Just came across these incredibly funny graphics by alostrael, poking fun at the inconsistencies of certain Republican politicians in the US when it comes to sexual issues.

Just what I needed at the end of a week of much work and stress and little sleep: a hysterical laughing fit. I feel so much better now.

Thanks to thewronghands for the link. I recommend you not be drinking any liquids when you click on it.

Due to a mega work crunch, I will not be going to as much Pride stuff as I'd hoped to, but two things I will be going to are Funkasia tonight and the Dyke March tomorrow.

The Funkasia event tonight - which is free, and happening from 7-11pm, at the south stage of the Pride Festival area - has been really under-publicized and for some reason doesn't even appear on the Pride Toronto web site. And Funkasia itself, and its host/organizer DJ Zahra, doesn't have a web site of its own any more, since it's been on hiatus for the past couple of years. But back when it was a regular event, it was amazing. Awesome Indian dance music - Bollywood songs, bhangra, etc. - and just a huge amount of fun.

Anyone else going tonight?

I can has 36 hour day plz?

Or just stop time for a week or so while I get caught up. That would do it too...

Maybe more like a month.

Alert to dog owners in Toronto - in case you haven't heard, there's been another case of dog poisonings in a public park. This time it was Dog Hill, in High Park -- someone laced the drinking water provided for the dogs there with antifreeze, and two dogs died.

Full story

This comes after a few years ago, someone left bits of meat laced with pesticide around Withrow Park in the east end, another popular park with dog owners. And I think in between those two there was an incident in another park where someone scattered broken glass and other sharp objects in a dogs' off-leash area in another park, though I don't really recall the details of that one.

This incident hit closer to home for me than the others, though, because I've been to Dog Hill with Kiska. She's probably drunk out those same water bowls. Not recently, fortunately, but still...

( Further thoughts )

The latest chapter in the ongoing saga of the Incredible Shrinking Woman. Also, further evidence that the fashion/clothing industry is insane:

Amongst the latest batch of stuff of mine that I picked up from chez kettunainen and optimystik was a tape measure. This morning, catching sight of it, it occurred to me that it had been a while since I last took my measurements. Also, that I have been finding my formerly best-fitting bra to be a little bit loose these days, and thus entertaining suspicions that I may have gone down a band size and/or cup size. Going down a cup size would actually be excellent news, in that it would make me a DD and thus back into the realm of being able to buy bras in normal stores.

So, I started measuring. First discovery was that yes, I am indeed smaller in all horizontal dimensions than last time I did this. The last measurements I can remember taking, a couple of years ago, were something like 44-34-47. That was after having lost some weight already.. Today's results: 42-32-42. I do believe this is the first time in my life that my bust and hip measurements have ever been the same. Also, it is no longer surprising to me that none of my pants fit any more, if I've lost two inches off my waist and five off my hips.

Next, the underbust measurement that is compared to the bust measurement to calculate bra size -- bearing in mind that just doing it on a chart is not always reliable, and that serious bra-fu is required if you want a really good fit. Anyway: 34".

So, I hit google and begin looking up bra size charts. The first one attempts to tell me that I am a 38D. This seems suspicious to me, so I experiment a bit and discover that D is the largest size it has - you could (theoretically) have a 20" difference between your bust and underbust measurements and it would still tell you you were a D. D is actually supposed to reflect a 4" difference. I have an 8" difference. Fail.

So I try another, from a site that I have heard before carries a wide range of sizes. That one lists an 8" difference as "FF". Never seen a double F before -- I was a 38F last I checked (having been sized by a bra-fu master at a store that sadly no longer exists). But cup sizes vary wildly between different countries: an F in European sizes (which rather sensible go through the alphabet in the normal fashion instead of randomly doubling letters) is an E in UK sizes, where they have double D and then go on to E, and a DDD in US sizes, although in my experience US DDD bras never actually fit me -- they seem to be designed on the assumption that anyone with large breasts is also large all over, probably due to the, er, peculiarities of the average American physique these days.

So I look over the rest of the chart, trying to make sense of this - to find that the version this site is using goes up to DDDD, which I have also seen, and then straight to FF without actually hitting E or F on the way. Who on earth thinks up these things? But it was when I compared their version of US sizing to the European sizing with which I am more familiar that the true WTF-ness of the situation began to sink in: DD = E, DDD = F, DDDD = G, FF = H!

H? H?! How is it even remotely possible that, having lost two inches from my bust since being sized as a 38 F, I am now two freaking cup sizes larger?! Although, according to this site's idea of band size, two band sizes smaller?

I check another site that deals with the full range of sizes for comparison, after an interval of trying a few more that either stop at DD or list any size larger than a certain cutoff as "etc." But it does indeed seem that an 8" difference between underbust and bust classes one as an H, though other sites say that a 34" underbust measurement is actually a band size of 38.

I measure again, a couple of times, trying to make sure that I haven't made some grievous error, and the first time get 42 again for the bust while the second time I get 41 (the underbust measurement stays the same both times). I guess it depends a bit on how you hold the tape measure. But even 41 would still put me as a G.

So I am apparently supposed to believe that while my bust measurement has gotten smaller, my cup size has gotten larger while my band size has stayed the same.

I think that instead I will choose to believe that bra sizing charts are fucking useless, and that I need to take foxesdaughter's recommendation of visiting her bra-fu master on the Danforth. Whenever I next have some disposable income, anyway...

P.S. Courtesy of poisoninjest, I have found the perfect userpic for posts such as this...

The 20 Worst Foods in America

This article is a really good illustration of the fact that there is something really seriously wrong with the typical North American (American, especially) diet. I know, not all food in chain restaurants is as crazily unhealthy as the things they've highlighted here, but a lot of it is.

It kind of took me back to when kettunainen, optimystik and I went to Ruby Tuesday's, an American chain, in Niagara Falls, back when we were having to make periodic trips across the border to keep Kettu's immigration status kosher while waiting for her application to be processed. I ordered a chicken salad, thinking it looked like one of the healthier things on the menu, and when it came, at first I thought they'd brought me the wrong thing, because I literally could not see any green on it at all. Then I took a closer look and realized that there was in fact a thin bed of lettuce at the bottom - overlaid with massive mounds of grated cheddar cheese, crumbled bacon, sugar-coated nuts, and deep-fried, breaded chicken bits. And a greasy, creamy dressing to boot. I later checked the nutrition info on their web site, and that "salad" had 974 calories, and 69 grams of fat.

And the scary thing is -- that wasn't the worst thing on the menu, not nearly. The Chicken & Broccoli Pasta, which I had almost ordered before settling on the salad as a healthier alternative, had a whopping 1682 calories, and 93 grams of fat. That's insane.

It's no wonder that we're seeing such a high death rate from "diseases of affluence"...

I am very displeased with my local laundromat. VERY displeased.

I was doing laundry earlier this evening - having braved the mega thunderstorm to venture out to it because I knew I wouldn't have time tomorrow and it really needed to be done. The laundromat theoretically opens at 7am and closes at 11pm, but many nights I've seen the door still propped open at midnight, 1am or later. I think sometimes it doesn't close at all. Still, I prefer to err on the side of caution, so I made sure before going home to hang up my wet clothes that the ones in the dryer would be done before 11:00.

I come back at about 10:50pm to find... The door locked and no one there, though all the lights were still on. Whatever fucktard is in charge of closing it up at night, who apparently doesn't even bother to close it at all most of the time, closed it early -- without bothering to check whether any of the machines were still going or whether there was laundry in any of them!

So now I have to (a) sleep on a bed with no sheets tonight, since the sheets are in the damn dryer, and (b) get up at the fucking crack of dawn tomorrow to go retrieve my laundry, since I do not have sufficient trust in human nature to believe that it will all still be there if I sleep in and go later in the morning.

And of course, I have no way of knowing if whoever it is that doesn't bother to close it at the correct time actually bothers to open it at the correct time in the morning, or whether I will go over there at 7am to find it still locked, and have to keep checking back until it opens, rather than, say, retrieving my damn laundry, bringing it home, and going back to bed.

The good and bad thing about this is that the laundromat in question is owned by none other than... my new landlord. I don't think he opens and closes it himself - he doesn't live anywhere near here - but whoever he's hired to do it is a complete fuckup. Anyway, his ownership of the place is bad because the general level of disrepair and neglect of that laundromat bodes ill for this building, but good because at least I know who to complain to.

. . .

In completely unrelated news, I have previously recommended the web novels of Alexandra Erin, in particular Tribe, Void Dogs, The Three Seas, and Tales of MU. But she has recently reactivated a long-defunct one, Star Harbor Nights, which has a superhero theme, and like a lot of her work, tends to often satirize the genre it's based in.

So now I am catching up on the original series, which can be found on a separate site, so that the revived series will make sense once I get there. And while I like the vast majority of her writing, every now and then I come across a particular snippet that's just especially brilliant -- be it in the sense of thought-provoking, or just laugh-out-loud funny. Tonight's stellar quote was of the latter sort, and made me just about snort soymilk out my nose:

"A census taker tried to quantify me once," Rhyme said. "I ate his liver with an overused movie reference and a clichéd slurping noise."

If for some reason you are not yet reading any of the various works of Ms. Erin, you really, really need to start.

. . .

And now I should really go to bed, having set the alarm for four and a half hours from now. Laundromat: fired.

OK, so who else wants to go to the Strawberries & Asparagus spring festival in Cedarvale Park tomorrow? I'll be going, as will kettunainen and optimystik, though I'm not sure what time yet. If there are other people who'd like to go, maybe we can make a group outing of it?

There will be live music, solar-power-cooled ice cream, a green business marketplace, electronics recycling, yummy food, children's activities, fair trade chocolate, Zen meditation and other cool stuff. It runs from 11 to 5 though my best guess is I'd be going up in the early afternoon, maybe around 1 or 2.

The first, for the vegan or lactose-intolerant or otherwise non-dairy-eating people who might be reading this:

( What the hell do you put in tea? )

. . .

Question the second, specifically for female residents of Toronto,
( particularly those whose breasts have been assigned their own postal code: )

As most of you probably know, Health Canada proposed a little while ago to declare the endocrine disrupting chemical Bisphenol A (leached by polycarbonate plastic) a toxic substance, and ban it from baby bottles and infant formula cans. This is good. However, it's used in a lot more places than just that, including in a lot of food and water containers, like those clear plastic Nalgene water bottles and the plastic, and currently they don't seem to be in a hurry to ban it from those places.

According to ToxicNation.ca, Wednesday, June 18 is the last day fthat t he public has to make an impact on the federal government’s decision on how to regulate the toxic chemical. On this day the 60-day comment period on BPA closes and the government will begin reviewing the comments submitted by the Canadian public, stakeholders, and industry.

Send them a message now!

For those interested, I just set up an LJ syndication feed for news items from the Toronto Farmers' Markets Network web site:

to_farmers_mkts

Add it to your friends list if you'd like to get occasional updates on new markets, seasonal eating, special events, etc.

X-posted to buylocaltoronto

Wow.

I just spent the weekend and then some (to be specific: Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings plus Saturday and Sunday daytimes) at the Radical Business Intensive, a really amazing business and marketing seminar for green or otherwise socially conscious business people.

My brain is now all explodey from being so full of information, plus I have a 600+ page workbook in a mega binder to keep me busy for the rest of my life the next several months, and an audio CD full of more stuff, and a whole bunch of perks from other seminar participants -- there was a lot of focus on building community and we were all encouraged to donate stuff to go into little loot bags we got at the end.

If you run any kind of business, and are at all a progressive/non-corporate/generally cool person, you really, really, really need to jump any opportunity you may ever have to go to this event or to hear Tad Hargrave speak in pretty much any other context for that matter. Or just check out his website and download the "Way of Radical Business" e-book. Caveat: the site is kind of a design nightmare and looks like a generic, cheesy marketing site, but he's a lot cooler than that. And does not in person look anywhere near as dorky as he does in the photo on the site. Seriously, he made anarchist jokes and wore a Utilikilt. Not your average marketing guru.

Did I mention that the seminar was pay what you can? Apparently he'll be coming to Toronto again in the fall, and does this in various other cities from time to time also. Massively recommended.

Well. There are now two partially assembled Ikea BILLY bookshelves in my entrance hall. Initially this filled me with a sense of accomplishment, until I got the part where I tried to stand one of them up (having had them lying down on their sides to assemble them.

Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself. First thing that happened was I got all the wooden pegs in (the first step in putting the frames together), discovered this made them into sort of tippy parallelograms, and quickly started trying to fasten in the little bolt thingies that looked like they were meant to hold them more securely. Checked to see what sort of screwdriver was necessary for this, and discovered that oh wait, these don't want a screwdriver at all.

Ikea: it's Swedish for HEX KEY. How could I have forgotten?

Off I go to see if I can obtain a set of hex keys from a corner store in my neighbourhood at 11:30pm. First, this involves trying to squeeze past/over/under/around/through the two partially assembled bookcases, which as I may have mentioned are in the entrance hall. Mostly blocking it. But I successfully got out. Sadly, the one with the large-ish hardware section did not have hex keys. Happily, the one with the almost nonexistent hardware section did. Go figure.

So, back to apartment, manage to squeeze through bookcases again, put in bolts, tighten bolts with hex key. All good.

Attempt to slide back pieces of bookshelves in along grooves placed there for that purpose. Discover that backs are supposed to be screwed down. Go looking for small package of screws I bought several days ago with the (correct) expectation I might be needing a lot of them. Cannot find.

Off I go again after squeezing through bookcases again, to get screws from the same corner store. In store, am affectionately attacked by an attention-starved ginger cat that wants to play and does not know the meaning of "soft paws!". Escape with only a few scratches, and a package of screws.

Back in (clambering through bookcases again). Set about screwing on back of first bookcase. Success. Then discover I positioned it wrong and that one edge was supposed to have slid under these little holder thingies on the middle fixed shelf. Oops. Unscrew, reposition, rescrew. Discover other part of bookcase back is in upside down. Thankfully have not screwed down yet. Have to move bookcase about three feet down the hall in order to slide this part out, though, as I originally put it in from the other end, which is now blocked by the one I did screw down. Successfully remove and reinsert, screw down.

Ikea: it's Swedish for "some assembly required".

Worry a little that things don't seem to be fitting together quite right, but what do I really expect from 20-year-old Ikea bookshelves? Everything's a little warped, so it's kind of like that Lovecraftian angles-are-wrong thing.

Move on to second bookshelf. Start to slide back piece on, then realize that the top shelf is in backwards. Oops.

Consider that maybe I really don't need to get these up and finished tonight after all. Go back to computer and try to do work. Get distracted by half-finished bookshelves in my peripheral vision. Cave and go back to bookshelf assembly after about two minutes of attempting work.

Remove all bolts from second bookcase, lift off side, turn shelf around, realize it's really supposed to be the middle shelf because it has those little holder thingies for the back pieces on it, swap middle and top shelf, make sure all the shelves are actually facing the right way this time, put side back on, put all bolts back in. Slide back pieces most of the way in, blocked by clamps holding damaged part of one shelf that is currently being glued back together.

Return attention to first shelf. Decide I am now ready to stand it up and add the four movable shelves that go on with little pegs in addition to the three bolted-on fixed shelves, so that I can at least unpack half the books tonight.

Can anyone guess from the above description what was wrong with this idea?

You may have noted that I was assembling these bookshelves -- very tall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves -- in a hallway. A long, narrow hallway. With them tipped up on their sides. The bolts that hold everything together go in the side.

Both sides, to be precise. Not just the one currently facing upward. Oops.

Manage to lift the now relatively heavy, mostly-assembled bookcase a little way off the ground. Discover what happens when the underneath side is not bolted on. Drop now-half-falling-apart bookcase back down, with muttered expletives. Everything lands wrong and one back piece pops back out from under the little holder thingies. Manage to get all wooden pegs lined up again and bookshelf back together. Discover that back piece is now stuck out in a warped position and will not go back under holder thingies. Not unless I unscrew it again, slide it out, put it back again, and screw it down again. Do this.

Stare at bookcase which is now mostly assembled again, but still lacking any bolts on the underneath side, as is its companion with the still-being-glued shelf. Try to decide how the hell to get either one of them into a vertical position, or even a turned-over-to-the other-side position, so that I can put the rest of the bolts in, without having them fall apart in the process, all within the confines of a long narrow hallway.

Am fresh out of ideas as to how to do that.

Ikea: it's Swedish for "Fuck this, I need a drink."

I've mentioned to a number of you in real-life conversation that I've lately been hooked on the works of a web novelist by the name of Alexandra Erin. And I keep telling people I'll post the links to her various ongoing tales (four of them that are at least semi-regularly updated) here one of these days.

Well, this evening she mentioned in the latest update to my favourite, Tribe, might be in jeopardy if it doesn't start attracting more readers, but if it does, might start being updated more often. So this seems to be as good a time as any to finally post those links:

• Tribe: Fantasy in Miniature. As mentioned above, this one is my favourite. It's kind of a gritty inner-city dark fantasy with some really interesting ideas about magic, and a similar feel to some of Neil Gaiman's work. The "in miniature" of the title refers to the fact that it's an "experiment in serial micro fiction", in that it's made up of mini-chapters that are each 333 words in length. This is not as annoying as it sounds, because the story is so compelling (to me, at least).
  
  I would like it even more if it were actually updated more often, which is why I am doing my part to try and promote it... Read, comment, let her know if you like it! Please!
  
  
• Void Dogs. This one's more science fiction than fantasy, although it has elements of both. It's pretty much a space opera, with a somewhat Firefly-ish feel, except that the ships are powered by alchemy and there are other magical elements here and there. It's got some really interesting, quirky characters, and a fair bit of humour in it. I should probably mention that some parts here and there are somewhat NSFW, though, for those who care about such things.
  
  You can get updates on your friends page by adding void_dogs.
  
  
• The Three Seas is more classic, sword-and-sorcery-ish fantasy, though like most of her work it's still got its own quirks and is anything but generic. It's also probably the most G-rated of the lot, being less dark than Tribe and without the sexual elements of Void Dogs or...
  
  
• Tales of MU (Magisterius University). Last but definitely not least, this is by far her most popular and most frequently updated story. The popularity may be in large part accounted for because a lot of it is, not to put too fine a point on it, porn. But not all, and those who start reading it looking just for that will probably end up disappointed by the amount of the story that's actually devoted to thinks like plot and character development, which is what makes it actually interesting.
  
  It's about a university for magicians, but this is definitely not just Harry Potter in a slightly older age group (except for the last April Fool's Day update). It's set in the university's one residence for non-human students, and gets into a lot of interesting social dynamics regarding the treatment of nonhumans of various types by the dominant human society and by each other. There are also a lot of satirical digs at the fantasy genre in general and role-playing games in particular. And, as mentioned above, copious amounts of sex, most of it queer and/or kinky.
  
  In the beginning I actually found Tales of MU kind of annoying because some of the characters came across as kind of shallow and stereotypical, but as the story progresses, they all develop depth and complexity. Highly unlikable characters end up displaying redeeming features, likable ones turn out to have major flaws, and sometimes it seems like almost the entire cast needs about 20 years of therapy (the author definitely doesn't shy away from dealing with disturbing issues, or making her characters intriguingly fucked up), but it's always interesting, and rarely predictable.
  
  You can get updates on your friends page by adding talesofmu.

You can also, if you get hooked on all her stories like me, get an LJ feed of the whole lot of them by adding alexandra_tales. I think that's currently the only way to get notified of updates to Tribe and The Three Seas, since they don't seem to have LJ feeds of their own (yet).

With any of these, BTW, I would recommend starting from the beginning. Don't just dive in wherever the story's at now -- you'll just get confused. The first three are all short enough that you can get caught up in a few days -- Tales of MU, having upwards of 200 chapters thus far, will likely take you a wee bit longer.

Happy reading...

Many things are making me happy today, even though I still have lots of work to do and stresses to deal with and what not. Here are some of them:

1. The side streets in my new location being so green, full of big trees and lush gardens, so that even though my apartment itself is right on the corner of a busy street and has no balcony or garden space itself, I do not suffer any lack of "green time" -- every walk with Kiska is restorative to me. (Interesting side note: there's actually scientific evidence that exposure to nature helps reduce ADD symptoms).
   
   
2. In particular, the fact that lilacs are currently in bloom.
   
   
3. Likewise, having two decent-sized parks very close to me, one a mere two blocks northeast, and another, about four times bigger, five or six blocks south. Also, a huge ravine about ten blocks north and another (part of the same riverbed) eight blocks east or so.
   
   
4. And the Wychwood Farmer's Market, just a couple of blocks east -- even though I missed the opening day of it last Saturday due to DrupalCamp Toronto and will be missing the next one due to the Radical Business Intensive. But both those events are happy-making in their own way.
   
   
5. And the fact that the Green Art Barns will be opening later this year, just a few blocks southeast.
   
   
6. Seriously, living here is the next best thing to living in the country -- but on a street with lots of cool little stores and restaurants and a 24-hour public transit line, a 5-10 minute ride from the subway. Best of both worlds.
   
   
7. Visits with Aidan -- I was there yesterday and will be again on Wednesday. I still miss being able to see him every day, but things could be a lot worse.
   
   In particular, yesterday I found myself enjoying the way that he can managed to be insanely cute even when doing something really annoying. He had spilled water all over his shirt -- for some reason he absolutely loves drinking water from a glass, but hasn't quite got the process under control yet, so there's usually a lot of spillage. So I was trying to change his shirt afterwards, and got the old one off with no problem -- he's always happy to get clothes off him, but putting the new one on turned out to be, er, challenging. He may not have good water-glass control yet, but he has excellent reflexes and is incredibly wiggly, and can get both his arms in under the shirt and push it up off his head in much less time than it takes me to pull it down over his head, all while simultaneously twisting and wiggling in about 17 directions at once.
   
   I think it took me about ten minutes to get that shirt onto him, but he was so cute in the way he fought it off that I was laughing the whole time and it all felt kind of like a game.
   
   
8. I am also happy that my eating habits have changed enough since the last point when I lived on my own that my fridge is half full of fresh vegetables, because the vegetable drawer is nowhere near big enough to fit them all.
   
   
9. And finally, the song listed in the music field of this post is massively happy-making. I was all prepared to hate the new version of Nightwish after all the drama with them publicly firing their lead singer, but when I first heard "The Poet and the Pendulum"... Oh Gods! *faints*
   
   It's a 14-minute epic that's divided into several parts so that it's like a number of songs blended together, or maybe the separate movements of a symphony, given the level of classical influence. In particular, there's a part about a minute and a half in where the very slow and soft intro shifts into this breathtakingly intense sort of -- I don't know what to call it -- neoclassical explosion that's equal parts metal aggression and symphonic precision, with strings and guitars and what not blended perfectly -- words don't really seem to quite be able to do it justice. All I know is that no matter how many times I hear that song, that part always makes me have to stop whatever I'm doing, close my eyes, and just listen...
   
   It's the musical equivalent of a really earthshaking orgasm. I kid you not. Listening to it actually tends to leave me flushed and hyperventilating, with my pulse racing... It's not the only piece of music that's ever hit me that way, but there are very few, and fewer still where the recorded version will do it -- usually that sort of reaction is more likely to happen with live music. If you haven't heard that song, and you have any liking at all for strange fusions of classical music and rock, you really, really need to. Preferably on good speakers, with the volume turned up really high.

And now that I have shared at least a representative sampling of the happy that is today, I should really get back to work. Because actually getting some long-overdue projects finished and being able to invoice for them would be another kind of happy, one which I am very much looking forward to.

Teacher Lets Students Vote out Classmate, 5

A kindergarten teacher had all her students tell an autistic boy what they disliked about him and then vote as to whether or not he could stay in the class. Now he screams if his mother tried to bring him anywhere near the school.

Some people should not be allowed anywhere near children, much less allowed to teach them.


(Link lifted from gesigewigus)

Did I mention there are three areas of the new apartment (kitchen, washroom and entrance hall) that have those sort of tile ceilings like office buildings do? Complete with fluorescent panels?

Behold: http://www.fluorescentgallery.com/

WANT!

And... their shipping prices to Canada are decidedly reasonable, despite the fact that these things must be pretty damn large. All in all, I am virtually certain that there will be three of these in my future. I just have to decide which...

Amber seems to be doing OK on her new medication regimen. She's eating well, and has put back on a bit of weight, her fur is a little softer, and she seems a little less agitated and has once or twice even let me sleep through the whole night without getting up to feed her partway through.

And I have discovered that the only good way to get a pill inside that cat is to crush it up and mix it into a little bit of canned cat food or plain yogourt. Anything else is an invitation to arterial bleeding (on my part).

Towards the end of this week she needs to go back in for a follow-up appointment and get her thyroid levels checked again to make sure the medication is having the desired effect.

Thanks to all who sent their good wishes/energy/etc.

Hopefully she will not be overly traumatized by moving next week...

I picked Amber up from the vet today. The verdict is that it does indeed appear to be hyperthyroidism, although the test results are not really quite as clear-cut as they could be. Her thyroid levels were above normal, but only by a little bit - not as high as hyperthyroid cats often area. But Dr. Toole said that if she had been that sick with just about anything else, her thyroid levels would probably have been at least somewhat depressed, so their being higher than normal plus the other signs made it by far the most likely thing.

So I now have a little bottle of pills, from which I am supposed to give her half a tablet every 12 hours. If anything changes (other than just gradual improvement) I'm to let him know right away, and she needs to go back in two weeks to have her thyroid levels re-checked.

She seems much improved - when I let her out of the carrier, despite being in the room where she eats and spends most of her time, she ran out of the room and proceeded to run all over the apartment, going everywhere except where I wanted her to be, which is pretty much standard Amber behaviour. :-) Then she demanded to be fed, and after eating, she lounged on the floor in front of the bookshelves in the hallway, licking at the part of her front leg that was shaved for the IV with annoyance but otherwise seeming pretty much her normal self. Although those who know Amber will probably be thinking "You mean she's got a normal self?"

The down side: the vet bill was a lot more than I thought it would be. Who knew that full blood & urine workup + chest x-rays + a solid weekend in the hospital on an IV receiving various medications would add up to nearly $1100?! Guess that definitely rules out the radioactive iodine option - that involves a 1-2 week hospital stay, which would be freakishly expensive even aside from the actual treatment itself. Plus, they then have to stay in isolation at home for another two months or something like that, with their owner only being allowed around them for about an hour a day, because, well, they're radioactive. For a 16-year-old cat, really not such a great idea.

So, pills it is. And I am incredibly thankful that among Dr. Toole's many virtues is flexibility about payment arrangements, because I will not be able to pay off the majority of that bill until the Show Your Ontario money comes in. I made a partial payment with most of what I had left in the bank, and the rest will just have to wait a little while.

Thanks to everyone who sent energy, good wishes, etc. It was much appreciated.

Tonight I was having dinner at my father and stepmother's place, and fielding the inevitable parental inquisition about my breakup with kettunainen, when the phone rang -- Kettu was calling to tell me that the older of my two cats, Amber (see userpic) appeared to be very sick. She and optimystik had found her crouching awkwardly in the hallway, looking disoriented, and that when she had tried to run away from them, she'd been all wobbly and unable to balance.

I had been a little worried about Amber for a while - she's not a young cat, and while she's always been slender, lately she'd seemed to be getting disturbingly thin, and she's been getting increasingly weird and neurotic about food. She will only eat canned, not dry, and changes her mind regularly about what kind she likes. If she decides she doesn't like a particular kind (even if she liked it fine the week before, she will completely refuse to eat, and just wander around the apartment crying and scratching things, and eventually start vomiting clear liquids. Usually switching her to another kind works, but sometimes I have to try two or three.

Also, she will generally only eat in a very sheltered space (currently, under Optimystik's bed is her preferred location, and sometimes she won't even eat there unless I sit by the bed where she can see me until she's finished.

And - she needs to be fed small amounts every couple of hours, because she will only eat a little at a time, and if I leave food in her bowl either Claribell will eat it, or it will dry out, which will usually make Amber not want it any more. And yes, that "every few hours" means at night too. She gets me up in the night more often than Aidan ever has...

Despite all the food neuroses, she does seem to put away a fair bit of food, and yet she never gains any weight and if anything seems to be losing weight.

Anyway... I left right away and my dad gave me a ride back to the house to collect Amber, and then off to our very cool vet who routes the clinic calls to his cell phone after hours and lives above the clinic, so he can come down and see patients at pretty much any hour if it's important. Although it was kind of a stroke of good luck that we caught him - the phone forwarding thing hadn't taken properly and we weren't initially able to get through on the phone, but we went there anyway, and I finally got hold of the vet while phoning one last time from the parking lot - turned out he'd been out for the evening and had then realized the phone forwarding wasn't working, and stopped back in at the clinic just for a minute to fix it - and that was when we got there. Lucky for Amber.

She is now staying there for the night, on IV fluids since she appeared to be very dehydrated. I was right about the weight loss - she'd weighed 9.5 pounds at her last appointment and is now down to 7.2! That's a loss of about a quarter of her body weight - as if a 120 pound person went down to 90 pounds. She also appears to have developed a level 4 heart murmur, which could be serious and her heart rate was really fast. So they're running some tests and will also do a chest x-ray tomorrow morning to see about her heart.

The vet thinks that the major problem is most likely her thyroid - apparently when cats are seriously hyperthyroid, it can cause the kind of disorientation Kettu saw, as well as weight loss combined with insatiable appetite, restlessness, rapid heartbeat, etc. It's apparently fairly common in older cats. I'm hoping it is that, because compared to some things, it's fairly easy to treat. They usually just go on medication, though apparently there's also a radioactive iodine treatment available. But there are other possibilities, so we won't know for sure until the tests come back. At one point early in the examination he thought it might be fatty liver disease, which is what killed Bastian and sickened Miko to the point where she caught the respiratory infection that killed her, but when he took a urine sample he said it wasn't discoloured the way that urine of cats with liver disease usually is. (Thankfully!)

I am mainly just posting this to ask people to try and send a bit of energy or at least good thoughts in Amber's direction, and hopes for this to turn out to be something simple to treat, with a good chance of recovery.