Regina Noctis

Lose “loose” to mean lose, damn it.

I see it all the time anymore. And just noticed that it’s making its way into books. Well, not really recently, to tell the truth. I only just noticed it this time because it’s something that’s been making my internal Grammar Nazi twitch a lot when reading online. What set me off is that I was re-reading a book that I picked up in the 80s. The main character manages to “loose sight of the floor” while climbing up something.

If something is loose, it’s not tight.

If you can’t find something, you lose it.

That show a lot of folks I know watch is “Lost” and not “Loost”.

If you don’t want to loose someone, well, that’s between consenting adults. But if you tied ‘em up too tight and they might lose circulation to their extremities, you should consider it anyway.

Okay, I’m done now.

While reading through my FL, I came across an entry from one of the communities I belong to. Its misspelled title was “Smorgasborg”.

I now have an image in my head of some mechanical monstrosity of a psuedo-table, flying through space with its top covered with buffet plates from various civilizations, all now a part of the dreaded Smorgasborg.

“Your meatballs will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

As things stand at the moment, it looks like I’ll be able to make it up to the Bay Area for a while before BayCon. So I should be at the mandatory meeting, and will have a chance to unwind from the stress I’ve been under recently. I have a list longer than my arm of people that I’d like to see, but I’m not fussed about it. If I can’t get the chance to see most of them before or after BayCon, most will be at BayCon. It’s a relief that I’ll be able to get some down time before the convention. The last week and a half or so of the semester combined with the psychotic cousin, Whiskers’s near death, and bad news from both family and friends combined to turn me into a complete nutter. The stress was so intense that by the last few days of finals week, I was constantly ill and exhausted. I’m still feeling some of the effects now. I’m always slow to recover from intense long-term stress, and I can feel that my heartbeat is still far too fast. It got tested at 102 a couple days ago. It’s slower now, but still not back to normal. I need time away from here before I start the next big high-stress project, the restraining order that may get me kicked out of here.

If the psychotic cousin does something that prevents me from getting out of here again, I may not be able to avoid just snapping. So, if he ruins yet another opportunity to get out of here for a while, he’d better keep his distance from me. And he is trying in a relatively low-key way to make it difficult for me to leave, currently. He returned the van, and it didn’t need to be fixed this time for a wonder. But he’s been coming by and putting nails in the tires of the van and my car. We’ve had three nails in tires so far in the last month.

Things aren’t all bad. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, some frustrating stuff. It’s rather a mixed bag, really.

I got one great research paper written, if I do say so myself. I overkilled on the research. Professor Johnson asked for three sources. My works cited list ran to two pages. I pretty sure I nailed it, which is good, since I didn’t complete the final. I did all the multiple choice, but did not write the essay for the test. I was very ill from all the stress, with nausea and my temperature spiking repeatedly, and couldn’t concentrate well enough to put two sentences together, much less write my usual 6 page essay in half an hour. At worst, the undone essay will drop me to a B. I might still have an A if I did as well as I think I did on the research paper, however.

I have an A in my late-start, short-term class, and I’m sure I have an easy A in Digitial Imaging. So, all in all not a bad semester when it comes to grades.

Speaking of Digital Imaging, I’m quite proud of what I thought would be our final project, but turned out to be the penultimate one. You can find it here if you want to take a look. We had to do something in the style of a favorite artist, and I chose Michael Whelan, since he was very influential on me when I was starting out. Any of you who know Whelan’s work will probably recognize the book cover that heavily influenced this piece, though it’s not an absolute direct copy. I did use the cover to The White Dragon as reference when I was painting in Photoshop, however, and that shows quite clearly in the work.

Also, I’ve been trying to burn copies of the little movie project thing we did in Digital Imaging. I can’t get the bloody thing to burn properly. Every time, with about a minute left, it announces that there was an error. I’ve tried three different DVD-Rs, and same thing happened with each. I can’t get either an exact copy of the DVD I made or a disk image of the DVD to burn correctly. I’m going to have to try to come up with some other method. My apologies to those of you who asked for copies for the long wait, which is just going to get longer while I fight with this. If I ever do get the thing to copy, I’ll have to force a copy on even though he didn’t ask. I hadn’t told him, but I took the name for the project from a comment he made when he was battling my crop of vampire weenies.

I suspect I’ll be making little mini-movies like mad over the summer. That project is still the most fun I’ve had in any class so far on this return trip to college. It fulfilled the creative need I discovered I had when I was learning the traditional, hand-drawn animation back in the 80s, before my hand injury forced me to stop. After all these years of trying to find something that fit as well, I finally have it. Be afraid, you people who gave me your addresses for the DVD I can’t make copies of. The floodgates may open this summer. ;)

A couple days ago, Whiskers started coughing. This is always the first sign that the medication is wearing off and that an asthma attack is coming. We thought it might, since it was getting toward the end of the three week period that the steroid injections keep the thing at bay, and the air has been heavily pollinated for the last week. We were managing to hold off the attack with some non-steroidal medication, so we thought we could make it through till the vet was open on Monday.

Whiskers went out this morning, as he usually does. Normally, he goes out for fifteen minutes or so in the morning, and then comes back in. He’d have been back in plenty of time for his next dose of medication. This time, though, he disappeared for hours.

His medication was due at about 2:30. We finally found him about 5:30. He was having a rough time. The asthma attack was well under way when we finally found him. We medicated him, with both the steroid and non-steroid medications, but they didn’t work this time. After thirty minutes, he was lying on his side, unable to get up, and doing open mouth breathing. That’s a very, very bad sign. That means that he could die if we can’t get the attack stopped. The vet, of course, is closed on Sundays. Even had he been open, this would have been after hours.

We had no choice. We got in the car and drove nearly an hour to get to the closest emergency care vet. We try not to do this as a rule, because stress makes asthma attacks even worse, and car trips terrify Whiskers. We knew it was a risk, but we didn’t think he’d make it until the vet in town opened in the morning.

By the time we got there, not only was he open-mouth breathing, but his mouth and tongue had gone from pink to dark grey. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen even with his frantic attempts to breathe. They had to put him in the oxygen cage immediately. We sat for hours waiting, but finally had to leave him there to stay the night. There’d been no improvement. Even in the oxygen cage, he was still open-mouth breathing.

We got home around 10pm. The vet called at 1am. She’d given him two massive injections of medicine to try to control the asthma. He didn’t respond at all to the first. The second he has shown a very little response to, but is still in the oxygen cage. The open-mouth breathing isn’t constant now, but it’s still going on quite a bit. She doesn’t think she can give him another injection anytime soon, because he’ll overdose. And she isn’t sure that they’ll be able to help him this time. If there are any changes, the vet will call my cell. Even though she didn’t indicate that it was completely hopeless, her tone of voice and the fact that she said three times that she wasn’t sure they’d be able to do anything to help him this time makes me think that she was preparing me for his death. She didn’t sound particularly hopeful, though she tried to keep her tone gentle.

If we don’t hear from the vet again tonight, we’ll have to call around 8 in the morning to see if he can be released, either to us or to the vet here in town.

I don’t know if I can sleep tonight. I’m certainly not close to it now. I was trying to be strong for Mom, since Whiskers is even more her baby than mine. But that means all the emotions that I was shoving aside then are coming to the fore now. I’m worried and scared and stressed, and can’t seem to stop crying for all that long.

I know that all I can do is wait to hear. I’ve never been good at waiting.

Edit: Just spoke with the vet again. Whiskers finally is responding well to the medication. They took him out of the oxygen cage around 2am, and he has been breathing okay on room air. The speed of his respiration has slowed, and things are looking much better. We will not be bringing him home yet, however. He is being transferred to our local vet for continued care. Our local vet will cost significantly less than the emergency clinic for continued treatment. This overnight at the emergency care will probably be around $800, so something less expensive for continued care will be a good thing. Not that I begrudge the $800. It saved Whiskers’s life.

Grumble. Growl. Snap. Snarl.

Which is an improvement over all the above plus shaking and fear a few days ago.

The first is related to BayCon. The second is related to the cousin (big surprise.)

should thank his lucky stars that he’s beem busy, and I’m too polite to call at 1 in the morning. Else I’d have called up to rant by now.

Instead, I’ll just go back to grumble, growl, snap, and snarl.