one of my cats has been sick for a while now... when i took her in to the vet a week or so ago because of stomach problems, she was still doing pretty good, and had lasted WAY longer than the vet ever would have predicted. mammary cancer in cats is extremely aggressive. she had lost some weight, down to about 7.5 pounds from 10 when she was first diagnosed, but at the time, she was still pretty ok... still eating, still had energy, getting around, doing the things she normally did. my vet warned me that even so, when she started to decline, it would probably be fast... and probably be soon.
about last thursday night, she seemed to start losing her appetite. she ate, but not much, and not with much gusto. i was hoping she was just having a bad day (shed had them before) and would pick back up. when i got home from work friday, all the food was eaten, and i thought maybe thats all it was. but saturday it was the same again, just picking at her food. sunday all day, she seemed ok but suddenly sunday night, she threw up a lot of blood, crawled into her bed, and wouldnt come out.
she couldnt even be tempted by a treat, which she ALWAYS went crazy for, even on her bad days. and when i went to bed, she still wouldnt come out, and from the time i brought her home 16 years ago, she had never missed even one night sleeping with me on the bed. not one. i finally carried her, bed and all, into the bedroom, and slept with her by my head for the little bit of sleep i got.
i knew then that it was time. shes been sick for a long time now... but today, she got well.
it was the worst thing ive ever had to do. ive never felt as bad as i did then (and now), and ive felt pretty crappy before. theres a big empty screaming hole in the center of my chest where my heart used to be. ive read stories about how people pull their hair and tear their clothes and beat their chests in grief. i get it now.
i cradled her in my arms for the 5 hours before the appointment, and held her as they put her to sleep. i was the last thing she saw. i hope it was a comfort... i want to think shes in a cat heaven with lots of fish and string and treats and sunbeams... but i know shes not. shes gone. and my heart hurts so bad i cant even describe it.
i know no one cares about this stuff, but it makes me feel a little better to write it.
i got kali 16 years ago... i had just seen a dollar movie with my then wife. there was a pet supply store in the shopping center and we decided to stroll over there and take a look at the fish. they didnt normally sell pets there other than fish (it was called "wet pets") but that day, they had a big cardboard box in the middle of the store with 6-8 kittens in it. these were teeny tiny kittens, just opened their eyes not long ago. they were free with the purchase of a huge expensive bag of cat food.
i walked over to the box and looked over the side, and there was this one kitten that immediately ran over to the side and started trying to climb up the side of the box. she didnt meow as much as... well, yell, really... it was the funniest sound id ever heard from a cat, and just had to pick her up... she climbed up my shirt sleeve, across my chest, and into my pocket, where she promptly went to sleep.
in retrospect, i can see now that i fell in love with that cat instantly... she had stolen my heart along with my pocket. but at the time, we were POOR, and a $50 bag of cat food was a LOT. i tried to bargain with the clerk but to no avail, and finally i reluctantly dug her out of my pocket. she was so tiny, she fit in the palm of my hand... and she cried and cried when i put her back in the box. i didnt make it 20 feet out of the store before i turned around, went back in, and bought that bag of cat food.
from that day forward shed been a constant companion... a lap cat bar-none. she would greet me every morning, follow me into the bathroom, sit on the back of the toilet and talk to me while i showered, follow me as i got ready, and give me a cat-hug before i left. every day when i got home, shed greet me with a yell and another hug, then climb into my lap as soon as i sat down anywhere. then at night, she sing her weird yelling meow (she never did grow out of it) for a treat, and curl up on the bed beside me (when she wasnt trying to crawl under the covers)...
shes always been my little baby girl, and now shes gone. god i miss her so much. i love you baby...
you know, its kinda hard to think up a way to explain WHY i like a song all the time. so... i just like it. you might like it too. click play and find out.
i also really dig the video. again, i just do. id love to post it here, but the cocksuckers at universal music pulled it from youtube. THIER OWN VIDEO, posted by them. not a bootleg from someone else. why? who knows. i suspect its because theyre a bunch of dicks.
if youve got a reasonably updated PC, or an xbox360/PS3, and you havent played Batman: Arkham Asylum... man, you really need to. B:AA was the best game i played last year, without question, and i think it would probably make my list for my top 10 favorite games of all time.
of course, if you wait another 6 months itll prolly wind up on sale somewhere for $10... and be $5 on sale in another 12. but B:AA is one of those rare games that is actually worth the full $50 pricetag, so you cant hardly go wrong for anything less than that...
the rebuild of the code is coming along nicely... much more quickly than i expected. had i not been so busy/lazy this weekend i think i might could have finished it even... but i think one more uninterrupted weekend will be enough to polish it off. the only thing that irritates me is that, because im deliberately going outside my comfort zone on this code and using techniques that i need to learn (but dont presently know beyond the barest academic sense), everything is almost certainly as bad as it can possibly be and still work.
a year or two from now im going to look back at this latest iteration and think its one of the worst things ive ever written. but i guess that shouldnt be a surprise, because i feel that way EVERY time i go back and redo the code for the site... i wonder if there will ever come a time that i code my own site in the same way i would a clients, where im not trying one experiment or another and instead just shooting for solid, reliable, quality code?
considering theres always something new to learn, and its always going to be safer learning it on my own code (where nobody gets fired or sued if it isnt perfect)... probably not...
the long-delayed and much-needed revamp of the whole blog layout and software is about to get underway over the next several days... during that time, the blog may be down or quite unusable. im going to take this opportunity to do a lot of stuff that ive been needing to do, like go to a pure css layout, rework the whole templating engine for the software, get the thing using subversion (the source is already in subversion but im manually copying updates over because ive been too lazy to clear out the server copy and check it out from subversion), switch everything over to jquery from my own now-outmoded javascript library, and more...
the difference to you, dear reader, will be undetectable if i do everything correctly. however, it will allow me to do stuff ive been WANTING to do but cant, so there will be some more visible stuff coming after i get everything transitioned. this will also allow the software to be useful for other people who want it (ive got at least one who has asked for it, but cant use it currently because it wasnt designed with portability in mind), and should also improve indexing of the site contents in google et al.
anyhow, bottom line, dont worry if the site goes away for a bit... it isnt permanent, and doesnt signify anything major beyond my semi-regular desire to keep things updated with current techniques and technologies.
Webdude2 (2010-02-02 10:14:27):
Hey..you never wrote about Jen and I having our baby girl last week so all your reader(s) would know. Lothos would probably like to hear all about her. :)
as you can see, ed's life as he knew it changed forever last week... no longer his own, his life now belongs to a (as far as i know) healthy baby girl named alice... hit him up on facebook for all the pictures and shit (i assume there are tons of pics anyway, i dont facebook so i dunno...)
man, the html for this site is sooooo bad. its obvious i was in a hurry the last time i banged things together. its long overdue for a rework, which i think ill start on this weekend. theres stuff i want to do that i cant do cleanly with what i have now, and its starting to irritate me...
do NOT attempt to cut your own hair at 5pm on xmas eve, when it is guaranteed no barber will be open for at least two days, and you have a full slate of activities from which you cannot hide for those two days, even IF youve done it a hundred times with no problem.
what is it the stock brokers say? past performance is no guarantee of future results.
ok, this posting every day thing is for the birds. so screw it... ill do it a few times a week... maybe. almost definitely once a week, at least, except for the times i dont.
to make up for it, im putting a whole album up today instead of a single song. this is currently my very favorite album (my favorite track on this album is #5, Floating City)... so, enjoy. or dont. its not for everyone...
