I'm going to go watch my yearly holiday specials that ash won't watch with me, and then I'm going to go to bed so we can do christmas tomorrow. Merry holiday!
So last night the cat peed on my pillow, and the night before or something she'd peed on some blankets, and I don't want Cael getting any ideas so I didn't want to leave them out but also didn't have time to wash them right then and there, so after some frustrations I managed to pile the whole lot into a hamper and put it out of reach in the closet. And then I went to bed! But, because I was short a pillow and had too-few blankets, I woke up at about 8, and shortly after I happened to discover the ghide bug and spent some time testing it
I waited around for signs of life from ash and Erik, and more importantly signs that they had finished their respective breakfasts, and around I think 10 we were all ready to do christmas and open presents. So we did! I got: a jacket, a small wooden box with a pendulum and some acorn-shaped bells inside, a decorative shelf, a bag labelled 'not full of teeth' and a bag with a Pottsfield Harvest Festival design on it, a waterproof speaker, and a space heater. Plus some stocking candy. I think that's everything? I'm not positive, but I am pretty braindead by now. I had gotten Erik a light-up Wheel of Time symbol and ash a stuffed manta ray who is also a small blanket, and also had sneakylike stuffed ash's stocking full of small squishy animals I'd gotten out of a quarter machine and one (1) fidget spinner shaped like a soccer ball
And the cats got a couple of toys that they have mostly ignored
So a good haul, and then ash and I watched The Santa Clause while he started making dinner, and then I read some more Wizard and Glass to him while dinner (and dessert) making continued. Then he, Erik, and I watched 9 Kittens of Christmas (we have a tradition of watching a hallmark-style christmas movie on christmas), which was not as bad as it could have been but was very much of its type and also turned out to be a sequel to 9 Lives of Christmas and also featured a character who we cannot for the life of us figure out if he's in a relationship with one of the other characters or the sibling of two of the characters. Partway through that I started getting migraine auras, so I took a couple ibuprofen and put my eyestrain glasses on, which usually helps, and I mostly don't have a migraine.
But after 9 Kittens of Christmas, we finished making dinner (well, ash finished making dinner), we watched a couple of youtube videos, and then we put on White Christmas, but by then it was getting late so we have watched about two thirds of it and will finish it tomorrow
I am very tired, and very braindead, and I'm going to go to bed pretty soon. But first I'll run around in ESO a little bit and watch some youtube or listen to a podcast. Merry holiday! I hope everyone's was good
Aaaand the cat peed on the pile of clean blankets
Jennette McCurdy's autobiography, I'm Glad My Mom Died, got back on my radar a couple days ago, so I finally got around to listening to it. It's very interesting, a pretty fast read (/listen) if you can handle the subject matter. McCurdy is a decently good writer, and I can't imagine it was easy to write -- in fact, I could easily imagine that my issues with the writing are attributable to the author being unable to dwell on the events being recalled. The issues being that the narrative (as it were) feels rushed through, and the events somewhat disconnected. There are 91 chapters, mostly only a couple pages long. But the subject comes through clearly and a couple of the chapters are very viscerally effective.
Content warnings, if you haven't heard of it, for child abuse, narcissistic parents, eating disorders, alcoholism, I'm sure I'm forgetting some specifics. It is unfortunately the sort of book that would be very useful to people who are going to be completely unable to read it.
Today I made a sandwich with fried egg, leftover ham, and a bit of mustard. Tonight I've made puds stuffed with leftover ham and with cheese on top. Delicious
Tonight I made maraschino-flavoured whipped cream as a dessert and it tastes exactly like vanilla-cherry ice cream, A+, four stars, big fan
Kitten milestone achieved: tried to jump into the toilet between my standing up and flushing
Thank god he failed
Happy new year! Oz has rung it in by peeing on my pillow, and then I startled her so she ran away and got pee all over the rest of my bedding, so I have had to spend today washing all of it. Like, all of it. Luckily the vinegar I was waiting to be replaced got replaced, so I can make sure there's no residual cat-pee-smell on the laundry that will tempt cats to continue peeing on it.
Aside from that, the day has been very ordinary. Woke up too early, got a few things done, went back to sleep. Did laundry and hung out with ash while he made a big ol' pot of soup. We watched Wild Wild West (1999), which is a very fun and very dumb movie. And we took down christmas decorations, which went very fast because we didn't have the time or energy to put up very many to begin with (plus, new kitten and didn't want the actual sentimentally valuable decorations to get broken, or for him to find some tinsel and eat it).
I'm switching Oz to raw again for a while. I'm very worried about her eating and I can't just stand by and keep trying to give her food she won't eat, so I'm hopeful she'll do better on it, that she'll put weight back on and get less grumpy, and that it won't cause her any peeing issues (she is on a special urinary food, but my understanding is that it works by increasing the amount she pees, and raw has a high water content, so). A main deterrent to trying this has been cost, but ash is going to help with that because he's a saint. So I broke down a game hen into meals for her and we'll see how she does on that for a while. The goal is to transition back to kibble after a bit, not keep her on it indefinitely, so cost won't be a factor for super long if all goes well.
I also did some research into current opinions on raw feeding and they're about the same as they were the last time I was doing it -- the main concern is people not being able to provide nutritionally balanced foods to their pets, with a secondary concern about foodborne illnesses. I take care to mitigate both, of course, though with Oz's current condition making her a little more vulnerable than she'd have been in the past, I'm a little worried.
But, she had her first chunk of chicken tonight and ate all of it immediately and for the first time in a long time she was excited to eat. I don't know, I want to do right by her and do what's best, and I hope this is it.
Meanwhile Cael has also gone a bit off his food and I need to decide if that's an issue with just the food I currently have for him or if he's decided he doesn't like that food entirely and I should try to find something else instead of getting another bag of this. But I will decide that when my credit card payments go through
Also meanwhile, I've been getting everything on my external drive copied over into my dropbox, so I can then move everything I want to keep on this computer onto that drive and then upgrade the computer's OS. It is long going, and I haven't decided what OS I'm going to upgrade to. The current OS is an old Xubuntu, which is a minor variation of Ubuntu, which has been getting a lot of negative press in recent years for very dumb design decisions. The steamdeck runs a version of Arch, which I've been enjoying, but installing Arch seems to be a bit of an ordeal? Maybe I'll try it and if I can't handle it I'll switch back to Xubuntu. I do want to minimise having to learn a new operating system, so I'm not really considering Debian or &c. The main thing right now is getting a computer set up that will let me attend class in two weeks
Anyway, I'm just killing time while laundry spins, and I'll be going to bed as soon as it's done. Long days and pleasant nights to y'all