I love my cats and I want them to be always well. But it’s hard to give medicines to those damned creatures! I got this scratch before I clipped Kimchi’s and Sushi’s vicious nails/claws.
To think I need to administer three liquid medicines to Kimchi twice a day for seven days. Agggghhhh!
This guy makes it look so easy. His cat is not as grumpy as my Kimchi. Masungit Kimchi.
I thought I would be having a more relaxed day today so I savored the morning sunlight while in bed. I thought I would take it easy.
Then my cat vomited again. This is the third time it happened. The two times it happened last week were in the mornings and every time Kimchi vomited, she went back to her food bowl and ate again her kibbles like nothing happened. So I thought it was just a case of hairball. But when the girls told me this morning Kimchi vomited twice, I decided this is no longer a hairball case.
Long story short, I spent like 2 hours in the vet clinic. It turns out she has an infection after her CBC came back. I came out of the clinic with a shopping bag full of meds and supplements. I was PHP 4,500 poorer with a very grumpy cat because she was poked three times (CBC, antibiotic, and antacid).
Another cause of stress is this: While I was at the vet clinic, a colleague under my watch messaged me he is resigning. Then I called him. That was a bummer because he is productive and resourceful and I was the one who brought him into the company. The biggest push why he is leaving is because of mismanagement–which I had been struggling with for several months now, too. Actually the issue has been festering for a long time now but I just grinned and borne it for years. That issue has been causing me so much stress and probably that’s another reason why I no longer have the motivation to write. I had already warned our APAC head about this months prior and told her people are really unhappy and I’m doing my damned best to keep the team intact while I battle some kind of power struggle because as I step up to help my teammates, I get hammered from above. I am already at the edge and there is little that’s holding me in place now unless they do something to improve the situation.
So I told my junior co-worker that if he talks to the APAC head tomorrow, “please do us a favor; you should tell her everything that is wrong and that I would soon be following you if things don’t turn around.” I’m just holding on because I like the flexibility that I have right now as I can work at my own pace and I can work from anywhere. However, they have let this really bad situation go on and on and on and on for a long time now and I was the one holding up the ceiling. I’m tired. And if I leave, everyone will leave as well as I was the only one keeping the team from falling apart.
The issue has been causing me so much stress and I was just sweeping this under the rug for months because I can handle only one issue at a time. I had to recover first from my heartache then I would tackle the work problem, I thought. However the two had been overlapping, causing me so much anxiety and stress. My back and neck muscles are stiff as hell and I’ve had trouble sleeping for several nights now because of my stiff neck. I booked a massage tonight and that somehow that eased the physical pain.
The mental strain though is still here.
Every cell in my body was protesting against returning to work today. I just wanted to sleep and read. But no, I have responsibilities to my team and I was needed today so I got my butt out of bed.
Then I wrote a story in under an hour this afternoon about a topic I wrote about two weeks ago, which was one of the top 5 most read stories in the region for us. I think I’ve got some of my mojo back. Probably I need a longer time to recharge so I can get back to my old productive self. Driving to my hometown, seeing old friends and bantering with them did wonders.
I didn’t realize that shutting the world out drains me more. Shunning the world and shutting myself in my apartment because I’m afraid of catching Covid again sucked the life out of me.
Maybe I need to drive back to see old friends again and/or drive to Makati and have dinner with friends from the industry whom I haven’t seen for 8 mos or more than a year.
Speaking of friend, one friend from the corporate communications industry sent me a a grazing box with cream cheese and caviar and the usual contents of a charcuterie board as a birthday gift. Too bad I can’t drink alcohol these days, as the doctor ordered. I still enjoyed it with my children even without wine.
I think I will make a huge charcuterie board for Christmas and one leg of Chinese ham. Make my wicked potato salad, which all of my friends said it was the best potato salad they ate.
Traffic was terrible yesterday; it’s as if the whole world descended on South Luzon Expressway. I left at 4 pm and arrived at 7:30 pm. I was just in time for the live broadcast of our talk show, where I wore a gorilla mask before my high school friends revealed that I’m the newest co-host.
The episode is a Halloween special and of course I’ve had a lot of those scary stories of my own. Two of our viewers last night were primary witnesses to my scariest story, which even freaked out my co-hosts. “You know,” one of my co-hosts and friend said, “we’ve known you for decades and we don’t have any freaking idea about this side of you. If we only knew that you were one entire horror movie, we wouldn’t have gotten you as our vocalist.” It was in jest but I could feel he got freaked out.
This is why I don’t like horror movies. I’ve lived through them.
Anyway, I was asked by some of our high school classmates to contribute to the photo gallery that we will be using for the homecoming. So I rummaged through my boxes in my old room and scanned some of them.
Then I found some treasures.
Here’s our mommy cat, Puppy (yes, that’s the name we gave her) and her kitten, Kulet. They’re so lovely.
Our cats by the old computer. My dogs. I suddenly missed them. I wasn’t joking when I told my kids that at one point we had four dogs, three cats, and a tankful of fish.
I also unearthed short stories I wrote and some drawings from high school that survived.
I’ve almost forgotten that I used to draw and do watercolors. I should revisit this one of these days.
I cooked brunch today then I slept again after that. It’s unbelievable that I was still exhausted from yesterday’s trip. Then I woke up a little past noon when I was asked by my daughter to sign a proof of delivery as some industry friends sent me baked lasagna and blueberry cheesecake so I didn’t have to cook a midday meal or even dinner. My daughter, Twin I, and I gardened in the afternoon. I transplanted this flowering plant (I wasn’t able to get its name) and herbs I bought yesterday along CP Garcia Ave on the way home from UP where I bought our vegetables.
Then we planted some vegetable seeds in new plastic pots that I will transfer to our “dirty kitchen”/laundry area because this area receives so much sunlight all day. The vegetables and herbs will be protected from aphids outside plus we can just pluck leaves from our kitchen “garden” when we cook.
After gardening, I slept again and when I woke up, it was already dark.
Gardening is some kind of therapy for me these days as I still couldn’t go out due to fatigue. Watching something you grow and nurture is also fulfilling, like having my girls with me.
Speaking of nurturing, the stray cats that reside outside our compound have moved inside the compound as our neighbor had also been feeding them and tamed them. We also have been feeding these cats since we moved in here in October 2018–exactly three years ago! Our neighbor had put pet collars around them so people would know someone had already adopted them and think twice about abusing them.
So this white cat has been trying to make himself cute to us while we were gardening this afternoon. He would lie down and go belly up and curl, something that my inside cats would do when they’re begging for some petting. Of course I didn’t pet it with my bare hands so what we did was we got a toothbrush and brushed it so it can have some grooming and belly rubs. It loved all the attention and loving touch. The girls were begging me if they can give the cat a bath, I said no because it’s not yet tame enough and we don’t know what kind of diseases it has. We have to tame it completely before we can do that. The compromise was we brushed on flea powder on it and the cat loved the brushing so much that it begged for a repeat tonight when I was checking out my partially charged fairy lights.
When this cat finally becomes tame, I would bring it to PAWS to be neutered, checked, vaccinated and de-wormed. Then we will give it a bath. However, it will still have to live outside because I don’t want to have chaos in my house. We will just make some kind of cat house outside so they will be protected from the elements. I would have to buy wooden crates and I have some fiberglass roofing here that I used for my “dirty kitchen”.
They say a woman who has sworn off marriage and choose to live single the rest of her life would become a crazy cat lady. I guess I’m turning into that now…which is fine by me. Cats are obnoxious animals but when they do give you love, it’s real. They don’t give you bullshit.
Gather the little things that put a smile on your face and your day would be brighter. It’s like gathering flowers from a field to take with you home so you would be reminded that life is indeed worth living.
My cats are destructive but their antics make me laugh.
Gotcha! Caught in the act! I banished my cats from my room after the bad deed. Kimchi looked so guilty while Sushi made her escape quickly. They know when they did something they shouldn’t have.
Meanwhile, my solar-powered fairy lights have arrived. But I wasn’t able to charge them enough because they arrived late in the afternoon when the sun was already weak. But at least I know they’re working and automatically turn on when it’s already dark.
I should order more solar-powered garden lights, like the starburst or flower lights so when we sit outside on a clear and cool night like tonight, we are properly illuminated.
I can’t believe it’s already October and I have nothing to show for it. In December-January, I didn’t know how I would survive the coming days when I was dying everyday. I was taking one step at a time: wake up, get out of bed, eat, push myself to work, and then try to sleep again even though sleep evaded me. Then it was one day at a time. Baby steps. Until I got past the first month of being able to survive a broken heart. Then two months…and now it’s October. At that time I couldn’t imagine how life would look like 6 months or 10 months from then.
Then I survived and lived. With the help of friends who pushed me to get well physically, mentally, and emotionally.
It’s still October and yet I’m already feeling festive. I will be buying more Christmas crap from Lazada and Shopee tonight. I’m ordering book shelves from Ikea online to hide the cat litter box (I was able to hide another cat litter box under a chair I added next to the sofa) and probably look for patio furniture.
It’s the little things.