So, I have this cat...

So, the cat was doing okay over last weekend and then on Sunday -- not eating, just sitting under the table looking sad. So, Monday, I go into work for a few hours and then come home, so I can sit with him and watch him and stuff. We ended up taking him back to the vet on Monday afternoon. He was feeling so poorly that he didn't put up much of a stink, even for having his temperature taken! I was shocked. The infection that was his teeth spread to systemic, so they gave us different antibiotics and more pain meds. Pain meds = good at reducing fever. New antibiotics = bad. Gel consistency and tuna flavored = Mitchell spits back out

So, I had to get regular pills, which I have a much easier time trying to force down his little throat. And it's easier on him too.

But, he has lost weight. Like I would say another pound or two at least. I keep meaning to have Jake hold him and get on the scale and then just weight himself to see where Mitchell's weight is at.

So, he has cost us another $100. Plus, my mom was nice and picked up and paid for his new pills yesterday. Which are nicely coated -- not like the sample that we got before -- WTF? Why wouldn't they just give us the same? Whatev. We're considering trying a new vet next year for shots and check ups and stuff. There's one very close to our house, so it makes sense, instead of having to drive all over freakin' town. Maybe not so expensive.

I like the doctor at the current one, she's really nice, but the drive and the expense so far has not been good. BUT, $1000.00 for not having taken in the cats for a teeth clean in years, probably isn't too terrible. I just have to keep up on them more now. Well, Boo will probably be ok for 2-3 years, but Mitchell...not so much.

In other news, I figured our taxes wrong when I was guesstimating and we don't owe money!!! YAY!!! In fact, we are getting what I would consider a nice chunk of change back. And most of it goes right on the ol' credit card. Which is a good thing.

I am currently looking like I haven't slept in days. Which isn't true. The cat woke me up at 4am! (it's time for the gate to go back up at night) But, he doesn't need me to fill his bowl -- there's already food in there. He just needs me to pretend like I'm filling his bowl and then he'll eat. GRRR!!! So, then I couldn't fall back asleep. So, I laid in bed until 5:15 and then got up. Yuck. It's almost 7 and I feel pretty destroyed.

Big plans for the weekend though. Putting together a real closet for Ryan's room and possibly cutting into the wall in the back room to make a new utility closet for the vacuum and other stuff. We'll just leave a little space for towels and stuff in the bathroom. At a later date, we'll go back and cut a new linen closet into the space that we're not using from the old utility closet (but from the other side). My parents have a dumpster from the remodel on their house (which is AMAZING!), so we can dump the garbage in there. woot!

Last Monday, my parents had no roof on their house for a day. Last weekend, we checked it out and they had a roof back on and all the new outside walls framed. It was pretty impressive. As I've said before, I lived up there almost my whole life and I barely recognized it. Well!

Last night, we went back and they have 3 (?) skylights in the upstairs, 3 windows facing south and the framing in for all the new walls upstairs. It's amazing. Their bedroom is going to be huge, they are having a good size walk-in closet, a pretty sweet bathroom, featuring toilet closet (water closet?) and a HUGE second bedroom upstairs. It's giant. The bedrooms upstairs are bigger than the downstairs. The plus side is, if they wanted, they could make one a nursery/playroom for Ryan full time. One of the old ones, downstairs, I would think. Whenever they decide to give up the ghost and sell that place, I would probably buy it. Seriously. I never minded that house, the backyard is really nice and now that it has 2 bathrooms, it's amazing.

Too bad that by the time they sell, we will have our own sweet house and wouldn't be able to afford it anyway. haha.

I should probably start comtemplating what I am going to do on my cleaning binges today. I have been nesting EARLY. I don't know if it's so much nesting as just totally be frickin' annoyed by all the crap that is everywhere in the house.

Poor, expensive kitty

The cats needed their teeth cleaned. It's been a while for Mitchie and never for Boo. So, I make the appt and take them in.

I call around 2pm to find out if they did okay. And they did, the vet said. I make the appt to pick them up around 5:30pm.

We show to pay the bill. Which was $850.00. ...the hell?

Turns out, just like humans, animals can have terrible teeth too. And Mitchell is one of those cats. So, both canine teeth on the left side of his mouth are gone, plus one from the back. Plus, the 4 teeth the other vet had pulled out years before. Total of missing teeth: 7. The cats got their annual check ups, shots and stuff, plus the teeth cleaning. Boo cost us about 350.00 or so. That's okay. Mitchell was the 500.00 cat. Yikes. I'll remember this for next time. And by next time, I mean, Mitchell is going to have to have his teeth looked at every year.

Boo's teeth were fine. Coated with crud that they cleaned off, but fine.

So, they were bring the cats out to clean them up and pull off their bandages and stuff and they put Boo in her carrier -- which she HATES. HATES. So, she got pissed, which set Mitchell off and he freaked out. So, they couldn't clean him up. So, basically, they had to bring him out coated in his own gore, from the teeth that they pulled and had to leave the wound open a bit, because his teeth were SO infected. The doctor said that they were oozing pus when they went in. YUCK!!!!

Oops. I'm terrible. On the plus side, Mitchell was down a pound from the last time he was in and his bloodword was totally normal. Now, we just have to work on getting him down more. Under 21 pounds for next year. Cats shouldn't lose too much weight. I remember the summer I was gone in Shell Lake and Jake fed him for me. He lost like 2 pounds in a year or something and the doctor yelled at me for that. This is the point at which I gave up worrying about his weight. It was damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I have to give the Mitchell antibiotics for several days to clear up any remaining infection. But, since the teeth are gone, the infection will stop raging in his mouth, I'm sure.

I think the part that I feel the worst about is that his snaggletooth is gone. For those of you who have ever seen him, he used to have a tooth that hung out of his mouth all the time. That's one of the ones that got pulled out -- that was probably the worst infected tooth actually. I miss it. It gave him that "I'm a dumb kitty" look all the time. Now, he just looks normal.

Oh well. I'll get over it.

In other news, we have a pretty good plan in place for starting to pay off the ol' credit cards. I know that I write about money in the baby blog when I should be writing about baby stuff, but I can't help it.

Maybe I'll go write about finishing our registry today. Maybe.

Okay, now that the holidays are over, I'm tired of winter

It can go away now. I just wanted it to come out and play for the holidays. White Christmas and all that jazz.

Taxes officially suck this year. We usually get a large chunk of money back from WI and the Fed and this year, it looks like we will owe the Fed $200 and get $900 back from WI. So, net effect is that we win, but we were thinking that it would be like LAST year, when we were sitting on 3k, plus the stimulus. And we pissed it all away on stuff, instead of paying things off and spending wisely. Well, we were having a tough time last year, I suppose. And that was a big influence too. Who wants to just pay things off when you feel cruddy?

So, I guess that we'll just have to get used to being middle class now.

Once we get all our paperwork and everything, I'll review it all to make sure I didn't miss anything, but that's really how things are looking as of today.

So, I'll file WI pretty soon and then wait for the refund to come and then file Federal and pay them. Boo.

I also have decided that I want to start making/keeping a list of things we want in the next house. Plus, I have also been thinking about staying on the West side of Tosa...maybe even in the "West" part of the school district. There's no reason to move north now. It would make Jake's drive to work an hour on the best days, I think.

So, I'm thinking that staying around Wisconsin Ave and 80's or 90's -- close to the hospital area, I think. I mean, this is a few years away, but it's okay to start planning ahead. :)

AND, if we can find a house over there AND it's in the "East" part of the district, that's okay too. :)

We'll call it Ryan's car

We purchased a "new" car. A used 2005 Saturn Vue. It's pretty nice. Big windows, so you can see everything, heated seats, and lots of storage. Plus, room for a baby seat.

And much safer than the stupid Jeep. I hated that thing since the moment Jake bought it. And, oh wait! We're still paying for it, because technically, it's part of his student loans from college. Grr...

The bad part is because neither of us had bought a car before (and I didn't know that this sort of thing mattered) and had no "car credit" (because the fact that we pay a gigantic mortgage with no problems isn't the same somehow), our interest rate is through the roof. 9.35% APR. Yikes. In this market?! That's highway robbery.

Oh well. A couple years of paying it down and we'll refi to get a better rate. I hope. 9.35 is ridic.

But, I still love the car. And it's SO much safer than that Jeep was.

So, now I feel much better about life. Now, it's just a matter of making the payments. Thank goodness they are due on the 22nd of the month -- we can save up at the beginning of the month and pay everything at the end. I should probably map that out, however. My paychecks are going to go down, because I have a few more insurance type things coming out of my paychecks. Oh well. We'll survive. Just can't go out for dinner as much. Which isn't really a bad thing.

We'll take pics when it's brighter out and I'll post them. Maybe. We'll see. I'm pretty tired today, so I'm about ready for bed here at 8:30 or so. It's been a long week.

Holy Frick! It's 2009!

I can't believe that it's 2009. I feel like I was just ringing in 2008 and making my goals for the year. I guess I should evaluate those goals. Let's see...I'll have to go get them.

I found them, after I re-read about our trip to Florida last year in January...I love Disney World.

Anyway, here's what I said:

Anyway, I think that I'll set some goals for myself this year (1 & 2 are kind of contradictory, but that's okay)

1. Have my first child
2. Lose 20 pounds over the course of 2008 (see? they contradict)
3. Keep running/walking
4. Pay off the tuition credit card
5. Save $1000


So, what did I accomplish:

1. This was really just bad luck. Considering I'm 22 wks right now, without an issue, I would say that we just had to have a couple of restarts. Either that or Jake and Josh cannot do ANYTHING separately. Married same year, bought house same year, having first baby, same year (hell, it's probably going to be in the same month).

2. Well, this didn't happen, for reasons relating to #1.
3. I tried. I really did. But, then I gave up.
4. YES!! I DID DO THIS!! Sacrificed #5 to do it, but my last payment for this month is $66.50 or so! WOOT!
5. I had saved $1000. Then, I decided that paying off stuff before we have the baby is more important. We'll get there eventually.



Okay, NEW GOALS FOR 2009!!!!

1. Pay credit card down under $3000
2. Lose 20 pounds (why not?)
3. Pay off remaining student loan that is not rolled up into my consolidation loan (stupid loan that I forgot about!)
4. Get rid of all the misc. shit that is cluttering up my house. Okay, I guess that could be, get more organized.
5. Save $500


We'll see. I don't really have good goals this year.

Man, that trip to Florida was amazing! I wish we were there right now. Oh well. In the future.