Month: December 2011

THIS MEOW!! 😀 😀 😀

I was waiting until after 9am to call the animal hospital and then they called me, which freaked me the fuck out because they said “no news is good news!” and that they’d only call if something went really wrong. I saw the number and my stomach cramped up and I started sweating up a storm, it was gross. HOWEVER she’s doing okay! Her blood sugar is finally back up (it’s too high, in fact, LOL DIABETES YOU SAUCY MINX) and they said I could either leave her at the hospital for a second day and they’d monitor her levels, or I could bring her home and take her to my regular vet tomorrow and they could monitor her levels. I’ve decided to go with the latter, which I have no doubt will be cheaper, plus it’ll free up space in the emergency hospital, because Saturday nights/Sundays are their busiest time. Also I just want to get her home, I miss her dumb face and annoyingness.

Also, I woke up this morning to a ton more donation notifications and when I checked my Paypal I found that I have almost $800 in donations/etsy sales rn. I’M OVERWHELMED BY THE OUTPOURING OF LOVE AND MONEY YOU GUYS.

A lot of people said they wished they could donate more but almost everyone sent five or ten dollars and that REALLY added up, like I said yesterday LITERALLY ANYTHING HELPS and it totally did, so THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I don’t know yet how much more I’ll have to pay today on top of the $1,300 I paid yesterday, plus whatever I have to pay for her to be at my regular vet all day tomorrow, plus I have to by a glucometer testing kit thing with the strips or w/e, so I’m still running the sale on my etsy (use CATAID25 for 25% off!) and still accepting donations but really, THANK YOU THANK YOU ALL A MILLION TIMES THANK YOU. Everyone who donated or bought something or retweeted/reblogged/shared on facebook, or even just said something nice. You all helped me through one of the worst days of my life.

If you were linked here from facebook/twitter/tumblr, please click here for an update on my kitty.

A couple of people have asked me if they could contribute to help with Claire’s vet bills and after getting an update from the vet this evening (her blood sugar is still way too low even after eight hours with an IV full of sugar, she’s not flinching when you put your hand in front of her face i.e. she can’t see it i.e. she’s currently pretty blind) I can safely say ANYTHING HELPS because at this point I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring her home tomorrow, and every day she spends in the hospital is another $1,500-$1,900 (the picture of the estimate I posted before didn’t include taxes).

Anyway I’ve added a donation button to the righthand sidebar on my blog, and I’ll also put it at the end of this post. EDIT: I’ve removed the donation buttons because my bills are taken care of. Thank you again to everyone who helped out! I know it’s a big dumb internet cliché to ask for money to help pay your cat’s vet bills, but OH WELL.

I’m running a Cat Aid sale on my etsy shop, get 25% off your order with the code CATAID25. If you’ve been thinking about getting a glitter banner now’s the time! There’s some new stuff too; in addition to the fancy letters for the Christmas banners I’ve added custom ombre glitter banners. They’re really beautiful and also cost effective! Who wouldn’t want to buy one of those? Cat haters, that’s who.

I know it’s the holiday season and lots of people are stretched pretty thin financially, but I’m not even kidding, LITERALLY ANYTHING WILL HELP.

I’m not having a good day.

That’s my poor sick kitty meow in intensive care at the emergency animal hospital after I got up this morning to find her unresponsive on the living room floor. Like she was breathing and everything but her eyes were staring and not blinking and her body just… wasn’t working. I tried to get her to sit up and she just collapsed like a poor sad pancake.

We took her to our vet right away and they sent us the emergency hospital, where we were told she was very hypoglycemic (low blood sugar), with low blood pressure and a low temperature. Just low everything you need to be alive, basically. Because we don’t know how long she was like that (probably a while, judging by her temperature) they don’t know what kind of damage their might be to her brain (hypoglycemia = your brain starves). She could go blind. She could die.

Because she’s pretty old and what with this whole diabetes thing, I thought I would be okay if something happened to her. Like it wouldn’t be totally unexpected or shocking if she passed away, so I thought I had resigned myself to it, but I guess not. As soon as I realized something wasn’t right I just started crying and crying, I wrapped her up in a blanket and carried her around the house crying and then when I was getting ready to go to the vet I made Taylor carry her around because I couldn’t bear for her to be left on the floor.

I’m supposed to call the animal hospital in a couple of hours to see how she’s doing, and I’m really hoping against hope that she’s doing better because I feel like her passing away is gonna break my heart. Also, this:

They bring you the estimate while you’re waiting and let you “discuss it as a family” before you decide, and it’s like, either I’m gonna pay all of my money to try to save her, or I just let her die. How can I just let her die? I can’t. I just can’t, she’s just a tiny kitty and I’m supposed to take care of her! But that estimate is for just one day, if they need to keep her longer I can’t afford it, so please send all your positive thoughts to my poor Claire-Claire. I just want to bring her home.

My beautiful friend Brooke bought a Sailor Moon cat face banner from me a couple months ago and she decided to put it on her little Christmas tree this year.

LOVE! I think it looks so cute! If anyone else has pictures of banners I’ve made for them that they’d like to share, leave a comment or email me at taniewanie@gmail.com.

When I make glitter banners I generally end up with glitter scraps. Lots and lots of glitter scraps. Scraps to small to use for letters but too big to throw away.

I’ve been saving them all up in a box but it’s basically overflowing so it was really time to do some scrap crafts! I decided to try making a dot garland. Using a quarter and a penny as templates I cut out lots and lots and lots of glitter circles and stuck them to a ribbon.

So cute, right?

I also made the red, green and silver one I posted previously. Unfortunately I ran out of the ribbon so I used monofilament instead, which looks cool but I haaaaaaate working with it.

I have ideas for all sorts of other dot garlands, so good thing I have all those scraps!

A little more of the holiday decorations at my house, this time the foyer.

Sym drew a panda & bunny dressed for winter to put on my reminders board (which I never actually use for reminders anymore, oops). I put up my Joyeux Noel banner and some red, white and green paper bunting I made last year. I hung up my old white wreath and unearthed the snowman light from the bottom of my Christmas storage bin. The little red felt tree on the right is from Ikea, I love it but haven’t really found a home for it yet. Right now it’s just perched on my Spud grocery bins. PRE-POST UPDATE: I wasn’t able to find somewhere to put the little tree when it was put together, so I took it apart and stuck one half to one of the canvases, and I actually really like how it looks!

The green wreath is actually meant to be on my front door, but I haven’t been able to find a hanger for it. So weird, I know I saw millions of them in stores a few weeks ago but now I can’t find anything

I bought a plain artificial wreath and added tiny white ornaments from Ikea (I pulled the tops off and stuck them right onto the ends of the branches), some fake red berries (which I had stuffed in a box for years), and tiny gold leaf garland. Originally I was going to wrap the garland around the wreath, but that looked cruddy so instead I cut it into 4-6″ lengths and tediously twisted it around individual branches of the wreath. Really.

I hung this red, green and silver dot garland (more on this in another post) up on the cloud wall just to take a picture, but I think I might leave it there, and make some more for the other birds!

In case you didn’t know, I love finding old furniture and making it awesome, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve done it exactly once. My desk really is great though!

Anyway I spotted this little end table in the alley the other night and made Taylor bring it home for me. Right now it’s sitting on the patio, filled with diatomaceous earth (I need to know it’s bedbug-free before I bring it inside) but soon it’ll be painted turquoise (maybe?) and beside my bed.

In other fixer-upper news, this happened this weekend.

In case you can’t tell, that’s the remains of the toilet roll holder in the half bathroom. It’s so weird, it isn’t like there was anything really heavy on it or anyone yanking or leaning on it, I wonder why it pulled out of the wall for no reason like that?

MAYBE BECAUSE THE BUILDERS DRILLED A GIANT-ASS HOLE FOR ONE OF THE SCREWS AND JUST LEFT IT LIKE THAT??? Ugh it baffles me how terribly put together this place is, like is it REALLY that hard to put up a toilet roll holder? Anyway I think I’m going to get one of those free-standing holders so I can put it closer to the toilet- you can’t tell in these pictures but it’s so far away that the non-diaper-wearing daycare kids can’t reach it, so I always have to get toilet paper for them and it’s preventing them from becoming fully independent, toilet-wise. Of course I’ll have to take the remains of the old holder off the wall, fill the holes and paint it, which is gonna be super fun because I don’t think I have any of that orange paint left. I guess I can get some more when I get the turquoise for the table!

Sooooo I basically spent all of the weekend shopping. It started on Friday night: Sym had come up with an idea for candy boxes to make for her family, so on Thursday night her dad took her to the store to buy the candies she needed. Then on Friday she LEFT THEM AT SCHOOL ARGH. She was seeing her grandparents this weekend so after I finished work we headed out to buy replacement candies. I was hoping we would be able to find what she needed at the store by our house but NO DICE, we ended up walking around the city for 2 1/2 hours before we finally gave in and went to the store by her dad’s house instead. It was super exhausting and kind of annoying BUT we got to look at Christmas lights and buy other candy and get yummy drinks from Starbucks, so I think we really made the best of it.

Sym in the St Paul’s Hospital Lights of Hope. Just over ten years ago I carried her outside for the very first time through those doors behind her (I gave birth at this hospital)!

On Saturday after Sym left I went out for brunch and shopping with Jenn. I didn’t have my camera, although I should really start bringing it out because then I could take all kinds of pictures to post on my blog and she could take pictures to post on her blog and we could be those annoying bloggers who hang out and post pictures of our hangouts.

Unfortunately I can’t post pictures of most of the things I bought, but here are a couple things I picked up for myself.

I’ve been wanting a knit circle scarf FOREVER but I’m also feeling cheap. I found this one at Front and Company for only $22!

I don’t remember the name of the store where I got this feather print top.

It’s not like anything I’d normally wear but think it’s so pretty. I’m planning on wearing it to Taylor’s office holiday party on Friday, but is it weird that it matches my hair?

Nope, it’s awesome.

I also got a couple new decorations for the tree, a couple glittery stag heads in silver and green. They were only $0.99 each! They had gold and red as well and it was difficult to only get two.

Sinead says my house is like a zoo for glittery animals. SHE’S NOT WRONG.

On Sunday Taylor and I also went for brunch and shopping, although we had to split up a lot so that the other wouldn’t know what we were up to. I will say that between the two of us we spent over $100 on candy. What was that thing about feeling cheap again? Anyway I can’t share most of what I got, although when I was waiting for Taylor I bought some holiday sprinkles for holiday baking!

These are all going on donuts btw, Christmas cookies are so last year.

… the “I’ve been slacking at painting my nails and everything else” edition. I meant to paint my nails on the weekend so I’d have this post ready this morning, but did I? NOPE. Luckily I have a very easy work day today so I was able to throw on a couple coats between playtime & snacktime.

Sally Hansen HD in Pixel Pretty
I’ve had this colour for months but have never used it until today, but as you know I can only do green/blue/turquoise polishes because of my hair. This colour looks WAY more intense in the bottle, but I only did two coats and I actually kind of like it- it’s more subtle (can turquoise nails be subtle?) and sheer, almost. I think this polish would be great with a different topcoat as well- matte, or Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, or the OPI silver crackle Sym bought me.

Also I think I’m getting better at painting my nails without painting my entire fingertip, which is good because half my nails snapped off and I had to cut them all really short. My cuticles are still a mess though. I bought some Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream this weekend so maybe that will help, but until then LONG HAIR DON’T CARE.

I know some of you guys sometimes do Manicure Monday posts, if you do, leave me a comment or tweet @ me with a link to your post and I’ll add it to my post!

Taylor’s grandmother passed away recently and he had to go out of town for her funeral. I asked him if he wanted me to come along for emotional, wifely support, but he said the way I could best support him at this time was to stay here and look after his dog. It’s been pretty easy; all the dog does is sit on the back of the couch and stare at the door, waiting.

To stop me from being lonely like Kichou, Sym brought the Little Taylor from the Felt Family I made for her 9th birthday to keep me company.

Please ignore the clutter on my desk, yes I absolutely DO need that stack of Moomin books, precariously perched tissue box, moustache on a stick, lighter, unicorn scarf, and pile of paperwork.

I realize I never made a post about the outcome of Taylor’s epic allergen elimination diet extravaganza. He had originally planned to be on it for eight weeks, and after six and a half he’d had the amazing result of nothing. NUH THING. No change at all in his skin. Really the only thing that changed was the THIRTY POUNDS he lost by eating nothing but vegetables and replacing all other foods with going to the gym. Now, he’s 6’4″ and didn’t really have 30 extra pounds lying around, so at that point I made the executive decision to stage an intervention because tbh he was starting to get a little manorexic about the whole thing. That was a few weeks ago and he’s back on food and put a little of the weight back on (which is good) but he’s (we’re) back at square one with this whole seborrheic dermatitis thing :/