freya

The light blue filing cabinet I found in the garbage on Saturday was better than the broken black filing cabinet I pulled out of the garbage a year ago. In the blazing 4 pm heat, I carried it home, the scratches and crankiness building apace.

The rest of the afternoon I spent culling and transferring my files. Do I need this article on seasoning cast iron? Yes. Do I need these five articles about stretching after running? No. Do I need all these records of how I pledged my allegiance to the Goob as my primary caregiver six months before I gave her the ol’ heave ho? Really really no.

At some point during this process, I heard some scrabbling in the boxes behind me. Anyone who’s had a cat and boxes in the same room knows that cat fur on cardboard makes a very distinctive sound.

I stood up, stretched my spine out, and went to find my cat. Seemed a pretty easy proposition. She’s not a small cat. There are not so many boxes. But I couldn’t find her. I looked in all the boxes I’d seen her in so far: the small one on the far right in the back, on top of the ones behind the Lovely Box Meghan B. brought me. In the banana boxes stacked three high on the left. Nowhere cat.

Again, the noise. She had to be in the banana box on the far left. Though I was sure I'd looked there.

I looked again. Further down. The top box was not to her liking, apparently. My cat, she is a banana box connoisseur.

If I were a reasonable sort of person, I would be asleep right now, seeing as how my alarm clock is going to go off at 6 am. At which point I will burst out of my nice warm cozy bed, perform my morning ablutions, finish the last bits of packing, swipe on some deodorant, make a smoothie, and race out of the house no less than one half-hour later.

I'm not entirely sure when I became the sort of person who needed to pack a full regular-sized suitcase for a 5-day trip. Probably when I became the sort of person who felt she couldn't manage five days without a run and/or yoga class. Or the sort of person who felt she needed three extra pairs of glasses, various pills and potions to keep her skin under control, an outfit requiring both spectator pumps and back-seam stockings, and last, but not least, enough rye thins, non-sulphured dried apricots, and cashews to see her through 3 days of a conference, functions notorious for only ever serving things she doesn't eat.

Fuck me. What that paragraph makes me want to do is throw one pair of pants, two t-shirts, a few pairs of underpants and socks and my toothbrush into a backpack and take off on another reading tour. Just to prove I can still do it, DIY style.*

The other creature in this house who got all packed up to leave was Freya. The 4th Dwarf swung by in his spaceship, stayed for a cup of tea, said many interesting things, laughed in all the right places, made good friends with my cat, and then squired her away to his abode. He's started cat-blogging her already, and I look forward to reading about her exploits for the rest of the week.

When I race out of the house tomorrow morning, I will be racing towards Portland, Oregon. It's not a city I know a lot about, except there's a vegan mini-mall there, Ian says to have a burrito should the chance arise, and apparently it's home to a vibrant dyke scene.

So, though my main purpose there is to attend a conference, 4D's assessment of my motives may turn out to be true, and I may spend at least some of my time looking for g-spots.

Hopefully, I'll be too busy to blog.

*Jennifer and Lesley? Thoughts?

Well, this is that. The last post of NaBloPoMo.

I know Andrea had a good experience with it, as did Jo. And I certainly enjoyed that they were both blogging every day.

For myself, though, overall, I'd say I'm fairly neutral. It was interesting to push myself, and occasionally when I didn't think I had stuff going on in my noggin, turned out I did. But I didn't love the pressure to just put something, anything, up. I may post a bit more regularly from now on, but probably not every day.

It's good timing, this end of NaBloPoMo, because at 4 pm I'm off to Montreal to visit Shelley for a couple days and then bring her back to Ottawa where she belongs. Not permanently, sadly for us Ottawegians, but I'll take what I can get. I packed my laptop, because what would I be without my laptop, but in truth, I'm not likely to open it, and less likely to blog.

I am more likely to be eating fancy food, shopping, visiting my sister, getting my queer on at Meow Mix, schlepping, or some combination thereof.

This trip away also marks the first time I've let someone take care of Freya since she became diabetic. I know very many kind, competent people who have offered to be on the cat care team, but I'm a little neurotic about it. It feels like a lot to ask of someone. But this time, ask I did.

Eric is going to feed her and shoot her up, and has been very kind about my needless mother-henning around how to do it: "Hmm, you know, *I* hold the needle like this. And I crouch, on her left side. And then yep, little tent, poke your finger in there, don't poke your finger, ha ha. I find it easier if I hold the needle like this." He has also been very patient with the two or three "Are you sure it's not too much/too early/too late?" emails. He's a good egg, that one.

Right now, I am sitting at my kitchen table, with a cat in my lap. This cat is resting her chin on my left forearm and purr purr purring. This cat is well fed and shot up with insulin. I'm not sure it is the same cat as three hours ago, the one moping around and turning her back to me when I tried to hand feed her. With wet food. That is how much I love this cat. I touched wet cat food for her. Without gagging.

This morning, she didn't eat enough of her food to shoot her up. But she's sometimes a fussy eater. Maybe she didn't like that the bowl was cold from being in the fridge. I do not know the mind of a cat. I figured she'd be starving by tonight.

No dice. I put down her food. I added some of her old food to it. I put out another dish with a new kind of food. I called the vet. The vet suggested tuna water on kibble. Freya licked up a teaspoon or so of the juice.

This afternoon, I borrowed Jennifer's lean green wagon to pick up some gear. Eric's gear, it ended up, because, well, it's a long story, but it involves a desk that used to be a change table, a car door I hoped was broken before I got there*, and the fact that I didn't know if anyone was going to be home to open the door to the house where the amp is currently living.

We packed Eric's gear into the LGW, brought it home and it was very light and he carried the organ himself. I was saying goodbye, leaving him to his copious amount of homework, and he asked what I was going to do tonight. I rattled off a list of things, none of which felt particularly appealing.

I went home. I started making chili. I tried to feed Freya.

Finally, Freya walked away from all three dishes and into the bedroom. I followed her. I dug my fingers into the wet food and held them out to her. She did literally turn her back on me.

Okay, the vet's. I started packing - insulin, check, needles, check, open food tins, check. Wallet?

What. The. Fuck.

Now normally, I am not so hard on myself about these things. But it has really felt like an effort to keep the self-loathing at bay this past week or so. I find keeping that kind of vigilance to be wearing and tiresome. And I did a few just sort of spacey things today, things that I normally wouldn't have done and so what the fuck and how could I be so damn stupid.

I calmed down from my little snit and called Jennifer and thank god my wallet was still in her car, really, because if it had not been in that car, I would have been fucked and, I thought at the time, my cat would have gotten really really sick. Or, I would have had to borrow money until I got my wallet back and I would almost rather do anything than borrow money.

Like borrow Grace and Greg's car. I called Grace, who offered up the Polecat immediately. I almost didn't take it because I borrow their car a lot, but then I looked at my situation. Bike ride to Sandy Hill, bike back, 20 minutes on the 85, as soon as the 85 came. "Yes," I said to Grace, "I would really like that."

Everything, of course, turned out fine. I got home with Freya, whose blood sugar was fine and seemed to have nothing more than a little gastroenteritis. I have to give her anti-diarrheal pills until I leave for Stouffville on Friday, at which point I will board her at the vet's and they will give her the damn pills.

I don't even know if she really needs them, though. She practically jumped out of her carrying bag and ran to the food dishes. She ate a good portion out of all three. I let her have her way with them.

All of this, this all should be making me happy. I have very nice friends willing to lend me their cars for various purposes. I have a cat who seems to be actually fine. I did get some healthy veggie chili made, which was one of the more important things on that to do list I gave Eric. My fish don't seem to have so much ich.

Still and all, I'm in a bad mood. I'm tired, I'm sad for no good reason, I feel like I'm about to cry, and I spent 3 hours at the vet when it appears I didn't really need to.

So you know what? Also fuck editing. I'm not even going to read this over.

*Not broken at all, just tricky.

Tomorrow, I leave for Edmonton. I'm going not for fun, but for a conference that my work is organizing. Somewhere along the way, I thought it would be a good idea to have a volunteer coordinator. And volunteered myself for it. Like with the iron, a smart person who does stupid things.

Normally, if I were about to leave for a few days, I'd be going nuts cleaning and doing laundry and tidying and buying wine for the housesitter. But I'm not going to have a housesitter because Freya is going to stay at the vet's while I'm gone. Eric, being his regular nice self, emailed an offer to take care of her. "Hmm," I wrote back. "You might want to wait to make a definite decision until I explain everything."

Later that night I showed him the insulin and the needles and read bits of the care sheet out to him. When I got to the part about how she might die if he got it wrong, he thought that maybe the vet's would be better.

I was super nervous about starting her on the insulin, but she's been fine. Better than fine. She's stopped drinking so much and she seems less lethargic. She's actually quite alert in that photo.

Giving the needle is awkward. I'm at the stage where I can see how it might go easier and faster but don't seem to be able to make my fingers do it. I think longingly of the practice shot with the vet tech, where Freya was nervous and so just sat there. At home, where she's more comfortable, she starts walking away from me, or flops down on the floor just after I've gotten the needle in. Oh, fun times indeed.

But no, no crazy scrubbing or bubbing, none of that, just an 85 ride to Boyd St with Freya in her rucksack, open at the top so I can peek in along the way and picking out my clothes for the next few days. And getting my apartment and myself cleaned up for a shit hot date with my lovely paramour.

I found out yesterday that Freya has diabetes. I thought she had arthritis, but it turns out that hind end weakness is a symptom of diabetes in cats. We caught it early, so she'll be able to go on insulin as soon as I make a decision about what kind of insulin she should go on. I'll change her food over even sooner.

My two insulin options are Can-Insulin and glargine, which goes by the brand name Lantus. Anyone have any experience with either of those? Any advice to offer?

Freya and I would very much appreciate it.