I swear it was just Tuesday. Yet another week has flown by. What my grandmother used to always say has most definitely come true, at least for me: the older you get, the faster time flies. But in all fairness, it’s been a busy week. We re-painted the laundry/storage area this week (details and pics are at In My Bag), so that involved a lot of moving of heavy things, and until we buy new wire shelving to put over the washer and dryer all of our sheets, blankets, and beach towels are currently on the bottom bunk in Ryan’s bedroom.
Then, on Wednesday, after Dan mentioned on Tuesday night wanting to do something with our bedroom since it’s the one room in the house that we’ve never rearranged or otherwise done anything with since moving in (five and a half years ago!), Dan and I did just that. We moved all of the furniture away from the walls, did a bit of rearranging, and of course cleaned as we went: dusted, vacuumed, gathered up stuff to donate or throw out, etc. I’ve said it before and I’ll save it again: for other people, deep cleaning & organization takes place in the spring (you know, spring cleaning and all that); but for us, it happens in the fall.
After having Ryan at the doctor’s office on Tuesday, I thought all was well. The OTC/prescription regimen set things into motion as of Wednesday evening, so things were looking up on that end as well. Then, Thursday, he came home from school, and after a mini meltdown over reading a book for homework, came into the bedroom nearly in tears, telling me how bad his head and ear hurt. Ryan next to never complains about pain unless it’s bad, so I knew this wasn’t a simple case of a headache or him banging his head or something. I called the doctor and got a 7pm appointment, made him as comfortable as I could with Tylenol (for the ear/head pain as well as the 99.6° fever), and then took him to the doctor. Diagnosis: double ear infection. We kept him home from school on Friday, and have been pumping him full of Amoxicillin, prescription ear drops (for swelling/pain), and Tylenol or Motrin as needed, but he’s actually gotten worse… as the doctor predicted, since we caught the ear infection (infections? ears infection? ears infections? infections of the ears?) at the very beginning of things. Figures. 
So, depending on how Ryan is doing tomorrow night, he won’t be going to school on Monday, either.
Waiting for the doctor.
Entertaining Ryan on Friday afternoon…and ourselves.
My sister-in-law and I saw Breaking Dawn 2 in IMAX on Thursday night, after I took Ryan to the doctor and then dashed home with him, dropped him off with Dan, gave him initial doses of medicine, then peeled rubber in order to make it to the theater at our appointed meeting-up time. Living in a conservative, ultra-wholesomeish area has its perks sometimes: there was a 10pm showing! I bought the tickets, she bought the snacks, and we got our seats (good ones, too) an hour before the movie started. It was good. Go see it. 
Today I successfully made another batch of bread! It doesn’t look like a scrotum, but it does taste good, and pretty close to Outback Steakhouse’s black honey wheat bread, thanks to the copycat recipe I found.
Today I also successfully got the four of us together for family photos for our Christmas cards. For a couple of years we had CHristmas cards that featured photos as a part of the designs themselves. This year I’m just going to include little 3×5″ black and white photos of us. I’ll process them and the other bajillion photos I’ve taken over the past few days tomorrow. There’s a bunch from Alyssa, too. She was really interested in trying out my camera after our family photos, so I gave her basic photo how-to’s and camera how-to’s, and let her take some shots. She had fun, and she got some really good ones, too!
Last but not least…Felix is here to stay. Sigh. Officially. When we took him in back in October we figured this might eventually be the case, but now it’s definite and all that. Our township is cheap and couldn’t care less about stray cats, so they do not pay the required tax to the county shelter in order for said county shelter to provide stray animal services to our township. Therefore, in order for the shelter to accept Felix, I would have had to lie and say that I found him elsewhere…such as in a township that does pay taxes to the shelter… and that I brought him home out of pity for him being out in the cold, but didn’t know what to do with him, couldn’t keep him, etc. Well, I contacted the shelter about a week or so back with a story such as this, and they called today to see if we still had the cat.
Dan and I have talked about this several times, and our consensus was that we weren’t going to throw him back outside to survive the elements and other cats, but at the same time, we weren’t too keen on having six cats, either. Well… Felix has been with us for a little over a month. He’s quiet, he’s friendly, he isn’t destructive, and with the exception of some anxiety that seems easily manageable (the biggest thing is we take him to the litter box first thing in the morning and again at night, and 1-2 times in the afternoon, to make sure he isn’t holding it for too long or having an accident1 due to feeling intimidated by one or more of the other cats). More than anything he’s content to lay next to or near someone, and he loves to be petted, and is quick to produce a deep, rumbly, ultra-contented purr.
So anyway, when the shelter called today and I played their voicemail, I then told Dan about it. He was all, “We have to talk about this reasonably and look at things logically blah blah blah”, and I took that to mean, “Jenn, don’t get emotional, we should really take him in, even if they’ll ultimately euthanize him because he’s old/scarred/timid”. Knowing all that, I was still willing to take him in. But instead, what I got was essentially, “I really like him. I feel sorry for him. I don’t want to take him in because I know they’ll euthanize him. We can manage six, right? His anxiety isn’t that bad, right? So we’re keeping him, right?”
Right. ♥
P.S. Is it bad that all I really have for Thanksgiving is a turkey, a couple of boxes of stuffing, and sausage and celery to throw in the stuffing? I guess I should probably step up my Thanksgiving preparations a bit…
- this happened twice ↩
Hello! I'm Jenn, and this is my blog. I'm 28, married to a sexy man named Daniel, and mother to an eight year old girl named Alyssa and a six year old autistic boy named Ryan. I'm obsessed with all things hot 
Awe poor Ryan. I’ve had double ear infections before and they suck so bad. Poor kid. Felix is a lucky kitty. <3
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