Missing My Max - UPDATE!

I come to you today with a heavy heart.  One of our four cats, Max, has dissappeared and Husband and I are completely shaken and heartbroken over it.

All of our cats are strictly indoor only pets, but Max got a taste for liking to go outside...through my stupidity.

Once in a while I'd take him outside with me for a strictly supervised visit to the backyard, never lasting any longer than just a few minutes.  He'd roll around in the dirt and get gloriously dirty, chomp on some catnip (that grows wild all over our yard) and after a few minutes I'd haul him back inside.

Unfortunately, as I see now, these little visits just fueled his desire to be out there and to try and sneak out whenever possible.  He succeeded a few times, but we always caught him right away.

Not this time.  This time he succeeded and we failed.  We believe he slipped out Monday night as I was letting the dog out one last time for the night.  I didn't notice him slip out, and I didn't notice that he wasn't inside.  But I sure noticed Tuesday morning when I got up to feed them.  No Max.  Nowhere in the house.  I ran outside calling for him, no luck.  I woke Husband up, frantic.  We both set out up and down the street while it was still dark out, searching.  I called in sick to work and I set about making flyers and posting them everywhere in our neighborhood.  Husband and I walked miles and miles all day looking, to no avail.  We left word at every vet clinic in town as well as the animal shelter at the Humane Society.  Haven't heard anything yet.

Mind you, our pets are like our kids.  Literally.  As we're unable to have kids of our own, we love and nurture and pamper our animals as if they are our children.  How would you feel if you woke up one morning and found your child missing?  Sick with fear, sick with worry, sick with grief over the very real possibility that you'll never see him again.....yes.  All that and more.

I managed to go into work for a few hours today to get done what I absolutely had to and then came home for the day at lunch.  I'm so glad I have a private office with a door that I can close, so no one could see me crying.  The rest of the day has been spent either sobbing like a child, or staring into space, silent and catatonic.

Three years ago I had to put my beloved Panther cat to sleep; he was 17 years old and failing rapidly from kidney disease.  That was the worst, most traumatic thing I had ever gone through up to that point in my life....but at least there was closure.  I knew what had happened. 

Now this is the second worst, most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me, but I have no closure with this.  How do I go on with normal life, not knowing?  He could be lost, unable to find his way back.  Someone could have picked him up and decided to keep him as their own.  He could have been attacked or killed by another animal.  He could have been hit by a car.  We just have no way of knowing his fate, and the chances that we'll ever see him again at this point are slim to none.  Do I just assume he's dead and grieve and go on with life?  It seems impossible right now.

If this were a real child, the police and everybody and their brother would be out searching....I don't have that luxury.  No, I'm supposed to just suck it up and deal; after all, "it's just a cat."  Well, #^@%!% that.

I just don't know how to handle this.  It may be awhile again before I feel like writing, all of the joy in life has been sucked out and I feel dead inside.  If you're the praying kind, please pray that our Max Max is safe.

Baby Max

Update 4/15/10:  Max decided to come back to us and grace us with his presence again.  Husband got up this morning at 5:30 to let the dog out, and when he turned around to go back inside there Max was as if he'd appeared out of nowhere.

We have no idea where he's been hiding all this time, but we think it was fairly close by and he was just too scared to come out.  We've had some bad weather the last couple of days and so all of the wind and thunder and rain probably kept him rooted to the spot.  He had some mud on him but otherwise appears unharmed, except for being dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted. 

I'm so relieved it's indescribable....my brain is still processing everything and it all feels a little surreal.  Last night after I posted this I said to myself, "Watch, now he'll show up."  LOL!  I guess blogging was my own good luck charm.  It really was that traumatic to me though.  To Husband too, though it's harder to discern with him.  Typical man. 

Thank you for letting me vent and for all your good wishes.  Max is recuperating from his little adventure and believe me, will never, ever, be allowed to get near the door again!

Happy Anniversary!

It's my wedding anniversary today!

This is my grandparent's wedding photo from 1907.  Cool huh?

Husband and I have been married now for nine years.  The time has flown by in a blink of an eye.  Slow down life, slow down......!

We went to Las Vegas to get married, sort of a "planned" elopement.  It was my second marriage, and I just didn't want to go through all of the fru-fru stuff again with the dress, decorations, etc. 

This isn't us, just a random photo from flickr!

We stayed at the Excalibur Casino and Hotel, which is right across the street from New York New York and the MGM Grand.

                   

No, we didn't go through the drive-thru wedding chapel, nor were we married by Elvis (although in hindsight that would have been kinda fun, lol!).  I booked a wedding package online that included the service, a limo ride from our hotel to the chapel and back again, and a bottle of champagne. 

It's cheap, but this has been "our" champagne ever since!

The service was simple and lasted only 6 minutes, as our wedding video can attest.  It was just us, the pastor and the photographer, outside in a gazebo.  It was perfect!

Afterwards, we had a lavish dinner at the MGM Grand at "21"....a reproduction of the famous "21 Club" restaurant in New York.  After dinner, we saw our first Vegas show, "FX".  The run at that time was starring Rick Springfield, but wouldn't you know it, the night we went he was sick and his understudy was filling in.  Despite that, it was spectacular.

Also during our stay in Vegas we got to visit Fremont Street (the original "strip"), the Star Trek Experience (which has since closed I think), and saw the Excalibur's show "Tournament of Kings" (if you've ever been to a "Medieval Times" restaurant, that's exactly what it's like).  All in all it was a great trip, wedding and honeymoon all rolled into one.

How are we celebrating tonight?  Nothing lavish, just a meal out with my parents, if I can figure out a restaurant that has something allowable on my diet!

                     

Miss Me?

Whew, it's almost been an entire month since I last posted!

I apologize that it's been so long, and that I haven't been keeping up with all of your blogs as well.  I've been doing a very poor job in managing my time....please forgive!

That said, this weight loss business has really become like a full-time job in and of itself! 

The last month I've been stuck in a rut - the last time I posted I announced that I had lost 15 pounds, but that's also where I've been stuck at all this time.  I hit my first plateau and have kind of been treading water without moving forward any further. 

Then, just this week, I stumbled onto a resource that I think will aid me in getting past the hump and back on track:  SparkPeople.com .

Here I can track every morsel of food and every drop of liquid that goes past my lips so I can see where I'm actually at with calorie/fat consumption....and I can track my exercising to tally up how many calories burned each day....and SparkPeople will tell me if I'm over or under for each.  There's a wonderful community of people on their message boards sharing tips and support that has been a wonderful help.  I've become quite obsessed with the site, spending all my free time there lately.  If you're on your own weight loss journey, check it out!

For some interesting, er....entertainment, check out this YouTube video my dad emailed me.   It's from 1944.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=BNR74UCidBI&feature=player_embedded

(I tried to embed it in this post but it wasn't working properly.  Click the link to watch!)

It was interesting to note what their body shape was.  They were lean and athletic yet still feminine with no uber-toned muscles or rippling "six-packs" like you see on gymnasts or dancers today.  Definitely a softer and prettier kind of look, versus a "harder" modern look. 

Have a great weekend, and I promise I'll get back in the blogging swing o' things!

The Sun'll Come Out...Tomorrow! yeah right

Oh sun, will you never come back?  We've been (im)patiently waiting for you for weeks now, won't you throw us a bone?  Pretty please?  With a polka dot bikini on top?

I don't know about you, but I am sick to death of dark, grey, and wet skies.  We've had 2 solid weeks of it and I'm about ready to committ myself to the nice men in white jackets, I tell ya what (said in best Hank Hill voice).  How do people in Seattle put up with it?  I'm not a sunshine and rainbows type of person as a general rule but boy oh boy what I wouldn't give for a sunny day right now. 

Some bright and sunny news though, I've officially lost 15 pounds now!  Woo hoo!  I don't know if I'll lose enough in time to don a little polka dot bikini this summer but there's always summer of 2011 to look forward to, lol.  I can't believe I've been able to stay committed for this long, so the fact that I have is heartening.  I've never actually lost weight before.  True!  I've had several half-hearted attempts at losing weight but would always quit before the numbers on the scale went down.  Seeing real results is keeping me motivated right now.  45 more pounds to go!

Have a fun St. Patrick's Day this Wednesday, and don't forget to wear your green!

10 Pounds Lost, Yay Me!

Once again I find myself horribly behind in blogland.  The days seem to be flying by and making my head whirl!  Hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to catch up a bit.

Everyone enjoying the Olympics?  I have been, especially the figure skating, of course.  :)  I have to admit though, I'll be glad when it's over.  This staying up until 11:00 pm every night is taking its toll.  Not that 11:00 pm is extraordinarily late, but it is when one is getting up at 5:30 am to workout before work!

Yep, this night owl is trying to turn into a morning person.  Working out after work just isn't practical for me.  I don't like delaying supper and having to take a 2nd shower; plus most days I'm so drained of energy by the time I get home it's too easy to skip it.   So, I'm getting the sweaty hard part done before work and my evenings are free to loaf as I want.  I'm in my second week of doing the 5:30 am thing and amazingly enough, I'm sticking with it!  It's really hard, but I'm a-doin it.  Thankfully, one of our cats, Sisco, has become my 2nd alarm clock as around 5:15 he'll stand outside our closed bedroom door and start demanding breakfast. 

Sisco

Not that this is anything new for him....but now instead of it being annoying, I'm thankful for his help in waking up.  :)

I can officially say I've lost 10 pounds, most of that since just Christmas.  Now only 50 more to go!  Oy....but it's getting easier.  I'm finally in the right mindset.  I can't wait until the weather starts getting warmer so I can expand my exercise options.  I never thought I'd be saying something like that, lol!

The meal planning thing is coming along nicely too...I'm actually looking forward to trying new recipes, and my cravings for fast food - both for taste and for convenience sake - are beginning to diminish.  The bad part is that I'm yearning to bake more and learn how to make more things from scratch, right at the same time I'm trying to lose weight.  I'll need to find a good balance there so that no matter how much I bake, I'll look like this.....

....and not this.

For all you Ginger Rogers fans out there, don't forget that Ginger is the Star of the Month for March on TCM!  The schedule is packed full of not only Fred and Ginger movies, but many of Ginger's more obscure, rarely seen early work.  Huey aka VKMfan over at Gingerology keeps an ongoing Ginger schedule on his blog (thanks Huey!), so pop over there to see what's coming up, and try your hand at some Ginger trivia!

That's all for now, have a great weekend!

In The Market For Patience...Anyone Got Any?

The last couple of weeks have seen some crucial changes made to our life.....and with any kind of change, there usually comes some growing pains as the change gets accustomed to.

Finances have made the need for frugality even more necessary and this year 2010 is going to see a lot of belt tightening - in more ways than one, hopefully!

One change:  meal planning.  In theory it seems like a no-brainer, and I've read for years about how it's necessary to do in order to keep on track with any kind of food budget.  I've had some half-hearted attempts at it in the past, but I finally buckled down and have done it, successfully, for the last two weeks.  This will be week three, and I can say it's been liberating, and just plain hard, all at once.  They say it takes doing something new 21 days before it becomes ingrained as habit.....so it should be easier next week, right?

(right?)

The upside to this is that I'm cooking more from scratch and relying less on processed, prepackaged foods....not to mention less fast food.  Which, of course, not only saves money but is much, much healthier. 

So, the other belt tightening is literal!  Now that I'm over my bad cold (which had turned into bronchitis) I'm really watching what I'm eating more and hitting the treadmill once again. 

It's been a challenge to stay motivated, with both the weight loss goals, and pinching pennies.....and I've only really just begun!  I've realized that what I'm lacking is patience. 


Once I make my mind up to do something, I get all fired up and overly-enthusiastic, ready to plunge in head first and make it happen, NOW!  The problem is.....losing weight, and saving money, take awhile.  There is no snapping one's fingers and fixing in an instant something that took years to go wrong.  It's a slow, daily slog....which after time has passed, one can look at the bank balance, and scale balance, and see progress, but in the meantime, everyday life has to happen and it can feel like everything's going at a snail's pace and I want to bang my head in frustration that it's not happening faster.   The enthusiastic novelty and rush of plunging in dies down and reality sets in.

Instant gratification.....that's what we've become slave to in our modern world, and I admit to it as well.  Not only do we want our food in less than a minute in the drive-thru, we want to shed 50 lbs overnight without having to work at it so we look to the latest fad diet pill to solve the problem.  It's madness!


How do you stay motivated to accomplish something that's gonna take a while?

Feng Shui

Ok, not real feng shui, but it's amazing at how rearranging just a tiny part of the home can lift one's spirits.

Today Husband and I pulled out the refrigerator to vacuum off the coils, an important part of making sure the unit runs as efficiently as possible.  Of course this is the first time we've done it since we moved in seven years ago [cough] but we'll ignore that part.

Once it was unplugged and away from the wall, of course we have to clean under it.  And clean the wall.  And then I start wondering how it would look if it were located on the other side of the room.....

See, we live in an old house.  Built in 1935, it's had very little updating done to it over the decades.  In some ways that's good, but in many ways that's bad.  For one, the entire kitchen looks as if it were tacked onto the house as an afterthought, with no real planning involved.

The area where the fridge is located looks like someone's botched idea of a breakfast nook.

 

  

And because of where the previous owners located the fridge, there was no place for it to plug into except around the corner, right by the sink.

Really bright, right? 

Because the fridge isn't confined to one designated space like most normal kitchens, I've always wondered if it wouldn't be more appropriate to put it on the opposite wall, where our "kitchen table" resides.  (we don't really use the table for anything other than to store stuff, consequently it just attracts clutter)  So, we moved it.  I neglected to take a picture of where the table was prior so just flip flop them as you look at the picture, heh. 

The table is now where the fridge used to be, and while the space is too small to fit more than one chair around it, it works because we only use it as a work/storage/clutter space anyway.

Sisco checking out the new digs.

 

Note the horrid yellow paint and green carpet.  I plan on painting the walls white soon, and will get some curtains put up as well, something retro looking with hints of red in it, to go with our cool table.  The carpet will have to wait awhile as we're in no position financially to rip it out and put down different flooring right now, but hopefully it will happen someday!

Everything seems much more open and inviting now in that area, and having the table there will make it a more convenient spot to utilize it in a way other that just collecting clutter.  It was a minor change, but it's made a huge difference in the feel of the kitchen.  I wish we would have thought of doing this years ago!

And, look what we found in the basement!  We had seen it there when we first moved in, left from a previous owner, but thought it had been thrown out over the years - nope, it was still there.  Of course, it doesn't work because it's the type of phone that has to be hard wired right into the phone line within the wall, but we thought it would look cool just hanging there as retro decor.  

 

Since our house truly is "retro," and we can't afford to update it, we might as well capitalize on it's retro-ness and accentuate where we can.

Something else Husband found in the basement was this old coffee can:

I was trying to figure out a convenient place to stash plastic grocery bags (used for trash and scooping out the litter boxes!) when Husband came up with the idea to put them in this old can, with a hole cut out of the plastic lid where we can just pull them out like a pop-up tissue box.  A frugal, creative solution, and one more piece of retro kitsch decor to add to the kitchen. 

Here's what the rest of the kitchen looks like:

The open shelf below the dishrack, that the crockpot is sitting on, is a place we hope to be able to fit and install a dishwasher in the future.

 

 

The dining room and kitchen are basically just one room, divided by an island of sorts.

So, that's a peek inside our house and how we spent our Sunday afternoon.  Thank you Husband for your hard work and creative ideas!  :)