Heat wave

So our heat wave has begun. I'm just glad it didn't start a week ago, for my birthday. I was able to bake my (meh) cake without feeling bad about turning on the oven. Definitely wouldn't want to do that today! And there's no end in sight for the heat. I read somewhere that it was supposed to last 10 days, so that would be until a week from tomorrow, roughly. We'll be on vacation by then, so we won't know for sure.

It's a little scary with no air conditioning. Right now our house is comfortable, but not wonderful. It's 4:30 pm and the temperature in the hallway is 79 degrees. Outside on the front porch it's 97. We're all kind of taking it easy, not moving around too much. I scolded Rocket Boy for using the oven to reheat a slice of pizza. I'm trying to figure out how to make dinner this week without turning on said oven.

Looking back to last Sunday, the rest of my birthday was nice. We went to the Shakespeare Festival that night, despite both of us not really feeling it. On July 3rd (which Rocket Boy had off work) he discovered that mice had colonized our garden shed and were eating all the grass seed he had stored there. So he embarked on a weekend project to take everything out of the garden shed and clean it thoroughly. He worked on this on July 3rd, 4th, and 5th, pausing to make the 4th of July barbecue happen and go out to lunch on my birthday, but otherwise working straight through. So when we left for CU at about 7 pm on Sunday night, he was a wreck. But he's a sweetie, so he didn't complain.

CU has redone the outdoor Mary Rippon theater and it was very nice. I remembered, too late, that in the past people in the know always brought their own seat cushions. But it was OK that I'd forgotten, because now they're provided for everyone, free of charge. Makes those red rock benches a LOT easier to sit on for three hours. 

It wasn't 97 degrees on July 5th, but it was still hot, even at 7:30 pm. As we settled into our seats and waited for the performance of "Shakespeare in Love" to begin, I thought, why am I here on my birthday? Is this really something I want to do? But it turned out OK. The performance was very good, great performers especially the guy who played Will. I was glad I'd gone.

The next day, Monday, it was back to real life. Our cat Sillers had an appointment with the cat neurologist at 9:30, so I had to get up when Rocket Boy did (at 7 am) and get my act together. I was pretty tired at the vet's, though, and gave some dumb answers to their questions. Based on those dumb answers, the neurologist decided that Sillers needed to have an MRI of her brain and neck -- for $3000 (including anesthesia, because obviously you can't ask a cat to hold still for an MRI). I gulped. But, you know, I knew it would be expensive, and what was the point of coming here if we didn't do the testing? So I said yes. I left her there and picked her up about four hours later.

And the results of the MRI were interesting. Sillers' brain is fine, but she has some sort of "lesion" or "growth" or "obstruction" or whatever -- not in her brain, but in her brain stem. The vet thought this could explain all of her weird behavior. It is probably not cancer, but it is not curable -- you can't go into the brain stem and remove things. However, you can try to treat it. We're going to try first with prednisolone (the same thing Baby Kitty takes for his asthma) and if that doesn't help, with gabapentin. The vet said we would do prednisolone for a couple of months and then repeat the MRI. I smiled. Of course we're not going to do that. I'm not going to spend another $3000 to see if a drug is working. But we'll have that discussion later. 

The problem is that the prednisolone apparently can't be mixed with her food (even though I mix Baby Kitty's prednisolone with his food). It's in liquid form, and I'm supposed to shoot it down her throat after each meal. This will not be fun, and I do not want to ask the cat sitters to do it. Therefore we're going to postpone starting treatment until after our trip. So poor Sillers will go untreated for another few weeks. Two days ago she peed on my pillow again -- and looked startled and started sniffing around to figure out what had just happened. I grabbed the pillow and the cat blanket and the bedspread off the bed and threw them straight into the washing machine. Most days she throws up at least one meal. I'm afraid she's going to die of starvation before we can start treating her.

But it's always like this before a trip! Something awful happens and you feel like you shouldn't go. Sillers will (probably) be OK while we're gone. She'll try to be good for the cat sitters. We'll put plastic on the bed (under the top coverings) so that if she has accidents while we're gone, they won't penetrate further. The cat sitters can clean up whatever accidents they find on the floor, and otherwise we'll clean up the rest when we get back. It will be OK.

Before I took Sillers to the cat neurologist, I told Teen B that on the forms they have you sign, where they ask if they should resuscitate your pet if it goes into cardiac arrest or whatever, I was going to check "no." Then, if Sillers went into cardiac arrest, all our problems would be solved. But I couldn't do it. She got sick on the car ride to the vet, threw up in the cat carrier, had bile dripping from her mouth, looked So Incredibly Pathetic. I couldn't do it. She's my baby, for better or for worse. I told them to resuscitate her if necessary (it wasn't necessary).

However, I'm not going to keep spending $3000 on repeat MRIs. There are limits. 

Not much else happened during the week. Teen A, who got a flat tire the week before (necessitating the purchase of two new tires, so they would match, only one of which was covered by the warranty), hit a raccoon on 36 north of town, and broke a piece of plastic that was attached to something near a wheel. So on Friday he and I went to Boulder Hybrids for them to take off the broken thing and put on a new thing. Cost: $175 (less than the tire). I paid it. I know, I know, at some point I should probably start charging him for things that happen to the car. But it's still my car and I figure as long as I can pay for it (easily), I'll pay for it. 

It was a very bad cooking week, and I'm sure this week will be just as bad. The combination of heat plus my drug makes me just pathetically useless. I did manage to make a pasta dish and a curry with rice. That might have been it. What in the world will I cook this week, with the terrible heat? 

This coming week I finally get my new fake tooth, that's tomorrow. I'm excited (a little). I've had a hole in my mouth for over a year now. Then on Tuesday my car goes to the shop for an oil change and a checkup. Hopefully nothing terrible will be wrong. And the rest of the week we will just try to survive the heat and get ready for our trip! 

***

Yes, the trip! so now we're planning our trip across the country. We're going to drive to California and back, be gone 11 days. We leave next Saturday, so I probably won't write any blog posts for a while (can't do it on my phone). We don't have the whole trip planned yet, but I'm getting there.

Next Saturday we're going to drive across Wyoming and Utah, past Salt Lake City to a hotel near Tooele, practically on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Sunday we'll do the rest of Utah and most of Nevada, stopping for dinner at the home of my old college roommate, Grace, who lives in Reno. Then we'll stay the night at a hotel in Carson City. Monday we'll drive to the Bay Area via highway 88, a road I've never (to my knowledge) taken before. It will be slower than I-80, but it will avoid Sacramento and other population centers, maybe be slightly more pleasant than I-80. I don't know.

Monday afternoon we'll show up at my sister's in Santa Clara, and we'll stay with her for five days. I also got a hotel room nearby, so that we can take a little pressure off her house and the family -- people will have a place to go to get away, things like that. I think I'm thinking of myself, mostly. Not that I would get away to the hotel, but if my husband is driving me crazy, I can send him off to the hotel to swim or rest. Not that my husband drives me crazy, but he likes to be active, always wants to have a plan and a goal. I might like to spend some time just lying around watching television, petting dogs, chatting with my relatives. That's when it would be nice to have a place to send him to.

Wednesday of that week we'll drive up to my cousin's house near Kenwood, to visit and see his vineyard, etc. We haven't been up there in seven years, and he and his brother are getting so old, 86 and 83. His wife died a few years ago, so we won't be seeing her, and his brother's wife is younger, but not that much younger. How many more chances will we have to see them? Not many.

The following Saturday (the 25th) we'll pack up and drive to Solvang to visit my father's cousin and her husband. They are very old too -- my cousin is almost 88 and her husband is 93 (or thereabouts). So again, how many more times do we get to see them?

Then on Sunday we're going to Chino to visit Rocket Boy's aunt (his late uncle's second wife), who we haven't seen in ages, maybe, hmm, not since his uncle's funeral? December 2002. Is that possible? More than 23 years. She's 95 and still sounded totally on top of things when RB called her yesterday. We'll probably have lunch with her and her son, who lives with her.

And then we'll get on the road again. I made a hotel reservation in Needles for that night, but beyond that how we're going to go home is still up in the air. Probably we should just go the fastest way. It's 868 miles to Boulder if we just take 95 to I-15 to I-70, and that's probably what we'll do. Just haven't quite committed to that plan yet. I'd like to take 40 to 89 to 160 to 285, go through Navajoland and southern Colorado. It's about the same mileage, 864 miles, but would take about an hour more. Does an hour matter? Will have to give this some thought.

Rocket Boy likes to see unusual things on road trips, and I mostly focus on getting us to the places we're going. But I try to leave room for his enthusiasms. For instance, on the way to Reno we're going to try to see the Sutro Tunnel. I'm not sure why this is so interesting, but I put it on the itinerary. Then, after we leave Chino on the 26th, we're going to visit Amboy, California, which I guess was featured on a Huell Howser program once upon a time. It sounds as though maybe the whole town is closed down now, but it's on Route 66, so that'll be fun, and hey, why not?

See you when we get back... 

Happy birthday to me

It's July 5th, so you know what that means! Happy birthday -- in this case happy 66th birthday -- to me! And just look at that beautiful cake. It's a chocolate cake, actually more of a mocha because it has a cup of coffee in it (we made a special trip to Starbucks for the coffee), frosted and layered with a mixture of whipping cream, mascarpone, powdered sugar, and lemon curd, and with lemon curd drizzled on top and on the individual layers. The middle layer split in half when I transferred it over, but I don't think that matters. I patched it together with cream.

We haven't eaten it yet. I don't know if it's actually going to be that good. It just looks amazing. I can't believe I made myself a three-layer cake. I never make cakes. And it's so hot today, 95 degrees currently. What a day to be making (or eating) a cake. There was a lot of cream left over, and I just put it all down the drain. It would have upset my husband if he'd seen me, but come on, what are you going to do with three extra cups of whipped cream frosting? 

I am having a nice day, a nice weekend. We hung one of our huge American flags yesterday, hoping the Pride flag next to it will make people understand that we're not Republicans. It's still up -- probably should take it down soon. OK, I took it down and Rocket Boy is now folding it up, putting it back in its container for another year.

Though maybe we should pull it out for Election Day. I'll see.

Our primaries were this week (we had all voted already, of course, so I guess you could say they ended this week) and the results were interesting. The candidate Rocket Boy and I wanted for governor (Phil Weiser) won, so that was good, although his challenger (Senator Michael Bennet) would have been OK too. I like Bennet, but I thought it would be disruptive to pull him out of the Senate. Weiser is a little more liberal, not a lot, but anyway, he trounced Bennet. I was surprised to see that John Hickenlooper almost lost his Senate seat to a socialist challenger, and Diana DeGette, who's represented Denver in the House for eons, did lose her seat to a socialist challenger. I don't think of Colorado as a particularly socialist state -- we're not New York. Brooks and Capehart on the NewsHour were surprised too. 

The other race that surprised me was Secretary of State. Both candidates seemed fine, so I voted for the one who wasn't blond and had a Hispanic last name. That is seriously how I made my decision. Turned out she won in a landslide. Apparently she is more progressive than the blond candidate -- I didn't even realize. I need to pay more attention!

We are still watching the Republican race for governor, but it seems pretty clear that the craziest candidate is going to win. The Repubs had three people running: a relatively normal person, a MAGA nut, and a certifiably crazy weirdo. And the weirdo is winning. I don't think Phil Weiser is going to have to campaign very hard.

So, anyway, the 4th. We had a barbecue, although Rocket Boy first had to remove a wasp nest from the barbecue itself (eek!). I bought a thing of potato salad, and we barbecued swordfish (very good), broccoli (a little different, but OK), and chicken, which was already cooked. I had bought a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store a few days before because I wanted to make a Chinese chicken salad. I decimated the breast for the salad and then put the rest of the chicken in the fridge, planning to throw it in the compost when Rocket Boy wasn't looking. (I don't like chicken!) But he put the legs and wings on the grill instead. I guess that was fine. I didn't eat any. He had some -- and then had a terrible attack of reflux and couldn't eat anything for the rest of the night. 

For dessert, I had bought graham crackers and chocolate for s'mores, assuming that we had plenty of marshmallows. What we had, it turned out, was plenty of MINI marshmallows! Honestly, my brain. I toasted some mini marshmallows, but it was pretty pathetic. Teen B was very disappointed in me.

After dinner, and after it got dark, we walked down to the park and the school, looking for fireworks. We saw some, but couldn't figure out where they were coming from -- maybe just the middle of a street somewhere. Instead, in the park, we found this sign, which amused me. Like, if I were a teenager looking to set off fireworks, would I really be deterred by this sign?

We went home and watched an episode of "The Prisoner" which is on the Criterion Channel right now, and then went to bed.

This morning everybody got up terribly late, even me, at 11. I sat in the living room (with Teen A asleep on the sofa) and did Wordle and Connections and opened a card or two. Around noon or so I opened Teen B's door and whispered "Starbucks... Starbucks..." and finally he got up and we went. I couldn't miss my beloved Iced Horchata Shaken Espresso on my birthday. Last week, Teen B and I went to Starbucks in the middle of the week (Wednesday?) just so we could try all the new S'mores drinks and our verdict was: meh. So I went back to my favorite and so did he (the Iced Lavender Chai). 

Then we came home and I opened the rest of my cards and gifts and talked to my little sister. I had gotten myself some books on genealogy, which I was happy to receive from myself, and a dress (a smaller version of my favorite which it occurred to me was probably available on eBay and sure enough it was, so now I can give my old larger dress to Goodwill), and the Rosa Parks Barbie doll, who I'd been coveting for a long time now. Should have bought her when she was cheaper, but it's fine. My older sister gave me several little things: a book, a sheet of paper dolls, some little doll toys, and a set of 12 handkerchiefs with birds embroidered on them. I said to her, I am the only person in the world who would want this, and it is so smart of you to have figured that out. If I had a pocket in my dress, I would put a bird handkerchief in it now. As it is, tomorrow I will wear pants and can put a bird handkerchief in the pants pocket.

Oh, and also I donated to https://www.forcemultiplierus.org/, $100 to the House races they think are most competitive and $100 to the Senate races they think are most competitive, and I plan to continue giving them money over the next four months. This was suggested by my old college roommate Grace, and since getting rid of MAGA would be the best birthday present ever, I was very happy to do it.

OK, we have now tried the cake, and the verdict is: meh. I'm so sad! Mocha and lemon, it turns out, is a weird combination. I think it would have been OK if it had been plain chocolate and lemon... but maybe not. Maybe I should stick with angel food cake, which I know goes great with lemon. Oh well. It's still an incredibly beautiful cake.

I need to finish this up because we are going to the Shakespeare Festival tonight -- we're going to see their version of "Shakespeare in Love" so not actually Shakespeare, but it will still be fine. It's outdoors in the Mary Rippon Theatre, and it's still 95 degrees right now, but we'll see. Probably it will cool down as the sun goes down. This is going to be a very hot week, the one coming up. The week that just ended was hot too, but not so bad. I went to the Boulder Concert Band concert on Monday again. This time it was at Harlow Platts Park, in south Boulder, and they combined with the band from the local National Guard, so that was interesting. Very good players. They encouraged people to join the National Guard and be in their band. Hmm? OK, whatever. 

There's no concert tomorrow, because they played for a 4th of July thing yesterday. I will be able to go to one more concert, on July 13th, and then I'll miss their last two, because we'll be in California (or headed home) on July 20th and 27th. But it's OK. I'm glad I've gotten to see as many as I have.

Tomorrow I take Sillers to the specialist vet, so we'll see if they can figure out anything about our very weird kitty. Other things scheduled this week: Teen B has a haircut on Thursday and that's about it. We can spend the time planning our trip and trying to check things off my master summer list. All of a sudden, with the trip looming, I feel like we don't have much summer left.