Cats, Weekends, and a Baby Octopus

Lexie is doing so well at home now. She's back to her normal self with hardly any meowing (just the small amount of meowing she used to do). It's actually weird to have her walk around quietly after dealing with her being in heat for 4 weeks.

I let her out last night when I got home from work, thinking that Emmie would be over his hissing issues. Apparently he is not. He hissed like crazy at her, and even tried to swat at her head. I guess Lexie doesn't smell like herself to him yet. It makes me so sad for her that he's acting like this, because Lexie still loves him and now she's afraid of him. Also, I hate that we have to keep Lexie locked in when we're not home because we're worried about what Emmie will do. I'm actually afraid that Emmie's behaviour will stress Lexie out to the point that she starts peeing again.

Speaking of pee, last night when I got home from work Lexie kept sniffing this one spot on the couch. I went and smelled it and discovered another spot of old dried pee. How thrilled was I. I had a friend coming over for tea in 10 minutes, so I couldn't do anything about it. So all during the visit with my friend, all I could think about was how Emmie is being so mean to Lexie, and how many other old pee spots I'm going to find before they're all cleaned up. That makes for a less than enjoyable visit! But the pee thing is a big deal, not just because I have to clean up all the spots (which is quite a process), but because if you don't get rid of the smell, the cats are much more likely to keep peeing in the same spot over and over again.

The problem is that there's no way for us to find all the spots on our own. We can't see them, and we certainly can't go around our entire house on our hands and knees sniffing every inch of everything. We have a big house! So we just have to watch our cats all the time to see where they start sniffing, and then smell that spot ourselves. It'll be a long time before I feel confident that nobody is going to pee anywhere inappropriate.

I haven't had time to make a proper dinner all week! I get home too late after my appointments, and then I always have to deal with some sort of cat issue. I feel bad for my poor husband.

Thank goodness it's the weekend. Justin is out of town at a basketball tournament tonight and tomorrow, but I have no commitments so I should have some time to get things done. I also have to prepare to have our parents over on Sunday for Justin's birthday. The house needs to be cleaned, laundry needs to be done, groceries need to be bought, and food needs to be made. I think I'm just going to make a pot of chilli for lunch on Sunday, but I'll have to get some snack foods too.

Hopefully I can get some more sleep this weekend! The past 3 nights have pretty good. I haven't had the horrible nights I was having, but I'm still probably getting only about 6 hours a night. I'm a 9 hour kind of girl.

The past several days Bambino has been CRAZILY active, and positioned in a way so that I feel every movement and always have limbs poking out of my stomach. It's so wonderfully weird... I'm going to miss this feeling! It feels like I have an 8 legged baby inside of me.

Good Stuff

I feel like I've had a string of posts where I've been talking about frustrating things that are happening. I don't want to sound like a really negative person, so I'm going to talk about some good things that have happened, too!

I got an email this morning from my pastor's wife (she's only 26 or 27) saying that her and my friend Nicole want to throw me and Stacey (a girl who just had a baby at the end of December) a baby shower next weekend! I was very surprised by this, and thought that was so nice of them. It's going to be held at my church, with ladies from the church being invited. I have no idea who will come or what they'll get for the two of us. I don't know if the girls will tell anyone that I'm registered (I don't even know if they know that I'm registered). I'll very likely end up with a lot of gender neutral stuff (from people who don't know we're having a boy) and outfits that won't fit Bambino during the correct seasons. But I still think it's a very nice gesture, and it'll be fun. And hopefully I can exchange things that we can't use. And maybe I'll get some practical things out of the deal. I just think that it's so nice of them to do this for us.

I went shopping after my OB appointment on Tuesday and got myself a nice pair of black yoga pants. They have a wide waistband and fold right under my belly. I'm not sure how well they'll fit after the baby is born. Right now they fit okay, but my hips are a few inches wider around than normal because my joints have spread out. The pants stretch out a bit as I'm wearing them, and I have some concerns about them being way too big once I'm down to my normal size. But they were only $30, and I bought them with a gift certificate I got for Christmas. And they'll fit for at least a little while afterward. You need some nice comfy clothes to wear during the awkward "my pre-pregnancy pants don't fit but I don't want to look like a slob in sweatpants all the time" phase. I also bought a cute new pair of boots to wear with my two pairs of yoga pants. I can tuck the bottoms of the pants into the boots, which I need to do outside in this weather since both pairs are so wonderfully long on me.

The past three days of work all I've worn are yoga pants, because they camoflauge perfectly as dress pants. My lulu.lemons are dark grey, and the other pair are black. Wearing comfortable, soft pants to work does wonders for your state of mind, especially in the morning when you're getting dressed. There's just something about pulling on cozy clothes that look really cute and knowing you get to wear them all day at work, instead of stiff dress pants. I now wish I had never even bought maternity dress pants. They are too short (even though they're "tall"), and I'll never wear them when I'm not pregnant (obviously), so they were kind of a waste of money. However, I hadn't even thought of just buying yoga pants before. I wish I had. They're so much more comfortable, and they last long after the pregnancy is over. Hindsight is 20/20.

Lexie didn't meow all night last night, and I actually slept pretty well! Pretty well for me means I didn't have 3 solid hours of awake time during the night. I still woke up in pain often and had to pee often, but I fell back asleep afterward, and that's what matters. That's now two decent nights of sleep in a row, which I'm thrilled about!

I've managed to still exercise everyday, usually twice a day, even with all the cat drama and appointments I have. I'm glad we have such a nice rower (read: expensive), because it works out your entire body at once, which cuts down on the amount of time you need to get a full-body workout. Unfortunately I have not had hardly any time in the past week or two to do my chiropractic stretches or Bradley exercises. I'm not just saying that either - I truly haven't had time. When I do have time, I do them! Right now with the amount of energy, effort, and attention my cats are taking up, I'm realizing how crazy things will be when Bambino is here, and how hard it will be to find time to do the things that need to be done and still find some "me" time. At least I won't be working for the first year, and after that if I'm working it'll only be part time.

Lexie is Home

Yesterday I picked up Lexie from the vet, and it was awful! When the assistant went back to put her in her carrier I heard this awful angry yowling and hissing. When they brought her up to me she was still doing it. The one girl was like "Yeah... she hasn't been very happy with us..." I felt terrible, for them and for Lexie. Emmie was nothing like that when he was there! I was shocked! And then I was worried, because who's going to be nice to a cat who is behaving like that? So she probably didn't get any affection or love while she was there because she was so difficult. Poor girl.

The 25 minute drive home was absolute torture. Lexie was absolutely furious. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, the most angry noises I've ever heard come from a cat before. She was violently trying to get out of the carrier the whole time, which isn't good for a cat who'd just been sliced open and declawed.

Once we got home I just put her carrier on the floor. I didn't open it right away; I wanted to take her to the laundry room because I was worried I wouldn't be able to get her in there otherwise, and she had been so angry I was afraid she would pee somewhere. Interestingly, even though she was still in the carrier, as soon as she was in the house she basically calmed down. It was like she saw the familiar stairs and smelled the familiar smells and was like "Okay, I'm home... I can relax." She was still meowing a bit agitatedly, but nothing like the screams that were happening in the car and at the vet.

I took her to the laundry room and she ate like she hadn't eaten for a week and kept wanting me to pet her. She was doing much better than Emmie was after I got him home. Emmie was mad at me and didn't want to be near me for a couple of hours (he got over it though, and that night he slept with me... Justin was out of town). Emmie also seemed to be in so much more pain than Lexie does. He limped around sadly and couldn't sit on his bum (because that's where he had been operated on). It took like 5 or 6 months for him to stop limping on his paws. But Lexie seems so much better than Emmie. Her paws only seem slightly irritated. And I guess it helps that she can sit down on her bum, since her incision is on her tummy.

Unfortunately, Emmie now despises Lexie. I was so upset by this! They're usually best friends and always cuddle and lick each other. I let Emmie in the laundry room with us and Lexie went right up to him so he could lick her; Emmie sniffed her for a few seconds and then started hissing and growling at her! Lexie was so scared! Poor little thing. I tried a few more times over the course of the evening, but Emmie behaved the same way. It's so strange, he's usually such a sweet, good-natured, cuddly cat.

I think this is because Lexie spent about 30 hours at the vet and now smells funny to Emmie. I have them seperated now, like they were at the beginning when we first got Lexie. I guess I'll just have to use the same procdure we used back then to acclimate them again.

Poor Lexie though, she hates being locked in. At least when she was a kitten she was locked in our bedroom and ensuite bathroom and we could easily spend a lot of time with her. But right now I still don't trust her not to pee in innappropriate places, so she can't be in there. I spent most of yesterday evening sitting on the freezing cold hard floor of the laundry/furnace room with Lexie in my lap. It was less than ideal!

Relief is in Sight... Kitten-Wise

Last night the cats were again locked in the laundry room, which is right under our bedroom. The laundry room also happens to be the furnace room. And everytime the furnace clicked on last night (which was often, because it was like, -20 here) Lexie started meowing. I put in earplugs, but I could still hear her. PLUS my ears were killing me from the plugs. I knew the peacefulness of the night before wouldn't last.

However, there may be an end in sight!

Today we brought Lexie to the vet for her rabies shot, and I kept asking him what the heck we can do about Lexie's constant screaming meowing and "innapropriate elimination." He gave us a couple of suggestions about litter (apparently we need to change to unscented clumping litter... the exact opposite of what my mother told me to get before we got Emmie... blasted mother!), but didn't give us any drugs. I was honestly hoping we could tranquilize my cat.

However, he did get us an appointment to get her spayed for THIS TUESDAY! Yaaaaay! That's two weeks earlier than our original appointment with them, and the receptionist had said it would be impossible to get her in any earlier, even after I almost cried over Lexie meowing and peeing everywhere. But he got us right in, no problem. Thank goodness!

This is our original vet, the one who only requires a 1 night stay, as opposed to the other vet we were going to try who required 2 nights, and was also inconvenient so we were going to have to add another night by dropping her off the evening before. However, this vet is also $80 more expensive... which works for me, considering it gets her in a week earlier than the other vet was going to!

Now, this doesn't guarantee an end to the peeing. But it does bring us a lot closer. Hopefully by the time two weeks is up and her hormones have stopped being produced, she will be back to her little trustworthy self. The one who didn't pee everywhere she wasn't supposed to.

We found a recipe online that cleans cat pee out of carpets, mattresses, and upholstery. It's a complicated process involving water, vinegar, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and a vaccuum cleaner. But it seems to work! I don't think we can smell any cat pee on our couches anymore (we found a second spot). Although that may just be because all we can smell is vinegar and green apple scented dish soap! We'll see how things are a week from now after the couches have dried and aired out. I think the problem has been dealt with, though.

3 more days and 3 more nights... I can handle this. Maybe by then her hormones will have calmed down a bit and it won't take 1-2 weeks for her to quit acting like an idiot.

Wishful thinking?

Change of Plans

Alright, plans have changed.

Lexie is driving me insane. Last night I had a friend over for tea and for the entire hour and a half she meowed. Constantly. And not a cute little meow. A loud, screaming, grating meow. And then Justin told me that she peed on a couch.

A couch. The worst thing she could pee on! A bed, I can deal with. I can wash sheets and a comforter. A carpet... well that's even easier to clean than a couch. But how do I wash a couch?!?!
She is actually making me lose my mind. We are keeping her and Emmie locked in the laundry room from now on until Lexie cuts this out. Thankfully (you have no idea how thankful I am for this) I didn't hear her meow once all night. The laundry room is right under our bedroom and I thought for sure she would meow all night like she does outside our bedroom door. But she didn't! That's not to say that she won't tonight, but at least she didn't last night. However, when we let them out this morning she started with the constant meowing again, so eventually Justin just put them back in the laundry room.

I feel bad for Emmie in all of this because he's such a good cat and doesn't deserve to be locked in a small room for 20 out of 24 hours in a day. But I also feel bad separating them. Plus, if Emmie wasn't in the room with Lexie she would probably meow more.

The bottom line is that I cannot handle this anymore. It is stressing me to the max that my cat won't shut up and is still peeing everywhere. So we're going with the earlier, less convenient appointment to get her spayed. Which means we have to take her to the vet tomorrow morning to get her rabies vaccine. And she also needs to spend 3 nights at the vet the week of the 18th, instead of 1 night the week after.

At this point, I'm almost okay with the 3 nights she'll spend at the vet. She is driving me absolutely insane (I was ready to give her away last night, which is crazy for me because I am so in love with my cats), and it'll be nice to be able to finally relax without listening to her incessant meowing and looking for where she most recently peed.

Another Day...

28 weeks 3 days

My back is killing me. Last night I was lying down for awhile while Justin was rubbing my feet (what I good husband... I really needed it), and when I got up to turn back the covers of the bed so I could go to sleep, I had STABBING pain in my lower back every time I stepped on my right foot.

Now today at work it's the same story. I've been sitting down all morning while teaching, because I am once again limping around. My back hurts constantly, but as soon as I put any significant weight on my right leg the pain is crazy.

Last night I also had what I think is the most excruciating hip pain I've had this whole pregnancy. I think I mentioned that I have burcitis in both my hips. Sleeping is terrible since I always have to sleep on my side. It doesn't matter which side I'm sleeping on, both sides absolutely kill all night. Last night my left hip had screaming pain. Luckily I was crazily overtired from the lack of sleep the night before, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to sleep a wink. As it was, I was up every hour. But that's normal for me.

Unfortunately, Lexie was also horrible last night. She meowed loudly outside our door every half hour to every hour. I put in earplugs, but I could still hear her through them.

Also unfortunate about Lexie is that I can't get her spayed and declawed until the end of January. It's a three week wait. I tried calling other vets to get her in earlier, and I found a much cheaper vet, but he's also much less convenient. First of all, they require the rabies vaccination to be given at least 10 days before the surgery. I think that's ridiculous, and my original vet doesn't require that wait. I don't want to have to take her to two vet visits, especially considering how busy I am right now.

Also, the hours at the new clinic won't allow me to drop Lexie off in the morning before work, so I'd have to drop her off the night before. And they make her stay for 2 nights instead of 1. So if she went to this vet she'd be gone for 3 nights. That feels way too mean to me. She'll feel so abandoned and unloved.

So I'm just going to bite the bullet, pay the extra $80 and wait the extra week so that I can take Lexie to the original vet. I know what it's like there and I like it. They were so nice to Emmie when I brought him to be neutered. And Lexie will only need to spend one night away from home.

I made my car service appointment for tomorrow after school, so that will be out of the way. And I'm not going to my staff party Saturday night, even though it's kind of required. Justin is coaching in a basketball tounament and might have a game at 6:30pm. The party starts at 6, and it's a dinner party, so we'd miss pretty much the whole thing. I'm just going to say I can't go. It takes one thing off my list of things I have to do.

I ALSO had a really horrible day yesterday due to a run-in with my jerk of a boss. It was the kind of thing that ruins your entire attitude and your entire day. It made me more impatient with my students because I felt like crap, mentally. And it made it so much harder to put everything into perspective. When I got home I was still so bothered by it that I couldn't bring myself to make dinner. I made Justin a couple of nice big sandwiches, and I ate an apple with peanut butter, a hot chocolate made with milk, and a tiny scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I can't wait to get out of here. 44 days left... 44 days left...

I Want My Good Feelings Back!

On Sunday evening I was feeling so settled and content and fantastic. I want that feeling back! Things are piling up and I'm starting to feel like I don't have any control anymore.

After a week's break, Lexie has started to meow a LOT again. We're very afraid that she's going into heat again. I can't believe she'd go in so soon! I really have to make that vet appointment to take her in to be spayed and declawed, even though it breaks my heart to do that.

The procrastination of this action has been helped along by the fact that last night we discovered a very larged spot of dried cat pee on our bed. We couldn't see it and we couldn't smell it, but I had noticed that Lexie and Emmie had been spending a lot of time sniffing around that area for the past few days. Finally I smelled it (I had to put my nose right up to it) and realized that Lexie had peed there. I don't know when, but it was sometime in the past week, probably on Sunday when we weren't home until about 4pm. It had dried completely and didn't leave a stain on our patterned bedspread, so I've been sleeping in between peed-soaked-and-then-dried sheets for who knows how long (that's right, it was on my side of the bed).

Thankfully because Lexie had been meowing so much and I was afraid she's pee on our bed again, I had the foresight that evening to wash three sets of sheets. So when we discovered this problem at 9:30pm we already had clean sheets we could put on the bed. We had also recently washed the comforter from the spare bedroom, so we put that on our bed. However, it doesn't match our bedskirt, which bothers me. I know it shouldn't, but it does. It makes my life feel more jumbled.

I think I'm going to keep clean sets of sheets around from now on, instead of washing them right before we put them on. I like fresh clean sheets on the bed, but we have run into the pee issue so many times in the past month that it beginning to be impractical.

I think instead of washing the entire comforter again, we'll hand wash the part that she peed on. I don't want our comforter to be destroyed by being washed too often. It's an enormous comforter, so it'll take both of us. But I'll feel better than if I was putting it in the washer and dryer.

During my only 20 minute break today I need to call the vet to make an appointment to bring Lexie in. I'm dreading this. I'm going to make Justin put her in the carrier (I had to force poor Emmie in last June). I'm trying not to think of how much pain Emmie was in for so long after his surgeries. It'll be much worse for Lexie because she's actually being sliced open:( It makes me want to cry.

After that appointment has been made I have to call to get a service appointment for my car. The issue is that I have three appointments after work next week, and I'll also probably be picking Lexie up after work on another day that week (if I can get her in on a convenient day so that I can actually make it after work to pick her up). Unfortunately I can only do one thing after work each day. Business hours only last for so long.

Last night after the "peescapade" I couldn't fall asleep until almost 11. After waking up at least 6 times (the usual), finally at 4am I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. I just laid there until the alarm went off at 5:50. I was supposed to work out when the alarm went off, but I was feeling too out of control of my life and I couldn't. Instead I ran around the house throwing laundry in the washer, organizing my closet, cleaning off my dresser, putting gift bags and boxes away, cleaning the bathroom, gathering shopping bags from the floor of the closet to put under the sink to use as garbage bags, hanging up clothes, folding sheets, folding blankets... Amazingly, I managed to make it to work on time this morning!

I just need everything to be complete. I need everything to be clean, I need everything to be tidy, I need everything to be in it's proper place. I need all the things on my to-do list to be done, and I need to have a week where I have no appointments... impossible, unfortunately. I just feel like things are flying out of control and I need to get a handle on everything!

On a good note, yesterday I got everything at work organized so that if I suddenly went into labour or was put on bed rest, somebody could step in easily for the rest of the year. I had to make some changes to my long-range plans, and I also had to make changes to my resource student notes. I wouldn't have needed to change my long-range plans if I wasn't going to be leaving, because things weren't drastically different. But there were some timing issues with different units that caused things to change. Now everything is all organized and set up. If I suddenly had to leave, all that would need to be done is me coming in to pack up my personal stuff.

At least that part of my life is organized.

Our First Two Babies

This morning I was lying in bed reading a pregnancy book when I heard jingling from the baby's room. I got up to see what was going on and this is what I found:

Emmie was just chillin out in the bouncy chair.

A few minutes later I heard even more jingling, so I went to investigate again. That's when I found this:

Emmie and Lexie cuddling in there. Look closely, you can see how Emmie's arm is around Lexie.

Apparently they love this chair, and I have to lock them out of that room. Which is too bad because we love walking past it and seeing baby stuff in there.