• Ed’s birthday. Storm Crow Ale House. Critical Miss AND Critical Hit. Drunk!
• Astronautalis show in Seattle. 10th one! Maaaaaay have done additional damage to my foot while dancing my tits off. Oops.
• Excellent weekend in Seattle. Saw a play. With nudity! Bush AND dong. What a time to be alive.
• Obsessed (like, Rent-style obsessed) with Hamilton. Spent last week learning about American revolution history. Cross-referenced soundtrack with Trouble Hunters (Astronautalis song about the Battle of Trenton, which is something I apparently now know about). Need to bone up on my Canadian history to balance out all this knowledge.
• Ultrasound today. Heart exists, moves and stuff. Good?
• Forthcoming birthday weekend shaping up to be insane for reasons that have nothing to do with my birthday.
• Desire for drastic shake up has me in a funk. Compromises are being discussed.
• Lola needs an engine rebuild. No idea where I’m going to get it done or how much it’ll cost. Bummed out.
• Bought tickets to see the Book of Mormon in Vancouver in September with friends. Fun!
• Accidentally bought an Xbox One. Not sure what to play on it.
• Haven’t ruled out travel beyond October, but have started planning for the next two years out. Who needs to stay home? Not me.

Mostly content. Forget how to write in complete sentences. Tired of having a broken foot. Desperately need a haircut. Other than that, things are good.

It’s finally happened: I am tired of the internet.

I am trying REALLY HARD to be good. Seriously! I wear my stupid boot (which is a whole universe better than the stupid cast) all the time, except when I’m sleeping. The doctor* said “stay off your foot”, so I am – using my stupid crutches as much as possible, beseeching Ed to fetch me things, and just generally being prone and pathetic at all times. It is tiring.

Unfortunately, Ed’s out of town for the next few days, so I’m on my own. While I’m still wearing my stupid boot, I’ve set the crutches aside because I can’t carry things while using them, and I need my hands to feed the cats and myself and get Diet Coke and ice cubes. I’ve been carefully stumping about the house, trying very hard not to break myself any further for ulterior reasons.

Did I ever tell you about the last time I had to wear an aircast? I probably did, because I tell the internet everything – but to make a long story short, I gave myself a stress fracture in Dallas and had to wear an aircast to heal it up, which then caused a stress fracture in my other foot so I had to switch the boot for a while which re-fucked my other foot and so on. It was a fun time for all, what with my being constantly broken. Had we stayed in Alberta, I would have eventually had surgery to replace my broken bones with steel rods of foot justice, but we moved to BC and the new foot doctor fucked me up in a hundred shiny new ways instead.

The tiny bit of walking around yesterday with the aircast on my left foot made my right foot hurt in a horribly familiar way.

I have a bad feeling about this.

I’m still going to wear my boot, but I have to remember to wear a shoe on my right foot to balance me out a little. Hopefully, if I can keep this unsanitary game (the carpets hate me which is fine because I hate them) up for a while longer, my bones will be okay enough to handle New York in eight days. I’m arranging for the majority of our time there to be spent on tour buses, will wear my boot and rest when I need to, and when I get home I will sit in one spot and not move until September.

Yes I’m justifying this all in my head and I know it’s dumb, but I’ve got an Adventure planned and no mere broken bone will keep me from Adventure. I’ll just have to be careful, and dial it back a little – maybe skip the midnight run through Central Park. Maybe.

Tomorrow I am going to Leave the House. I’ve been cooped up in here for what feels like months, so I am going to shower and put on clothes and go to the office like a normal person and it’s going to be weird and exhausting but I’m starting to go all Gollum here, so it’s time.

Plus, there may or may not be three whole mails waiting for me.

*Every doctor I’ve seen at the Lions Gate Hospital has been this swarthy dreamboat soap opera person – what’s up with that. It’s weird. Stop being so handsome.

In today’s mail:

• Dainty paper plates
• Three Union Jack disco balls
• Kevlar pants

My plans are coming together nicely.

April is apparently a busy month ’round these parts. Ed and I were in Victoria last weekend to say hi to mom and romp around Beacon Hill Park in the dark. We stayed at a B&B (we did not partake of the second B because I am not getting up at 8am to eat with strangers), which was nice – it was an old Tudor house built in 1912 and undoubtedly stuffed with ghosts (which we did not see, but all old houses are haunted – it’s a fact). The visit with mom was almost TOO uneventful (she didn’t once mention my purple hair), and we had a lovely meal at her favourite food hole.

Oh, and we almost bought a house.

Ed and I were hanging out at Saxe Point, which we do every time we’re on the Island. We found a neat cove with benches, and sat for a while to take in the naturey goodness and watch dogs fetching sticks in the water. There were several houses under construction around the cove and I got nosy, so we looked up the area on a realtor site to see what property was going for. Depressingly, property in Victoria is a LOT cheaper than it is in Vancouver – like, temptingly so. It didn’t help matters that a near-perfect, almost affordable* place was just around the corner from us, smack in the middle of the part of town we had already agreed was our favourite .. shit. We drove to see it. Oh look, an Open House! Noooooo. Fortunately, there was no one there – but Ed almost went as far as calling the realtor, which I stopped. We were just wishful thinking, right? This was not real life. That was not our beautiful house.

The truth is, I’m torn. Victoria is beautiful, and I’m finally of the (advanced) age where I can appreciate my roots. We’d be able to afford an actual stand-alone house. We’d be closer to deal with my mother on a more frequent basis. The ocean is super.

The flipside, though: isolation. Being dependant on the loathsome BC Ferries. It’s not Europe. We have friends here, and sometimes we get to see them. Getting to Seattle is suddenly an expensive ordeal, instead of something that can be done on whims. I might have to find a new job, if I wasn’t able to convince my company that I’m so important I should be allowed to work remotely full time. The aforementioned proximity to my mother.

The cons are winning, for now. I could probably convince myself of the opposite if I really wanted to, but I don’t know that I do – it’s a huge decision, one I’m not in any hurry (or real need) to make any time soon.

But .. what if?

As I looked at available properties in Victoria, I noticed a decent number of low-priced one-bedroom condos. We did the math: if we were to, say, buy one of these units, the monthly mortgage payment would be less that the rent my mother pays for her horrible basement suite. We could help her out, improve our Financial Situation for The Future, potentially have somewhere to stay when we visited that wasn’t her horrible spider nest, and all sorts of other excellent reasons. It’s an intriguing (if terrifying) idea, one we approached mom with. It could be done, we all agreed. Will we actually do it? That remains to be seen.

After a weekend of hardcore grown-upping, I need a ridiculous vacation.

That was a lot of thinking for just two days in April. Other things were done this month, too – someone (me) forgot that I’m afraid of children, so I hosted around 40 of them for an event at work last night. I had a Discussion with my boss about my role and where I want to take it. Science has proven that I am a terrible person and so few are the fucks I give that I am starving for fucks. Ed bought a dream car, which is mostly why I can’t run out and buy a house in Victoria tomorrow. When he gets the car, the Mini will be all mine and I am making furious plans for stickers I’m going to put on it. Tattoos are happening! Consult is booked for May, a couple of days after we get back from New York. Speaking of which, I got bored one day and booked a trip to New York. Hooray! Lemon is doing wonderfully well, in that he is a total brat. No one has any clue what made him so sick, but this healthy Lemon is still miraculous to us so we will joyfully take it. Tonight I get to go to the launch of the Pan Pacific’s new fancy restaurant called Ocean 999, which is super cool. On Sunday, I will make a piñata. So many things going on! I’m exhausted just thinking about it all and also justifying this terrible run-on paragraph.

All caught up now, right?

I tend to forget that I do technically have ovaries and junk, because I don’t really use them. That’s why, when I suffer from Explosive Emotions, I’m freaked out – where the fuck did this come from? True, it’s not always hormonal – sometimes things just suck – but without a monthly clock to keep track of this stuff (Mirena is my BFF), these internal drama bombs are truly random. They only happen three or four times a year, and they’re basically the only form of menstruation I go through. I’m not complaining – the opposite actually, it’s pretty fucking awesome – but it does take me by surprise.

Like today, when everything made me cry before 11am. So far this morning I’ve cried over:

• Ed telling me to wake up after I slept through my alarms
• My favourite song coming on while I was in the shower
• Extra money
• When Dilly rubbed against my legs in greeting
• The state of my savings account
• That swans can be gay
• How blue Lemon’s eyes are
• Remembering the severance I got from a job 15 years ago
• Being hungry

There are so many FEELINGS, and apparently I am having them all. I’m pretty sure I’m too much of a weepy mess to be of any use today, but I’m still going to go into work and tinker with systems. Eventually all these tears will turn to pure incoherent rage over nothing, and I want to make sure there’s a rotten issue tracker or two I can take my rage out on safely.

they’re just so BLUE *sob*

I don’t know if Lemon will ever know just how close to the Rainbow Bridge he was last week, and that’s probably okay. Ed and I were tearfully saying our goodbyes the evening before the appointment when he just .. got better. The Last Resort steroids kicked in, and since last Tuesday he’s shown a remarkable improvement. He’s eating again, and has even started demanding food in the mornings before we’re awake. He hasn’t thrown up since last week, he’s all groomed and fluffy, most of his time is spent showing us his fuzzy shaved belly (and getting angry if we touch it), and yesterday he tried to clean Dilly’s head. Lemon is still too skinny and sometimes looks as though he’s uncomfortable, but when I think back to the pitiful, puking mess he was last week .. I’ll take it. I don’t know how much time we have with him, but last week he wasn’t ready to go and I am grateful.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an Apple Watch. I was waiting until Apple’s March event had passed, to see if they were going to announce a new one – but they didn’t, so I caved and ordered. Since the advent of smart watches I’d been wearing a Pebble and then a Pebble Time, but wasn’t happy – the PT was supposed to be better, but I found it came up short when compared to the original Pebble. With riding season coming up, I needed a way to keep connected that didn’t involve pulling out my phone every time my finger buzzed, and since I couldn’t rely on my current tech, a new shiny was warranted.

I’ve been wearing the watch for a week now, and it’s pretty cool – cool enough that Ed went and got himself one yesterday. Now we can send each other sketches of dicks all day long, and it’s pretty great. My only concern: today I discovered how to use the heart rate function, and now I’m convinced I’m dying all over again. I don’t know if the sensors are wonky or if I accidentally ingested a whole lot of meth at lunch time, but my heart is beating crazy fast. Fast enough that the internet says I’m about to keel over and die in a puddle. That’s not good, right? Or is hypochondria just considered a feature?

It feels like we’re living at the vet these days.

After Lemon’s first bout with the sick, he responded well to the treatment. He was his old, ornery self for almost two full weeks, but then he relapsed hard last Thursday. Since then, he’s been throwing up foam and saliva non-stop. He’s had blood work, x-rays, an ultrasound, antibiotics, steroids, fluids, pain meds .. nothing is working. He isn’t eating or drinking, grooming himself, meowing, purring, or doing much of anything other than gagging up bile and foam. The vets – multiple, now – don’t know what’s going on. There’s nothing in any of his results that would cause this. They’ve never seen this before.

We spent most of yesterday watching him struggle to stop gagging, and I sobbed as his head drooped into a puddle of foam, as his muzzle became soaked in drool, as his eyes watered up every time he retched. This isn’t life. This isn’t my awesome, stubborn, loud, potato jerk of a cat that I love. This isn’t fair.

And yet every time we make a decision, he changes. Last night was his worst night yet, until around 10pm. At 10, he sat up. He stretched and walked around. He jumped up onto the furniture, climbed my chest to perch on my hip, curled upside down, patted his big brother on the side. We measure his affection (with two f’s) in “boofs” – headbutting into our fists to rub his face on us. We got a few tiny ones last night. He joined us in bed, taking up most of the room.

He’s spent all of today in an upturned Amazon box. Occasionally, he bites off small chunks of the paper used to cushion the teacups I decided we needed last week. He used to do this as a kitten – take bites out of cardboard or tissue paper and spit it out. He threw up once this morning, but nothing since. Still no eating or drinking.

At 2pm, he got out of his box and walked over to me. I got several boofs before he went over to Ed and did the same. He hopped up onto the ottoman and settled in for a sit, and started to purr – the first purrs we’ve heard in over a week.

I’ve spent the last 6 days crying in sadness or hope. I’m tired. Lemon’s tired. Ed is tired. There’s nothing we can do but watch and wait, and it is exhausting.