sad things and happy times

our 2013 xmas card

 today is the day after xmas.  we had a really nice xmas!  the kids were a treat, as always, and they liked their presents.  sirus received a ton of legos and nano-big things.  seamus wound up with 40 different kits to make differenty types of bracelets.  i am hoping she will make a few for me!  her big gift from santa was a pair of stilts.  she was super surprised and was a little afraid of them at first.  but once she practiced some she was trekking all over the house on them.  they are set on the lowest level so she has plenty of inches to grow!  AND her wish from santa came true!  when we went to go visit with santa she had asked that her big front tooth came in.  and sure enough on xmas eve, it just started coming in!  it is peeping out!  she had her surgery on the 9th, and the little chain is attached to that tooth and it is starting to work!  she was very excited and it seems as though santa was able to work something out with the tooth fairy afterall!
eric got me a scale...  ok ok, i asked for the scale, so he wasn't being mean, but my mom did get my a hair removal kit.  what?  i didn't ask for that!  what was she implying?  turns out it was a free gift with purchase thing that she got as part of something else and not a comment about my personal grooming.  later in the day, xtie and her bf and his little boy came over for dinner. it was fun to spend time with them all, and we brought out all of the fancy china and it was the one meal of the year that i contribute to, making homemade apple sauce and cranberry relish.  eric cooked up a turkey and grandma brought over some icelandic bread that she made, some icelandic butter and some icelandic skyr pie/cake thing.  it was a fabulous and fun day and evening!

 

all of the xmas goodness was welcome after the rough xmas eve we had.  we got up as normal, we started our day as normal, which meant i stayed in bed longer than anyone else.  i tried sleeping, but nadj was there in my face, purring and trying to get me to pet her.  so i lifted up the covers and she crawled in and cuddled and we slept for another hour.  then it was really time to get up.
we packed everyone up and headed to the gym.  eric and i did some gym stuff, i spent 20 minutes with a giant grin on my face while watching elf in the cinema room while on the elliptical.  love that movie!!  then we lifted some weights.  we did some of this and some of that and just took our time.  then i loaded up the kids into the car and we headed to starbucks for some hot chocolate and eric ran home.
at home, we got into the house and i went up to our bedroom to put some stuff away and then, that is when it all happened.  seamus mccat was on the bed next to nadj.  she stood up and started meowing the second i walked in the door.  nadj was making a terrible gasping / hissing noise which confused me.  i went to look at her and she was laying there limply, making that terrible noise.  i ran to get the cat carrier, yelling to the kids to put their shoes back on.  i quickly lifted nadj's limp, but warm body and set her on the towel in the box.  i called eric quickly asking him how far away he was and he said he would run right to the vet and meet us there.  it was xmas eve and i wasn't even sure if the vet would be open, but i went anyway, and we ran inside, i was crying and told them nadj was dying!  they took her right back and started taking care of her.  i sat in the waiting room crying, the kids sitting on either side of me not knowing what to do.  the tech came out and said they were giving her oxygen and trying to get her stable enough to transport to an emergency facility.  but by the time eric got there, the vet came out and said there wasn't anything she could do.  she was tearing up while telling us what she had tried and how nadj must have had a clot or something, but her lungs were full of fluid.  i asked if we could see her, so they went back and wrapped her up and brought her into a room for us.  i picked her up, hugged her, kissed her and cried.  the kids each petted her some.  then eric went and made arrangements for her, and then he and the kids left for a little bit.
nadj was my friend.  i was sad when pawpi died, 3 years ago, in december as well.  but nadj is different.  she and i were good friends, i loved her very much.  she was always there for me and went through so many tough times with me and was always there giving me purrs and cuddles.  these past two days have been strange, there is no one to chase me as i head into the bathroom, there is no one sitting on the bathmat while i take a shower.  eric offered, but its not the same.  no one walks all over me as i am falling asleep, or purrs in my face as i am trying to sleep in.  seamus mccat is alone, too.  she came up on the bed to sleep only for a little bit, but she has to know what happened, since she was there with her friend.  but now nadj is with pawpi. 

Nadjalene and Seamus Mccat Dec 23.

cats

there has been a plethora of pee going on.  not ok. it was getting ridiculous.  and despite my threats that if they didn't stop it, i was going to take them to the vets for check ups, they kept on doing it.
so first to go was nadj.  she hadn't been to the vet in about a million years.  she is 15 and has been healthy, and in indoor cat, so i stopped taking her.  i tried taking both her and seamus mccat when we first moved to this house, but neither of them would have it, and pawpi was the only one who went that time.  seamus mccat had an episode about 10 years ago that resulted in many many trips to the vets and $1500 of tests and emergency visits, extreme kitty weight loss and then one day she just got better.  so she hasn't been since then either.  she is 13.

so nadj went to the vet.  she has been looking thin lately and is awefully boney.  eric keeps saying that he'll be surprised if she makes it another 6 months.  well, the vet thinks otherwise.  she is on the border of having thyroid, kidney and liver disease, but far enough from them that the vet says no medication.  instead she prescribed some nasty ass wet cat food that makes me barf when i scoop it out.  nadj ate it but it was apparent that she didn't love it.
the peeing did not improve, in fact it got WORSE!
it got so bad that i told eric i was done and started researching no-kill shelters. i was so upset and frustrated.
eric texted me off the ledge, so instead i made a vet appointment for seamus mccat.
in the mean time, we locked fuzzy in the kids bathroom, and then the other two in our bedroom/bathroom.
i asked the vet to find out what the penalty for last minute cancellations might be, seeing as seamus mccat can be tough to catch.  no penalty!  but i really wanted to get her there.  so 1/2 hour before the appointment, i went in there and just picked her up, wrapped her in a towel and tossed her in the box.  she was NOT happy.  last time she was put in the box she peed all over the place, that was a million years ago.  she does tend to pee in terror. like, whenever the vacuum is turned on.  thankfully, we now have hard wood floors in the bedroom and those don't get vacuumed.

eric totally put these floors in - cut plywood into planks, installed, sanded, stained then coated.  they are awesome!!!

 luckily she held it together and no pee happened in the car.   she did really well at her exam, but the vet was worried she might have the jaundice, asking me if i thought the inside of her ears looked a little yellow, and what i thought of the whites of her eyes. the vet also commented on her lack of teeth - the teeth that she tore out while fighting with eric when we tried to put her in the box when we were trying to empty the house of cats for the open house when we were selling.  needless to say, she stayed in the house during the open house. and she did pee all over when they were trying to draw blood.  so they kept her for a few hours to try to not traumatize her too much, and they clipped her toenails, too!  seamus mccat was put on the nasty food too.  bleck.
turns out she doesn't have jaundice, her liver levels came back totally fine!  she just has a yellow tinge to her inner ear skin.  she doesn't have any kidney or thyroid problems either.  so no health reasons for her to be peeing.

the vet went on to say that fuzy was probably too young to have a medical condition causing him to pee.  she did go on and on about how they all love fuzy!  he hasn't been in there since they picked his berries, but they remember how awesome he is.  they would be surprised tho how huge he is, probably double in size by now!
so after about 10 days of being sequestered, fuzy has been set free to roam the house.  his bed is still in the kids bathroom and he does sleep in there sometimes.  his food  is in there, too, as well as a little box.  but now he has TWO litter boxes - the original one in the laundry room, too.  lucky him!
nadj and seamus mcat are still locked in our bedroom/bathroom.  this arrangement seems to work.  there has not been any aberrant peeing happening.  fuzy seems a little bit lonely, but at least i get to cuddle with him some without nadj getting mad at me.  we have swapped the nasty wet cat food for dry, which seems to make everyone happier and one of my favorite things is being able to hear the cats snacking or getting a drink of water during the night time.  we have committed to keeping them separated for the rest of eternity. 
everyone seems happier!
AND, from all of this drama, eric put in new floors in our family room!!

fuzy gets to roam free

so now we are almost carpet free.  all our floors are miss matched, but we went with the dark in here to contrast with the surrounding kitchen flooring.  we decided it would look better to go with something totally different than trying to match the existing flooring and have it be a little bit off.  can't wait to get rid of the rest of the carpet!!!

i graduated again!

 I went to Boston University.  because i did that, i get any number of magazines and stuff.  this most recent Arts & Sciences magazine had an article called Brain: It's What's for Dessert. A psychology professor, Alice Cronin-Golomb, conducts the Edible Brain Competition allowing her students a chance to create some brains.  I of course, sent off this photo of the cake that eric and the kids made for me to celebrate the end o my radiation, thanking her for all of her good work and expressing how people like me depend on people like her and her students.  She wrote back asking if she could share my note with her class, to which i replied, of course! 

i wore this.  i bought this Burberry dress off of ebay like 10 or more years ago and haven't ever worn it.  it still had the tags on it.  damn, its really cute and i do say that i managed to style it quite effectively.  i wore it to tea!

 we went to the Queen Mary Tea Room to celebrate both my birthday and xtie's birthday.  ok, well, really janet asked if i would be interested in going so i hijacked it as an opportunity to celebrate birthdays.  all the kids went and my mom came too.  it was very fun!  the foods were super tasty, although i have decided that i really only like the desserts at tea time.  the tea was good too.  the kids loved it, maybe because instead of tea they got their very own pots of hot chocolate and they each had a brownie with a big blob of cotton candy on top of it, or maybe it was this delightful sugar?  i don't know, but it was a fabulous idea on janet's part, and super happy we went.  we lived right around the corner from the tea room for several years and never went. 

this was me in highschool.  i was like 15 or 16.  they told me my nose was too bulbous at the end and i should work on contouring it more.  i wondering what they would say now about the giant witch's wart growing on the end of it and the piercing now?

sirus got me this shirt for mother's day.  i love it!  i paired it with the lovely infinity scarf from allie.  i wore it all to celebrate brain tumor awareness month, which was May, you were supposed to wear gray.  is it a coincidence that i was diagnosed with my brain tumor on a May 1?

thanks to susan's sister, we got to go to a Sounder's game.  i hadn't been to a pro soccer game since i was little, and the kids hadn't ever been to a pro sporting event ever.  this football helmet display was the first thing we saw when we walked into the stadium and both kids were fascinated by it.

 when we first walked out into the open air, the sounders had just scored a goal.  the fans were yelling, the cannons booming, fire was blasting and the kids jaws dropped to the ground and they both just stood there, frozen in their tracks.  they had no idea what to do!   Once we got to out seats, which seemed to be practically on the field, we all got settled.  it was a fun game with lots of fire and booms.  the sounders won and both kids agreed that soccer games are pretty darn fun.

we went up to edmonds on mother's day and hung out at the beach with grandma.  some guy dug this giant moat and sand castle, and sirus brought a dead crab over to decorate the castle.  the tide came in and filled the moat and eventually washed the whole thing away.

kids on the stone sculpture.  the tall guy has his mouth open and all i want to do is put my iphone in there.

sirus had to write a persuasive letter at school.  he wrote trying to persuade eric to let him get a pet fish.  so he got a pet fish.  it has been a big deal.

this squirrel climbs up the window framing and gets into the bird feeder.  i can pound on the glass and it doesn't even flinch.  i think its cute, i don't mind that it comes around.

oh, that squirrel drives fuzy crazy tho!

 i have a new hobby - metal stamping.  so fun!  the brain tumor group i belong to is having a picnic in southern california this weekend.  i'm not able to go, but i wanted to send something for them, to let them know i was thinking of them.  so i made them all survivor medals.  seamus sat with me the entire time i made them, surprised and fascinated that there were other people, including kids who had the same tumor as me.  she picked out the ribbon colors for each of the girl's necklaces.  sirus wondered why i didn't make one for me, he reminded me that i am a survivor.  he's got a point.

i graduated from the wound healing center!  no swimming until july, they want to avoid the chlorine for a bit longer, but i can wear a bike helmet! 

 we went to leavenworth.  a few times. and since i can wear a bike helmet not, this time was for the Bike n Brew Bash.  I haven't ever raced it.  I have only gone to spectate once, when seamus was only 1 and i was pregnant with sirus. i was miserable that time.  this was my first mountain bike race since the race i did the weekend before my diagnosis.  i was excited to race but not sure what to expect either.  i was happy with how my race went, although i gave up two spots on the descent. still it was super fun, and i can't wait to race some more. this is the view from the top of the race course where i hiked to after my race to watch eric.

look!!  here i am on a bike, with a bike helmet on!!  this was the weekend before the race, pre-riding.  so fun.  riding bikes is fun.

eric did some weed whacking while in leavenworth

and of course we went to the munchen haus for some big bobs.

i had this for dinner not too long ago.

i went to the neurologist's today.  and i graduated!  It has been a busy few weeks with all of these graduations!  i hope i don't have to go back for summer school, but since my migraines have been pretty much non-existent, we are thinking maybe i was just going through a really bad spell.  so i am weaning off of my medication over the next week.  fingers crossed that i don't have to go back!!

this is a big pork roast

a reasonably offensive bacon wrapped dog in Leavenworth

you see that red spot that looks like a mosquito bite?  that is my allergy to cats!  gah!!!  cats!!!

this Big Green Egg has that giant pork roast from a few photos earlier in it

i am somewhat obsessed with Tilda Swinton

someone just called me!!

 sometimes this whole blogger thing drives me crazy.  the formatting is too tricky.  ok, so not really, it doesn't have to be, but i am lazy.  so all of these photos loaded in reverse order and also in messed up order. so reversed messed up order.  the above photo is of me and mountain biking world champion, world cup winner and olympian catharine pendrel!she is totally bad ass and adorable (how is that possible?) and overall super awesome.  this past weekend was the annual LUNA summit in Ca where we all go down for a weekend of fun, lectures, workouts and hanging with the girls.  catharine came to seattle a few years back and lead us through a great mountain bike clinic at duthie.  it was so great to see her!

i got to share a room with this un named individual which was a super treat since she moved to the deep south.  on sunday after the long run, her friend came to pick us up and we went to lunch.  after lunch, we went and sat on a bench at sports basement for over an hour, loitering, waiting for the time to pass.  eventually it was time for me to go to the airport, and while in the parking lot, i mapped out the route to the airport and so did this lemon drop drinker.  i said turn right out of the parking lot, she said turn left.  i was like, well she did live here for like a hundred years so she probably knows what is going on so i shut the hell up and said i'd take a nap.  in a little bit, there were hugs and good byes and i was dropped at the airport.  i walked in, they drove off.  i went to the kiosk to check in but i couldn't find my flight, how odd!  and then it hit me!  i called the drinker and asked "am i at SFO?" to which she replied - "yes!" to which i responded "but i fly out of Oakland!" to which she screamed "turn around!!"  they speed back, picked me up and good thing that fancy car had some sport suspension and a former world cup winning pro cyclist driving it, because they got me to Oakland with plenty of time to spare!  whew!! after we landed and were waiting at seatac airport for our ride, i saved the day!!  a group of HS volley ball players got stuck on the escalator!!  one of the girls got her shoe laces stuck and everyone was piling up on her and it was crazy and very reminiscient of when sirus got stuck in the escalator.  that was much more horrible because we weren't paying attention and just walked away while the escalator was chewing him up, terrible parents!!  so this time, i dropped my stuff, found the big red emergency stop button and pushed it! an alarm rang, it stopped and then the girls thanked me and thanked me.  hooray!

i also got to hang out with danelle kabush.  she too is awesome.  she went to UW so she is familiar with our area, and she has two adorable little kids!!  her daughter is so cute that one time i showed sirus a photo and he gasped and if i remember correctly told me that he loved that little girl.  so funny.  danelle is a super runner and a kick ass mountain biker, and xterra racer.  one of the fun parts of going to the big xterra races is getting to see her, but since we have been out of it for a while, it was great to catch up this weekend!

and of course got to hang with shonny vanlandingham.  if you don't know who she is then you need to do some googling. she coached me through 2 xterra national championships and xterra worlds.  i learned so much from her and accomplished more than i ever thought i could!  plus she is very funny and quite beautiful, too!

London Bronze medalist Georgia Gould let me not only touch her medal, but she let me hold it!!  although i think in this photo she is like, okokok, you can give it back now!  georgia, too, is very funny, it must be a requirement to be on the team and of course she is one fast lady!!

and lastly but not leastly, Marla Streb let me hang on her for a little bit. we talked costa rica, social media, the pros and cons of pinterest, crazy times of our youth and dirtworld.com. 

my mom got a slide reader thing, so she is converting all of those old slides into digital images.  here is one of me.  and look!  you can see my mot!!  and that is my teddy bear blanket and that might be my don king baby, but i'm not sure.  the funny thing about that teddy bear blanket is that when i was in high school, i became friends with a guy named shane.  he went to a different school and he had a funny last name, and when i told my mom about him she was like - oh my goodness!!  apparently, his parents had given me that teddy bear blanket as a baby gift when i was born.  funny.

here is my head on april 1.  i've been going to the healing center every monday and this is what it looked like on monday.  grody, right?  but this was significantly better than the prior week.  but still gross.

we went out to yakima for easter.  it really is the best time to go there and the kids have so much fun.  there was egg rolling or course, but they actually had more fun throwing the eggs this year than rolling them. 

eric got a kite and we spent all easter weekend chasing the wind.  yakima is always windy but not this particular weekend.  finally on the drive home we stopped at a rest stop and found a little bit of wind.  it was an amazingly beautiful day, the snow covered mountains were amazing, although you can only see a tiny sliver of them in the below photo.  but the best part was when the kite actually went up into the air, the kids would run around below it screaming and chasing it.  it was so funny and almost like some involuntary response.

this is at eric's parents' house.  sirus went down the hill to find some of the thrown eggs that didn't break up as much as they were supposed to.  he was throwing them more and stomping on them.  those little black dots waaaay in the back ground are some of the loudest cows ever! and if you look closely and if i wasn't so lazy and would mark it out, you could see where we went on our run earlier in the morning.  i love running and biking in eastern washington!  we even caused a stampede of baby sheep!  the live stock does not trust the runners!

the egg rolling hill!  multiple tracks this year, with a jump and a tunnel even!

 

by the time you have come to this photo you have already maybe noticed that my hair is significantly shorter.  the other week at the healing center the head was terrible.  there was gore all over the place.  they finally said that yes, a buzz cut would probably be a good idea.  so right after the appointment i called up eric, and he met met a Rudy's Barber Shop in Redmond. the girl wasn't so sure, sounded like she had some very unhappy buzz cut customers before but whatever.  it was fine.  i did go around and point at the different guys who were there and was like, i don't want to look like him, or him, or him, and i turned to the cute guy behind the cash register and was like and i don't want to look like you either.  so she shaved it all off and this is what i got!!  within two days the wound on top of my head was significantly better!

we finally put up our bird feeder!!  it drives fuzy crazy!!  it took a really long time for the birds to finally come, but now that they found us, they come every day!

holy crap we had a snow storm!!  i was like two days after spring started and it was the only snow storm of the 2012-2013 winterish season!  in a matter of a few hours there were inches of crazy snow and then later that day it was all sunny and gone.  crazy!

infectious waste bin at the healing center.  totally artistic through instagram, of course.

AMAZING simmer from Evolution Fresh.  omg, i love that place. i want it in my kitchen.

the cats are cuddling!!  all three are actually touching!!  i see fuzy feet on seamus mccat arse!!

my beautiful little girl.  love her, can't beleive she is 9!

yeah, so this is gross, this is what my head was looking like before it was buzzed.  this was on a good day before it opened up yet again from yoga (which i have now stopped doing), but totally gross, right?