Listening to the Voices in my Head

I think we might be living over a radioactive site

I bring Loki to the vet for a dental scaling, and am rewarded with the knowledge that he has aggressive non-squamous cell cancer under his tongue, not just an infected cut as the vet thought it was.

I am fucking gutted over this.  Yes, I know Loki is 16 years old, but he is HEALTHY. Heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, all the things that are supposed to start failing are as healthy as a 10 year old cat. What's the fucking good of being healthy?

I have no idea how the young'uns are going to handle it. Groo and Drax have glommed onto Loki, as he has never done anything to hurt them, and has even licked their faces clean. 

Dr M said it's just bad luck to have 4 cats, with 4 different kinds of terminal cancer.

We will have to play this by ear. Since this tumor can't be totally removed, how about removing part of it when it makes eating difficult?  I know that would be a stop gap, but as long as he's eating, sleeping, grooming, purring, just being a cat, I want to give him as much quality time as I can, and me enough time to try to come to terms with this... if I ever will.

Loki is getting mellow in his old age

I had to move, lift, throw away some things in my office, and then vacuumed the floor, including taking the head off the vacuum and getting all the fur and smut off the cables, wires, and even the vents on the computer.

What does Loki do? Follows the vacuum head all over the room, even when I have it powered up. He the complained/meowed at me, looking around, all but saying "Put my stuff back.", which I did.

The second I sat down, Drax and Groo went dashing out of the room. Loki jumped up on the footstool demanding treats.

Yes, I am ruled by cats.

An addendum: I already hurt like hell from yesterdays' activities, so figured moving my chair, putting footstool on the sofa, lifting padded cat box to the top of the tower, and putting cat pad (formerly my seat cushion) in order to clean out my office of cat fur, dust and the stuff you get from regular foot traffic off the floor, wouldn't make me feel any worse.

Really, DeSantis

A bill has been introduced that blogs must register to write about DeSantis?

Really? He wants a list of people who write about his asinine feud with Disney which makes the tax payers pick up the tax burden. Disney has/had their own infrastructure, their own utilities, had their own police and fire departments.

His abuse of power, using government office to dictate what adults can or can't study in colleges/universities in Florida.

Ron DeSantis is a two-faced, backflipping, bald-faced liar. And in my opinion, he is also a colossal asshole.

And I am not going to register.  FOAD, Ronny boy. FOAD.

Go ahead, I dare you

I dare you to tell me doing household chores isn't a work out.

It's started with me making a clean spot. I vacuumed the dust and dirt (cat fur mostly) from my keyboard, mouse pad/armrest and monitors. Then I cleaned the rest of my desk.

It led to me vacuuming off the sofa, the cat tower/scratch post.  And the floor, after I moved things.  I put those things back where they belonged.

Then the bedroom. Stripping and remaking a queen sized bed had me panting for breath, and feeling quite physically tired by the time I was done.

Time for a cup of tea

I'm too old for sudden gymnastics

Water from helping Wing take a shower (he had surgery on his right hand) made its way under the rubber backed bathmat. I didn't notice that water had made it's way under the bathmat.

I walked in as usual, left foot lead, stepping on bathmat which sudden slid forward, and I found myself doing a 'split'.  I managed to stop the downward momentum by grabbing the shower wall, and the vanity top.

I bent both knees and stood up carefully.  Everything seemed ok.

Until this morning. Left leg only hurts when I move it. 

Umm, ow.

Back, I say, back!

I have beaten the black beast of depression back a bit.  The hellidays being over had helped immensely.  I still have depression, and seeing the appropriate people regarding it, but it doesn't feel like it's on a runaway, downhill rollercoaster ride to hell. 

I've been taking a little time for myself. When I do my 10 minute rehab walk, I listen to an audio book. I continue to listen to it until it's time to do something else (lunch, or dinner). 

Still tired, as sleep is touch and go, but when I do sleep well, it's either 5 hours or 10. IF it's 10 hours I do wake up refreshed.  This means I have to go to bed fairly early so Alan and Wing can get their "let's play with the cats on the bed, and talk to mom.".  At least they get the message when I get ready to put on my sleep mask.

55 minutes and one day later

It was a very deep, gut punch session with D.  She did say that it's very common for people who are depressed to get worse. The challenge for me is how much worse.

I told her this Helliday season was the worst since the year I became an only child, because at least I had my family around me, and did feel as if I was alone in a crowd, as I felt this year.  Wing apologized for me not being happy. It's not his job to do that, and it's what's going on in me, not him. 

I talked with Alan over lunch, and it felt good to talk to member of the family, without judgment.  No one saying "Oh, you just got the blues."

Was getting ready for the day

Which includes session with my counselor, and had included session with Simon the Sadist. His session has been rescheduled at Wing 's convenience.

But as I was getting ready, I heard a slight scrabbling in the back of the closet. I irrationally looked at the Keito cuddle clone, looked back at where the noise was coming from, said his name and the clothing started to part. I have to admit for the briefest of moments, my illogical brain thought Keito was coming out from beneath the hanging clothes.  It wasn't of course, it was Groo-bear. I looked back at the cuddle clone, and burst into quiet tears. Quiet because if I make so much as a peep, I get helicoptered.

Stayed in room for about 15 minutes. It's been not even 4 years since an arrogant vet gave me the wrong instructions, even though I had asked him more than twice "Are you sure?"

Façade of sanity re-establish, but the shell is thin. Very thin

Every time I think about calling it quits

Something small, probably insignificant to everyone else in the world, happens.  Maybe it's seeing a bird singing his heart out at the start of the day.  The smell of something in bloom. My cat Loki climbing up for a cuddle

I made it through the hell that's called "The Holidays". It's so hard to keep a happy smiling demeanor plastered on my face, or the look of interest in what someone is talking about.

It's fucking hard. But at least the stress of November through December social shit is over. I need to decompress. I need to sleep. I need to talk to someone who won't dismiss my feelings and mental state as 'just the blues'.  If I have the blues, their fucking indigo.

New and Improved?

Once again, I tried Topaz Labs. They have come out with "New and improved" versions of their AI software. I coughed up the money, and 'renewed' my yearly plan (not going to renew it again, for reasons that will follow.) But I was willing to give it another shot.

I loaded an Olympus ORF file into Topaz DeNoise. It did ok, but left the image kind of dull and flat. So, I closed that, and opened Topaz Sharpen AI, opened the same ORF file. It does have a rudimentary denoise function. But the finished results again were lacking.

To use the Topaz software, you need to open them in another program, adjust exposure, then use one Topaz plugin after another. And although you can get good results, the Sharpen AI takes a long time (6 minutes).   

On1 NoNoise 23: opened the same Olympus ORF file in NoNoise. Not only was I able to remove the noise, but I could also sharpen the image at the same time. And it was finished in about 30 seconds.  If I want to have even more editing, I could open file in On1PhotoRaw, get it all done in about a minute.

On1 for the win, again