Royce's Random Thoughts

Just wanted to post a link my nine year-old daughter Georgia's donation page for the charity Love Without Boundaries which supports orphans and children needing expensive medical treatment in China. Their program helped Georgia and her own orphanage back before we adopted her, and in return she's going to attempt her first run/walk half-marathon in May of this year to raise at least $1,300 for them.

Please consider donating and/or posting a link to her page in your own journal to support her.

Thank you.

Vindicated!

Once upon a time in the 1950's my dad was an investigator for the FCC, hunting illegal radio transmitters (remember those?). One of those investigations involved hunting for a gang using radio transmitters at race tracks to transmit the results to compatriots doing off-track betting.

They caught the guys, and Dad actually got his picture in a "True Detective" style magazine showing off the gear they used. After Dad passed away, my mom SWORE she had given me the magazine as a memento. Then she promptly got peeved at me because I told her I couldn't find it.

So, ten years after Dad died and I supposedly lost the magazine, guess what she finally found in her files? Ha!

Georgia: (watching MST3K on YouTube with Daddy) "Why is everything in black and white?"

Daddy: "Well honey, this was before colors were invented. Everyone looked like that."

Mommy: "Daddy!"

I'm the guy who writes all the furry stories, but it's my wife who wears the fursuit...


Lemee 'splain: My wife works for a county library system, and the particular branch she works at always has an annual Teddy Bear Picnic around May or so for the library's children patrons and their parents. So the head librarian for the children's section bought a teddy bear costume out of her own pocket for the annual picnic. Now that the old branch is currently being demolished and since they're stuck in a temporary location until the new library is completed late next year, there isn't room to store the suit, so now there's the beheaded body of the suit stored in the trunk of my wife's car for the next few months.

If I ever want to get a fursuit of my wazagan persona or one of my Red Vixen characters, I don't want hear any complaints from her. :)

Began very badly, with Thomas waking up t 12:30am and refusing to go back to sleep. I stayed up with him until 2:00am, when we got Tracy and Georgia up and just opened presents then. We gave Miss G a LEGO set, a replacement for the glass diamond paperweight from last year that she lost and a Spirograph set. We gave Thomas a PS2 Fat and Madden 2006 to go with it, which is exactly what he wanted. Then I went back to bed for a couple of hours and then spelled Tracy who slept until 8am. Then at 11:30 we headed down to my sister Rae's for Christmas with her, my mom and her daughters. Tom was amazing ly good given how exhausted he was, and kept it together until we got home at 6pm and he could go to bed.

Going to bed very soon.

So, my son Thomas, who is autistic, is entering adolescence. In a normal child's life this is a difficult time. In Tom's, its been pretty upsetting. Especially at daycare this year, since he's been increasingly disinclined to listen to the teachers there and they have been increasingly unable to handle him (the personnel consists of three women, one who's pregnant, one who's 70+ years old, and have about twenty kids between them besides Thomas to look after.) Things came to a head Tuesday, when he started screaming and crying and banging doors open and shut, ending with him getting in a tug of war with the head of the center and then breaking a toilet seat.

So we needed to get a new daycare for him. Now. And just trying finding one that can handle an autistic 12 year old on short notice. His middle school will have an after-care program to watch him at the start of the year, but that left us with August to get through.

Fortunately moonshadowed's mother is already watching my brother-in-law's kids (who are in their teens or jsut a bit younger) and agreed to watch Tom and Miss G for us. I just have to spend a month shuttling them up to Reading Hanover, PA, drive to my work in Baltimore, MD, then pick them up in the evening.

Sadly, all that gas will still be cheaper than what we'd be paying the daycare...

Rascal was the second cat we acquired for our household, about a year after moonshadowed and I got married. Technically he was badasher's cat, adopted as a companion for his other cat, Max, who needed a distraction to keep from upsetting Tracy's cat, Sunny. In the end though he became ours mostly by default, and Steve left him with us when he moved out.

He was young when we got him, less than a year old and still a catten. He was also perceived by everybody as being a bit of a dim bulb. We blamed it on a fever he got a few months after we adopted him, but honestly I think it was just a case of him not being as smart as Max, who was the undisputed Alpha Cat of the household, and also being a bit mouthier than the others, which made him seem terminally confused and worried. Ex:

Rascal: Meow, meow, Meow, MEOW!

Royce: What's that, Rascal? You say Timmy fell down into the well?

He was a gentle soul though, running from, rather than attacking, our bird Sadie when she dive bombed him, and putting up with sometimes rough handling from the kids without clawing them.

Eventually Sunny passed away and we adopted Salem, and then a couple of years later we lost Max to failing kidneys. After Steve moved out Rascal and Salem lived in mutual ignorance of each other, not really interacting unless they had the bad luck to pass near each other in the hall.

When Salem began ailing, Rascal became a bit of tub, since he was consuming the dry cat food Salem didn't want to eat. After Salem had to be put to sleep in December though, he slimmed back down to his own weight, and became a great deal more cuddly, actually sitting beside of behind us on the couch when we used the laptop, instead of his usual perch on the far end on an arm.

Last week, around Wednesday, he disappeared. We found him hiding under our bed, after figuring out that he hadn't touched his food bowl at all that day. After dragging him out from under there, he seemed to be in pain, so Thursday evening I took him to the vet. He was diagnosed with a blocked urinary tract and wasn't able to pee. The poor guy's abdomen felt like he'd swallowed a baseball. One catheter treatment later he was drained out, and the vet warned me she'd seen a bit of blood in the urine, which might mean a kidney stone.

He drank water when he got home, but still wasn't eating. Friday morning I left out wet food and some fresh chicken breast to encourage him, but when we came home in the evening he still hadn't touched them, nor had he used the cat box.

By the time I brought him back to the vet Saturday morning, he hadn't eaten for almost four days and hadn't drank any water in 36 hours. The vet said it was almost certainly kidney stones, given he'd become blocked again immediately. To fix it would involve an operation that, ignoring the fact we couldn't really afford it, may have killed Rascal outright, and would have at minimum left him in a lot of pain. So I called Tracy at home and we agreed to let him go.

He stopped purring halfway through the injection.

He was a good kitty.

Travel: We were planning on doing Thanksgiving at home anyway, but after last weekend's trip to Cleveland we're doubly inclined to stay in today.

Dinner:

Brined Turkey
Stuffing with Chicken Livers
Country Mashed Potatoes
Gravy from drippings
Corn Pudding
Sweet Potato Casserole
Oven Roasted Brussel Sprouts
Biscuits
Apple Pie with French Vanilla Ice Cream
Pumpkin Pie
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Viewing: Since we no longer have cable, and never got an HD converter box, we'll be doing a Lord of the Rings, Extended Edition marathon in lieu of the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

Music: Can there be any other choice...?

Rolas and Mel's daughter doesn't even have a name yet and she's already demanding that I write about her. So she can complain about how boring Aunt Salli's planet is and how Aunt Ali is fun but a bit scary and how her dad can't possibly have been a pirate because that would mean he's actually done something interesting.

Oh God, that means Rolas is my dad. [1] And Mel my mom. Except now now I'm imaging Mom in one of the Red Vixen's outfits and AHHH, THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!


[1] Dad was the most dull quiet person you can imagine. Who was in the OSS in World War 2, then worked as investigator for the FCC which led to him riding a Navy blimp up and down the Baja Coast in the 50's to find illegal radio transmitters and bust a gambling ring at a horse track.

But aside from that he was completely normal.

1. chaypeta is doing one of those "Make a randomized list of your characters and then write answers to the prompts" memes. Except the meme is 100 items long and she's doing full panel cartoons of them. She's on Day Three right now (which is slightly naughty). Check them out at the Terinu website (and tell her she needs to post stuff to LJ again!)

2. Going to take my daughter to the rehearsal for my niece's wedding tonight (she's the Flower Girl). It's not even my wedding and I've been getting a return of the heart pain stress that dent me to the hospital last December just from running around buying dress shoes and otherwise preparing. Can't wait for Saturday to be over.

3. Plowing with more determination than skill through Shadow of the Red Vixen, with one character down and bleeding, the other floundering, and the end nowhere in sight. While that percolates I'm also trying to move forward on Wazaga's gift story.

4. I've also applied to be an MiB for Steve Jackson Games which will hopefully get me enough participation credits that I can actually get games without straining our budget.

5. Oh, and my DeviantArt membership ran out, so I'm stuck with ads again. Wah.