Cast Change

The Vansome will no longer be appearing in this blog, as the actor who played the part has quit without giving notice. The role will not be re-cast. Once the legal issues are resolved, I will write an adequate exit for his character. Thank you and good night.

Happy Tenth to the Man I Love

There really is nothing better than being married to your best friend.

Knob Blog

We finally (almost completely) finished our perpetual kitchen remodel a couple of months ago. The two remaining items on the agenda are for the Vansome to stain and attach the trim along the top of the backsplash, since he was the one who ripped out the (newly completed) trim before he had the larger trim (that I didn’t think was necessary) ready to install (hard feelings, much?), and for me to choose and purchase hardware for the cabinets. Also, I belatedly conceded that the Vansome was right and we should go ahead and install a cabinet over the fridge, so we’ll have to special order one to fit, and we desperately need to replace the 21-year-old range. The budget has been exceeded for now, so those don’t count towards completion. Also, I’d love a new fridge. And better cookware. I am in love with my Calphalon skillets, but they are lonely. Some Le Creuset in Caribbean Blue or Kiwi would be nice as well.

I have been scouting out knobs and pulls online for the past two days. Home Depot has one of those cool wishlist features on their website, so I have been adding all of the potential winners. I think I have been looking too long, because I am definitely getting pickier. Here are some that didn’t make the cut:



















These look like fallopian tubes to me.



















This one looks like the legs of some elf or oompa loompa that were cut off while in the middle of one of those weird oompa loompa dance move poses.















The more I look at this, the more the ceramic insert seems to be smiling at me in a creepy way.



















These are the pulls on the cabinets in Skeletor’s Evil Lair.



















Okay, I am not going to be pulling on the monkey’s tail.



















I liked this, but they smashed it in. On purpose apparently.



















I picture this one being tossed with a mighty force by a Marvel superhero, with maybe some lightening flashes around it to indicate speed and deadliness. Interestingly enough, it’s called Fountain Pen. So maybe the superhero is a mild mannered bank executive by day, but at night he wields the Fountain Pen of Justice, and he seeks to right the wrongs of overpaid CEOs intent on destroying the world economy with their evil Credit Default Swap machines. Okay, now I’m just getting political.



















This is a bean pull. It is much more bean-like than the knob version of this design:



















This does not look like a mess of beans to me. It looks like a mess of something else. Off topic, but along the same lines: If I had lots of money and a house with too many bathrooms, I’d decorate one of them in a Winnie the Pooh theme. These knobs would be perfect on my Pooh cabinets.



















Too many ridges, reminds me of arthritic knuckles. Also the ends are slightly inappropriate.



















Curvature of the spine. Could also be a weird alien two headed sucking worm creature. Those little dots around the bases? Mean pointy teeth that will latch on to you and not let go. Ever. Or it could be a silver plated bamboo purse handle.

















Inchworm, you are just draggin’ ass.



















They’re supposed to be sunflowers, but they look like they could crawl off. I’m way too arachnophobic , thank you very much. Sunflowers aren’t really my style anyway, even when they don’t look like spiders or crabs or those creepy little red crab-spiders that run sideways and then crumple into an unrecognizable blob when you toss a bath mat over them so they won’t escape while you wake up your husband to tell him that a teeny tiny crab has somehow gotten into your bathroom in central Arkansas and is stalking you so you can’t get ready for work. Whew! Sorry, flashbacks. Yep, this one wins the Creepy Award.

As of now, I have 67 different styles of knobs and pulls in my wishlist. Of course, quite a lot of them are automatically disqualified due to price. Let me recount to see how many are actually feasible. OK 21 are somewhat within range. I had a fantasy going that I could have a different knob on each cabinet, but the ones that would work best for that are all way too much, and there are not enough lower priced items on my list to balance them out. I’ll have to ruminate on this a little longer. I don’t think I’m ready to buy yet.

Cat Surgery 2.0

Thursday night The Boy was visiting and he noticed that Joe's neck was swollen. He weirdly did not seem to be in any pain, and didn't even mind when we poked and pressed on it. He did not, however, want me to take a picture of it. I tried anyway:




















The Vansome was anxious to set up the Surgical Suite right away, and we debated for a while, finally deciding to at least wait until the end of the recorded episode of "Lie to Me" that we were watching. When we shaved the area, we realized that Joe's fur was making it look larger than it actually was, and the overlying skin was not taut, indicating that it would probably go down on it's own. Another indication that it might not need surgical intervention was the fact that it had not been there earlier in the day as Joe helped me knit. He sleeps on my feet when I am curled up on my knitting couch, which has the dual purpose of keeping my feet warm and making it more difficult for me to get up and do something else.



Friday afternoon, I could tell the swelling was larger, and the skin was tighter. When the Vansome got home from work, I gave him the go-ahead to prepare for surgery. The surgical suite was still set up from the night before, so I rounded up the Joekitty and took my place on the bathroom floor. We wrapped him in a towel because this was the first time he'd ever been through this experience and we weren't sure how well he'd take it. He took it well. He was calm, and only cried out when the scalpel finally broke all the way through. Even then he didn't try to get away.

It was definately infection that we drained from him. It certainly smelled like infection. I was worried we were going down the same road as with Gobs, but Joe had two distinct holes at the base of the swollen area, so I feel confident that it was just an infected bite. The cats have been fighting with something the past few nights, but we can't ever find anything when we go out to check on them.




















I took a post-surgery picture as he recovered on the Vansome's lap, but the area is too shadowed and the angle is bad. The Vansome was uncooperative with the posing of him. Something about wanting to let him rest in peace. Grandmother's bed served as his recovery room. He checked his shadow on the wall to see that the swelling was gone, then he snuggled into the comforter and went to sleep.



















At about 2 am I heard him crying at our bedroom door. He wanted to go in our room, but it has been a strict no-pet zone since we re-decorated and re-furnished last winter. I sat in the living room for a while, with him as far up on my chest as he could climb, and his head firmly tucked under my chin. I eventually needed to get back to sleep, so I checked to make sure he had been using the temporary litter box (he had) and then I crawled under the covers in Grandmother's bed and called him to join me. I slept for a few hours with him curled against me, my hand in mid-pet on his back. When I woke up in need of a Zantac, I went back to my own bed. He slept well into the morning, still down when I checked on him at 9:30.

The Late Great Goblin Kitty, or How We Became Cat Surgeons

Over the last year of his life, Goblin Kitty was prone to cystic swellings and/or abcesses around his head and neck that required lancing. The first occasion, we had noticed a large swelling on the side of his head behind his left ear. The fur covering that area had also fallen out, so we assumed it was a snake bite. Gobs was our wild thing, and he would definately have taken on a snake. We decided to wait until morning, and take him in to the vet if the swelling had not gone down. Gobs never liked to stay in the house overnight, so we let him back out at bedtime.

He did not show up for breakfast for the next two mornings. It was not uncommon for him to roam for a couple of days at a time, but with his injury we thought it most likely that he wanted to be alone for a while and he was hiding out. Also not an unusual trait for ill cats in general. We were, however, kicking ourselves for not keeping him inside that first night. On the third day, I began to suspect that he had gone off to die.

That afternoon, the back door was open because I had burned dinner and I was trying to air out the smoke before the alarm went off. Gobs walked right in the door. The Boy was closer to him and saw that the abcess had burst, and I could tell by his reaction that it was not something I wanted to look at. I have a strong stomach, and in my previous job I saw my share of diseased human parts, but only after they were no longer attached to the human. What I can't handle is an injured, suffering, animal. I loved my Gobs, but I knew I couldn't look at him, and the Vansome would be home soon to handle it. I went to hide out in my bedroom in full-on avoidance mode.

Gobs was having none of that. He needed my help and he knew it. He jumped up on my bed where I was sitting and working hard at being in denial. He got right in my lap and turned so that I was forced to look at the left side of his head. I really desperately wanted to ignore it, but he knew I had to acknowledge what had happened to him in order to save his life. He had a gaping, oozing, raw wound larger than a half-dollar below and behind his ear. There was a hole in the middle of it large enough to fit my pinky finger (if I wanted to touch it) and deep enough that I could see inside his skull. This was not something that would just get better on its own.

As soon as the Vansome arrived home, I told him we had to get Gobs to a vet ASAP. By that time, the only place open was the emergency vet. They sedated him, took care of the damage, and pumped him full of IV antibiotics. They sent us home with more meds, a very sick cat, and a huge charge on our emergency credit card. Against his wishes, which he was not shy about letting us know, we kept Gobs in the house for a good week. We had to keep the wound uncovered and it drained constantly. It irritated him, so he would shake his head and fling nastiness all over the place. I was constantly wiping things down. Thank God for Lysol wipes, tile floors, and leather furniture.

The next time Gobs showed up with a big swollen bump on his head, we took care of it immediately, and without the assistance of a professional. The Vansome is a do-it-yourselfer in the extreme, and so we became cat surgeons. Initially I would wrap him in a towel to keep him from scratching me or trying to escape. Gobs figured out pretty quickly that what we were doing would bring him relief, so the towel became unnecessary. In fact, he would turn his head just so, in order to provide us with the most access to the place we needed to cut. Our wildest wild thing would lay calm and still in my arms and stretch out his neck as the Vansome approched him with a sharp scalpel.

The first few surgeries, either infection or cyst fluid drained from the incision. The last ones were a little more sinister. The last time we lanced him, he was full of thick, brownish stuff. Obviously tumor. The Vansome knew he was dying, but I chose the denial route again. Shortly afterwards, we took a two week vacation to Florida - Destin, then Disney, then family. When we returned, Gobs came in the first evening. He showed up again for breakfast the following morning, and then we never saw him again.

I grieved over that cat more than any other. It's been three years, and I still miss him.