June 11, 2008 @ 8:16 pm
I haven’t posted in awhile. Been pretty busy, working on the novel, cutting the lawn, re-watching Millennium on DVD. And dealing with some bad news: found out Thor has diabetes. Last week we noticed him acting a little dopey, drinking and peeing a lot. I took him to the vet and they performed a blood-glucose test. Healthy cats have a rating between 5 and 8. Thor’s was 27. So we were quite upset and stressed about the whole thing. We took Thor back in on the weekend when he seemed to be getting worse. He turned out to have a fever and was given a shot of antibiotics. More stress. Monday we brought Thor in yet again, found out things weren’t as bad as they initially thought. A urinalysis test determined Thor didn’t have ketones in his urine, which meant his diabetes wasn’t as bad as it could be, and could probably be managed by switching him to a low-cal diet and a pill taken daily. This was much better than the two injections of insulin a day we’d originally been told would be necessary.
So Thor’s joie de vivre has been slowly coming back. He’s been on his kitty meds for a couple of days and his fever has been resolved. He’s playing a bit, cuddling with us more, and has pretty much stopped hiding under the bed, which was upsetting Kathryn a bit. Upsetting me too. I’ve had Thor ten years as of this month, and it was a pretty serious blow to hear he had diabetes. But after some research we learned it wasn’t so bad, and when we found out his case was relatively minor we were that much more relieved. Even better, cats who are diagnosed early and switched immediately to low-cal diets have a very high chance of their diabetes going into remission, unlike humans and canine which are apparently stuck with it for life.
Suffice to say I haven’t been feeling so hot lately. Kat and I took a much-needed road trip this past Sunday. I had been planning it for a couple of months as I needed to do research for my novel. The trip was a success. Many notes and pictures were taken. Now I’m ready to get back to work.
Some good news: I received an e-mail from one of the editors at Broken Pencil who asked permission to reprint “Camp Zombie” in a forthcoming anthology featuring some of the best stories that have appeared in BP over the years. It was nice to be asked, especially since the story hasn’t even been published yet. The anthology will be published by ECW sometime in 2009.
So that’s what’s been going on with me lately.
Wow, sorry to hear about Thor’s illness, but very glad that it’s manageable. It is a nasty blow when something goes wrong with your pet. Good luck to the kitty!
Thanks, Tiffany. We’re managing it as best we can. He can actually take his meds in his food, which helps a lot. Thor would eat cinderblock as long as it was in his food.
I know all about poorly cat blues. Sounds like he is adjusting and hopefully he will be much better soon.
Thanks, Ally. We’re keeping a close eye on him, that’s for sure.
Not much of a cat person myself, but I understand how hard that is. Best of luck.
Thanks, Jeff.
Thor is the MAN !! Give him a pet from me.
Will do!
Hope Thor gets to feeling better, it is rough when your animals are sick.
Congrats on the reprint, that is great news.
And I’m interested what you think about Demon Theory — it was one of my favorite reads last year.
Thanks, Eric, I appreciate it.
I’m coming to the end of Demon Theory and my feelings are mixed. I think the idea is clever, but I don’t know if I like the individual plots of each section very much. I enjoy the footnotes on their own, probably because I’ve seen every single one of the horror movies he mentioned, but in the context of putting such references in a novel, I find them extremely distracting to the reading experience. I certainly haven’t read a book like it before, and I can attest to the fact that Jones is an excellent writer.
For me it’s up there with House of Leaves. Somewhat brilliant, somewhat original, somewhat self-indulgent. Which is not to say I don’t like it. I’m just very torn. I would definitely recommend it to people at the very least as a very different type of horror novel. :)
Glad to hear Thor will be okay. It’s horrible when pets get ill.
Things are good here. Finished installing our new kitchen. Now we’re just waiting on counter tops. Having shoulder surgery on Tuesday which will put me in a sling for a month or more. It’s my left shoulder, which means I can still write with my right. This will be the first time in ages I’ve composed in longhand.
CMO
You said it, Chris. It was a pretty stressful time — still is, although not as bad as last week. Things are smoothing out. Kat and I went to the movies last night, which made for a nice break from all the madness.
Glad to hear about the new kitchen. You should send me some pictures (and some tips) since Kat and I are planning to redo out kitchen next. We just painted the bedroom, a minor project but it looks pretty damn good.
Sorry to hear about the surgery. Too bad you’re not ambidextrous. But at least it’ll give you a chance to catch up on the longhand. That’s usually how I start any given project, then proceed onto computer once my thoughts and ideas starting coming so fast that I need a keyboard to put them down.
I understand how you feel about Demon Theory, the first time I read it I was a bit annoyed, ticked off even. Then I re-read it one weekend when I ran out of books to read (and was too lazy to head to the bookstore). On the re-read, I had a new appreciation for it.
I can actually say that I liked it more toward the end than I did when I first started it. Where the story began kind of distracting and gimmicky, I really came to the way the characters appeared in each subsequent section, and how it all came together in the end, mostly because I wasn’t expecting it. It also helped that there were fewer footnotes in the last section, which made the story flow better, I thought.
So I ended up enjoying it quite a bit, contrary to my previous comment. :)