Cat Tales Zoological Park, still achy, music

Today we went to Cat Tales Zoological Park. 

I'm not sure what spurred Amanda into wanting to go or if it was a joint deciding venture between her and our friend Rachel. Either way, we went with Rachel and her boyfriend. 

Cat Tales is a  non-profit that takes in animals from side shows, animals that basically idiots decided it would be cool to have and then learned they were much more than they could handle and so on. They have Bengal and Siberian Tigers, a Lion, bobcats, a bear, some parrots, and at least one house cat that we decided was the most dangerous kitty at the park. No, really, we named him Skittles and he rules that joint. Okay, he probably doesn't but he's wild enough that there are signs advising people not to pet the house cats if they see them. There are also signs that state "do not run, you look like food", which I thought were appropriate.

It is not a big park and for my first real outing involving a good bit of walking, I think it went pretty well. One of the white tigers, Zeus, was pretty chatty. I didn't know if he was upset because he was limping and possibly hurting, or if he was just talking. He kept looking at me, so I spent some time at his enclosure while he walked up and down and rubbed his face on the chain link.   

I do not have pictures because my phone died during the night last night and I didn't have time to plug it in this morning before we left. My camera battery is also dead, so I didn't have that available. I linked the website above

After we left Cat Tales, we stopped by a cemetery so Rachel's boyfriend could get some pictures and then we went to get something to eat. Then we stopped at Party City and I knew after a few minutes in there that I was done for the day. It has only been four weeks since my surgery and I am still pretty sore. On top of that, I think the lackluster breakfast sandwiches I got us at 7-11 upset my stomach because I wasn't feeling well. It was bad enough that anything Amanda mentioned us getting from the store for the week made me want to vomit. 

I am still having trouble laying down to sleep. I tried this morning but it was just painful enough to keep me from getting any true sleep. So I gave up and sat up. I'm not happy about this, I would really like to sleep in bed with Amanda. I miss it and we are both feeling a little disconnect in that regard. Tonight she was having a bad night, so I made her come out to sleep on the sofa because I didn't want her to be alone. I mean, it's not like I'm likely to sleep anytime soon. Writing all night seems to be the best time for me. The rest of the world is sleeping.

A bit of good news is that my Grandmother is out of the hospital and back in the rehab center. She's keeping food down, but fora  little while her kidneys weren't functioning. She's better. 

Still writing and I did a really naughty thing. I ordered a couple of small note books from Evil Supply Co. They are relatively inexpensive and I find them to be the perfect size for story notes. Plus they are so me. This is one of the ones I purchased tonight.

On to music. I set up a L'Ame Immortelle station on pandora because I wanted more of that type of Gothic Music. Through some tweaking I am finally getting a mix of Gothic and Darkwave that is akin to what I was hearing on R1 Das Darkwave years ago. It was a streaming station I stumbled upon via Winamp over a decade ago that is no longer running. The station on pandora isn't perfect and I'm not getting everything I would like, but its close enough to make me happy. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell "Cry Little Sister" from the movie Lost Boys actually pertains to the damned movie. I know I saw it years ago, but I don't get it, lol.  I also heard a "new to me" song by VNV Nation called "Carbon" that I fell in love with. 

   

Last weekend's camping, playing chauffeur, Das Stein Haus, shopping, and lunch

Amanda found a cell phone camera lens kit in the check out isle in Wal-mart last night. Fun fact, don't leave the flash on when using them. By the way, that's Narcisa checking out the pickle in my cup.

Okay so last weekend we went camping out at a friend's house. It was a small, invite only gathering and the drive was beautiful. Of course it was a chilly, cloudy, and wet sort of day so of course I loved it. Everyone set up their tents in the rain because if we hadn't, it as decided that it would rain all day and then we would have been trying to set them up in the dark. Of course once all the tents were set up, it stopped raining. 

While we were there we had a Fairies vs. Goblins of theme. Everyone had a grab bag and depending on what was in it a wand or a glass ball, was what you were. The wands were fairies and the balls were goblins. I happened to pick up the bag with the blue ball in it thus I was the King- or because I am a girl- Queen of the Goblins. One of my friend's children was Queen of the Fairies. Everyone else was either fairy or goblin and we played games and did actives outside, tallying up which side was winning. At the end, the Fairy Queen and I had a battle/ sword fight with swimming pool noodles. We ended up calling a truce partly because some meddlesome boys kept trying to get in on it, and also because neither of us were giving up. Honestly, my back was giving me all sorts of grief but there was no way I was letting that little fairy Queen beat me! So for at least a year, the Goblins and Fairies have peace. 

Aside from Goblin and Fairy wars, there was drinking, good food, and we watched Practical Magic outside under the stars, drinking margaritas. Some of the other campers were in inflated swimming pools with pillows and blankets. I had to go to bed early that night because I was in a lot of pain. I also had reading done, which was helpful. All in all, it was a lot of fun and if we hadn't had to worry about Amanda getting to work on Sunday, we would have stayed longer. 

Monday, I took some friends to a doctor's appointment because they are currently car-less, after a fashion. I hung out at their place for as long as I could before I had to head back and get read for Monday night's event.

I headed over to the north side around the 5 mile area of town to go to Joann's crafts and fabric store for a bit. I saw plenty of things I wanted but I didn't buy anything. We still had grocery shopping and bills to pay, and honestly, I was too hot and achy from the weekend to really care too much. I did look at yarn and knitting needles.

Afterward I met Amanda and one of our friends at Das Stein Haus, a German bar and restaurant. 

Our friend ordered her own beer plank and Amanda and I split one. We couldn't decide which one we wanted to try. So why not try several? We also had an appetizer of Kazen Spaetzle, delicious!

These were our choices.

Here is Amanda's dinner a Schnizel dish

And here is mine. I can't remember what it was called but what I can tell you is that I was very bad and ordered pork. It had a yummy pork sauce, mushrooms, and it was atop a bed of Spaetzel. It was fantastic! 

To finish it all up Amanda and our friend had apple strudel and I had one of my favorite kinds of cake in the world, Black Forest!

Which brings us to yesterday. I had some grocery shopping to do and while I wanted to go to the Kiev Market and one of the Asian markets in my area, I didn't quite make it. I did, however, begin at Yoke's Fresh Market. I was looking for something in particular and couldn't find it but picked up some produce. Next I went to Winco and did the bulk of my shopping there. I was hurting, hot, and tired, by the time I finished there and knew my spoons were almost spent. I stopped by another grocery store and while they didn't have exactly what I was looking for at Yoke's, they had a decent substitute. Bonus, they had a nice deal on tea so I got a couple of boxes.

When I got home, I only brought in the groceries that had to come in and left the rest in the car. But I was too tired, hot, and in too much pain to do the usual meal prep. I spent some time on the phone with my Mom, went to the bathroom, and then picked up Amanda and then went to Wal-Mart to finish up shopping. I'd forgotten mayonnaise, needed pads, and shampoo. We grabbed food at Taco Bell, came home, watched a weird anime episode, and went to bed. 

And that brings us to today. I slept in by accident and just up in time to meet a friend and take lunch to Amanda at work. We stayed there a little longer than we intended but Amanda is working late tonight. I know that parking is difficult downtown, especially during lunch, and especially since there is construction, but as helpful as my friend wants to be with helping me lose weight along with helping herself toward that goal, parking two and half blocks from Amanda's work really doesn't help when my back keeps trying to lock up. I had to stop a couple of times to kind of slowly coax it into cooperating with me. Which of course made me feel even worse because my friend had to slow down to begin with and then stop in the heat while I shifted around until I could walk more. I know she doesn't mind, I know she will wait for me, but I still feel bad about it. 

Last bit of news, we might go look at and test drive a car tomorrow afternoon, after Amanda's doctor's appointment.   

You'll pay for it, tired, homework, and something strange is going on...

Picture seems appropriate...

Today, I had planned to move into the office/library to work on homework. The plan failed when I woke up in pain, worn out, and so incredibly stiff, all before I'd even had a chance to do anything. So I am couch bound today and am even considering a nap.

I think part of the reason I hurt so much today is because I decided, since it was a relatively nice day yesterday, to take a walk. I'd wanted to take the Redbox movies Amanda rented to the 711, get a little treat, and have Amanda pick me up there. While I didn't make it to the 711, I made it half way- which is the bus stop, that's 0.4 of a mile. Now for most people, that's not a big deal and in fact is pretty much nothing. However, for me, with my back and the fibro, it can be a lot. Generally speaking I can do more, but that's in the grocery store with a cart in front of me for support. And I am paying for it today. On top of that I am having a pretty big fibro flare. I will be honest, it is so bad today I don't want to wear my clothes and my hair hurts. I kind of want to cry, but I won't because that won't fix anything. 

Moving on. I have decided that for today, I am only going to worry about doing my introductory post of my homework. I will read the text book and make my notes, after dinner. A&B are coming and bringing spaghetti. Which reminds me that I need to schedule time with Birdy again. Our last friend date had to be cancelled and so did our D&D night with them.   

Strange and interesting fact, I think my upstairs neighbor's sink was clogged because suddenly I heard weird things happening in my sink and got a horrible smell in my apartment. I went over to check it out and there were soap suds that I didn't create, in my sink. This does not make me happy. The last time my pipes were connected to a neighbors, my basement was flooded with disgusting crap from their clogged drain. We are talking food bits, egg shells, grease, and just yuck! It took forever to clean it up and worse, it almost got as far as my bed- my bedroom was in my parent's basement. I definitely don't want a repeat of that.

Other than that, I talked to my Mom today. She dislocated her shoulder again. Sigh. 

Foggy Brain

Yesterday my doctor's nurse called me and wanted to know if I would be comfortable upping the dosage of my Fibromyalgia medication. I said that I was and so I was instructed to take an extra pill in the morning. I am back to having a semi-foggy brain and being sleepy and sometimes lethargic. That doesn't really work for me as far as writing goes but I am going to try and fight through it and see what I can get accomplished.

As it stands, I don't have too many plans for writing today. I left off in a good place the last time I worked with my vampires so when I open the document and am ready to tackle them again, I'll just be able to pick up where I left off with no problem.

I've been feel a pull and tug to start working on one of my fantasy stories again. It's a little weird, when I work on that story I sometimes feel a tug to work on the vampires and vice versa. I suppose I am going to have to do what I used to do when I lived at home with my parents and have several documents, each of them different stories, open all the time. Or at least the notes pages.

I spoke with both my parents, one of my aunts, my grandparents, and my cousin Shi-chan today. It was really nice and I learned something interesting about an ex-abusive-troglodyte of Shi-chan's sister. Seems he'd gotten out of jail and was going to get pulled over by the police. He, of course, ran and drove through a private property fence, jumped out of the car and jumped into a sand pit that was full of water. So far they haven't been able to find his body. If he died in there (from drowning) then his body will resurface in a few days. If he made it out no one has heard or seen hide or hair of him. Honestly, I hope he died. It would be karma for all the horrible things he did to my cousin's daughter, to my cousin, and to my family.

On a lighter note, it's a really nice day today. I am planning to try to go for a walk after Skoora and I are finished at the library. There is a nice park near where we live that abuts the river. There are several little paths we can take to get to the water and I think it will be nice to sit for a few minutes and just watch the river flow by.

Well, I'm off to get a few letters written.