This is looking way far ahead, but it gives us something to anticipate.

We will be going away on vacation for a full week.  This is something we have never done before.  We usually stay away for three or four days at the most so it’s sort of daunting to think about.  We will be heading north and staying in New Hampshire for three nights, then heading down to Connecticut for two nights and then home. 

What we are missing are the one or two nights on the way up to New Hampshire.  We want to stay in upstate New York or the very south of Vermont but can’t decide where to go.

We looked at this place - which looks totally fabulous and is co-owned by Kate Pierson, ferchrissake! - but we would really like to share that experience with friends sometime.  And they can’t make it the weekend we’d be there.

So what do we do?  Where do we stay?  Who will help us???

OK, granted, our vacation isn’t until the end of July and we do have plenty of time to figure it out, but it weighs heavy on my mind!  Poor me.

My senses are being assaulted.  And I blame it on my lack of exposure to certain things lately.  Case in point.

I used to smoke way back when.  I quit many years ago but ever since then, I have enjoyed the smell of (most) cigarettes.  Nowadays, chances are good that wherever you go, the smoking section is outside.  It is so where I work as well.  I used to pass through a pleasant cloud of smoke when entering or exiting any of the buildings.  But they moved the smoking areas and now I never pass through the second-hand goodness.  The people who go outside to smoke on my floor have to pass right behind my desk to get to where they’re going and on their way back to their desks.  We have an open environment (I mean REALLY open) and whenever they pass by me on their way back, I smell the smoke all over them.

Only now it doesn’t smell so good.  I’m finding myself being offended by these people who walk behind me.  And I think it’s because I’m never exposed to smoke any more.

And another thing.

When we cook, we have started (for some reason) to back off on the salt.  The flavoring comes from other ingredients - pepper, fresh herbs, etc.  And we don’t eat a whole lot of canned things or salty snacks as a general rule.  And now?  Give me a Wheat Thin and I’m scrambling for a bucket of water to wash down the extreme saltiness.  The last time I had a Wheat Thin, I couldn’t eat more than a couple.  It bothered me a whole lot.

I have become quite the delicate flower. 

I guess it’s healthier for me but it makes me feel like I should be carrying little lace gloves and covering my mouth and nose with them and saying in a teeny tiny voice, “Oh my!”

OK, I feel much better about this post than the one I wrote about the books I read in 2008.  I mean, come on.  Five books in the entire year?  Well, I didn’t read my first book until May of this year, but I still outdid all of my years that I’ve been keeping track so far.  Here’s my list for 2009:

B is for Beer by Tom Robbins

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Novelties and Souvenirs by John Crowley

Emma by Jane Austen

The American Claimant by Mark Twain

Giving by Bill Clinton

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

Speedbumps by Teri Garr

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasan

Crippen by John Boyne

Lost Island by James Norman Hall

Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe

Search the Shadows by Barbara Michaels

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Paganism by Carl McColman

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

Sabbatical by John Barth

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The 39 Steps by John Buchan

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

That’s it!  I’m currently in the middle of three books and so happy to be there!!  Happy reading in 2010, everyone!

In the immortal words of The Waitresses:

“Bah, humbug!” No, that’s too strong
‘Cause it is my favorite holiday

Yes, Virginia, I really want to just bypass Christmas this year.  I am not feeling it at all.  The house is a mess and not decorated to my liking and that makes me disgruntled.  I have been sick since before Thanksgiving and I can’t sleep.  At all.  And that makes me miserable and grumpy.  We still have Christmas shopping to do and I haven’t wrapped a thing.  Christmas cookies are not done yet (although, they have been started) and Buzz and I don’t know what we’re drinking on Christmas Eve for our Christmas tradition.  Nor can we afford to buy anything to drink on Christmas Eve.

And to top it off?  Yesterday, we almost lost two cats.  Phoebe nearly went into insulin shock (a near miss because I was sick and working from home and happened to see her have a big-time ‘sode and was able to get her to the vet where they put her on a dextrose drip for several hours and stabilized her) and I thought that Courtney had escaped into the great outdoors.  We searched for an hour and a half in the dark looking for a grey tabby.  Do you know how impossible it would be to see a grey tabby amongst fallen leaves and dead grass?  And we live on a very busy street.  I expected that the next time I saw her, she’d be dead.  But, no, she was sleeping peacefully upstairs in a place I never thought to look.

So at the end of yesterday, I announced that I’d had just about as much vacation as I could stand (from “Six Days and Seven Nights").  And I just want to be done with it.  But I don’t want to be totally down on Christmas.  It is my favorite holiday and I wait for this all the rest of the year.  It’s just a pity that this one is turning out so sucky.  So, in my sister’s words, here’s to January 2nd.

Of course, the new year means working on various weekends throughout January and, seriously, we could really use a break.

I wonder if there is something genetically wrong with me.  Besides the obvious, I mean!  I don’t have a Twitter account.  I don’t have a Facebook account.  I don’t even IM any more.  Looking around me, the vast majority of people I know - even those who aren’t all that computer-savvy - have at least a Facebook account.

So what’s wrong with me?

I really feel no need to communicate with anyone that way.  You’d think this blog is a similar device but it’s not.  First of all, there are only three people left in the world who ever read it, but that’s beside the point.  A blog is not interactive the way Facebook and Twitter and IM are.  It’s passive.  And so am I. 

Years ago, I took the Myers-Briggs test and scored, expectedly, extremely high in the “introverted” section.  (Please see name of this blog.) One of the characteristics of an introverted person is that they prefer time to think about responses before speaking.  Because of this, the highly introverted tend to work better via e-mails than phone calls or face-to-face.  That’s totally me!  The blog is the same way.  I get a chance to think and re-read before posting.  (Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way, as I tend to ramble on and on and on.)

I think that’s probably the crux of the matter.  But still.  Don’t you think I’d at least be curious about certain people?  I mean, I could be out there following Elizabeth Taylor or Ashton Kutcher on Twitter (they’re really the only two I’m sure have Twitter accounts ‘cause I read about it in the news).  But I really don’t seem to want to.  Curiosity is not a strong trait of mine.

And that’s the part I can’t figure out.  That’s what I’m curious about!

Well, we have been living the life of diabetic-cat-owners for almost a week.  I thought I’d write down my observations as one from the trenches.

Phoebe does not mind the insulin injections in the least.  She doesn’t even notice them, actually, and she comes running at the sound of the box coming out of the refrigerator.  She’s very excited for the 15 or 20 minutes we let the bottle sit out to come to room temperature.  And why is she so excited?

She gets treats!!  And lots of them!!  She hunkers down and eats her little treats and we just pop the insulin in her scruff and that’s the end of it.  This is WORLDS better than trying to pill her. 

In the morning, she gets some treats and her injection right before breakfast.  (At this point, we’re still only feeding her canned food once per day but she goes in for her first monitoring on Monday to see how her glucose level is.  Then she may be getting her canned food twice per day.  We’ll see.) In the evening, she gets some treats and her injection and then she gets brushed, which she now totally enjoys.

So we have a routine.  And it’s not too bad.  The worst part is making sure we are home at 6:30 to give her her evening injection.  We work until 5:00 and if we want to stop somewhere on the way home (or have to roam far and wide to get a 365 picture), it’s sometimes tough to make it home by 6:30.  But we’re doing well so far.

Life goes on.  Phoebe seems happy.  Let’s hope it stays that way!

I sat in a meeting today and listened to two people repeat the phrase “cut and dry”.

It’s CUT AND DRIED, people!

CUT. AND. DRIED.

Sometimes certain things really bug me.

We’ve had quite the time of it lately with our elder cat, Phoebe.  She’s slowly deteriorating but nothing terminal yet.

Today, we got the word that she is diabetic.  So opens up a whole new world for Buzz and Empress!  We have never had an elderly cat before.  For one reason or another, our cats have all died fairly young and intact.  The closest we got was Phranc who developed a fibrosarcoma in 2003 and, once we got through all of that, lived another two years before suddenly developing a recurrence of cancer that quickly took her life.  In one day, actually, from symptoms to euthanasia.  She was almost 14.  So we never really nursed her through any of that, save for the post-op in 2003.

So, now we have an almost 16-year-old cat with newly developed diabetes.  We are going in on Tuesday to be taught how to inject her with insulin twice a day.  And she has to go on Atkins, basically.  (I knew I liked that diet!)

This, combined with keeping puppy training pads on the laundry room floor for her, is sure to keep things interesting.

Poor Phoebe! 

Poor us!

Buzz and I are living small these days.  On the advice of a relative who is living our dream, we have spent the last month living “like we have 50 cents in the bank”.

Or trying to, at least.

There were some unforeseen expenses and, honestly, how long must I go without wine?  So, now that I finished our finances for the month, we took a look back.  We overspent what I had budgeted but it was a good start.

We have now further adjusted our attitude.

We are now going to live like we have 5 cents in the bank.  Woo hoo!  Party time!!

Today’s word of the day is noisome.

noisome \NOY-sum\, adjective:
1. Noxious; harmful; unwholesome.
2. Offensive to the smell or other senses; disgusting.

I really would have thought that “offensive to the hearing” would have been first on the list.  Doesn’t it sound like it should have to do with noise??  Hmm.

Why don’t I like peanut butter and bananas?

Together, I mean.  I love both of them separately.

But everyone I know likes peanut butter and bananas.  I wonder what gene I am missing…

Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary. 

Happy Anniversary to Us!!

And it was one major food and drink fest from midafternoon until late at night.  Yeah, baby!

It started around 3:30 with some crab rangoons, which we found in the frozen seafood section of the grocery store.  We had no idea how they would be but they turned out to be quite tasty, actually!

Then around 5:30, we had crab imperial-stuffed mushrooms (of the ENORMOUS kind) with a couple of glasses of champagne (Moet & Chandon, please!).

Dinner was absolutely fantastic!  We had gotten 3 one-inch filets at the local butcher on Saturday and Buzz trimmed them very nicely.  I started cooking a batch of organic brown rice in some chicken broth.  While that was cooking, Buzz cut the filets into bite-sized pieces and skewered them along with a red onion from our garden, a green pepper and a yellow pepper.  Then he brushed on some olive oil and sprinkled on some Nature’s Season.  We had four Pacific halibut fillets and we marinated them for about a half an hour in lemon pepper marinade.  When the rice was almost done, Buzz grilled the halibut and the skewers to absolute perfection!  They were both served over the brown rice with a glass of some very nice meritage.  The wine had a lot of sediment but it was still very tasty!

After dinner around 8:30, we headed downstairs to watch a few episodes of Dead Like Me while sipping on some mead that our youngest (who was celebrating the day with us) had bought for us to try.  It was really delicious!

An amazing day of food and drink - a grand celebration to launch our 19th year of wedded bliss!

I hate petty-ass bullshit.

I am doing the best I can, trying really hard, always nose to the grindstone, minding my own business, living and letting live, and don’t you know that someone is out there undermining me for no good earthly reason.

I hate that.  And now I have to deal with it.  It’s stupid and it stinks.

Well, we’re coming to the end of a two-week vacation.  We just have tomorrow and then it’s back to the grind on Monday. 

And, while I do not want to go back - at all - it’s not a bad thing, in a way.

I have drank myself silly over this vacation.  Another glass bottle of wine?  Sure - why not?!?  I’m on v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n!  I’ll just sleep it off!!

Ugh.  There are only so many times you should do that to yourself and thirty-five times within two weeks is too many.  (I may have overestimated that number just a bit...)

Where do I sign up for the new liver?