Hibernation & Heated Floors

Smelly Mel aka Mel aka Melvin (my jeep) is back, and successfully got me to the chimps on Sunday and Monday! Praise whatever deity helped me out with that one! Phew. 

Sunday and Monday had a recurring theme at the chimp house- hibernation. Even though the pass is becoming a treacherous part of the journey and the temperature continues to fall in Cle Elum, the chimps have a warm living space, including heating in the concrete floors of their play areas. Honestly, I was playing with Foxie in one of the front rooms and we were both laying on the floor with our feet in the air each holding a troll doll- and I was pretty damn comfortable. Lars can attest, I find sleeping on floors very comfortable. Some days I do prefer to nap on the floor with just a blanket over me rather than my bed. But, with the heated floors in the chimp house, I really could have just taken a nap right there with Foxie. 

(photo stolen from CSNW's blog)

While Foxie may look uncomfortable on the floor in the picture above, I can tell you from experience, it's pretty darn warm. 

What you can't see in this photo is Jamie in a HUGE pile of blankets, and to anyone who didn't know these chimps it would look like Foxie was cast out of the welcome circle and Jamie sent her out there with no blankets. 

With the weather like it is, the chimps spend most of the day sleeping- and who can blame them! It's so warm in the chimp house that all you want to do is grab a few blankets and get some shut eye. Jamie took me for one walk, actually a run. She was asking for walks all day but as soon as I would get a boot on and go meet her in the door to the hill she would take one step outside, feel the wind and rain sprinkles and go right back inside. She looked so frustrated everytime- all she wanted to do was take a stroll but the weather was not ideal. Finally she got the nerve to go, and we ran around the entire hill. She didn't want to be out in the cold any longer than she had to. 

In days of hibernation it's really hard to spend any quality time with anyone. Most of the chimps are out of sight in a huge pile of blankets. Sunday I grabbed the Ipad to see if Jamie wanted to play her favorite mouse catching game- where a mouse runs across the screen and you have to tap it with your finger to make it squeak and eventually kill it. I didn't see Jamie at first so I turned on the animal sounds app for Foxie. Fox doesn't really want to play the games as much as she just tries to grab the ipad from you. She will nod her head like she wants to play the game or paint on it but then she will just stick her fingers as far through the caging as she can trying to grab a corner of it to wiggle it out of your hands. She does- however- love the animal sounds app. Exactly like it sounds, it shows a picture of an animal and when you click on the photo the sound the animal makes comes out. Foxie was very excited by the chimp noise- running around and even did a backflip. Jamie heard the commotion and came down to see- and wanted to play the mouse game. So we squished the mouse a few times, she groomed my boots and watched me brush my hair. Then she went back into her bed. 

Even B was out of sight, except for a few moments of play where he came down to stomp at me and kiss my hand. Like a true gentleman. :)

In other news:

With all of the commotion and money spending in October I decided to look for another job. Now, let me say, because I know you all are thinking it, I am a busy person. BUT I'm not so delusional that I can't tell when I have too much on my plate. During my senior year at PLU I over committed myself beyond belief and I will never be that busy ever again- but a silver lining to that time in my life when I was crying almost everyday is that I found my maximum. I learned how much was too much, and I am no where near that level of stress, I promise. There are a lot of things in my life right now that cost money, and in order to keep doing the things I want I need to have a little more cushion that the 0.00 I'm working with now. I applied at Forever 21, and was hired on the spot. I'm oddly excited to be working with clothes, as most of you know, I am obsessed with shopping and fashion, and it's going to be the perfect thing for my OCD organizing tendencies. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes. 

Big dreams mean hard work. And if I have to sacrifice sleep to live in Africa and open a sanctuary then I will. 10000x over, I'll do it. 

Jasper is doing better, Raleigh is back to his normal bubbly self and Queen Butters is going in for a check up- things are looking up! Lars and I continue to purge and get rid of unnecessary things in the house, and it's looking emptier and emptier every day.  We acutally had a day off together and went out to a real restaurant (without a drive thru) and relaxed. Which, for the two of us and our schedules, is quite a feat. My next project is making our annual holiday cards. Never a dull moment around here. 

Shamless Plug: the 2016 CSNW calendars are here! Order one, they are wonderful. Learn about my 7 favorite non-humans and share the gift with others! My dad always looks forward to getting his calendar. 

That's all for now. With black friday approaching, please remember CSNW on Give Big Tuesday. (or for christmas gifts check out their wish list!)

<3

-b

October: The month that tried to push me over the edge.

And just like that, I've missed a month. I am sincerely not a fan of trying to blog one month at a time- too much happens to try to shove it all into one post, but here we are. 

I'd like to write briefly about giving life the middle finger. 

Now, I usually don't like to blog with an angry undertone, I feel it's better for writing in a journal and personal venting space but this past month has been arguably one of the most stressful in recent years. Yes, I'm including wedding month in that, you know- that major life event I had to move to a new location less than 9 hours before it started. 

On my way home from visiting my 7 favorite chimpanzees on Monday October 12th, I had been on I-90 for a whopping 5 minutes before my car made a loud clunk noise and began shaking almost uncontrollably. I lost most acceleration and could go a maximum speed of 40 MPH, on a road where most people are doing 75 mph- lets just say I didn't make a lot of new friends on the ride home that day. 

It would still drive- so I toddled on home. I took it to a Midas about mile from my house- for fear it wouldn't get any farther than that and dropped it off in the hopes that it would be back to me the next day. This was on Thursday October 15th. 

Midas calls on Monday to inform me that they have no idea what is wrong. They checked all the things they could think to check- I needed to take it to the Jeep dealership because it was a problem specific to a Jeep. So, after 4 days I still was in no hope of getting my car back. I took it to the Jeep dealership (luckily only another mile down the street) where after a day they said I needed a new computer-the current computer was no longer communicating with anything in the car. So, they ordered a new one but it's on back order. Could be 2-4 weeks. And with my luck, it was 4 weeks. The part was just delivered today, November 10th and I will *hopefully* have the car back tomorrow. At this point, the $1000+ bill is whatever- I'm just overjoyed to be able to get it back. 

During all this, Lars and I played musical cars with his car, his motorcycle, many uber trips and begging people to give us rides places. My husband is undoubtedly the sweetest and most understanding human I've ever known. I hate mooching. I despise being reliant on other people to lend me things and I felt and still feel horrible for borrowing Lars' car so often. Of course, classic Lars, was more than happy to help and doesn't mind being chauffeured around while I use the car. The straw that broke the camels back was yesterday when Lars planned to ride his motorcycle to work. He needed to be there early so he got up with plenty of time, got all his gear on, only to discover that his bike wouldn't start. After trying to troubleshoot, he called an uber- a last minute attempt to be on time. After 20 minutes of waiting his driver calls to tell him to cancel the trip and request a new one- he's been pulled over. And I'm at work thinking "Whoops. I have Lars' car. This wouldn't have been such a day if he just had the car!" So, wishful thinking that tomorrow I get my sweet Melvin back and our life is a little less hectic. 

In the end of October, Raleigh went into the vet to get looked at- he had a rash that had been only getting worse throughout October and was turning into scabs. The vet set him up with an antibiotic and a steroid for the rash- nothing too major. The real kicker was his teeth. He has 2-3 teeth that are in bad shape, and possibly need to be removed. Just a teeth cleaning- $800+. A teeth cleaning + 2 removals-$1200+. Great. And because I always want my animals to be in the best health possible, I scheduled it. Today he'll be going under and hopefully will come back with most of his teeth. 

Jasper is next. I came home from work to find his left eye swollen shut, watery and bright red when he could open it. It's 1pm on a Saturday, so I have to take him to the emergency vet ($$$) but the fun part is that Lars is in Olympia at rehearsal with our only car. So, Jas and I wait not so patiently for Lars to get home. Around 4:30 I take him to the vet and we wait in the emergency waiting room. We wait. We get bumped for a dog that needed attention right away. We wait. I search desperately for snacks. Nothing. We wait. We get bumped again for another emergency situation. We finally get into a room and a doctor sees Jas and immediately says pink eye. He's also got a corneal ulcer on his eye. He also might have a respiratory infection. We get the drops for his eye and leave. I arrive home at 8:30pm. The emergency vet is 15 minutes from our house. I spend $$$ on Jasper, and we get a cone. 

Until Jasper, I have never seen another animal so incapable of living in a cone. He thrashed around relentlessly trying to get it off. Ran into everything he could possibly run into. He has no idea how to eat with it, drink with it, and could only sleep if I pushed a blanket or pillow underneath his head, like the photo above. 

Follow up with our regular vet led to a diagnoses of kitty herpes. Yeah, that's real. Not on their sexual organs or anything, but Jasper has a viral infection that is a lot like herpes- meaning he will have outbreaks of being sick his entire life. His version of being sick is getting eye infections, ear infections and constant sneezing. The vet assured me it's typical in some cats, but I can expect outbreaks every few months. aka $$$. Which I don't mind, because I love that little shithead so much. 

Princess Butters' health remains unknown, because I didn't have enough money to take her in for a check up- the boys and all their problems took priority. *eyeroll* Boys, amirite. 

So, in short: Life is sucking all the money I have and I'm fighting like a little salmon swimming upstream, just trying to hold it all together. So, life, I'd like to offer you my middle finger. 

As thankful as I am for everything good in my life, I see someone is trying to test me here. And all I have to say is GOOD TRY BUT NOT TODAY. Sometimes, you have to just give life the middle finger. Haven't we already talked about my resiliency and strength? Good. Someone upstairs is vastly underestimating my ability to make sure my family has everything they need. 

In the background of all that noise: We are still in the process of suing our caterer, I got a second job working nights, I'll hopefully be headed to Thailand for a few weeks next year, my pink hair has finally faded into the color I wanted and we are preparing for the holiday madness. 

We did our annual holiday photo shoot with Mara and as usual she got some of my favorite pictures of us. I can't wait to get our Christmas cards and updates out! 

More updates on chimping in a few days- now that I have a car to go see them. :) 

B