Amateurs

Our poor kitty is still not in the greatest shape. Despite the chemo, she's not eating much and has dropped a few more ounces. She has been intermittently spiking fevers which has meant trips to the ER vet and to our own vet for subcutaneous fluid injections (one of the few things they can do for cats who have fevers as none of the human medicines work on them). I suspect that one of the causes of her fevers is the appetite stimulant we've been giving her every three days to try to get her to eat more, so we've stopped that for the time being. Dave spends hours patiently trying to spoon feed her, poor thing.

I'm insanely sad about the whole thing--there have been lots of tears in the past couple of days--but I think we just need to be patient with the process and give it at least another week. The oncology vet thinks that we might opt for a biopsy in the near future, but I'm loathe to put our poor kitty through that, especially since it seems at this point to be more exploratory than anything and may give no more answers than those we have now.

That is the bad news.

The good news is that I checked my email in the middle of the night and found that I have been accepted into the program that I jumped through hoops applying for in September. I jumped out of bed and had to walk off my elation and do some deep breathing so I didn't hyperventilate. I have to send off my acceptance letter by November 4th and then I have to attend an orientation on January 10th, which seems so long away from now, but really, we all know how time works.

I will have to start the process of perhaps applying for financial aid and scholarships to defray some of the costs. We can probably swing the tuition, but it would be nice to have some help given how expensive school has gotten.

And that is the good news.

Halloween came and went (today is Day of the Dead, though, so I kept the jack o' lantern we carved and will light it again tonight). We had a single trick-or-treater, a young teen dressed as a zombie bride. Dave gave her 3 pieces of the 150 piece bag of candy we bought at Costco, a mix of plain and peanut M&Ms, Kit-Kats, Twix, Snickers, Mounds, Almond Joy, York Peppermint Patties, and a bunch of other stuff besides. We should have dumped the bowl into the zombie bride's bag because that was it for the night and we are both mostly off the sugar (though I will admit to sneaking a handful of fun-sized Kit-Kats and a few Twix besides), so we are now planning on Dave taking it to work to dump on the breakroom table.

The Saturday before Halloween, my aunt asked me if I could help her do some Halloween makeup for a party. I asked her what kind and she said "zipper face." (Probably don't google it if you are terribly squeamish.) This is what we came up with:

What do you think? Not bad for amateurs on a budget, eh?