Dwarf Planet in Purple

I really need to dust this journal off! Let me summarize here:

ELECTION: I worked as an election judge for four of the eight days of early voting and for Election Day itself. Same as the Maryland primary -- same-day registration during early voting and provisional ballots on Nov. 8. Fortunately, no giant windstorms and power outages this time around.

CHURCH: We finally have a place to hold in-person worship services! We are meeting on Sunday afternoons at the University Christian Church in Hyattsville. (This started only on Nov. 20.) Despite having the word "Christian" in its name, the church is a member of the Disciples of Christ denomination, which is pretty ecumenical. The Hyattsville congregation welcomes the LGBT+ community, and when I drove by it just before the election, I noticed that one of the messages on its outdoor LED sign was "Reject Christian nationalism." I can go along with that.

PHILCON: Even though I would have liked to have gone to Holiday Faire (an annual SCA event), I used the free membership to Philcon 2022 that I won at Costume Con 40. I rode up there with my fussy friend R. in his shiny CR-V. (Before our trip to Cherry Hill, he'd owned that vehicle for about 18 months and put a grand total of 3,200 miles on it.) For some reason, all the people I already knew at this convention were male, and they have been getting steadily more conservative. By the end of the weekend, I was craving the company of female friends.

CHESSIECON: Now this is a convention that is all about female energy. But it was dreadfully small ... *maybe* 120 people. And since it was at that Hunt Valley Inn that used to host Balticon, which is something like 10 times that size ... it felt empty, full of ghosts. The con committee rented way more function space than they could fill with programming, and they didn't sell out the room block, so the committee is now thousands of dollars in debt. Most of the (few) attendees believe that this was the last Chessiecon, sadly.

And now Julia is demanding her nightly treats.

P.S. I am definitely NOT missing the Virginia congressional candidate commercials.

OK, any day on which a Red Sox player becomes a first-ballot member of the Baseball Hall of Fame has to be a good day. Congratulations, David Ortiz!!

Still, clouds loom on the horizon. Julia (the cat) has high blood and urine sugar and dilute urine (with a bladder infection), so she is getting (expensive!) antibiotics to treat the last. Once the infection is fixed, she is going back to the vet to have her sugar tested again. I may have another (expensive!) diabetic cat on my hands.

Church work continues apace, as we trustees continue to grapple with the reality of having a smaller congregation and an aging physical plant. We are making slow progress on our two biggest repairs: replacing the deck and improving the HVAC in the Meeting House. (The deck is not a luxury item; it's a raised wooden platform that connects the two buildings and in fact is the only way to get in and out of the Meeting House.) At least we are getting a couple of prezzies from the county government: it will fix our water runoff problem AND pave our packed-gravel parking lot properly. (The water runoff comes from the surrounding neighborhood, but it is digging a big trench on our property. Long story there.)

I really, really need another source of income. I know I've been saying that for years, but it is really obvious now that my lifestyle is not sustainable. Please think positive job thoughts for me!

Been a long time, been a long time...

In fact, it took me a long time to actually start getting emails from the Golden Dolphins. It didn't help that the current Order principal had a parent who had just undergone open heart surgery (and believe me, I know what it's like to be the adult child of such a patient). Finally I whitelisted the email address for the mailing list and, presto change-o, I received a huge pile of emails welcoming me to the Pod. So, all is well on that front.

My finances continued the same roller-coaster trajectory until I finished up my latest feature article at the start of December and received my payment for it a week later. Yay, I can finally catch up on some bills.

Except ... I ended up NOT going to Discon III, the World Science Fiction Convention or Worldcon. You'd think that, after hoping for Worldcon to show up in DC for three decades, I would have been first in line. However, I always seemed to be lacking in money for a Worldcon membership every time I went to another convention and saw a Discon III table or party. So I kept putting things off. And then the damned pandemic hit. R. kept dithering over whether or not he'd attend. Mike T. was abruptly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease earlier this year and abruptly moved to Pennsylvania over the summer (did I ever mention that?). Finally, the con was upon us, and even though I now have money in the bank, I honestly could not justify spending $325 on a five-day-long convention. Not when the last in-person Balticon, back in 2019, cost only $77 at the door for four days.

Fortunately, before Discon III started, I was able to spend a Saturday evening and a Monday with my friends Chris and Richard, visiting from Palo Alto. I had not seen them in person since their elder daughter graduated from Drexel University, and it was a total delight!! I received some of their camera and film shipments through the mail, so they didn't have to schlep it across the continent, and they saved some sales tax too (heh heh heh). I drove them out to the Udvar-Hazy museum, which is not on public transportation, and we had a couple of fabulous meals together at Asian-style restaurants. I was SO incredibly glad to see them again, possibly more so than any attendance at the Worldcon.

Let's see, what else is there for me to dish about?

The boy toy painted the "spare room" (the second bedroom), and I rearranged the bookshelves and released some books I'll never read again through Bookcrossing. Gaah, I still own so many books I have never actually read. I need to READ more.

I didn't go to Massachusetts for Christmas again this year. My cousin Tim's wife canceled Christmas Eve after Tim ended up in the hospital for non-covid pneumonia (he was in only for a couple of days, but still). With this new omicron variant of covid-19, I wasn't keen on a long road trip anyhow.

R. is having a prostate procedure tomorrow. Something about sticking microbeads in some of the arteries leading to the prostate to shrink it to a more normal size. It's supposed to be less invasive than regular surgery.

Over the Christmas holiday I have been taking care of a neighbor's three cats (at her house, not mine).

The boy toy and I seem to have avoided all variants of the coronavirus so far. We both have had our booster shots (Moderna, on top of Pfizer for the original two jabs).

I'm sure I'll think of something else once I finish this post. Ah, well.

Over and out.

Someone contacted me in the middle of the week to offer me some freelance work. Maybe I am getting known in my field. Of course, I wouldn't see this money till December....

Last night I went with a UU friend from the SCA to a "soft opening" party at the Charm Kitty Cafe in Baltimore. She supported its Kickstarter project, so that's how she got the invitation. It was in a neighborhood I'd never seen -- a complex of really old mill buildings on the edge of a huge park under the Jones Falls Expressway. I adore old Industrial Revolution buildings that have been restored and reused. I really ought to go back there with the boy toy during the day, even if we don't go to the cafe.

(Oh, yeah, the cats were pretty mellow, and I enjoyed observing them, but I know that Princess Julia has an ironclad commandment: Thou Shalt Not Have Other Cats Besides Me.)

And, of course, it was good to hang out with my friend and talk. I finally met her dog, who obviously did NOT come to the cafe with us.

JULIA'S SIDE:

Oh my Ceiling Cat!! My litter boxes have been out of their regular places for days!! I don't know how to count that many days!! The humans have been going in and out of the place where the pee and poop is supposed to go and making all sorts of funny LOUD noises!! Sometimes Daddy yells a lot! There is this loud RRRRRRR sound! Yesterday Mommy was in there for a long time with the doors closed and when she came out it smelled funny! Not pee and not poop!! I want to pee in the right place again!!

MY SIDE:

After 16 years of living with bathroom wallpaper that I didn't choose and I never really liked, I am finally changing the place! It has been a somewhat challenging project. In some places the wallpaper came off easily, and in other places it didn't. (We used a product called "W.P. Chomp [brand] World's Best Wallpaper Stripper." I kid you not.) Then we went through multiple rounds of spackling and sanding. There were plenty of old dings and divots and holes where towel racks used to be, and also places where the drywall had sort of rotted out under the wallpaper. Yesterday I finally started applying paint to the walls. I hope we will get the ceiling, trim and doors done today.

It won't be perfect -- probably the only way to get "perfection" in this bathroom would have been to get a contractor to strip everything down to the studs and construct a brand-new bathroom from scratch. But at least I will feel as if I have accomplished some sort of home improvement, despite my limited budget. :-)

Today has been the 11th anniversary of the Boston Red Sox victory in the 2004 World Series. Guess which long-sleeved shirt I am wearing. Yeah, that one. :-)

Nowadays, of course, the World Series begins later than ever before, because there has to be a play-in round before the ALDS and NLDS. Gee, why don't we give all the teams a gold star, like in a kindergarten competition?

Today's bit of exercise involved planting some bulbs that I bought at Aldi last month. If all goes well, next spring I should have some purple flowers mixed in with the daffodils in my tiny condo garden. Julia watched me through the bedroom window. She looked as if she was thinking, "Hey, you're wetting down the place where MY birdies like to take dust baths!"

I have a tiny little garden in front of my ground-floor bedroom window. (Well, OK, the whole condo is on the ground floor.) I used to think that squirrels were making the little roundish depressions in the dirt in the places where there are no plants. However, since I moved my desk much closer to the window, I've seen that little brown birds, which I presume are house wrens, are using the dirt for their dust baths. They alight in a little depression in the dust, flick dust on themselves and flutter their wings.

And, since there is now a lot less stuff around the little table in front of the bedroom window, Julia has been spending a lot more time in front of that window (instead of in the bay window in the living room).

She loves, loves, loves watching the little birdies. She is obsessed. Even in the morning, when I still have the blinds closed for privacy and modesty, she is crouched in position, trying to peep through the gaps. Then, all afternoon long, she is gazing out there, swishing her tail, occasionally chirping or chittering under her breath.

Sometimes there are as many as six or seven wrens out there at once. When one gets especially close to the window, Julia goes especially bonkers and scrabbles her paws or paces.

I have been putting a bit of bird seed out there to make my little garden especially attractive. I've started to call it the House-Wren Social Club. :-)

Here's what she looked like a few days ago, when it wasn't so hot and I had the window open, so that there was just a screen between Julia and the birds. (Note that the birds sitting right *on* the window sill are made of clay ... a couple of ornaments I bought years ago to symbolize my wish to find a mate.)



Right now Julia is sound asleep because she wasn't able to do her usual afternoon catnapping -- too many distractions! :-)

Today was a HORRIBLE day! I was taking a nice afternoon nap when Mommy petted me, then picked me up and put me on that low flat thing that moves around. Then she HELD me while Daddy took this buzzy thing and made more of my fur come off. I DO NOT LIKE being held so that I can't jump and run around. Daddy said he was giving me "another trim." Do NOT WANT "trim"! Then Mommy sprayed me with something WET!! Yuck!! She said it was "anti-hairball solution." I don't know what that means, but WET is BAD!

After the human supper Mommy and Daddy went out somewhere. I was just sitting on the human bed and trying to fall asleep when I heard BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! That was VERY scary!!! I went under the human bed and did NOT come out until my people came home and the BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! stopped. At least Mommy and Daddy did not hold me and do the buzzy thing again. I was so scared.

The boy toy and I got home around 7 o'clock last night. Yes, it was a night for dance/music practice, but once I got past the threshold I did NOT want to cross it again. I drove a total of 1,172 miles in five days! Thus, I felt a powerful, overwhelming urge to be stationary for a while.

I know that it's a stereotype that cats shun their owners when the people come home from an extended trip. However, Julia ran to greet us at the door and let out a stream of vocalizations that could only mean in kitty language, "Where have you BEEN all this time? I *missed* you SO MUCH!" She came up to both of us for skritches and petting. When I flopped down on the bed and extended my right arm to stretch it out, Julia laid her body against my arm with her head perfectly positioned next to my hand for the neck skritching. Awwww....

Anyhow, we had mostly fabulous weather. One brief cloudburst in New Jersey on the way up, a few sprinkles in the morning on the way back ... otherwise, it was GORGEOUS weather: bright, sunny, ideal temperature, low humidity, nearly cloudless skies ... to me, that was EXACTLY how summer SHOULD be!! Gosh, I miss New England summers!!!

I will write more later, but I just wanted to drive home the point that one of New England's major supermarket chains and one of the supermarket companies here in the DMV (the new slang for DC/MD/VA) are EXACTLY the same:

Pumpkin has gone to the Rainbow Bridge. :-( :-(

Saturday and Sunday were OK for him, no big change from Friday. I went to an SCA event on Saturday, and Pumpkin apparently peed on the sofa sometime during the afternoon while the boy toy was playing with Julia (the other cat) in the bedroom. Last night, when he and I were excitedly watching "The Walking Dead" and "Talking Dead," I kept giving the Pumpykins skritches on his neck.

This morning, when I got up, I saw Pumpkin sitting at the other end of the hallway, looking at me as if to say, "Please feed me! Now!!!" I fed the cats as usual, and I took a short video of Pumpkin noshing on his kibble (the cats get dry food in the morning, wet food at night -- they would prefer crunchies all the time, but I started insisting on the wet food once Pumpkin got his diagnosis of diabetes). The video is still in my camera.

Unfortunately, after he ate, Pumpie started throwing up this brown stuff that looked like partially digested cat food. He threw up at least seven times during the afternoon. He also looked as if he wanted to poop but couldn't. He kept staggering between the dining room litter box and the bathroom litter box. He definitely looked uncomfortable. He didn't know where to put himself. Julia and Pumpkin aren't all that friendly with each other, but Julia kept stalking him, keeping an eye on him, as if to say, "Gee, that other cat is not quite right, but I'm not sure what's going on."

When running our afternoon errands, the boy toy and I picked up a little pot of organic "kitty grass" -- a special treat indeed. When he was healthy, Pumpkin would attack the sprouts with the ferocity of a weed-whacker. This afternoon, he took a nibble but wasn't that interested.

The vet we saw on Friday had told us to call on Monday if we had any questions or if we didn't think Pumpkin could make it until his Tuesday appointment. So we called the animal hospital and said that we could bring our poor kitty in for an anti-emetic shot and a check of his butt.

We brought him into the exam room. We could tell that he couldn't get in a comfortable position in the carrier, and he squirted pee out the carrier side and onto the exam table. Dr. S. (not the vet we saw Friday, but the vet who gave us the initial diagnosis in December 2011) came in and talked to us about quality of life, etc. Then he left us in the room to talk for a few minutes. We let Pumpkin wobble around and he peed on the floor before flopping down with his eyes moving back and forth quickly, almost like REM sleep, but his lids still open. Poor little guy was so tired.

Yep, there was really no point to keeping Pumpkin here for another day. He just had too many problems with too many major organs.

After I signed the paperwork, we let him walk around the exam room one more time. He rubbed his face on things, as best he could, and just before the vet came back into the room, he jumped back into his carrier as if to say, "It's time to go home!" Not that kind of home, little Pumpkin. Not that kind.

I started to cry.

The vet tech put Pumpkin on a clean towel on the exam table. Pumpkin growled and hissed at the sedative injection. Then the vet and his assistant left to give me and the boy toy a few last moments with our Pumpie. I picked him up with the towel wrapped around him (because he was kind of wet from the pee) and I held him in my arms one more time. He let out a couple of yowls of protest one more time, because he really, really didn't like being held like that. But I wanted to cuddle him and feel his little body. We put him back on the table and noticed that he was nice and relaxed and "out of it," so we rubbed his white tummy without being afraid that he was going to bite us out of overstimulation.

I didn't want to stay for the lethal injection. I'm sure that the last thing Pumpkin heard was our voices. The vet let us leave by the side door so we didn't have to see other people's happy, healthy pets (and the other people didn't have to see me as a big, sobbing mess).

I'm not sure if Julia realizes yet what happened to Pumpkin. She seems to be enjoying the sprouty sprouts, though.

Poor Pumpkin. He had a hard life before he became an indoor kitty and never really learned how to show cat-type affection. He drew the short stick when it came to bodies. May his spirit now bask in the sun forever.