Another Tri-City Thanksgiving

i get this feeling every year around thanksgiving and christmas. i begin to think of all the traveling i’m about to do. it’s a bit daunting.

either tuesday night or wednesday morning, brett and i will be driving to mooresville.

i may or may not drive to winston that night. if i don’t go that night, i’ll go the next morning.

that day, i’m driving to raleigh with my mom to visit my grandparents.

then we’re driving back to winston that night so i can drive to my dad’s the next morning to have a second thanksgiving with them.

then i’m either driving to mooresville that night or the next morning to go back to brett’s. we have planned to spend the day saturday looking for places to get married.

i am pretty sure we’ve decided on the reception venue, so we need to find a church for the ceremony. which makes me a little uneasy because i’m not a very church-y person (going to a private southern baptist middle school kind of beat that out of me), and i already know that i won’t be comfortable with a big fancy church with the organ playing and the whole 9 yards. that scares the crap out of me.

and this is the south, so there are a lot of those. but i’ll be damned if we’re not gonna try to find one that suits BOTH of us.

i am really hoping we find someplace this weekend so we can actually start planning things. i have all these fun ideas, but i am kind of stuck right now since i don’t know how those ideas can actually unfold when i have nowhere to imagine them in.

i feel so behind in all of this. but, such is life. it will be an awesome day no matter what.

and the latest news on the loki front… she had her first round of chemo today! she did fantastic, despite the first 5 minutes that she spent shaking severely. every time she sees someone in blue scrubs now she just turns into a nervous wreck. for that, i can’t really blame her. but she’s done and is acting normal, tormenting the cat, begging for ham.

i did have a bit of a scare about an hour ago because she wouldn’t walk on the leg they put the IV in and kept holding it up like it hurt. i think the bandage was too tight, but i called the vet and they told me to bring her back in (open 24/7 and it’s literally across the street from us, couldn’t be more convenient). they wanted to make sure she didn’t have a bad reaction to the chemo, but they said she’s fine and they removed the bandage and they didn’t even charge me. thank god.

i’ve been paying off as much of my credit card balance as possible lately, and i’ve beaten my first goal, which was pay off as much of the surgery as possible before chemo starts so that the entire cost of chemo won’t max out my credit limit. so… i feel better about that. the last thing i want is to have my card maxed out. mostly because of emergencies and i am having dental work done in the near future, but christmas is also coming up. i’m way behind in comparison to last year when i got ALL my christmas shopping done by october. amazon is awesome that way.

back to website work, and another shot of whiskey with brett. here’s to paying off that credit card!

Chemotherapy, It Is

today feels like the longest day of my life. i have not stopped working since i got up this morning. i think brett could feel how crappy it was because when i got home, he had bought me a purple joose and put it in the fridge for me. amazing.

anyway, all work business aside, today was also more loki news.

i am so sick of the vet by now. now i know how my parents felt when our old dogs had all their problems. i don’t like when the vets know me this well.

she called me this morning to tell me that loki’s biopsy results came back negative for the particular mutation they thought it was. which is good and bad. good in the sense that it’s not what they thought it was, but bad in the sense that none of the ways to fix this are as surefire as they would be for fixing that mutation.

the pills that would fix the mutation only have a 40-50% success rate with other cancers, which is right around the same success rate as chemo.

DAMMIT. you know? loki does not deserve this. if we do nothing, there’s a chance it comes back. so i can’t do nothing. i have to either do the pills or the chemo.

the catch to the pills is it’s 6 months worth, $600 a month. $3600. ouch. and if the cells aren’t eradicated after the 6 months? more pills. plus there are a lot of possible side effects. mostly nausea/upset stomach, but 6 months of that just sounds awful.

the chemo is 8 visits for $450 each, and it will be over after those 8 visits, more than likely. she said that almost all of her patients haven’t had any side effects (at the most, they puked on the first day), and it doesn’t seem to bother them. so i’m going to go ahead and get it over with.

loki goes in for her first chemo treatment monday. 1 blood sample, 1 IV, out in less than an hour.

please just let this be over with.

I Need New Hobbies & No More Cone Head

the last couple weeks have been ridiculous.

nothing exciting has really happened. just… a lot has been going on. i feel like i haven’t even stopped to take a breath.

the loki news first. she got her stitches taken out this evening. i found another lump on her left leg/shoulder last week but i had the doctor take a look at it and she says she is close to certain that it’s nothing, so that made me feel better. just keep an eye on it, should be fine.

what made me feel even better than that was when she said today’s vet visit was FREE. holy crap. i was expecting at least another $200 (removing stitches, nail clipping, diagnosing possible second lump). what a relief.

loki is thrilled to have that damned cone off her head and she has been doing nothing but playing and throwing her toys everywhere all night. i love when she’s happy. i don’t know what i’d have done the last almost-6 years without her in my life. i really don’t. her second biopsy results still haven’t come in. i called the doctor and she said to expect a result by friday. keeping my fingers crossed. pray for no chemo.

besides all the drama going on with loki, i think i over committed myself on side work to keep my mind off things. side work meaning god knows how many website projects. most of which i LOVE working on. it’s just that i am so obsessed with getting them done and pretty so i can be like LOOK WHAT I MADE YOU GUYS that i do nothing but work lately.

i’m one of those people who can’t read books. NOT because i don’t like to read (i really enjoy it), but because if it’s not something i can sit and finish without stopping, like within 1-2 days, it will drive me MAD because i won’t finish it. same thing with websites. i’m so impatient. some projects force me to wait because i have to wait on my clients, which is fine, and awesome actually because it forces me to quit working for the evening and, you know, go to bed. but if i don’t have that, i don’t really stop.

like today. i have been going non stop all day. not to mention the semi-crisis that happened at work which i can’t/won’t get into. one thing. after another.

things just keep showing up on my plate, basically. i’m ok with it. but my brain is not. it’s like I NEED TO ORGANIZE EVERYTHING ON MY TO DO LIST AND DO THIS IN AN ORDERLY FASHION… and life just won’t let that happen. and it’s making me nuts.

aaaand that’s why we have wine.

i need to sign up for another welding class. or go back to my flight classes (but so expensive =/ ). or do something else to get me away from the computer. within the last 2 years i’ve done welding, pole dancing, cessna flying classes, and tumbling. love all of them (except the pole dancing, that was more like 8 weeks of awkward humiliating fun time), but none of them cling to me like computers.

so to fill that void, i’ve fore-fitted going to the LAN party this weekend at work (OH MY GOSH) for 2 reasons. 1) i’d only play quake, and no one else would probably play it for more than 20 minutes. and 2) brett and i are going to take the hunter safety course.

a friend of ours is a warden and we’re going to try and go hunting on the naval weapons base until we can get accepted into one of the hunt clubs around here. the base is shotgun or bow only, so i don’t have to buy a rifle yet. thank god, because i can’t afford that after loki. so i’m crossing my fingers that i can get hooked on hunting. i’ve wanted to go SO badly for years now and it just hasn’t happened. and now it is. and i’m so excited.

this post got a lot wordier than i anticipated. blame the wine, people.