Hi,

I know its been a while for a blog from me. One of my goals this year is to keep my blog going throughout the year this time around.

A lot has happened over the past year. The main reason I stopped blogging is that I lost Gucci. He had laminitis/navicular and the bones in his feet rotated. Pain killers weren’t cutting it anymore and special shoes/boots weren’t helping, so it was time to say goodbye. At first we thought he was just sore because he didn’t get his medication for a couple of days, but he never recovered once he was back on pain killers. We had a plan with the vet and the farrier set up 2 weeks prior that we were going to do the week that we had to put him down. We were going to take xrays of his feet and try putting him on new medication, but we never got that chance. In the end he could barely walk out of his stall, and you could tell he was in pain.

I called and made the appointment with the vet, hoping I was wrong and he was going to be okay. The vet came out and saw him, gave him a quick going over and agreed that it was time. Mom and Poppa came out and said goodbye to him and stayed with us as we put him to sleep. I loved the vet and the job that she did. She was very kind and explained everything that was going to happen. She gave him some drugs so that he would lie down on his side, he kind of fell as he was going down. I stayed with him the entire time, I couldn’t imagine leaving his side at this point in our partnership. I held his head in my lap and petted him, whispered things into those great big ears of his as the vet injected the shot that would end his pain. I told him I’d see him tomorrow right before he took his final breath.

The vet said that he left as he lived, as a total gentleman, and she’s right, he did. I stayed with him for a long time after the vet left. I pet and talked to him until the bugs started coming to bother him, then I went and got Poppa and we covered him up until the tallow man could come the next day and take him away. The vet was kind and cut off his tail that I had braided earlier in the day and handed it off to me before she left.

Poppa was amazing and let me get him cremated, getting his ashes back a week later. He currently lives in our living room with a custom model of him done and Fiks got me an amazing picture of him printed on canvas for me for out second anniversary. But saying goodbye was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in a long time. I told him to pick up his hooves as he galloped across that rainbow bridge, because I knew he was clumsy. Fiks wanted to say goodbye to him one last time, so he went over after work and said goodbye to him, cutting off his mane and forelock so we could send it away and get some jewelry done.

After that I struggled for a while with work and just life in general. I’d had him for 20 years, more than half my life. He was my kid. Sorry, I’m tearing up and crying as I type this. 

I got a new job in July. I moved to a vet clinic closer to home that wasn’t an emergency room. Its been a great experience seeing all points of life, just not emergency situations. I think one of the greatest highlights has been helping with puppies. I got to hold 12 1 week old puppies a while ago, and seeing them grow and change has been amazing. They are black Labrador puppies, 6 male and 6 female and they are so fing cute! I wanted to get one for Christmas, but they were basically a rent payment, and Fiks and I have other things we need before getting a puppy. Things like a new mattress.

I also had issues with my truck for a good month, and I swear that half of that time it was in the shop. It would die and not start, then start up a couple of hours later. Went in and got that fixed. Then like a week or so later it just died. Thankfully I was at my parents house and got it towed to a local dealership to get worked on. I got it back right before our vacation started. Like I got it back Thursday night and we left Friday morning.

We also went back to the UK at the end of September beginning of October. I did blogs for those weeks so if you want to catch up on our adventures go back and read those. It was a great time, even if we didn’t know if we were going until like a week or less before we were meant to take off due to UK travel restrictions. They kept saying they were going to update them and then kept pushing the date further and further back. They pushed it back to halfway through our scheduled vacation, so we decided to go and have a good time, which we did.

Fiks got a promotion at work. He’s now a manager of the FedEx station that he works at. I’m super proud of him and try to support him the best that I can. Its been a lot of long stressful hours over this holiday, 14 hour days some days. But its over now, hopefully.

It was Christmas yesterday, and it was a really good day. We did some presents over at my parents house, then at my house, then over at my brother’s house. When we were done there we came home. We watched a few YouTube videos then Fiks started playing Mass Effect 2. I started on working on my journal/tracker/planer that I got from my parents for Christmas. Its one reason why I started working on this again.

I also got a cool gift from my brother and his family and my sister. Hand down my favorite TV show is M*A*S*H and they got me one of the stars of the show, Jamie Farr, to send me a video wishing me a Merry Christmas. I was so excited when I saw it I was almost crying. They got one for Fiks too from his favorite podcaster, Greg Proops.

We spent the day after Christmas (or Boxing Day for my UK fans), doing errands and cleaning up and doing laundry. My family got Fiks a whiskey barrel with a shelf in it to hold all his whiskey, and he also got lights in it. So he worked on that most of the day and I’ve got to say it looks really good.

MONDAY

Today was okay, I asked one of my coworkers and the person I get along with there best to help me figure out how to do anal gland expressions. We talked it over later in the day, waiting for the right opportunity. But it never came, which is fine. Just something I wanted to work on. We had some cute dogs and cats, but no puppies. The day was fine, just uneventful.

I came home and ordered Chinese from our favorite place, and then I got cleaned up and finished watching Sabrina on Netflix while waiting for the Chinese to arrive.

It showed up and I managed not to eat it all, so yay. And Fiks came home shortly afterwards, so he got himself a bowl and we sat down and watched The Witcher. Such a good show. Highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.

We then watched a few episodes of Disenchanted and then I went and crawled into bed. I did a little mediation before reading my book (“The Markswoman”) and then I managed to fall asleep.

TUESDAY

I woke up around 5 and tossed and turned the rest of the night away. Fiks got up early and went to work, I got up as he was leaving and ate some breakfast and then I passed out on the couch for a little while before getting ready to leave for work. I got there just on this side of the time clock. Then the day started, and it was one of those days.

I got the wrong weight on a patient to start off my day, and got busted for it. Honest mistake, but still it sucked. Then it was just getting beat up by numerous clients, like I’m covered in cuts and bruises beat up. I managed to jab myself with a needle and slice my finger open bad enough to need a bandaid on it. Well first I pressure wrapped it with a paper towel and continued with giving the injection with a new needle. Because I’m stubborn like that. Then I found out that I have literally been turning a piece of equipment off wrong basically since I started at my new clinic. So I’ve been doing it wrong for almost 6 months. That was great to discovered. My mopping was not up to the head techs par today. Just stupid shit like that.

Oh, and I asked to do anal glands today, and I get the dog with the hardest anal glands to express. I tried and tried, and then turned to another tech to get them done. I felt better when she had a hard time doing it. Felt less like an idiot. But trying is the only way I’ll learn. The rest of the day I continued to get beat up, and when I came home and took off my shoes and my socks I tore off half of a toenail on my left foot, so that was a great addition to my day.

I came home and got cleaned up and made myself potsitckers for dinner. I watched a baking show for a little while, got bored, and put on Lost In Space on Netflix. I haven’t really been paying attention tho, working on this at the same time. I finished Castle last week, and I’m hunting for a new show to watch. So if you have any recommendations let me know.

Fiks came home a little while later and we watched some more Witcher and Disenchanted before a couple of YouTube videos. Then I went to bed and read some more of my book after doing a bit of meditation.

WEDNESDAY

God today fucking sucked.

I went into work and said good morning to one of my coworkers, A, didn’t get anything back. Fine. Got greetings back from my other coworkers. A proceeded to ignore me for the morning, not addressing me until it was time to tell me to go to lunch. But I did get another anal gland expression done, so that was cool.

Came back from lunch and proceeded to get yelled at about basically everything I did. She doesn’t treat anyone else this way, just me. I got in trouble for doing something one of the doctors told me to do. We had a patient who needed xrays. I went and talked to the doctor about the appointment and she asked if they were done in surgery yet. I said they had just started. She said she wanted to wait for one of the other techs to come back. So I went back to the treatment room and started on something, a pack I think. I was working on that when A comes up to me and asks me why I haven’t roomed the appointment. I tell her what the doctor told me and explained that I thought she would be busy in surgery so we were waiting. So she storms off. Tech K comes back from lunch and then A has K room the client. Fine, whatever.

I’m cleaning surgery once the doctor is done with the spay, and A comes in and turns off all the lights on me. And she sees me in surgery cleaning, because she was just being rude to me again not 10 seconds before she turned out the lights.

I decide to wait in vaccuming surgery because I don’t want to stress out the dog in xray next door. She glares at me for a that, even tho I find other things to do while I wait. I finally get my chance to finish surgery and tech K comes and gets me so I can give a vaccine to a patient. Come out of surgery and get yelled at for something else. She yells at me to fix it and snatches the syringe that I have out of my hand and storms past me.

At this point I’m really tempted to grab my stuff and just get the fuck out of there. I’m really upset and frustrated. I go do a couple more surgery packs and towel packs as I try to calm down. I’m wondering if I should start looking somewhere else. Because I’ve been dealing with this for months, and it’s not getting any better.

I message Fiks that I’m having a shit day and I’m having problems with A again. Thankfully we start getting clients again so I don’t have to deal with her. Well I have one client who wants to say hi to her, so I tell her a client wants to say hi, and she just snaps and glares at me. Again. I walk away. Thankfully she’s not there much longer.

I come home and Fiks asks me what Im doing for dinner. I tell him I’m thinking Togos sandwiches or Eric’s deli for dinner. So I call him up and we talk and I tell him the ins and outs of my day. I’m crying down the phone. We agree that I need to talk to one of the doctors or the manager about how she’s been treating me. I’ll do it tomorrow when I go in. And I ordered us dinner from Togos.

THURSDAY

I didn’t really sleep last night. I moved to the sofa and turned on M*A*S*H and fell asleep to that for a few hours. When I woke up I moved back to bed, then it felt like Fiks got up as soon as I got comfortable. But I’m sure timed passed.

I had reached out to my Cousin yesterday and I heard back from her this morning, so that was nice. Had a good conversation while I was waking up before heading into work.

I got to work and was ignored again by A. I just hit the ground running. I was rooming clients and helping with tech visits and just not interacting with A unless I had to. One of the doctors asked me to label the needle drawer with the difference guages. A tried to yell at me how I was labeling, but I was right and so she left grumbling. Did something else correctly and she grumbled at that too.

After lunch I was doing chores when we had an emergency come in. Dog in a fight with a coyote. Except that was wrong. Looked more like blunt force trauma or something. The dog was blue in gums and tounge and started vomiting blood. I tried to help but got yelled at by A. Then the tech that was in charge of the dog called me and asked me for help. So I helped. I got a bag of IV fluids going and held oxygen to his face to help him breathe. We took xrays and saw some concerning things and sent him to emergency room down the street. I felt sorry for the owner and the dog, I hope they’re doing okay.

The xray table was covered in blood. So I cleaned that up and then I roomed the first patient for one of the doctors. And the rest of the day was just hussling it felt like. I got compliments on my help and stepping up with the dog at lunch. That made me feel better about myself.

After work I went and hit up a store and got covid tests for Fiks and myself for when we get back from Disneyland in January. Then I came home and started cooking dinner. I was halfway through cooking when I got a text from my sister saying she cut herself and needed me. I told her I was cooking and asked if she could come over here.

She showed up and I took a look at her finger and it wasnt bad. I have her fresh paper towel and an ice pack and had her rest on my sofa while I was cooking. Tonight it was seared tuna with rice and broccoli. I was busy taking care of her and not paying attention to the tuna and over cooked it.

We watched some lost in space while I ate dinner and she stopped feeling faint, so she made her way home. I kept watching until Fiks got home. Then he ate dinner and we watched a couple of YouTube videos before heading to bed.

FRIDAY

Today was just a half day at work. Something I didn’t realize until I was there, good thing I forgot to pack a lunch then. Anyway, today went better than the rest of the week. True, it was just me, A & K and one of the doctors, but we got along okay today. I did another anal gland expression, well, attempted anyway. I got most of both of them I think.

After work I went and swung by my parents house to say hi for a little while. Mom wanted to take a nap because it is after all New Years Eve and she wants to be able to stay up late and go to her party. I went and swung by Fiks’ work and hung out in his office for 15 minutes before giving up. I thought that he was in a meeting and I didn’t want to bug him, so I went and left. He called me back when I got home and said that he was just working the second sort, so I feel kind of foolish for just leaving.

I came home and got cleaned up and started working on this while Lost In Space is playing. I’m going to try to take a bit of a nap so that I can stay up late too.

I took a longer nap than intended. I woke up with a text from Fiks asking me what we were doing for dinner. Ended up with Chinese again. I continued watching Lost In Space until Fiks came home. Then we watched The Book Of Boba Fett on Disney+.

I also talked with my cousin most of the night, that was nice. After that we watched YouTube for a while before watching one of our favorite movies, Hot Fuzz. After Hot Fuzz we both went to bed, too tired to stay up and bring in the new year.

SATURDAY

Happy new year!

We had a slow start to the new year, but filled with good news. I called and talked to my parents. Remember how on Thursday my sister cut her finger? Well she went to the doctor and ended up getting 7 stitches in her finger. She’s a hard patient to deal with, she doesn’t really let you poke and prod. I feel kind of bad about it, but I really didn’t think it looked that bad.

Anyway, Fiks and I got up and ran to CVS pharmacy and picked up a few things, and then we hit up Starbucks to get some coffee and hot chocolate. Then we hit up a local grocery store to get stuff for waffles…. Which we didn’t really need but I couldn’t remember the last time I bought eggs. We also got some limes and some rice crispy treats after drooling over some marinated meats.

We came home and put things away and got to the making waffles. They were good, haven’t had waffles in a while. Currently we’re watching The World According To Jeff Goldblum. We watched that for a little while then Fiks wanted to play Mass Effect 2 on the PS5. So he did that, I read my book for a little while before looking into gyms (joining one is one of my goals this year), and taking a nap.

After my nap I did some shopping for gym clothes and shoes. Then I went over to my sister’s house and said hi to her and mom. We gave the kittens some treats and Lumi a bone to chew on for a while. I stayed and chatted and then I came back home and ordered pizza as Fiks plays Mass Effect 2. I read my book for a while and then we watched more According to Goldblum while we waited for pizza and for gaming to start.

I can’t remember if we had started the new campaign before I stopped last year, but I made a new character for the new campaign. I made a Kitsune (fox person), for D&D called Prim. She’s a tiny druid. Literally tiny coming in at a whopping 4’5″ and 75lbs. So we’re in a tower and fighting bad guys. Prim is helping my brother’s character, Dakka, hold a table against the door. Well the door gets broken and the table flies up to the ceiling with Prim still attached. I’m casting spells from the ceiling. I’m just highly entertained by this image. This is Prim by the way.

We mostly did combat, and not a lot of anything else, which is fine. It was fun. We hadn’t played since the beginning of December, so it was nice to be able to escape reality for a few hours. Fiks and I went to bed once we were done. I had a really hard time falling asleep after reading and finishing The Marskwoman.

SUNDAY

I woke up in the middle of the night and Fiks wasn’t there. I got up and found him asleep on the sofa. I tried to wake him up and have him come back to bed, but he wouldn’t wake up. So I just left him alone on the sofa and kept the bedroom door open in case he woke up and wanted to come back to bed. A few hours later my alarm went off and Fiks hadn’t come back. I got dressed to go to the grocery store and to take care of Mom while Poppa was at church. I woke Fiks up and asked him what happened, I literally kicked him out of bed. I felt horrible. He kissed me and told me it was okay, but I still felt bad.

I got to the grocery store okay, and it wasn’t too busy, so that was nice. I got everything we needed to my knowledge. Well, everything they had that we needed at least. I went over to my parents house and put my cold stuff in the fridge and went and said hi to Mom, my brother, and my niece. We sat and watched some of the old Pink Panther cartoons. I haven’t seen those in forever, so it was a nice thing to watch. There were also cinnamon rolls to eat, so I got breakfast too.

After my brother and niece left, my mom wanted to watch some Downton Abby, so I turned on Netflix and found it and turned it on for Mom. So we watched a couple of episodes before I took off to come home.

I came home and Fiks has left for amtgard, so I unloaded the groceries, took out the garbage cans, moved the laundry and hung up the masks to dry in the sun. I put the cold groceries away, have a snack while watching Lost In Space (holy shit!) and work on this. I turned on Johnny English (so good!) and unintentionally dozed off and on to that. Fiks came home during that time and went and got cleaned up while I watching Johnny English.

After the movie was over we watched a couple of YouTube Videos and then it was time to head over to my sisters house for my niece’s birthday party. So we had custom party hats made by the party girl, then we had pasta for dinner and cake for dessert after throwing ping pong balls at each other for 20-30 minutes. Quite the work out.

We said goodbye and came home and did our Sunday duties, taking out the garbage and recycling out to their respective cans. I’d been doing laundry off an on all day. I still have a load in the washer I need to move. Damn. After doing that Fiks and I worked on stuff for Disneyland, getting breakfast and dinner reservations booked and then we booked a deep tissue massage for both of us.

I’m going to call it here tonight folks.

~Just keep swimming