Saturday, December 31, 2011

Anybody Need A Cat Bed?

Some of my friends from other places know we acquired Demonkitteh on December 31, 2008. Some of my friends also know why he's nicknamed Demonkitteh, however, since both he and my house have survived these last 3 years, we decided to commemorate the day with a gift. He steals Hubby's shirts to make beds out of so we decided to buy him one of his own. I ventured out on an ill advised trip to Walmart after my case this morning and purchased a SmartyKat CATNIP Cat Lounger.

The instructions say to place the catnip into the cloth bag that comes with the bed and zip it into it's place on the bottom side of the lounger. I did that and set the lounger on the floor. Demonkitteh promptly flipped it over and tried to destroy the bed in order to get the catnip pouch out of it's rightful place. I unzipped it and gave him the pouch to play with so that I didn't have bits and pieces of cat lounger strewn throughout my house.

He played with the pouch for 5 minutes, had himself a light lunch, went and sat in the lounger to take a bath and then wandered up the hall, I thought, to use the litter box. He was in the bathroom for 5 minutes during which time I heard the clothes hamper come crashing over and Demonkitteh reappeared with one of Hubby's quilted flannel shirts.

He dragged the shirt to the cat bed, laid down on the shirt and placed his head in the cat lounger. You know? Maybe I should have spent my money on a sturdier hamper? One that he can't knock over quite as easily?

I have work to do, if I don't get back into Blogger later today, have a safe and Happy New Year.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Making Hard Decisions Doesn't Come Easy

There is a lengthy and rather convoluted path we travel in life. For some of us that path is smooth with few bumps and for others it's a mountainous climb with many missteps along the way. For most of my life the path has been relatively smooth. Mountainous climbs have usually been of my own making since making mountains out of molehills is a habit of the Type A personality. Another Type A trait is that we dismiss things we should pay attention to and obssess about things we should dismiss.

I was diagnosed, in my middle 20's with ankylosing spondylitis. That was back when doctors were demi-gods and one didn't ask questions. Had no idea what it was and since all I heard was "arthritis" never bothered to ask what it was. It's a form of rheumatoid arthritis that affects the spine's sacroiliac joint. Which accounts for all the lower back, hip and leg pain I've been experiencing for the past year.

It's not that I didn't have pain before, it would come and go periodically. Much of the time it would exist at a level that I could and did ignore. It wasn't until I did a music post about Motley Crue that I encountered the term again. Mick Mars has it, and had a hip replaced so he could rejoin the group when they tried to reconcile around the middle of the last decade. Once I found out what it was, I decided there wasn't anything I could do about it since I don't have health insurance, so I resumed ignoring the problem. That reality check bounced. Fortunately, this time I have a doctor who can guide me through this flare. Good thing, because it's lasted more than a month.

I'm having trouble writing blog posts since I can't sit for long periods of time. I've maintained my Twitter account by posting a couple of things and then moving away from the computer to do things that will keep me from stiffening up too much. It's not humanly possible to move constantly, but if I'm not moving, I'm supposed to be lying down to keep everything straight. That too is pretty difficult.

During a conversation with my doctor at my last appointment the subject of internet usage and TV watching came up. She believes that there is a correlation between what happens in the mind and ones level of health. When we expose ourselves to unresolved negativity, it will effect us one way or another somewhere else in our bodies. Her view is that we'd all be farther ahead if we shut off our TVs and limited our online time to less than half an hour a day.

I'm not sure what I will do about any of this. That half an hour isn't much and won't allow me to be as social as I might like to be. I thought about closing my blog and just spending my online time in Twitter. I'm finding that Twitter is a major source of the negativity that may be having an effect on my problem. I finally decided to step away from the computer for her suggested 30 days in favor of other things until I can make up my mind. There's just too much garbage in, garbage out going on and I need to concentrate on me and not obssess about what possesses others to behave so badly.