All in all, a good show.
And on the way home, I saw either the world's strangest lightning, or a meteor shower; either way, I decided it was the universe giving me celebratory fireworks for passing the test :)
Spent Friday working on the latest issue of the bird club newsletter and getting stuff ready for Saturday (and I got paid to do it, since my employer decided to observe the holiday on the 3rd).
Saturday, had to work... which was totally stupid, it was so slow it was ridiculous. At the start of the day we were 10 minutes between calls, for about 2 hours around noon we were at 5 minutes between, and by late afternoon we were up to 20 minutes between calls. But would they let any of us take off early? nooooooooo...
Meanwhile, John and a friend from work and her family were at the lake, sailing and swimming. Once I finally got off work, I headed out there. We had dinner (fried chicken, the first corn of the season, beans, potato salad), then got on the boat and headed down to the other end of the lake for the fireworks. Had dessert on the boat (this nifty applesauce-jello-fruit concoction we got the recipe for when we were in our weight class last year), enjoyed the pretty fireworks, and dragged our asses into bed around 1:30 (cuz it's an hour drive back from the lake - and that's after the hour or so it takes to motor the boat back down the lake in the dark).
Today was a club event day, so John went out early to help with setup while I worked on waking up, lol. Just as I was getting ready to go wash my hair and get dressed, the dog flumphed into the living room and woofed, so I went to see what had gotten her attention (seeing as how all the birds are in that room)... and there's the screen slider door open about 5 inches, and Ebay (my youngest cat, who's never been outdoors without a carrier and refuses to leave his damn collar & tags on) standing on my front deck looking terrified. I grabbed him and got him in without a problem... but I had no way of knowing if the door had just been opened, or opened 20 minutes ago (which was the last time I'd looked in that room) and my other cat, Charlie - the one who's always trying to get out of the house - was nowhere to be found. He's got his collar... but he's still wearing last year's tags, I hadn't changed the rabies tag yet.
Needless to say, I skipped the shower and went out looking for him. Checked all the places he'd tried to go in the past when he'd gotten out (always before one of us was right on his heels, so he was caught in a matter of minutes). Walked up our street, the street behind us, the main street for a couple blocks. Looked in neighbor's back yards and garages. Nothing.
After 45 minutes I gave up. I know from experience if you haven't spotted them by then, you probably won't. Headed out to the event, hoping like hell he was hiding in the basement or something.
While I was there, I decided to adopt one of our fosters. He's the rainbow-sherbert bird I mentioned before; we've had him as foster for over a year (not counting the month he spent with someone else in the spring), and I've been back-and-forth about adopting him for most of that time. He's what I call an aquarium bird; he doesn't really want to get out of the cage and hang out on your shoulder or be picked up and played with. He'd rather hang out in his cage with his toys, and hey, a head-scritching is always nice, thanks. I kept thinking there might be someone out there who could do more with him, he might like them enough to want to be a more social bird, and I didn't want to prevent that... but I really liked him and wanted to keep him. But what if???? Well, John had gone to a training class on birds, and learned that this is pretty characteristic of the breed; add to that I was really upset when we moved him to a different foster home, and I finally decided the hell with it. He likes me, he calls to me every morning when he sees me coming down the stairs, he's healthy and seems happy - so now he's going to be mine. John told me while I was filling out the application that he'd pretty much decided if I hadn't done it by Christmas he was going to get the bird for me, lol.
Overall, a decent event considering how slow it was - 2 budgies and a dove were adopted out, and I had the app in for Mowgli. John headed off to storage to help Dean unload, I headed home. Did another indoor search for the cat, just in case he'd been hiding, and headed outside to do another search.
I was just coming back around the house because I thought I heard a meow on the other side and John was driving up to the house - and John yells out his window "he's on the porch!" I headed for the porch while he parked the car - sure enough, there was Charlie by the screen door, trying to figure out how to get back in. Dumb cat slipped behind a bush and under the porch before I could grab him, so John ran in and got a can of cat food and coaxed him out from under the porch and grabbed him.
Yeah, emotional rollercoaster head all splodey...
ETA: Gahhhhh - head went more splodey - it just struck me, 2 of our birds were out of their cages at the time the cat got out, and one of them is fully flighted. She could have flown out that door and been gone....
Anybody got anything more recent on his status?
Also went to the the movies - The Proposal is very funny, and Sandra Bullock is apparently keeping a painting in her attack...
It'd be nice to have a year that wasn't filled with people I know dying. Sigh.
Sunday we finally got the boat into the lake. (yay)
Monday we tore down the old white crown molding in the kitchen and replaced it with the stuff we used in all the other rooms on that floor (wood, with a vine design)... and in the processs discovered that the one big wall of 'wood' paneling that we'd painted blue? was pretty much printed wallboard, and underneath of it was some very old and very pretty real wood paneling. We had to scrape the glue off, and touch up the stain where the glue was, but now I have a very pretty wall-o-wood that'll make a nice backdrop for the copper wall decorations I brought back from his Mom's house.
I believe it was Tuesday when we noticed Sushi wasn't acting right, just wanting to lay around and not move, and I figured I'd have to take her to the vet's on Friday to get her drained again (for those who missed it, when we came back from the funeral, Sushi looked any-day-now pregnant; the vet drained 1.4 liters of fluid, ran a bunch of tests and basically said 'might be her heart, might be a tumor, it'll cost you $600 just to diagnose it - and they'd already charged $500 for the tests run to give us that answer. So we've been taking her to get drained when she gets uncomfortably big). Later the same day we realized she was refusing to eat.
Wednesday, still refusing to eat, still no energy, still no sign of being in any actual pain. At that point, we knew she wasn't going to be with us long. By Wednesday night, she was refusing water as well, and kept trying to find hidey-holes (classic cat-ready-to-move-on behavior). We made her as comfortable as possible.
Thursday morning, we found her. She'd gotten her head under my chair so she could feel like she was hiding in the dark, curled up in her classic napping position, and took her last nap. John buried her next to my herb garden.
Today, I went and picked up Mowgli, a bird we had been fostering for a loooong time, that the president of the club had moved to a different foster in the hopes they'd have better luck getting him to come out of his shell. She had no luck, and now she's moving someplace she can't have him, so my cute little rainbow-sherbert bird is back with us for now. I've thought about adopting him, but I keep hoping/worrying there's someone out there better for him, that he'd actually learn to come out of his cage and be playful for instead of being an 'aquarium' bird (pretty to watch, but not much else). He calls for me when he wants his head scritched or attention, and once he actually let me hold him for a few minutes (that was at christmas, so I kept joking it was my christmas present from him), but the rest of the time he's not interested.
And the film American Beauty was playing on the big TV at the gym tonight.
Maybe it's just me feeling off and it wasn't all that weird...
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