Finally Feline Friday: Men At Work

This is how everyone should get to spend their Fridays at work!


TB: Right, boss?


Cubby: Right, TB! This is chillaxing for the both of us, keep stroking!

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Oh Boy It's Lost Night!

Little T's Birthday Part II

So we celebrated Little T's 5th birthday again yesterday. We took Kennan's suggestion and got an erasable marker board for him. He seems to like it! :)



He began to write his name, eventually erased the whole board and then wrote his name again. It's really cool to see how far he's come! He can say his letters and recognizes them individually.

Yesterday he tried very hard to tell TB and me something and we just weren't getting it. I felt so bad. He was looking into my face and carefully trying to shape his lips so I know how frustrating it was for him. :( He is making a much better effort to use his words and someday we will get everything he says!

So it's snowing hard but schools are still open. I suppose it's because nothing is sticking to the roads. It's a real pain in the hiney though. I was hoping if school was closed we wouldn't have to deal with the Billy shuffle but that wasn't to be.

BUT I did make it clear to him that he's got to do something because Heidi, TB and I can't continue to drive him all over the place. The two cars left have a lot of miles on them and we can't afford to lose them. We don't have any money to replace them and it would be a disaster not to have a car!

One of my biggest complaints/concerns about living here is the lack of mass transportation--no buses, no nothing. A cab won't even come into Browns Mills to take a passenger to a bus stop. I'm not sure why that is. We have the same problems with crime as any other town and they all have cabs!

Today Bill finally checked into his school loan and found out the paperwork had been misplaced. Why he didn't do this when his car first broke down (although we put it high at the top of a list of things to do) I don't know. He was telling me that the money won't come in until March and I just can't see us shuttling him around that long. I suggested he find another job, closer to home or on a bus line. He didn't like that very much.

It might be different if he didn't have little bitty part time jobs all over. He works 4 nights a week at Shop & Stop, which is about 15 minutes away. Then he tutors at the local campus for 4 hours one morning a week. He tutors at the other campus (which is over 25 miles away) for another morning. Every afternoon he tutors for 2 hours at a school over 20 miles away and it isn't on any kind of bus route.

Today I dropped him off at the community college. He expected his sister to come and get him on her way to work. He was going to drop her there, drive to his 2 hour job, drive back to Heidi's job and wait for TB and me to come pick him up (after we've collected Little T) and then take him to Stop and Shop. His sister then has to pick him up after she gets home after work and after his shift, which ends at 11.

He talked his sister into letting him take her car on her two days off, leaving her stuck at home. Meanwhile, he drives out to the further campus for his class, then over to the school where he tutors for two hours and then either back out to the college for a night class or to the local college for a night class.

And we haven't even begun to talk about Kristin needing rides because she's on the bowling team. Arrrrrgh!

Why do kids have such a feeling of entitlement? What does he think we're supposed to do if our car and Heidi's gets run into the ground? Grrrrr!

Cats on Tuesday: Can't Catch Up

In about 10 minutes I will have to start driving all around south New Jersey *again* even as the snow is falling down! :P But first...


All of us with fur babies know that they like to "help" us read the computer screen for messages on forums and emails. I find the more "help" I have, the behinder I get!



Here Mouse reads the screen carefully while Cubby supervises my typing...except I can't really see what I'm doing.


Ah, I figure this is what they want anyway! :)

Cubby's grandmama, Jean, has been staying in touch with us and we've become friends. I'm sorry to hear that she's suffering complications in her hand after breaking her arm last November. Recovery has been frustratingly slow. We are all praying for you, Jean, to have a speedier and full recovery!

Want more cat blogging?

Be sure to check out Gattina's blog. Today is also Tuxie Tuesday and then there's Blogging Cat Noos for all the latest!

Post hibernation update/Little T is 5

I feel like a big old bear that crawled out of its cave. Honestly, I can't believe I've slept so much over the last few days! I think it's part sinus infection, part driving around fatigue, part fibromyalgia and part fat fatigue!

Some updates: After I saw Dr. Greenbaum, I've swung back to the duodenal switch. He agrees with Dr. Wasser that the lapband is not for me with all my co-morbidities (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc). I talked to him about my concerns about malabsorption and being able to afford the supplements and vitamins on our fixed incomes. One thing he pointed out is the money we save on prescriptions can go toward the vitamins/supplements.

He said I shouldn't let that guide my decision toward the more convenient surgery. Lots of people have the surgery that is the safest, the quickest or the least expensive and they end up regretting it. It's true. I've read the Obesity Help Revisions and Regrets boards enough to know that. He said the practice would do the lap band for me if that's what I want but he doesn't recommend it.

He didn't push me to make a decision. He said to check out obesity help some more and also duodenal switch.com and another website (can't remember it offhand but I can easily find it) again. I'm going to go to more of the support group meetings that the practice has and hopefully will meet Joanne, a person I "met" online who was a patient of Dr. Greenbaum's and has been supportive and helpful all through my confusion and waffling. This is not to say that TB hasn't been--he has, it's just that he doesn't want to push me toward one procedure or another.

Want to see what all the procedures entail? My dh TB wrote a pretty good summary here.

All my friends have been supportive too, praying for me to make the best decision for me and for a positive outcome.

I also decided not to delay or postpone my surgery because of Bill's car problems (thanks, James!). Bill is a college student and he is going to see if he can't get some loan money to get himself a car. Meanwhile we'll do whatever we can to help him without driving ourselves into the ground or sacrificing our health needs.

So with that in mind, I went for part one of my stress test on Friday. It was no big deal, just getting injected with stuff, waiting around for two hours and then having pictures of my heart taken (with me trying very hard not to cough!). Part II, the walking on a treadmill, takes place tomorrow.

I can hardly believe our Little T is five years old today! It seems only yesterday we went to the hospital to see him for the first time. I picked him up and just totally fell in love with him from that very first moment. We got him an erasable marker board with markers and an eraser. He seems to enjoy those things, especially now that he's copying letters and numbers! Happy birthday, sweet Little T! We'll be seeing you later.