Smelly cat, sicky cat...

Harvey is Not Well.

He recently stopped eating his regular k/d (kidney diet) crunchies. Stopped. Completely. Starved himself for a few days (we did our best to tempt him with tuna etc until we could get him to the vet; naturally he chose the worst possible time) and lost a truly shocking amount of weight.

Now, those of you who've met Harvey are probably finding this hard to imagine. "What was there left to lose?" you are thinking. Well. Trust me on this. He got even skinnier. Also, he started hobbling around on wobbly old-man legs the way he did when we first adopted him - before getting him on the miracle k/d food and turning him into a real live cat, doing a good job of pretending to be healthy.

So the vet (who turned out to be a long-lost schoolfriend of Beloved's, as it happens) said he'd gotten hisself hopelessly dehydrated and needed to go on drip. He went into hospital. He stayed on drip for two days. (Jemima, meanwhile, wandered around the house looking a bit freaked out. She always knew there was a danger of not coming home from That Place.) Vet told me he was then doing sooo much better, totally ready to come home, he was eating tons (dry and wet food), enzymes were down (up? whichever is the good one when you're testing for kidney failure), all great. Harvey came home.

Harvey continued to refuse to eat dry food. Okay... we give him wet food. He's lapping that up, more or less (less, really, but doing pretty well for Harvey). But he's still limping around like a very old, sick man. His legs are all wobbly. He doesn't purr. And he's got diarrhoea. And the vet keeps saying ominous things like "it's a bit touch and go" and "there's not much point in giving him his shots now".

[Insert sad face here.]

Some random notes on expo prep.

1. Price guns are fun.

2. Nothing else about expo prep is fun.

3. No, it's not a good idea to have any other commitments immediately before or after a show, even if you think it'll be fine because after all there's the weekend, etc, etc, etc.

4. I appear to be constitutionally incapable of getting ready in time. By "in time" we mean anything not involving (a) significant loss of sleep, (b) leaving home within 2 hours of the time we planned to leave home, or (c) total panic and chaos up to at least half an hour after the show's official opening time.

5. Unexpected Good Thing about having a bebeh: very good excuse not to do this again next year. Or, possibly, ever.

Arg.

My PC seems to be on a mission to convince me to buy a Mac. Yes yes, I'm sure there will be lots of enthusiastic support for that idea, but really I wasn't planning on buying a new computer less than three years after this one. Especially not in my present position as a pregnant freelancer. Is annoying. I could probably sort out most of the problems, with a lot of research and effort and purging and reinstalling and such, but man, I don't have time for this crap. The screen is slowly but surely flaking out. Excel is flaking out. (Sharing violations. Anyone know anything about these? Google delivers lots of results, none of which are terribly helpful.) iTunes has totally flaked out. (Thank gods for last.fm, because I can NOT work without Choons.) It's all just very annoying.

Also, it's cold and dark and miserable and my head hurts.

Also, I have to do the big Ally Pally show this week, which is a frankly terrifying prospect.

Mind you, I did get to go to Andrew&Iza's very good housewarming last night, and they had laid on ginger ale *and* Appletiser for me, which I thought was extremely cool. Thanks chaps! The desserts were also particularly fine. Mmmm lemon meringue...

Because I haven't bragged enough

It's barely possible that some of you might not have yet heard my excited squealing from whatever farflung corners of the earth you inhabit, so just for you:

I'm a cover girl. And a designer. Twofer!

"That's right, the dog ate the weapon"

I can't work out whether he was trying to make some kind of homophobic statement, or was overcome with repressed longing, or was just batshit crazy.

No, wait. I'm pretty sure it's the batshit crazy answer.

Burglar rubs victims with spices, sausage, runs away in underwear without his wallet.

Eyes open. Semi-upright position accomplished. Now how to stand up...

Yesterday was iKnit Day - a lovely fest of knitting type fun, organised by London's coolest yarn shop, and featuring such exciting stallholders as Purlescence (natch) and such attractions as a talk and book signing by the fabled Yarn Harlot.

Good things about the day:
1. Bunches of fun. A chance to meet other yarny shop owners, dyers etc, and many of my customers. A great vibe. Lots happening. Yeah, fun.
2. Yarn Harlot!
3. Making lots of money. Based on last year's show, which was smaller (and I wasn't yet selling any yarn), I knew it would be a good day. It was an outstandingly good day. Woo yay capitalist joy!

Bad things about the day:
1. Being too busy (see 3. above) to actually take part in the day's pleasures. Or to go round and talk to other stallholders. Or to take part in the fashion show (yeah, I was asked! Such glamour!).
2. Missing the Harlot's speech, because, well, that busy thing. Armin was working with me, but you think he was going to man the fort for an hour and a half while I sloped off to enjoy myself? Not a chance. (Seriously, wouldn't have worked. Nope.) But I did get to queue-jump for a signed book, and she claimed to have heard great things about Purlescence (though I suspect she was thinking of the Californian shop of the same name), so, I guess that's something.
3. Being pregnant. Working a show is exhausting at the best of times. This is not the best of times. Not. At. All.

So today is not great. I am so unbelievably knackered. And I have so, so, so much work to do. And I have had a headache since halfway through yesterday. (This is a very bad thing for a pregnant woman to have, as most painkillers are off limits.) And I feel awful all round. And did I mention the huge pile of work?

*sigh*

How many blogs can one person reasonably run, anyway

FYI: Beloved and I have started a joint blog to murble about Teh Bebeh and that. Hopefully this will keep the preggers stuff to a minimum over here, but still allow me to indulge my hopeless fascination with the state of my waistline and digestion, plus feed the curiosity of those who really want to know, gods help them.

This will also be the place to look for pictures (occasionally), baby gift requests, etc.

As you were.

So wrong in so many ways

You have GOT to be kidding.

I wish I were a panda

Because this just looks soooo much easier than what I have to look forward to.
(Although, clearly even momma pandas get annoyed by their squalling babies. You'll note she tries to put it back at the end there.)

Also, I bet pandas don't get morning sickness. And if they get fat, who can tell? Who'd even care?

Spam o' the day

"Britney Spears Vagina Uninjured in Car Crash"
"Paris Hilton in Crack-in-Arse Scandal"

Am I just easily amused, or are those really funny?

The update, updated

For tedious and tiresome and sadly unfightable reasons, the 9 days I thought I had to make permit happen turn out to be only 4 days. Which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made to resemble 5-10 days, even with begging letter. So I give. I surrender. The universe does not wish for me to be in Cape Town this year. Fine. I won't be.

If anyone out there knows any good curses, please direct them at whatever idiots thought it would be a good idea to outsource all visa functions to the private sector. I thank you.

Bureaucracy, the update

Oh it just gets more and more exciting. This whole "apply for entry clearance while in SA" thing? They need "5-10 working days" to process. Which is interesting, considering I'm only in SA for... 9 working days, including arrival and departure. Huh.

"You can include a cover letter asking them to speed things up and giving your reasons," I am helpfully told. Obviously, based on past experience, I do not have a whole lot of confidence in that. I imagine that the 5-10 day time is not because they actually require 10 days to ponder the merits of my application, but rather, because applications arrive and get dumped on the bottom of a large pile of other applications. They work their way through the pile, and reach mine when they reach it. Say, 15-45 days after submission. "Oh lookee," they will say. "She wants urgent consideration. Aw bless."

So the ulcer-inducing panic continues. (This can't be good for The Bebeh.) I fully expect to be stuck in Cape Town longer than expected. While some of my Capetonian readers may rejoice at this news, I do NOT, for reasons of (a) cost of new plane ticket (pretty sure mine doesn't allow changes) and (b) obligations back in London. Cancelling a few shifts would be annoying enough, relying on my freelance income as I do, but it's worse than that: Saturday 6 September is iKnit day. Big ol' knitting expo that I'm exhibiting at. Really not okay to skip it. Really not viable for Beloved to do it without me.

Arg.

We can haz passports!

So let's review. Me: two letters, two faxes, and about three phone calls, all resulting in vague assurances.

Beloved: one phone call, resulting in immediate return of passports.

I'm really trying not to take this personally...

FYI

The Home Office has a surprisingly tenuous relationship with the truth. Oh, they say "allow 10 working days for us to process your request", but they MEAN "...and then allow an extra 10-30 working days, depending on the tides and planetary alignments, and whether or not we like your face, for us to mock you with our pretence at helping."

Also, someone may tell you "you don't really need this piece of paper, but you can get one if you like", but what they MEAN is "...of course if you don't have it, you better not plan on ever travelling anywhere, ever."

What all this means is, if someone in Liverpool is having a good day, I might get to Cape Town and back this month. If someone in Liverpool has run out of coffee, I might get to Cape Town, and then spend my holiday fighting with the British High Commission to be allowed back into the UK. If someone in Liverpool has run out of coffee, is on a diet and lost a parking spot this morning, I might not be able to leave the country at all for a few more months.

It's a nailbiting ride.

Losing amusement value fast

Are spammers getting smarter, or are my filters getting dumber? Anybody else noticing this? It's emails, and also Movable Type comments. Hundreds of both a day.

Grrr.

Mah genius recognised!

Ooh, this is exciting, I made Post of the Week! (With a "judgely huddle" including Glitterforbrains, who is hilarious, by the way.) Gosh. I do like this. It's been a long time since I put much into this blog, so I don't really feel I deserve it, but I'm totally chuffed that some people felt I had something interesting to say. Thanks chaps.

Caution: spiders inside

You know when you think you know something and then years later you find out you had it all wrong? And that's really annoying and sometimes embarrassing? Well, I had one of those moments yesterday, except instead of being embarrassing it was DISGUSTING and totally FREAKED ME OUT.

It's like this.

Cape Town is home to these wonderful things called rain spiders, also frequently called baboon spiders. They are huge (like, saucer sized), ugly, common, and revolting. And harmless. So you encounter them, you deal with them, you take a really long shower and tell everyone about your gross spider experience, and that's that.

In my case, sometimes you encounter them, you get your non-arachnophobic mother to deal with them, and then you suffer while she plays practical jokes on you involving letting the spider loose again and not telling you where, because ha ha, aren't you a wimp, they're so harmless and actually quite cool.

Through bloggity chance yesterday, however, I found myself doing a little fact checking online. Huh.

Turns out, rain spiders look like this.


Which is odd, because the ones I've so frequently encountered - and been tormented with - look like this.



They are in fact baboon spiders. Which, common usage notwithstanding, are a different sort of beast entirely. And maybe not quite harmless. Not lethal... but "aggressive". They jump, people tell me. And bite. And make you sick.

Some conclusions:
1. My mother is an EVIL COW.

2. I am unusually unlucky to have always, always encountered the nastier kind of spider, while everyone else I've spoken to since discovering this confusion had the correct idea about rain spiders all along.

3. I suppose I should really be very grateful that I didn't know my mistake at those times when I was dealing with the bloody things. That time when one fell out of my trousers just as I was about to put them on, for instance, landing between me and the door. Or the time when I woke up and saw one on the ceiling directly above me, and there was no one else in the house to deal with it. Yup... just as well I didn't know then that they were aggressive, jumpy, and venomous.

PS. Beloved has been so rude as to doubt my story. He has never seen a baboon spider in Cape Town, therefore he believes my memory is at fault. He is, of course, completely wrong, and this article backs me up - baboon spiders a-plenty in Cape Town. This article also points out, casually, that outside Africa, these little treasures are known as TARANTULAS.

I've seen food from both sides now

Okay, bear with me, this is sort of a pregnancy post. Sorry. But not really. This is actually about how this alien parasite has enabled me to see something from the other side. And it's fascinating. (To me.) So I'm going to tell you all about it. Read it, don't read it...

You may recall my little fattypuffs vs thinifers rant. A precis: I believe that chubsters have a fundamentally different experience of food to skinnies, and as a result skinnies are incapable of understanding why it is that we should have such trouble dieting, etc. Now I believe I have Incontrovertible Proof! that it is so. Because the alien parasite is making me, temporarily and sadly invisibly, a thinifer.

It's like this. Hormones, not-just-morning sickness, yada yada - I will try not to bore you with too many details, but you see, I've lost my appetite. That's only partly because of the nausea; some of the time, like most of today, I don't actually feel sick. But I still don't want to eat. It's not just that I'm not hungry; something has switched off. Food has lost the fun factor. And no, it doesn't taste different. (Apparently for lots of pregnant women, tastes do change, but so far, not for me.) Everything still tastes fine, I am capable of thinking in a detached sort of way that something tastes good and is quite enjoyable... but something is missing. Look, consider this: I don't want chocolate. Do you begin to comprehend the vastness of this change? Yesterday I found myself thinking I wanted a chocolate, while at the same time I was perfectly aware that I didn't really, I wouldn't enjoy it if I had one. What I wanted was the satisfaction which I normally get from chocolate, but which is now gone. (Try to imagine the horror.)

And that's what got me thinking. I suspect, for thinifers... every day is like this. Less extreme, because of the total lack of nausea and the presence of hunger, but with that same disconnect between food-as-fuel and food-as-fun. If this were my normal state, I too would hotly deny any accusations that I "just don't understand", because after all, I still have tastebuds! Mmmm, yummy pizza! I get that - but I can stop! Why would you want another piece when you're not hungry any more?

It really is completely different, and it really must be a body chemistry thing. Living like this, you would eat when you're hungry (and mildly enjoy it); you would even sometimes eat when you're not really hungry, on social occasions, or because chocolates really are delicious. But you wouldn't experience the desire to do that very often, because frankly, putting food in your mouth when you don't want it is pretty damn repellent.*

Like this, food is like taking a shower. You need it regularly, and yes, it's really enjoyable, and sometimes you might indulge in an extra-long shower just because it feels so nice; but nobody was ever in danger of overshowering.

The way I used to be - and hope I will be again - food is much more like sex. Not literally. I don't gasp and moan over chocolate brownies (well, not often). But it definitely pushes some or other pleasure buttons in the limbic centre that right now are out of reach. It satisfies something that has nothing to do with hunger, and frankly, although it makes me happy, in itself it has nothing to do with psychological comfort seeking either.

Fattypuffs get pleasure out of food. Thinifers merely get enjoyment. It's a physical difference, and you know? Now I really feel sorry for thinifers. Because they're missing so much.

PS With this in mind - I've just stumbled across the Shangri La Diet, and putting aside for now (PLEASE) all questions of whether or not it works, is healthy, etc, the question is: would I want it to work? It sounds an awful lot like it might just have the same effect as what I've described above - not so much reducing appetite, as taking away that pleasure response. Would I want to be naturally thin and healthy and still enjoy food... but not enjoy it the way I am used to? I honestly can't say.

_____
* Nature has a mean sense of humour. The best way to stave off all-day sickness is to snack constantly. The last thing you want to do.

Creativity in unexpected places

I love spam. I may have mentioned this before. I hate spammers, especially those that "borrow" my email address to send their odious missives, but I am enormously entertained by spam itself. Spam is FUNNY. And it's getting funnier. I seem to be getting an awful lot of subject lines that combine two completely different attention triggers: (1) straight news (or the impression of same), and (2) hot chicks (famous if possible). Thus, today alone:
"Hot White Chick Dies in Tsunami" (which, to be fair, is a more honest version of a hell of a lot of natural disaster news coverage)
and
"Old Man Dies Inside Paris Hilton"

Funny! Right? Right?

Aw, shucks, you guys!

Thanks for all the good wishes, folks. They freak me out a bit* but I really appreciate it.

Some answers, to questions both asked (here and elsewhere) and unasked.
1. Yes, we really are happy, despite the footnote.
2. No, we didn't exactly expect this. At least not right now. I have been duped by the media! That whole "trying" lark is a total myth!
3. See 1.
4. March. It's very new. No, I haven't been keeping secrets (not for more than a week anyway).
5. There is no such thing as too many knitted baby things.
6. More than one test to go on? You'd be surprised. The doctor laughed at me when I begged her to confirm. "No no!" she said. "The tests we use are just the same! No more accurate! You say you're pregnant and I believe you!" I mean REALLY what is the NHS coming to? Taking a patient's word for it? Ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous. The tests the doctors use are better because they are DONE BY DOCTORS. I don't know how to do a test! Ludicrous.
7. ...My body still seems to think it might be pregnant, though, so we're assuming the worst. I mean best. Assuming the best.
8. No, I haven't forgotten my long-held belief that babies are alien parasites, nor have I changed my mind. It's *my* alien parasite though.
9. No morning sickness** so far, but apparently the hormonal stupidity*** is already kicking in. See 8.
10. I didn't do it for the knitting (that's just a bonus). I did it for the cuteness of the skiing toddler. Man, that's enough reason all on its own.
11. I really, really, really don't plan to turn this into a pregnancy blog.

Ok that's all the questions dealt with. Just one more thing: thank you all, again, very much. I'm pretty terrified. And pretty scared of drifting apart from some of my very lovely friends. It would be very nice if that didn't have to happen. Please thank you.

_____
* I still don't really understand why I'm happy about this, why should you be? What's the big deal about babies anyway? They smell, they're noisy, and the world has enough of them. I mean, obviously my genes are great and all - Beloved's too - but is that enough reason to get excited about my spawn? You're weird.
** Which is reportedly a misnomer as it can strike any time of day, but usually when you've not eaten for a while. As Lucy said, "That explains why you're not getting it."
*** To those who've already sprogged: I am applying a very specific definition of "stupidity". Hormonally induced brain impairment is the only possible explanation for the fact that people have been known to have more than one baby, despite having gone through pregnancy/childbirth and knowing what it entails. Doesn't affect brain function in any other area, though.