I feel like putting together a care package! Let’s have a contest!

Guess the significance of this photo. Like, when I show you later this week the blog post that accompanies this picture, what will the post be about?

I’ll put all correct answers into a random-number-generating hat and choose one. The winner will get a Swistle care package of various shopping finds. Unless the winner has a mailing address that is not USA, APO, or FPO, in which case I will mail them a kiss in an envelope because HOLY SNEEZES the shipping. If you won an earlier contest, you are nevertheless welcome to enter this one. Contest runs through Friday, April 24th, at, say, noonish, U.S. Pacific time. (In other words, best to get vote in by Thursday, but if you make a guess on Friday before I’ve gotten around to choosing a winner, you’ll probably still make it.)

When one cat is getting spoiled with tuna, EVERYCAT wins

OUR NEW COUCH IS HERE!!! Unfortunately, probably due to a problem with the warehouse it was stored in, it is INFESTED with children. We didn’t notice until we’d already signed the thingie saying we’d received it in good condition.

Also, remember how I said it was RED? Not quite so red as we’d thought, is it? I’ve said before that I am not AT ALL skillzed at visualizing from a swatch of paint or fabric or wallpaper, and this is total proof of it. To me, the swatch looked very bright red, with a variegated color pattern that included some orange and some deep red.

It arrived, and it is WINE-colored. Which on one hand, excellent! Because AFTER we ordered the red couch, WEEKS after we ordered it, we remembered that we have a wine-colored recliner, and it seemed like the red and the wine might be a…poor mix. But in fact they are the same color, really. Both wine. And really, I can’t claim I was misled by the swatch: the color name is “Claret.” WINE.

But on the other hand, I was looking forward to fiery red with little bits of orange in it. Last night, I kept trying to get Paul to engage in a conversation about whether we’d made the Wrong Fabric Choice—on a non-returnable couch, is what I was trying to discuss. He escaped into sleep.

Thank you for all your kind comments about Georgie. Srsly, what did people do before they had internet support? It feels so much better to read the commiserations, the anecdotes, the personal experiences, the tips.

And also the book recommendations. I ordered Desser, The Best Ever Cat by Maggie Smith (recommended by Jessica), When a Pet Dies by Fred Rogers (recommended by Trina) (I LOVE Mister Rogers), and I Miss You: A First Look at Death by Pat Thomas (recommended by Amazon after I added the other two to my cart). Our library has Lifetimes by Bryan Mellonie (recommended by Trina and Heather), so we’re going to pick it up this weekend.

Another Heather asked if Georgie were Burmese. The vet lists him as an American domestic shorthair, which I think is a nice way to say “cat mutt” (Georgie was a shelter kitten), but when I went and looked at a bunch of pictures of Burmese cats, I saw some that strongly resembled Georgie, and I also saw resemblances in the Burmese temperament: Georgie still acts like a kitten, and he’s social and cuddly (though not much of a meower, and the adjective “intelligent” didn’t click right into place). Maybe he’s got a Burmese grandparent.

Oh em gee. Woman. Stop taking my picture. Also, I’m ready for another Pringle.

I took the cats to the vet this week for their annual check-ups. Two kitties are doing well; the third is not. He’s lost weight; he’s got a heart murmur; he’s coughing; he has fluid in his lungs; his kidneys are smaller; and he’s “side-breathing,” which I gather means that he’s using his abdominal muscles to help him breathe because his lungs aren’t working well enough to do it on their own.

The vet says he has both kidney disease and congestive heart failure. The tricky thing, she said, is that the treatment plans for those two things are opposite—and in fact, treating one could push the other one over the edge. Georgie is 15 years old, and she said even if we did a bunch of testing to discover exactly how bad each situation is, it would still be difficult to get a treatment plan that would…well, that would WORK.

I croaked out something about how long would he….? and she said it could be months or it could be weeks (she did not say years), that it could happen suddenly or that he could start struggling to breathe. It’s so smart of them to keep boxes of tissues handy. I mouthed “Pain?” and she said no, not usually, but that he could start panicking and feeling like he’s drowning, and if that happened we might want to “keep him from suffering.” She said if he seems okay now (he does), we can just, as she put it, “enjoy each day with him.” But that if he seems to be struggling and suffering, we could “bring him in.”

Here’s the part that got to me: she said we didn’t need to do the usual vaccinations. She put away the little filled needles. Doesn’t that sound like a “hospice” kind of move?

Here’s another part that got to me: he’s very allergic to fleas, and he recently apparently got bitten by one because he has a huge itchy patch. I asked if he could have a shot of whatever they gave him last time to make the itchiness go away faster, and she said it would put too much strain on his heart. She said it could just…and she snapped her fingers and pressed her lips together.

So now we are on full kitty-spoiling mode. Does he want some cheese? A chip? Ice cream? Kitty treat? ANYTHING? He’s always liked people food but we didn’t like to let him have very much of it, but now that seems like an unnecessary limitation, if the situation is so dire that he’s not going to have vaccines.

He likes to sit on my shoulders, which can be inconvenient. But what’s a little inconvenience? What’s a little claw-puncture here and there, between friends?

(And incidentally, if you’re trying to conceal a double chin in a photograph, I highly recommend using a cat.)

Now and then I see a post with the theme “What makes you feel like a grown-up?” The answers are always so cool: when I started doing my own taxes; when I realized no one was going to clean up that barf except me; when I bought my first set of dishes; when I had to start paying for things like furnaces and roofs; when I started buying pictures for the walls instead of posters.

And this is another one for me: When I had to make a decision about a pet’s life. It’s hard to be responsible for deciding whether someone else lives or dies, and when the suffering justifies the intervention, and this is the first time I’ve had to do that. Georgie was the first kitty I adopted on my own, as opposed to my parents adopting a cat for the family. And he’s the first pet I’ve had on my own who’s been in this situation: I’ve never had to make end-of-life decisions before, or wonder what is supposed to be done with the body. Do we….bury it in the yard? The last time any kitty of mine died, it was a family kitty and my parents handled it entirely.

I’m fretting, too, about how to talk about it with the kids. I had a brief talk about death with Elizabeth the other day, and it didn’t go well: she immediately started talking about how she didn’t want any of us to get any older because we might die, and about how after her BIRTHDAY would SHE be old enough to die, and so on. Ack.

On the other hand, I’m grateful to have this warning. The vet said that with heart disease, sometimes the first sign of it is when the cat dies. I am glad to have this time to give Georgie extra treats and pettings, and to take his photo, and to be extra sweet to him. Want to sleep on my favorite blanket in the sunshine? And can I bring you a Pounce treat?

When I was in college, I did my internship with the March of Dimes, a non-profit organization that focuses on preventing/managing premature birth and birth defects. (And you know what? No one who worked there knew if it was “The March of Dimes” or “March of Dimes,” either. It was one way on some material and the other way on other material.)

They said I could have my own desk (it was a card table, but it was MINE), so I chose them over doing an internship with the human resources department of a health care facility, and that turned out to be a mistake because the March of Dimes internship had NOTHING to do with human resources (my major) and instead was a lot more like marketing (my anti-major: I could not sell a sedated duck to a hungry fox). But I got to wear cute suits, and also I didn’t end up doing anything with my major as it turned out, so no biggie that I may have chosen the wrong internship.

Plus, it’s because of my March of Dimes internship that I knew to take folic acid even before getting pregnant, and since I myself was a near-miss spina bifida baby (a deep but skin-covered indentation down to my spine), this was a super-good idea—a super-good idea my doctor didn’t talk about with me until I was 8 weeks along and it was super-too-late.

My friend Shannon of Cerebral Palsy Baby has had two preemies, and she just found out she’s expecting. She’s walking in the March for Babies, a March of Dimes fundraising event, and I’ve sponsored her, and I hope you’ll consider sponsoring her too. And I would like to say for the record that I am doing it out of the goodness of my heart, and not because I am hoping to win the prize she’s offering from her Etsy shop. Ahem.

(And if you’re reading me in an RSS reader, you should totally click over today to see how FREAKY this place looks in purple. One day only, and then it goes back to the usual aqua color.)

Well, FINE, so pretty much everyone except Paul and me knows the lyrics to Do-Re-Mi. I sure did appreciate all of you who assumed that I would have it right and Paul would have it wrong. We should get “Team Swistle” shirts printed up. And we should get those distributed before I tell you I was half wrong. Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier that it was only in the last decade that I realized it wasn’t “Fa, along the way to run.” And that it was only as I was composing the post that I realized it was “sol” not “so”.

Paul was singing, correctly, “Fa, a long long way to run.” I was singing, incorrectly but I still prefer it, “Fa, a longer way to run.”

Paul was singing, incorrectly, “Ti, I drink with jam and bread.” I was singing, correctly, “Ti, a drink with jam and bread.” Actually, I don’t think I’d like tea with jam and bread. I think I’d prefer it with an almond white-chocolate cherry scone, the kind with big-grained sugar all over the top. MMMMMmmmmmm.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had any pay-it-forward updates around here! I think a lot of them got out of our orbit. But today there’s one over at 3 Giraffes, and it is SUCH a sweet idea: not only will there be a care package as a prize, but Chris and Kim will each donate $50 to the March of Dimes on your behalf, in memory of Maddie Spohr.

Go enter

You know that song from The Sound of Music, the one that goes “Doe, a deer, a female deer”? Paul and I discovered we have different ways of singing it. WITHOUT LOOKING UP THE ACTUAL LYRICS, which of these do you say is correct?

a) Fa, a long long way to run
b) Fa, a longer way to run

a) Ti, a drink with jam and bread
b) Ti, I drink with jam and bread

I bought a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs yesterday. I’m so conflicted: I want to eat one SO BAD, but if I open the package and start eating them, they’ll be gone and then I won’t have any more. Also: it’s still technically breakfast time.

I have this same problem with almost everything. It’s probably the borderline version of whatever inspires people to save every newspaper and magazine and piece of junk mail in huge teetering moldering piles until eventually the piles start falling and they crush the person domino-style.

If I have a little left of a “special” moisturizer or conditioner, it’s hard to use it. I end up saving it until it’s all dried out or gross or something. I must have…well, I’ll just go count and save us all the agonized guessing. Hang on. BRB. Okay, I have three—THREE—bottles of “special” conditioner with about three servings left per bottle.

(Putting “special” in quotes like that makes it look like I’m talking suggestively. NO. I just mean, like, my Aussie 3 Minute Miracle Reconstructor DEEEEP is “special,” but my Suave Professionals Color Care ‘Protects as well as Biolage’ Conditioner is “not.”)

If we’re down to the last few bags of chocolate chips, I start feeling anxious and squirrely about using them. Bags 3, 2, and 1, are THE SAME VALUE as bags 6, 5, and 4 were, and yet…I really like to buy fresh bags 3, 2, and 1, before I use the bags formerly known as 3, 2, and 1. My pantry is…generously stocked. I am a fretter, but I rarely fret about what we would do if we couldn’t leave the house for a week because of natural disaster or zombies or whatever. We’d have plenty of food. In fact, come on over, we have enough for you too.

Clearly this is a little psychological glitch. Probably therapy is unnecessary, but a little practice at home wouldn’t hurt: using the SECOND to last bag of chocolate chips before restocking, for example. …Well, THIRD to last. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I also think it would be valuable to open that package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.

Updating the No More Babies situation is a tough call. Every time I talk about it I get a few ugly comments, and who likes that? Nobody! And also, I feel so blicky talking about how “wah, wah, I’ve only had five helpings,” when other people haven’t even had a first helping yet.

Still. This is a big thing to me, and it seems to me that “wanting a child” is a big thing to a lot of people, and so it’s worth discussing—whether a person has zero children or one child or two children or eight children or whatever. But I plan to be brief about it and just sort of sum it up, not go on and on.

The reason I’m doing such a PREAMBLE is to give you a chance to duck out if you’d rather chew tin foil than hear a woman with five children give an update about wanting another child. I’m not going to talk about anything else in this post, so it’s safe to take a pass on the whole thing.

Last chance! Last chance!

So. It was mid-December when Paul and I had the big talk. It took me several weeks to be able to find any positive things to say at all, and to work out a wallowing system. I found I felt better when I shopped and when I ate yummies and when I did fun stuff, and I felt even better when I thought about my niece and about the babies THREE of my friends were/are expecting and all the babies my online friends were/are expecting: it reminded me that I can still enjoy happy anticipation and happy family expansion, even if it’s not happening in my exact household or barfing in my exact toilet.

Even so, I spent a solid two months feeling overall awful. Almost as if the sixth child already existed, and I had failed to save him/her, and now he/she was lost. Desperate.

The third month, I felt the first inklings that this might be a temporary feeling. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Henry getting full-swing into the Toddler Nutcase Era just as everyone came down with a nasty snarfing coughing cold accompanied by cough-related barfing.

And now it is almost the end of the fourth month, and I’d say I feel bad about it only 5% of the time, which is really really really good, and better than I’d been hoping for. Furthermore, I probably feel GOOD about it 5% of the time, too—also way better than I’d been hoping for. And perhaps most importantly of all, I’m spending large% of the time NOT THINKING ABOUT IT AT ALL.

Still, if you’d like to expand your family to make me feel better, please do. Very thoughtful of you.