother and his family. The FG had met him and his boys a few months ago, but not his wife. We got to see their adorable young cat too. Since their house is small, we stayed at a hotel nearby, but had dinner and then breakfast the next morning. We parked our bikes in their garage, so we didn't have to worry about them overnight.

Day Seven, we drove back to Maryland. I almost stopped in New Jersey, as we'd heard that my cousin was having issues again, in his fight against metastatic colon cancer. He's been through 50 rounds of chemo; the first protocol eventually failed and he switched to a monoclonal antibody last year. That had just stopped working, and he was jaundiced again, plus in a lot of pain from the stent that was placed. My parents visited him at home, and reported that he seemed to be rebounding, which was a great relief. We arrived at my place, where we unpacked and repacked things. The FG had left her cat at my place, so she took him home that night.

And then it was Monday again.

On Tuesday, I closed on my house and saw my son for the first time in more than a week. He completed another merit badge that night, at the weekly Scout meeting. Tonight he is here, as the Hex (thank you, serge_lj!) is heading out of town for a professional meeting this weekend. We'll stop by her house every day, to take care of Rico, the fish, and the plants. But first, we shop for a new bike for Sonny; he's big enough to get a grown-up bike, and she took her bike when the furniture was moved. We'll see what REI has to offer, bright and early tomorrow morning.

And now to bed.

I hope I don't forget all the little things I've been meaning to post about.

The last post was in December, and I still can haz lovely delicious comfortable bed. I almost hate to spend my night somewhere else. Almost.

Well, clearly the holidays happened and stuff. ::waves hand:: In more exciting news, I had a mediation meeting in January and another one in February. Both of these have been more productive than I would have hoped. The first meeting got us agreeing to work with a mortgage specialist on determining how much either of us can afford; this led to the Ex realizing that she could, after all, afford a decent house or townhouse, in a decent location. Surprise! I mean, I could have told her this, but I knew she wouldn't hear it from me. The second meeting allowed her to identify how much she could afford on her own, and accept the concept that I didn't have to provide 100% of her down payment.

It still means a refinancing of my mortgage, even just to get her off, and a bit of extra cash from that to give to her, but one hopes the rates will remain low enough that my payments can remain around the same. This will make it -- if I recall correctly -- the fifth refinance since I bought the house. Ugh. On the other hand, she's not stressed out about GETTING MONEY and now she's house-hunting. If it means she also takes the youngest cat, my son's favorite little ninja kitty, then I'm all for it. Poor guy doesn't get along with the older cats and even though he loves the dogs, he can't be left out. He purrs a lot, so he's still a happy youngster.

The FG is still just as F and G as ever. Her daughter and son-in-law have begun to hear some of my stories, like the ones about the sheep, and seem to think they're funny. They met the Sonny at one of our dinners back in December, before his knee surgery, so he knows what they look like and vice-versa. His toxic girlfriend, BTW, is now history. He apparently dumped her -- or they mutually agreed to cool it -- before Christmas. He has a new one now, whom I shall refer to as "Nevermore". Let's hope she's not nearly as toxic, which would not be difficult. Toxic Girl was Toxic. Ugh.

Dogs are happy dogs. We play with the tennis ball before meals, run around the yard, eat, play, and get chewy treats like pig ears (I'm avoiding rawhide as anything beef seems to trigger allergic reactions, in the skin).

Cats are happy cats. Cleo and Brady get along very well, much better than he did with Kedgie, who was a Princess of the First People and A Higher Power. Cinder is now 19 and still setting daily records for the Oldest Cat I've Ever Had. She haz a cranky and a hungry, then a sleepy. Apparently she can hear the wind when it's howling, and it bothered her, so she yowled in Sonny's ear at 3 am. Either it was the wind or else she was hungry again, we don't know.

The FG took me skiing one weekend about a month ago; she's been dying for lack of snow this winter and we managed to eke out a cross-country session on some snow, surrounded by brownish green fields. I fell only once this time (!!) and did a better job skiing. She zoomed around and I had fun watching her ski. The following weekend we made a trip to NY to surprise my mother for her birthday (which was actually the weekend after, but they'd managed to schedule themselves out of town on that date, drat them). My brother came down with his two sons; we all met at our cousin's house and surprised her. She had already suspected something was up, particularly after she found out Dad had canceled their concert tickets, but she didn't know exactly what. We all had a wonderful time; there were her grandchildren and the cousins' kids all running around -- Sonny babysat them and my cousin made it "worth his while" with a $20, which is a family tradition and a joke related to her mom's habit of slipping twenties to the kids.

Last weekend we took the Sonny for a bike ride out at Harper's Ferry. We started off ok, then he got sulky and wasn't paying attention, so he ran into me because he didn't realize I'd stopped to look at the river. The bruise is fading nicely, thanks. He failed to apologize, instead choosing to argue, so I gave him heck and rode off; she gave him heck and then he came up to apologize very nicely. We all had a much better afternoon then.

Somewhere in the past two weeks I saw "My Neighbor Totoro"; a lovely movie that I highly recommend. It's one of those where at the end, you turn to your loved one and say "I ought to buy it". It shows aspects of Japanese culture that I'd never seen before, which was nice as well as educational; it is about love and family; it contains magic and the adults treat the children with great respect. Definitely worth seeing!

I think that's good for now.

It's been an extremely eventful month. In short, the Sonny "ran away" or "failed to come home on time" once weekly for four weeks, culminating in an overnight disappearance (ditched his first finals to run with his girlfriend out the door). The miscreants were tracked by the GPS in the phone they'd borrowed from another teen, whose father was rather irate about that turn of events. However, Irate Father was the man of the hour, as he tracked the GPS as soon as the phone was turned on, resulting in the swift apprehension by the police of our two young idiots.

Ex had been teleworking in case he was captured, and responded to the police station; she took him immediately to the behavioral health hospital and admitted him. He was hearing voices and seeing things, and was oddly nonchalant about staying, although he kept asking for things like "stopping at McDonalds on the way home", which indicated that he wasn't really well-connected to reality.

Twenty-four hours later, he was still rather subdued. Another day after that, he was sullen and angry, lashing out with hurtful things (he wished he hadn't signed the adoption papers, etc., etc. ); today he was more mellow and even hugged the Ex at the end of her visit.

He's getting worked up for causes of psychosis; they've dropped the dose of his ADHD meds and have added both an anti-psychotic as well as an anti-depressant.

I'm still processing this. I'm not sure how much I will be able to trust him once he's released to outpatient care.

In other news, we're still preparing for the triennial site visit, starting tomorrow. Our part of the site visit begins Wednesday afternoon, through Thursday afternoon.

I've also been cleaning Sonny's room; I've found all of the missing DVDs -- they were all under his bed, along with the portable DVD player. No wonder he was claiming lack of sleep! Well, no more temptation. The DVDs are all at the FG's house now, and we're taking advantage of this opportunity to watch the movies I'd been promising her. Yesterday we saw "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which is still good even when you know how it ends.

Is it really just a crappy Monday?

This morning started out so nicely, too: I was woken by my new alarm, who kissed me ever so nicely. She packed me a lunch and a travel mug of tea, and I left for home to take care of the remaining menagerie.

The drive from her house is always lovely, but even more so on foggy mornings. There's just something unutterably surreal and fragile about fog drifting in thick banks across the fields.

Traffic was minor until fairly close to home, which is because the traffic lights start in about five miles away, and this slows down everyone. Still, I made it home in about an hour, and fed the monsters. We had a lovely walk, the dogs and I, and since I already had a lunch I only needed to make my tea. I was at work in time to get a decent parking spot next to my building, which is a major accomplishment.

Got lots of work done at work, which is always nice to do. The Ex called to update me on the Sonny, who is dealing with sleep disturbances still, and had been woken by a nightmare again. We talked about training him on lucid dreaming techniques, and she also apologized for her behavior on Sunday. (Basically, she'd been running late, had yelled at me because he wasn't ready to go, and I'd ignored it.)

Heading home, I ran into weather and that caused the Bad Kind of traffic, so I detoured away from the Beltway, stopped by the pet store for dog fud and a few cat treats. I got home in time to see the Sonny also heading for the house with his best friend. This was unexpected, and it turned out that his friend's younger brother had run off, so the family was out looking for him. Even later it turned out that Sonny has been spending many afternoons at their house, on his way home from school. No wonder he's usually late, but the lying has to stop...

Since it was her week, the Ex was also around for this, and took the Sonny off to her place. I finished feeding the monsters, and started making my dinner.

The phone rang. It was about 7 pm; my dinner was not ready yet. It was Ex, asking me to come to her place now. She and the Sonny had gotten into a confrontation and she needed help. I turned off the stove, packed away the dogs, and drove down.

They'd gotten into an argument over homework, and he'd pushed her. On the other hand, he'd been woken by a nightmare at 3:30 this morning, and could be reasonably expected to be somewhat tired by now. I spoke briefly to him; he was in his room with his arms folded. I sat with her and tried to redirect her into positive approaches until she got mad about "letting him get away with it" and started in on me. I told her I wasn't going to let her treat me like that and left.

I called her about 15 minutes later to ask her what she thought was an appropriate punishment for him. She couldn't decide at that time, but we discussed a few options and she'll get back to me. I suppose she'll apologize tomorrow. If not, I won't be surprised. When she thinks she's right, she gets righteous and mean about it.

I'm glad I walked out. I was not going to sit there and tolerate her anger again. She asked me to come help, and I did. If she didn't like it, well, she can deal with him on her own then. She's the one who left (and the Sonny is still angry at her about it); I don't owe her anything any more. I'm happy to try to help if asked, but that's my limit.

I went shopping at TJs for more bread before getting home to finally have my dinner (asparagus risotto and italian sausages); I think I'll have some dessert now. And tea.

And then to bed. By myself, tonight. It would have been nice to drive up to the FG tonight but not at this hour. It's late enough, and I don't want to fall asleep on the drive.

With any luck, the Sonny will have a better day tomorrow. Poor kid needs a decent night's sleep.

1. I finally had the chance to try Amaretto with Costco's Super Premium Vanilla ice cream...delicious!

2. Suzanne Westenhoefer is hilarious, and in fine fettle this year. Turns out her wife was cheating on her, and continued to cheat throughout therapy, with a professional volleyball player who is deeply closeted. Oops! Never piss off a comedian!

3. The Ex and the FG met at the show. Hands were shaken. Each spoke one sentence ("Hi, I'm Ex." "I'm FG") and then we spent the rest of the evening with our backs to her group, enjoying Suzanne's comedy.

4. FG is enjoying me reading "The Curse of Chalion" to her, and is appreciative of Lois McMaster Bujold's writing skilz.

5. The stray/abandoned cat on FG's doorstep is now at the emergency clinic, getting warm fluids and tender loving care. Don't know if he/she will make it, being hypothermic and dehydrated, but if s/he does, there's a new home. Guaranteed.

I have a sudden and nasty little cold -- and now a sudden and purring kitten on my chest, blocking my view of the laptop. I know which one I prefer, despite the sharp little claws...anyway, I decided to take today off and remain in bed as much as possible. It's an annoying cold, mainly rhinitis -- a runny nose, congestion, sneezing -- with some coughing and a bit of headache every so often. I've had worse. However, this one blew up fast; I was fine yesterday AM through just before lunch, and then wham!

I have debated making a hot toddy, and decided to wait until later, because I don't need it yet and it would just be a waste of decent whisky to consume it while I can't smell anything.

I am drinking hot tea with honey in it, for the sore throat and the cough. It helps. I also have my cats around me, and a paperback Stephen King novel to re-read ("It", which I used to re-read in vet school by letting the book fall open and starting from that page). I need to remind myself to drag "The Dome" out from its hiding place so I can lend it to my friend K.

My fabulous girlfriend wanted to take care of me, which was very tempting, but this cold is more annoying than debilitating. I'd rather have her help when I really need it, and not give her any unnecessary colds like this one.

So, I'm catching up on emails, playing Farmville, drinking tea, cosseting a kitten, blowing my nose and using mass quantities of facial tissues, and thinking fondly of a nap very shortly.

I was bemoaning the amount of cleaning to do in my house, courtesy of an Ex who never followed through on her promises to review/screen/toss her old papers, and who has felt free to use my house as her storage facility..and then my fabulous girlfriend pointed out that I could hire professionals for a reasonable rate to box up all that crap, and stick it someplace out of the way. I've been so focused on my responsibilities that I'd overlooked the obvious.

I know I've been enabling Ex, mainly because she's using her presence on the mortgage as leverage for money -- in other words, she wants me to provide her with the down payment for her next house. And good luck with that! ::throws up two fingers in the age-old gesture::

Then I also pictured replacing the old shed with a brand new one, which has been a plan for years, and putting as much of her boxed crap in there as possible. I like this.

My fabulous girlfriend and my best friend have both offered to help me clean up around the house. I can haz fantastic friends..and Sonny had better get his butt in gear. His room is starting to look a right mess again. I am not pleased. And when Ema is Not Pleased, ain't nobody happy!

In other news, the kittens are crazy. They need to go to their room for the night. In the morning, I may have to box them, to keep them out of the way as the windows get replaced. I also have to finish moving the furniture away from the windows so the installers can get close. I have one dresser in the guest room, one buffet in the front room, and one bureau in my bedroom. Well, two.

At least I have the day off. I will enjoy myself at some point. Or else.

I suppose I should update..

When last we left our intrepid hero, it was St. Pat's and I was enjoying a wee drop of Bushmill's in honor of my granpa. Since then, we've had a bit of vacation, with Sonny's spring break, that coincided nicely with Passover. I used that excuse to drive him up to my parents' house for a few days. On the drive up, the clutch burned out -- going up a long steep hill, naturally -- and I successfully coasted across the crest, down into the visitor center in the median, where I attempted to call the 'rents. Only, in the hours between the last successful call and that time point, their phone line had gone out -- repeated busy signals for me -- and they don't leave their cell phones on. My only hope was to reach Mom by Facebook, but the blackberry couldn't get any service.

( Cut to spare your flist )
And that is the update.