Myriad Unsubtleties

Just occurred to me that I haven't updated here in... quite a while. Since February? My cat who was ill at the time has since more-or-less made a full recovery - even his eyesight has returned, thank god. The day he started chasing a laser pointer I could not stop smiling.

So he's mostly upstairs again; he and my Abby get on all right, but his brother is up there, and his dogs and his other feline friends.

Unfortunately, while he's doing better, we lost our oldest cat to kidney failure a little over two months ago.

Other than that? Well... I've started playing Guild Wars 2, because I can't afford to keep my WoW account going, and GW2 is Buy to Play. I don't need to spend another cent on it now, as long as I can resist the lure of cash shop shinies. >_>

Not much else to update on, really, unless you're all desperate to hear about the Saga of the Toe Infection. But really. It's toes. They're not cute like a kitty, so I think I'll spare you. No one wants to hear about my toes. XD

Since that last post, my cat has made a pretty good recovery. He's no longer having seizures, and can eat and drink on his own. He's still completely blind, unfortunately.

Our regular vet took his glucose curves on Monday, and without any insulin shots, his blood glucose never went into dangerous levels, even shortly after eating, so it seems his body has adjusted and requires nothing more than a good, high-protein, low-carb diet now. (Possibly. We're to keep an eye on him and see if he goes slowly out of whack again and call her if we see signs he's deteriorating.)

So, it's possible that the spark for the problem was hypoglycemia caused by his regular insulin dose. The vet isn't 100% certain whether the hypoglycemia was the entire problem, or whether there's something underlying that was triggered/made worse by the hypoglycemia. We're to keep our eyes out for more seizures, too.

But, in the meantime, I still have my kitty, and he seems pretty content. I don't know how long that will last - hours and hours of seizures followed by a couple days of intermittent seizures and not enough food or water had to have been hard on his body - but that's then, this is now.

My kitty Misto has been diagnosed with diabetes; I'm freaking terrified about giving him his shots. I hate needles, and I'm scared that I'll hurt him on accident. Ugh.

We also need to change how we feed our cats, because we can't give him regular cat food - too much carbohydrates. Mom's considering going to a home-cooked diet. I've done some research on it, we'll see how she feels about what I dug up. :p I have little doubt it'll be "too much work."

But at least she's giving him a chance. I fully expected her to just have him put to sleep . . . now all I have to do is try to figure out how to give my cat insulin when just looking at pictures of people giving their cats shots on sites explaining how to do it makes me want to scream.

I hate needles.

straight 4.0s

what

how

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As I saw somewhere else, "Any that will win me a $50 Amazon gift card."

. . . no, but really, I wouldn't call what I do celebrating so much as "anticipating and dreading in equal amounts." I'm not religious, so my celebrations, such as they are, are entirely secular. My family is Christian, so of course, when I celebrate with them, it's a celebration of Christmas in the Christian sense, but my own personal feelings and attitudes towards the celebration are based differently from theirs.

And of course I look forward to receiving presents. I already know that this year, I'm going to receive Skyrim, which is something I'm anticipating. But it's also a bit painful that I can't give much, since I'm extremely broke; I currently have about $200 to my name, if that, which is already earmarked for books for next quarter. Broke college student, that's me.

Now, I've been the sole gift-giver in my family before, during a particularly hard Christmas where I was the only one with any real disposable cash, and now it's my turn to be the one with very little money, but that doesn't make me feel any less guilty for this year. So that's part of the dreading.

The other part, however, comes from the fact that I am the child of alcoholics. Growing up, holidays were an excuse for my father to start drinking early and achieve new heights of inebriation; my mother, a recovering alcoholic and codependent, was often sullen and withdrawn, upset over having to do so much by herself (because god forbid my father help, and we children were a bit young to cook a turkey) and reacting in a typical passive-aggressive manner that I and my sister learned to imitate. Family times, difficult enough ordinarily, became excruciating.

Even now, holidays are difficult for my entire family; my father is no longer part of the picture, but that doesn't alleviate years of training that holidays exist to be berated on; that along with gifts under the tree, or presented on birthdays, come gifts of verbal abuse. That heaping helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes are garnished with liberal doses of scorn and insults.

The dread of holidays is getting better over time, which is something to celebrate in and of itself. The longer we're free of my father's poisonous influence, the more we all improve. This year will be the first time we celebrate Christmas with my new stepfather; my mother has been able to move on, put my father behind her, and trust again, which is a fantastic step. She's been so much happier!

And this year, that's what it's all about. The changes that this Christmas will be seeing, the progress we've all made. I'm back in school again and getting straight As this quarter, and I'm struggling a little but working through it instead accepting failure as natural to me and curling up in a little ball of self-hatred the way my father trained me to do. My sister and her husband bought their own home this year, a milestone they weren't sure they were going to manage so soon.

These are the things that I'm celebrating.this year. This is my 'holiday'. I'll be doing it on the 25th with my family, because that's when they celebrate their holiday, and that's okay.

Though I have to say, I wouldn't mind if they wanted to celebrate a little earlier. Want Skyrim nao plz.
(Can you tell I've been writing essays for school? I wasn't even trying, and I laid this out like an essay.)

OKAY. Gosh, do you have any idea how hard maintaining radio silence on this has been? fistingthing is miiiine and, btw, I adore Dragon Age II and Fenris. And have written several fics which I couldn't post here because there's CFUD people on my flist and I didn't want to tip my app hand too obviously.

They're up on my AO3 page, so I'll just link there:

Changing Boundaries
Pairing: Fenris/Male!Mage!Hawke
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Some spoilers for DAII? Male/male sex

Driven (Thinking Of You)
Pairing: Fenris/Female!Mage!Hawke, Fenris/his hand
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: male/female sexual fantasy, minor spoilers for Fenris' romance

Pledge
Pairing: Fenris/Male!Rogue!Hawke
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Spoilers for Act II of DAII

. . . like I said, I adore Fenris. XD

Watching The Sentinel.

Seriously. Jim and Blair. How are they not canon? I mean . . . seriously. I am not 100% sure, but I do not think I have ever seen a more slashy show.

(Not including Torchwood, because Torchwood doesn't count since it's bloody well text. Text in capslock. And 72-point bold, blinking typeface. Possibly done up in a scrolling marquee to boot.)

So last night I learned that my real name is, in addition to being a word in Spanish and Italian like I've known forever, it's also a word in Finnish. Whay does it mean?

Hi, my name is Tonsil, nice to meet you.

This amuses me so, so much.

And now it's time for the embarrassing day: Day 10 - A song that no one would expect you to love

Yeah, okay, so I like Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance." Shut up.

YouTube link
Not providing a download link for this one because it's popular enough that I don't want my Mediafire account getting swarmed by downloads. x_x

( The rest of the days )

So today after my math test, as I'm walking past a row of classrooms, a couple of boys walk out of the room I'm passing and stop abruptly. And I hear one whisper to the other, "Damn, she's hot!"

Oh, hello ego. Haven't seen you in a while. :3

cpip asked me five questions! If you want to be asked questions, comment here and I'll ask your five. :)

( Cut because this got a little long! )