BrrrrAAAAWKKKKKKKKKKK!!! MCD update!

Time for a Magic Chicken Diet update.

Some of you may remember a series of impassioned and creatively spelled blog comments left by one "Hulon Pate" who represented himself as the son-in-law of Mr. and Mrs. Magic Chicken Diet.

This should come as a surprise to no one, but "Hulon," whoever and whatever else he may be, is categorically not their son-in-law.

One of my pastimes is genealogy, and if you search the Texas Birth Index, you can see who Mr. and Mrs. Magic Chicken Diet's children are. I'm not posting their names or genders, but there are three of them and none of them is now married or has ever been married to anyone named "Hulon Pate" or any permutation thereof. Those that are married are married to people who are clearly not Hulon Pate, nor has any of them ever been divorced from a Hulon Pate. He may be a boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend, or a friend, but he is not a relative by marriage.

It appears as though Hulon Pate, Devoted Son-In-Law, may in fact, be fiction. At least insofar as his relationship to the Magic Chicken Diet's goes.

I'm shocked!

Elle

PS. Honeybee has a great post about the Supernatural Fowl Starvation Diet here. Also, please don't forget to visit the many other fine sites on the Just Say No to Kimkins webring, which you can find over on the right.

Prayers/Good Thoughts Needed!

Tomorrow at around 1 PM I am supposed to be on a plane, winging my way to New Mexico.

Supposed to, because a #!*&^% snowstorm is coming! It's supposed to start late tonight and continue through till tomorrow morning. Some 5-9 inches of snow should accumulate.

No big deal, normally, we are not unused to snow in this part of the country. I'm not even all that worries about the airport itself, Manchester is very good at this kind of thing. When Dancing in Socks Guy was here earlier this month he took off in a pretty big storm with no problem, and by the time my plane leaves the worst of the storm should be over and there should be plenty of time to plow.

But, there is an added layer of difficulty to this. Back when I was still a grad student, I worked part-time as a home health aide. It seemed fitting, somehow, since I'd put myself through my undergraduate degree by working in a nursing home, to return to my old profession to supplement that fabulous teaching assistant salary I was getting. I worked for a nice agency, and I had very nice clients. It was hardly onerous work, either, I mostly did 'overnights' where there was maybe two or three hours of actual 'work' (fixing dinner, chatting with my nice clients, reminding them to take their meds, helping them into bed, helping them get up in the morning) and the remaining nine hours or so I could sleep, read, watch TV or whatever. So, I mostly got paid for sitting on my butt.

Once I graduated and started working-working, I decided to stay on at the agency, on a per diem basis, which basically means I fill in now and then, and end up working four days or so a month. Why not? I enjoy it, it's mostly weekends and holidays, doesn't get in the way of my 'real' job and it's money -- those four days cover my basic living expenses for the month. The agency is very good to me, and they think it's hysterical that they have a 'doctor' (of philosophy) working as a home health aide.

So, I am working tonight, from eight o'clock at night till eight in the morning. Hopefully. I'd scheduled to work before I booked my flight, and normally there would be plenty of time to get to the airport (it's about an hour away). I'd even made contingency plans -- cats will be fed and medicated tonight, Mom will come by tomorrow night and subsequent nights to feed and medicate, I was going to take a shower last thing before I went to work, and I planned to pack today and bring my suitcase with me. If weather permitted, I could bop home quickly and feed the kitties a proper breakfast and take a quick shower. If it looked bad, I could just head to the airport from work.

So here is the problem. The woman who is supposed to show up at eight to relieve me is, I learned last week, going to be on Cape Cod with family until very early Monday morning, when she planned to drive straight up from the Cape. Given that there will be a buttload of snow on the road at the time, this may get in the way of her showing up on time. Thus, I am panicking slightly. I can't just take off and leave Nice Lady alone, if Replacement is late, but unlike other days when I am not flying anywhere, I have a very narrow window of time in which her lateness won't matter. I need to be on the road by 9 AM at the latest.

So, for those who read this, all twelve or so of you, please spare a minute or two and send some prayers/good thoughts my way and ask that:

• That even if the worst happens and I miss the flight altogether, that I am able to put it into perspective. The world won't end and I bought the trip insurance.
• That Replacement has a safe drive, and the common sense to leave very early so she'll show up on time.
• That the airport remain open and that the planes leave on time, and that I make my connection in Atlanta.
• That I get to the airport safely.
• That no one gets hurt in this storm.
• That the exhaust system on my car stays on till I get to the airport (ominous rattlings popped up yesterday, but I can't get it fixed till I get back).
  
• That both of my planes stay aloft even if I am not helping by constantly pulling upwards on the armrests.
  

Actually, writing this out has helped a lot. It occurs to me that I can call the agency in a bit, and ask about contingency plans. Nice Lady has a wonderful family, including two children who live literally down the street, and who have 'filled in' by staying with her for an hour or so when needed. I'll have everything ready to go. The storm is starting early so there will be plenty of time for the plows to get out before I leave, and since it's New Years Eve, traffic will be lighter than normal anyway.

It'll be okay. Deep breaths, Elle, deep breaths.

But prayers and good wishes would still be welcome!

ETA: I just talked to the agency. The director said that if Replacement is late, Director will come out and stay with Nice Lady until Replacement gets there. Thank Goodness. Nice people there. But you can all still pray/send good thoughts for the aforementioned stuff anyway.

Elle

Thoughts on Rapid Weight Loss

Mariasol has a great post up about online diets, and it got me thinking about rapid weight loss.

In some ways, I feel like I really shouldn't be talking about this. The most I had to lose was about 30 lbs, and I had a perfect weight loss experience. I was one of those people whose metabolic needs and personal food preferences dovetailed perfectly with Atkins. I lost thirteen lbs in my first two weeks on Induction, and hit my first goal of 132 lbs exactly three months after I started. I went on to lose a bit more and over the last four and a half years have managed to maintain, with only a bit of upward creep here and there which was easily fixed each time with a brief return to Induction.

Back when I was actively posting on Low Carb Friends I was part of a challenge, where we'd all post our goals and cheer each other on. There were a few like me who found it easy, but there were more than a few who struggled. Even when they were doing everything 'right' they still weren't losing as fast as some others, and it was hard for them. They weren't alone -- there were plenty of people on LCF as a whole who were having the same problem, people who had a great deal of weight they needed to lose, much more than my piddling 30 lbs. It's no wonder some of them fell for the kimkins scam.

I can understand that, the need to get it off NOW, even though I don't have personal experience with it. My best friend had weight-loss surgery a few years ago, and I was there for the whole thing. I didn't agree with this decision, for a variety of reasons, which I shared with her but being a best friend, once I'd registered my opinion, I snapped into best friend mode and supported her all the way. Up to and including traveling to the foreign country where this surgery took place with her, emptying the drains that had been inserted in her stomach, cleaning up the puke from that first popsicle she ate too fast (I told her to slow down with that!) and giving her the anticoagulant shots once she was discharged. And to her credit, G (not her real initial) was a model patient, except for that first popsicle. She did, and continues to do, everything she's supposed to do and has maintained a healthy wait for years and looks just beautiful.

One of those things she's supposed to do involves ongoing medical supervision, which she gets religiously and which brings me at long last to the point of this post. If you were, for instance, to gain 100 lbs in just a few months it's to be hoped either you, or someone in your life, would think of getting you some medical attention because, clearly, that rapid a weight gain is an indicator that something could be very wrong with you.

So why, then, do people think they could lose that much weight in the same time period without medical supervision and not expect any adverse consequences?

I know the answer to that, of course. We all convince ourselves we're the exception to whatever, and point out that archetypal individual who did thus and thus and suffered no ill consequences. I have one in my family, my paternal grandfather smoked for nearly seventy years, having started when he was twelve, and lived to be 89. Well, he didn't escape it entirely, he did, after all, die of lung cancer ("If only he quit sooner!" said my grandmother) but still ... 89!

Of course, my maternal grandfather smoked too, starting in his twenties all the way to his death from throat cancer at the age of 55. But back when I used to smoke, guess which grandfather I looked to as proof of my superior genetics and how I could do something so damaging to my health and still get away with it?

Ultima ratio regum, the final argument of kings, in this case, our overweening desire to do or have something so badly that it completely overwhelms our common sense.

I need to go do some laundry in preparation for New Mexico. Where, incidentally, I plan to eat all manner of stuff I normally avoid. Induction when I come back!

Elle

New Year's Resolution

I know, I'm a few days early. But, I'll be in New Mexico with Dancing in Socks Guy all next week, so I thought I'd do it now. My New Year's Resolution for 2008 is to ...

Perform Twelve Random and Anonymous Acts of Kindness

As with so many other things, the concept of a random act of kindness is not unique to me. But I've always admired people who did such things, and no doubt like many people, have often thought 'Oh, I should do that too'. But, also like many people, I seem to never get around to it.

One of my (many) failings is that I tend to focus on the negatives in my life, to the exclusion of recognizing my blessings. In other words, I can be a real self-centered bitch. Certain things could be better, true, but when I look around me I realize I have it infinitely better than so many other people. I'd like to stop being quite as self-centered as I often am, so I thought one way to try and work on that would be to focus on other people for a change.

Here are the ground rules:

1.) Perform one random act of kindness every month this year.

2.) Stay anonymous. That means not just with the recipient, but in my every day life and here as well. I may say 'Random Act of Kindness for the month of May was completed' and I may discuss how it made me feel but beyond that, nothing. Advertising what I did sort of contradicts the point of what I'm trying to do, and would make me a bit of an attention whore.

3.) The random act of kindness has to be something I wouldn't normally think of doing. Giving up a parking space or holding a door for someone doesn't count. This also includes contributing money to large-scale disaster relief (may that not be necessary this year). Not that I can't do that, or won't if I can afford to, but I would like to make this more about me thinking about what I'm doing for someone, rather than just doing the obvious. Besides, it's hard to do that in a way that's completely anonymous.

4.) That last sentence notwithstanding, the random act of kindness can involve a financial contribution of some kind, but it needs to be something thoughtful and purposeful, something geared towards a specific individual or individuals.

5.) The recipient doesn't have to be human, but because I'm, uh, already a bit of a crazy cat lady, if the recipient is a non-human, it must also make a human happy at the same time.

6.) This ties in with #4 -- whatever I do, it needs to be done thoughtfully. Which means planning. Which means not suddenly realizing it's the last day of the month and rushing out to do something half-assed just to fulfill the letter of the resolution and not the spirit.

7.) I will make an effort to ensure that the recipient(s) are people I don't already know, but there can be exceptions to this if there's a good reason for it.

8.) I realize all the preceding rules may put the randomness of this in question, so the last rule is that it should, wherever possible, be random for the recipient.

So, there it is. We'll see how I do. What about you all -- what resolutions are you making and why?

Elle

Camp Send Me Your Money

I haven't said much about TippyToes, mainly because I never had much to do with her during her stay on LCF, and aside from a general disdain of diet scams such as Kimkins, I don't really have a dog in this fight. I know what a lot of people think about her, and I haven't seen anything which leads me to disagree with the general consensus but the fact remains that I don't know the woman or what she's really like.

I do know this, though. She's started a 'diet support site' called Camp Carb Away, which offer access to their fora for a registration fee of $19.95. There's also a PayPal donation button on the main page, for some reason.

Okay.

So, let's think about this. Someone wants to create a new support site. Perhaps they genuinely do want to provide the internet with a safe, gentle, kind, fluffy-bunny site in which members routinely exchange nothing but squeeful !!!HUGS!!! with each other. A virtual world in which the moderators wield big ban buttons and mean people who post nasty things will not be tolerated. A laudable goal, some might say. I personally prefer an open exchange of frank ideas with very light moderation, but that's just me.

When I first began low-carbing, nearly five years ago, I got a lot of support from Low Carb Friends. However, like any active forum with lots of members, there is a very wide variety of opinions and posting styles, and while it's moderated it is not a group-hug kind of place. Members occasionally bicker and argue and call each other names. That doesn't bother me, but it's not for everyone. For those who prefer a more heavily moderated board, there are plenty out there. That you don't have to pay for.

Seriously, why would anyone pay to join a diet support site when there is no end of free places available? Why would anyone not question the motives of someone who is running a 'diet support site' which requires any kind of payment?

Oh, but Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Pickles Lady! you may be saying. That kind of thing takes time! And MONEY! You have to pay for that site and arrange for people to design it and host it and everything! Why shouldn't you charge something to cover her costs? YOU'RE A MEANY!!!!

I may be a meany, but you're deluded if you think it's not possible to set up just such a site for nothing. There are many perfectly free message board sites which can be tailored to the user's wishes. They can be set up to require registration, they can be set up to hold posts pending moderator approval, they can be set up so you can ban whoever you want as often as you want. I'm speaking about sites like Aimoo and Proboards and even Yahoo Groups, all of which will let you set up your very own registration-required, moderated out the butt forum for nothing more than a few minutes of your time. What I am saying is:

- You can set up a private, moderated message board for free.

- If you are paying for one because you don't know any better or are so incompetent that you can't manage to follow directions to set it up yourself, you probably have no business running such a forum.

If you want to try and make a little by running ads, fine -- I mean, I have ads. I'm never going to retire on them, I'll be lucky if I can buy a case of cat food with what I make from ad revenue this year, but my feeling is that nobody has to click on them if they don't want to. If they're too obtrusive, I'll hear about it soon enough in the form of non-returning readers and angry comments. And they're right out there -- it's obvious why I have them. But, I am not claiming they are there because of start-up costs and the need for technical assistance which are, in my opinion, mere smokescreens to make a profit.

And if it's a profit you're after, well, fine. It's a service and if people want it they'll pay for it. Just be up front about it, and do not cloak it in a lot of disingenuous babble about wanting to provide a 'safe place.'

Not that this is what TippyToes has done, to my knowledge. I don't find her all that interesting, so I haven't been following her role in the Kimkins saga that closely. I just think that if her motivation in starting Camp Carb Away was to provide such a safe place and nothing else ... she could have done it for nothing, and her users would pay nothing to join.

I'm just saying.

Mariasol has a great entry on her blog about free diet support. I suggest anyone who's looking for support check it out.

Elle

Merry Christmas!

<

They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on Earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the Virgin Birth

I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas Tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire

They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a Silent Night
And they told me a fairy story
Till I believed in The Israelite

And I believed in Father Christmas
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes
'Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear

They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on Earth
Hallelujah Noel be it Heaven or Hell
The Christmas you get you deserve.

This is my favorite Christmas 'Carol.' The lyrics may be a little off-putting for some, at first glance, but if you listen carefully you realize it's a celebration of what Christmas should be. I'm off to decorate Christmas Cookies with my niece. In fact, I just baked two dozen gingerbread men for that purpose, and I didn't taste a single one! Ah, the joys of being low-carb at the holidays! Merry Christmas to everyone and blessings for peace and happiness in the New Year.

Elle

Hi, Heidi!

I have an invisible counter on this site, one which, in addition to telling me how many people have come here, tells me their IP address, how they got here, and how many times they have been here.

Number of Entries: Entry Page Time: Visit Length: Browser OS Resolution

2 18th December 2007 20:34:06 Multiple visits spread over more than one day MSIE 7.0 Windows Vista unknown

Returning Visits: Location: Hostname: Entry Page: Exit Page: Referring URL:

5 Riverside California United States 71.80.137.24 [Label IP Address] grilledcheesewithpickles.blogspot.com/2007/11/kimkins.html grilledcheesewithpickles.blogspot.com/2007/11/kimkins.html www.lowcarbfriends.com/bbs/kimkins/528823-why-fascination-kimmer-11-a-93.html

That IP address, 71.80.137.24, resolves to charter.net, BTW. And, the page they were on before this one was one of the Low Carb Friends Fascination Threads.

Cheeze Whiz, I wonder who that could be?

I can't imagine who else from Riverside CA would come here, and if I'm mistaken about my visitor, my apologies unknown person and my sympathies for breathing the same air as my favorite discredited diet guru. But, it if is you, Heidi -- let me offer you a friendly warning. I'm better at this than you are. You're an amateur, and you have more important things to worry about than me.

Elle

Feline Biographies: Thundercat

Official Name: Thundercat
Nicknames: Big Boy, Big Guy, Mama's Sweet Boy, Thunderboy, Mama's Only Normal Cat, Sweetie Pants, Large Man, Sweetiekins, Grandpa Cat, Fraidy Cat
Age: Exact age unknown, assumed to be about 7-10 years old
Likes: Sleeping, eating, cuddling with the other cats and Mama Cat
Dislikes: I am much too polite and considerate to inconvenience you with any sort of dislikes. Whatever you want is fine with me.

Dear Thundercat,

I met you nearly six years ago. My dog had just died, and my then-cat, Baby Boy, was going crazy with loneliness. I thought about getting another dog, but decided, for a variety of reasons, that another cat would be a better fit. So, I called up our local humane society, and asked about available cats.

This group didn't have a dedicated shelter building at the time, so all of the cats lived in foster homes (the dogs were either fostered or stayed at the local pound, although they were not ever euthanized). They gave me a list of names and numbers to call, and I started dialing. The first lady I called was adamant that the cat she was fostering had to be allowed to go outdoors, something I am opposed to, so that was a no go. The next lady had a big male cat, exact age unknown, who could really use a home as soon as possible, could I come by tomorrow? I said sure, I'll come check him out.

The next afternoon, I pulled up by her house and as soon as I opened the car door, I could smell why you needed a home. I was greeted at the door by Well Meaning Lady and her multiple dogs, cats and ferrets. I asked Well Meaning Lady which of the cats was you, and she said, "Oh, he's down cellar."

I assumed that meant you were just down there playing. But, as we descended the cellar stairs I realized that she meant you lived down there. In a large wire cage. All by yourself.

As I looked at you, gaping in disbelief at what I saw, Well Meaning Lady filled me in on your history. You were found on the side of a road, ten months before, huddled under a tree against the rain. A good Samaratin saw you, thought that you didn't look like a feral cat, figured you must be lost, scooped you up and brought you to her vet. Who, coincidentally, happens to be my vet, Dr. Best Vet Ever. Dr. Best Vet Ever does a lot of pro bono work for the local humane group, so they kept you for a few days while a foster home was found (and named you 'Buffalo Bill' since you were such a big boy) and from there you went to Well Meaning Lady's, where you had been ever since.

No one ever came looking for you, so it was assumed you were either dumped or no one cared enough to find you. Given your non-wandering nature, I'm thinking it was the former and may whoever did that to you get all they deserve out of life. Well Meaning Lady certainly kept you safe, but for reasons I don't understand, felt you needed to be isolated from the other animals in her house, which I later learned was not a general policy of the humane group. You first stayed in an upstairs room by yourself, but were later moved to the cellar.

Maybe it was your size, Big Guy. You were a large cat to start with, your original record at Dr. Best Vet Ever's record your weight at 15 lbs when you were brought in. Months in a cage for 23 hours a day didn't help that any, since you weighed a whopping 18 lbs when I took you to the vet a few days later for a complete checkup. Hence, your new name, Thundercat -- I could hear you walking around.

Well Meaning Lady seemed a little apprehensive about you -- when I went to scratch your head through the wire she said, "Oh, be careful!" This may be why you were caged like that -- she'd convinced herself that your size meant you were dangerous. I didn't know what I was looking for in a cat, other than one who needed a home, and you certainly filled that requirement. So, I said I'd take you. Well Meaning Lady further proved her fear of you by trying to tip you out of the cage and into my cat carrier. I just reached in and picked you up, at which point she yelped, "Be careful! Watch out! Don't let him scratch you!"

It was clear she didn't know you at all.

I got you in the carrier with no trouble at all, hauled you back upstairs, got your vaccination records etc., wrote out a check for the adoption fee and took you home. Before I left, Well Meaning Lady imparted one more factoid about you -- you never purred. "Well, no shit, Well Meaning Lady," I thought as I left her house. "If you lived in a cage all by yourself, you wouldn't purr either."

You didn't utter a single meow as I drove home. I brought you inside, opened the carrier and took you out. You huddled on the floor as Baby Boy came over and ... started hissing. As I expected. You bolted to my bedroom and hid under the bed. Also as I expected. I put food and water under the bed for you, and moved the new litterbox in there too. You spent the first few days under there, where I would come in periodically and pull you out so I could pet you and give you love. Baby Boy went around hissing and spitting. But, on the third day I came home from work and found the two of you knotted together on the bed, giving each other a bath.



You were fast friends after that, always together. How you two loved each other! You warmed up to him a lot faster than you warmed up to me. Oh, you were quiet and polite, and never objected to me cleaning your ears or handling you, but you never approached me voluntarily. At night, when Baby Boy would jump on the bed and settle down next to me, you stayed out on the couch. You also continued to never purr, even with Baby Boy. I didn't mind -- I knew that humans in the past hadn't been especially good to you, and all your experiences up till then had taught you to be wary of us. But I also knew you were a smart cat and eventually you would figure out that you didn't need to be afraid of me. That someday you'd realize that I loved you and would always take care of you.

Some six months after you came to live with us, you did realize this. One morning you didn't run to your food bowl. You looked a little off that morning, and when you refused to eat again that night, I knew you were sick. I 'forced' some water into you (meaning you sat there and let me open your mouth while I dripped some water in) and took you to Dr. Best Vet Ever the next morning. You had a very high fever, probably from a virus, he told me. He wanted to hospitalize you so they could bring it down with subcutaneous fluid boluses, something I was capable of doing at home, but not as often as you would need. So, in you went. As they carried you back, your little face had a stiff, scared expression. What was happening?

You stayed there for three days, and I came and visited you in the mornings before work and at night when I got home. You were a little surprised to see me that first night, but that, Sweet Man, is why I was there. I knew you'd think you'd just been abandoned again, and I wanted you to realize that wasn't so, that you would be coming home. Which you did, fully recovered, for a joyous reunion with Baby Boy.



A few weeks later you had a regularly scheduled well-cat checkup, where you also had a dental exam. Unfortunately, you had a rotten molar, which needed extracting, so a day or so later you went back for the day. Again, as they took you out back you had that same, stiff, scared expression. All went well, and I picked you up that afternoon and brought you home. That night, as I was lying in bed reading, you jumped up, nosed my book aside, settled yourself on my chest ... and started to purr.

I nearly cried. What was it, Sweet Boy, that made you feel safe enough to finally purr? Was it that twice in a row I'd left you somewhere ... and came back for you? Did you finally realize that I would always come back?

Whatever it was, you have purred ever since. We've been through a lot since then, Big Guy, and I couldn't have gotten through it without you. When Baby Boy got sick, you nursed him. You groomed him when he was too weak to do it himself, you let him eat first when he had no real appetite, quite as if you knew that any distraction at all would turn him off food totally. One horrible night, the night the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, he was quite bad. So weak, so apathetic, and hypothermic. He was on the couch next to me, under a blanket, and you got in there with him and wrapped yourself around him, comforting him and keeping him warm. We finally found ways to help him, and he came back to 'normal,' clinically, but you played a huge role in that, Large Man.

When little Minx came into the family, you helped even more. She was just a few weeks old and filled with the typical minnikin (that's a baby minx) energy. Baby Boy was getting better by then, but it was a while before he could keep up with her and in the interim, you took over as her nanny. You are not a very playful cat, Sweetiekins, you much prefer to nap in a sunny spot. But more than once I saw you engage her in play so she'd leave Baby Boy alone to get some rest. You also taught her all a cat should know about litterboxes and grooming and the like.



You cuddled and napped with her as well. Even now that she is a grown-up Minx, you still do this. In fact, you and Minx are sacked out together on my bed as I write this.



Too soon, the day came when it was time for us to let Baby Boy go. I wrapped him in a blanket, and you jumped on the bed, came over and licked his face. So did Minx. You both knew. And when I came home, clutching that same blanket and crying, you came up to me on the couch and got in my lap. You gently licked my hands as if to say, it'll be okay. We'll get through this. You didn't leave my side that whole weekend, knowing as you did that it was your turn to help me. And you did, my sweet, sweet boy. You have no idea how much you helped comfort me.

And you continue to help. Morsel came into our lives, quite unexpectedly, just four days after Baby Boy died. He was even tinier than Minx had been, maybe five or six weeks old. I wasn't expecting either you or Minx to give him a rousing reception, but I should have known better. When I took him out of the carrier, you both sniffed him, and accepted him straight off. Below is a picture of you and Morsel, taken Morsel's first day, no, first hour here.



I mean, seriously. What other cat does that?



And now we have Lilly, too. Through it all, you have been my rock, Sweet Man. I often call you my 'only normal cat' because, in a house with two cats and a minx who have extremely colorful personalities, and exhibit rather unusual behaviors (eating lettuce, chewing cardboard) and naughtiness (the orange tiger variety), you are the only one who acts like a typical cat and doesn't do anything even remotely naughty. You eat, you sleep, you cuddle and purr. In some ways, this could act against you. In a house where little Morsel falls to the ground and curls in a ball on command to a "Why are you so cute?!?". and Minx trills her mimimimmiMI!!!!! and attacks a cardboard box and Lilly flaunts her supermodel calico self, a quiet, non-assuming personality such as yourself could so easily go unnoticed.

But I notice you, Fat Man, though at 14 lbs you are no longer a fat cat. I notice your sweetness, your consideration, your gratitude when I open another can of cat food just for you because you didn't like the first one I opened. I know how much you love cuddling with me at night, and how you know that I save half the pillow for you. And very often at night, while I am stroking your sleek fur, so gorgeous in its gleaming blackness and snowy whiteness and unusual patterning, you purr your sweet purr while I tell you your life story:

Once upon a time, on a cold and rainy day, a lady was driving down the road. She looked over and saw a big black and white cat under a tree, soaking wet. "He must be lost!" she said, and she picked him up and brought him to Dr. Best Vet Ever, where she knew they would help him. He stayed there for a few days, and got a new name, Buffalo Bill. Then the Humane Group found him a temporary home, while they looked for his people -- they never found them, so the big black and white cat stayed at Well Meaning Lady's for a long time. Oh, he was safe and he had the basics any cat needs, but he was so lonely. Then, one day, he heard strange footsteps and a strange voice overheard. Then he saw a new face and before he knew it, he was in a brand new house with a brand new name, Thundercat. A house where there was everything he needed and more. Warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Good food, fresh water. Toys to play with, and the occasional treats in the form of chicken livers and catnip. Brother and sister cats to play with. Plenty of comfortable places to sleep. And someone to love him.



I love you, Big Guy. I promise to always try to be the guardian you deserve. Thank you for understanding when I fall short of that, as I sometimes do, and loving me just the same. Thank you for being my kitty.

Love,

Mama Cat

Requiem for a Cat

Dear Baby Boy,

Just a little over two years ago I held you in my arms while gentle hands eased you from this world to the next. It's a tribute to how very loved you were that everyone -- literally everyone -- at the vet's was in tears that day. We knew that day was coming, but it didn't make it any easier.

For nearly two years you'd been living with dilated cardiomyopathy. Feline cardiomyopathy, unfortunately, is quite common but you had one of the more unusual forms of the disease. Many heart kitties have the hypertrophic form, where the walls of the heart thicken. You had the dilated form, where they thin. I knew our time together was limited the night I rushed you to the vet, the night when you suddenly started having problems breathing, and Dr. Best Vet Ever told me he thought you were in heart failure. He told me it could be managed, but I knew, and he knew I knew, that 'managed' meant at best a few months.

But that didn't happen, sweet man. You lived a lot longer than anyone thought you would, longer than even some of the best veterinarians thought you could. And more importantly, you lived as a normal cat for much of that time. We don't know how this happened to you, there are various causes for feline cardiomyopathies. The vets at Tufts Veterinary School thought the most likely cause was a virus, since your heart was normal at a well-cat vet visit just six months before you got sick. But, it could have been genetic. Whatever it was, it didn't really matter to me because the end result was going to be the same. My beloved Baby Boy was going to die.

You came into my life nearly seven years ago. I had just lost another cat, my lovely Grey Kitty, unexpectedly and I was a mess. One of my lab techs, who happened to live in the same town, told me about a stray who was living around an apartment house near me, a house where a friend of hers lived. This stray, she said, was desperate to get into a house, and was being fed by at least six people, none of whom could adopt him for various reasons. Maybe it was too soon for me to get another cat, but ...

In some ways it was too soon, but the thought of a stray cat, any stray cat living in the open at the mercy of traffic and the foxes and coyotes which abound around here was too much. So, I walked up the street, found you sleeping under a lilac bush, verified with some of the residents of the apartment house that you were the stray in question, scooped you up and brought you home.

Thank God for that impulse. You were a joy and a delight. Every single night you curled up on the bed next to me, and every morning you woke me up by purring loudly and often wetly in my ear to let me know the cat needed to be fed. You played with your many toys, and you played with the dog and her many toys. You cuddled and you teased. You never met a stranger. You were, my sweet man, the perfect cat -- that combination of loving snuggliness and playful felinity.

When the dog died (it's been a bad few years for pets around here) you were so lonely. Within a week it was obvious that for our combined sanity, I needed to get you a pet. I thought about getting another dog, but due to the fact that I worked a lot and the fact that my dog was a rare soul herself who was just fine being left alone for 8+ hours a day, so long as there was a cat around for companionship and someone to come in to walk her in the middle of the day, the likes of which would be hard to find in another canine, I decided to get another cat instead.

That's how we got Thundercat. When I brought him home from his miserable foster home (another post entirely), you were less than thrilled. He spent the first three days under the bed, while you spent those three days hissing at him and generally acting pissed at the world. But, sweet boy, I've had cats all my life and I knew that with a little time you'd both get over it and at least coexist. And I was right. On day four I came home from work and found the two of you knotted together on my bed, giving each other a bath. You were fast friends after that.



You loved your brother cat so much, and he loved you too. You played together, even though Thundercat was shy at first, due to his sad history. You groomed each other and snuggled together on the couch. And after you got sick, Thundercat appointed himself your nurse. In the first, early, awful days when you were so sick and weak, he groomed you when you didn't have the energy to clean yourself. Before we got your meds and supplements worked out, when you were barely eating, he let you go to the food dish first, as if he knew it took very little to turn you off eating altogether, and that his presence would distract you from the one or two mouthfuls you would take.

One of the most painful things about your illness, which came just three years after I adopted you, and only two years after I adopted Thundercat, was how your inveitable death would affect our big boy. He loved you so much. Then came the night when my brother called me, a little after midnight, to tell me he'd found a flea-ridden kitten in a snowbank, and he was worried because he'd bathed it and it looked like it was bleeding and could I come over and check it out ...

As I drove over to J's house I tried to convince myself that I was not going to be taking that kitten home. You were so sick then, little guy, that night had been particularly bad, and the last thing you needed was excitement in the form of a kitten. But when I got there, and saw the scrawny little creature that was our Minx, I couldn't resist. J had said he'd keep her until the morning, and take her to a shelter. He's not a pet person the way I am, despite being raised in the same house with all those pets, and felt he couldn't give a pet his full attention anyway, but couldn't leave her out in the cold and snow. He was worried because she was bleeding from all the flea bites, and figured his crazy cat lady sister would 1.) know what to do about it and 2.) drive ten miles in the middle of the night to check it out.

Of course I ended up bringing her home, cursing my stupidity all the way back with that kitten cuddled inside my coat. But it was Thundercat I was thinking of, Baby Boy. It looked, frankly, like you wouldn't be with us too much longer and I wanted Thundercat to have a friend when you passed on. As it happened, that kitten was the best thing I could have done for both of you. She distracted you from your illness, gave you something to think about besides how bad you were feeling. Your innate curiosity rose to the forefront and you took to your new little sister right away. So did Thundercat, who now added 'nanny' to his list of duties. Thundercat is not an especially playful cat, but several times I watched him deliberately engage Minx in play so she'd leave you alone.


A month or two later, not so long after Dr. Best Vet Ever told me I needed to seriously consider euthanizing you, you made a miraculous turn around. I started you on co-enzyme q10, taurine and L-carnitine as well as B vitamins, supplements I learned about through a wonderful support group I'd joined, the Yahoo Feline Heart Group, and this in combination with the meds that Dr. Best Vet Ever and Tufts Veterinary School came up with for you made you feel so much better. Medically, your heart was the mess it always was, clinically, you were normal. You ate like a horse, you ran, you enjoyed your new cat tree (you'd make a running leap, five feet in the air to the top of it all the time, this with practically no heart function at all!), you napped in your cat bed and on the windowsills, you played and cuddled with your brother and sister. You were your old self.

We lived in this grace for fifteen months, sweet boy. I still knew you were going to die, I'd accepted that, but I was then, and continue to be now, so grateful that I had all this extra time with you. Everything I'd done, every penny I spent was so worth it just to have this time with my Baby Boy. Even the twice-daily ordeal of getting your meds and supplements into you was worth it -- how you hated that! But to my mind, the ten minutes of not-so-great time per day was more than compensated for by the other twenty-three hours and fifty minutes of good. I think you felt the same way. You were even more attached to me during the last year of your life than you had been before -- you used to get on my lap and throw yourself over my left shoulder so I could stroke your back and tell you how much I loved you. You literally could do anything you wanted (except skip the meds, sorry, little guy), everything a cat could want, you had because I knew that each day could be our last.

The end came swiftly, and in the way I thought it might. Despite the fact that clinically, behaviorally, you seemed normal, your poor little heart was failing. And because your heart was failing, so, inexorably, were all your other organs. I'd guessed that because of the chronic under-perfusion of your liver and kidneys and so on, you would eventually go into systemic organ failure, and sadly, I was right. On Thanksgiving Day, you showed the symptoms of acute kidney failure. The next day, I sent you on to your next home, with messages for all my other babies who waited for you there.

This was a sad decision, but not agonizing, the way it was when you were first sick. Back then, back when everyone was telling me I 'needed to think' about euthanasia, I just couldn't do it. Which was strange for me, Baby Boy. All evidence pointed towards that being the humane choice, the right choice, a choice I had sadly made many times before with different pets ... but something in me said no. It's not time. And, as it happened, I was right to wait.

And, as it happened, it was right to send you on when I did. You knew it was time, too. That afternoon, as we were lying on my bed, I asked you, "Is it time, sweet boy?" and you turned your head and looked at me. I saw then, in your eyes, that you were ready. That you trusted me to help you with the last thing we needed to do in this journey. I wrapped you in your blankie, and the other cats came and said good bye. I walked outside with you, walked you around the yard so you could see the trees and the birds one last time from the outside (you were a strictly indoor cat). Then we drove to the vet's, and it says a lot about how ready you were that you didn't even need to be put in the carrier for this last trip. You just lay there, cuddled in your blankie, not even trying to move. And there, in the same exam room where I first learned you were sick, you lay peacefully in my arms, not resisting at all while you transitioned from this world to the next.

Despite knowing that this was the right thing to do, and despite a generally peaceful feeling about it, I was still quite obviously a sobbing mess that weekend. But, just four days later, Morsel came into our lives. More on that later, but ... if that wasn't you materializing back on earth as a little orange kitten, then it was you from heaven directing the most perfect cat possible into our lives.

I think of you every day, Sweet Boy, literally. For many years I have made it a practice to review my day -- not prayers, exactly, more of a shout-out to the universe -- and each night I have said good night to you, along with my other beloved dead, human and otherwise. I learned so much from you, and from our journey together. It was because of you that I ended up adopting our lovely Lilly, who also has a form of cardiomyopathy. It seemed a shame to waste all that specialized knowledge I'd gained while helping you, and I'd learned that I had it in me to love and cherish a pet even knowing that the time I would have with that pet was going to be painfully short. And because of you, a cat who was considered unadoptable is living out whatever time she has as a cherished and pampered princess in the home you loved so much.

We love you, Baby Boy. And wherever you are right now, I know you love us too.

Mama Cat

Candles, candles, everywhere ...

The Saga of the Magic Chicken Diet continues. To catch everyone up -- a diet website, now apparently defunct, called the Magic Chicken Diet recently cropped up. This diet and its website site looked and sounded suspiciously like that of everyone's favorite discredited diet guru and lawsuit defendant, Heidi Diaz, the fraud behind the dangerous Kimkins diet. A lot of stuff came out in a short period of time, which you can read about at Mariasol's Blog and Kimkins Exhausted, but here is the precis; The owners of the Magic Chicken Diet, a self-described God-Fearing couple called Bonnie and David, have claimed in various comments on various sites that:

- Their diet is genuine
- They don't know Kimmer, and have never been directly associated with Kimkins
- They got the idea to do a website based on Bonnie's diet after seeing the infamous Woman's World article on Kimkins.
- And a bunch of other crap.

I should mention that it is not just Bonnie and Dave who are out there bravely defending their diet/website. An individual named 'Hulon' who describes himself as their son-in-law has been leaving interesting, passionate, creatively spelled missives on these sites. You can find one here. In this particular screed, Hulon, unfettered by grammar, blames Kimkins and Kimmer for the demise of his 'in-law's' site, despite the fact that the 404 screen from GoDaddy contained a message asking the site owner to call a certain number. A number which our intrepid Yucky called and found connected to ... the billing department.

Would that we all had such devoted relatives as Hulon. In addition to defending the diet site, Hulon has also been known to leave a post or two attempting to sell candles, except interestingly, they appear not to be Bonnie and Dave's candles. Which brings up a question, how many candle businesses do they have? There's Stoney Creek Candles, there was apparently at one time something called the candlesupplyplace.com, but Hulon was busy selling candles from here, which seems to do wholesaling.

Hmm. Who else do I know who 'employs' her 'relatives,' sometimes without their knowledge ...

Interesting. Well, not really.

Elle

I laughed my a** off at this!

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=5426456

OMG.

Elle

Three of my kitties love each other ...

... and the fourth hands out beatings to the other three on principle. Because she's a calico, damn it!

Top pic, from the left -- Thundercat, Morsel and Minx, all cuddled on the couch, wuving on each other as they usually do. Bottom picture, the incomparably lovely Lilly, plotting the torment of the other cats from her Secret Underground Fortress of Evil (my closet).

Three out of four isn't bad.

Elle

Dancing in Socks Guy, I love you

My sweetie has two of his final grades in for the semester. Both A's!!!

I love you, Dancing in Socks Guy. And I'm so proud of you. You're not only a million times nicer, sweeter, kinder and more loving than anyone who came before, you are also smarter :)

One more final to go, tomorrow, but I don't anticipate you'll have any problems at all with that one, either. Good luck, love, and go study :)

Elle

You have GOT to be kidding me!

Breaking news from Mariasol's Blog -- it looks like Kimmer and Kimions (Kimmer minions) are attempting to reinvent themselves as ...

The Magic Chicken Diet.

If nothing else, the name of this 'diet' should convince anyone with even so much as a functioning brain stem that this is the work of crazy people and the only magic involved is the kind that makes $69.95 disappear from your wallet.

Seriously. The Magic CHICKEN Diet???

I'm about average when it comes to being a moral, principled person but I find myself wishing that I was well below average. Between us, Dancing in Socks Guy and I have these students loans and we'd like a little more of a nest egg tucked away for when we start a family and all that would be so much easier if I had it in me to start an internet diet site called "The Magic Bacon Diet" and take $69.95 from the desperate and gullible in return for which I'd provide a fun message board and a 'plan' which was basically the Atkins Diet with a twist, like taking a teaspoon of lemon juice with each meal.

I find this amusing, if sad. Kimkins Exhausted has, of course, run with this and uncovered some more stuff.

Good Lord.

Elle

May I recommend ...

I really need to update my blogroll. There are so many great kimkins related blogs out there, and many of you have shared their names with me. Later today, hopefully.

In the interim, and in the spirit of not playing favorites, let me just say I'm mentioning it because I happened to read through it over coffee this AM, I present a wickedly funny blog, Mariasol. She's a kimkins victim, and her take on it is just ... hysterical. BamaGal also has some great stuff on her site -- I highly recommend it. And 2big4mysize is another must-see. Cheeze whiz, I keep editing this to include my faves, I should just update the blogroll already. I swear I'm not leaving anyone out on purpose! I'm a little bleary-eyed -- up early to give a friend's diabetic cat his insulin this AM (she's away for the day) having gone to bed quite late last night.

Another great blog by someone who has a lot of interesting things to say is Medusa's Blog. And of course, Kimkins Exhausted is one of my personal favorites -- love that banner! Then there is The Alliance Report, a blog by the PI who snapped the now-infamous pix of Heidi as she really is, as opposed to the Russian Bride she wanted to be. And as always, if you are a victim of the kimkins scam, please consider joining the class action lawsuit against kimkins.com and its founder Heidi Diaz.

Oh, and Heidi, if you are reading this ... did you actually manage to adopt one of those foster kids? A little something I found makes me think you might have. I am not posting anything about it, because it involves a minor, but I certainly hope I'm wrong. I wouldn't trust you with a ChiaPet.

Elle

Where have I been?

I have a good friend, who I will call H. H is possibly the smartest person I know -- he has a bachelor's from A Very Prestigious University and a Master's and a Doctorate from an Even More Prestigious Institute of Technology. Immediately after getting his last degree he began working in finance, even though he is a scientist -- he does obscure financial modeling for some damn thing or another. He worked on Wall Street for a while, and then went into consulting, where he makes quite a good living.

The thing is, he hates it. He's always hated it. He's always wanted to crawl back into the academic womb and teach. Back when all this started I told him to work for a few years, make and bank his money, and then go into academia. Money is, of course, not everything, and academic salaries prove this. Still, when you have expertise in a field that maybe three other people in the world know, expertise that people are willing to pay you >$200,000 year for, why not spend two or three years earning something to bank away against the day when you get paid about one fourth of that as an assistant professor? Especially when you still live like you're a starving student and could easily save most of it?

Yet years have passed and H is still doing modeling and still talking about the day when he will teach, and what he needs to do to make that happen and blah blah blah. I've been encouraging him for the last, oh, four years or so to just go ahead and teach already if that's what he wants, and as much as I love H, I admit I have been frustrated with his repeated statements about how much he hates what he's doing and how bad he wants to teach, and I have wondered why he doesn't just do it already, damn it.

Until this week. I think I know why. Somewhere, in the reptilian core of his brain, H knows he's in for what I've been experiencing all goddamn week:

BIG, MASSIVE, HUGE, GINORMOUS, INFANTILE, OUTSIZE, SELFISH, PETULANT, PARANOID, SPACEPHXCK CRAZY, OPERATIC PERSONALITIES COUPLED WITH REPEATED HYSTERICAL, IMMATURE, UNPROFESSIONAL, HISTRIONIC, CHILDISH, EMOTIONAL, BABYISH, BATSH*T, BUGPHXCK, LUNATIC, WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE OVERREACTIONS TO NOTHING AT ALL!!!

That's what he's in for, because that's what you get when you work in a place where people are tenured and can't generally get their dumb asses fired, no matter how outrageous their behavior.

Seriously. This has been just about the worst work week I've had in my entire professional life. I will spare you all the details, mainly because they don't matter to anyone who isn't me, but it was just brutal. Brutal, aggravating, and, may I say, disappointing and incredibly frustrating because the principle actor in this drama is someone that I happen to like very much. Someone who has done a great deal for me. Someone who, until this week, had my loyalty until said person put me in a position where I had to choose between them and uh, sanity.

And the truth of the situation. Now, I'm no more or less truthful than a lot of people, and not even the people who love me the most in this world would describe me as a latter-day Norma Rae. I just want to do my work, get paid and go home. That's all. Still, there are times when even an avoidant personality like me must face a situation and call bullshit, which is what I was forced to do.

So now I am a disloyal bitch whose wings must be clipped, even though I, uh, technically don't really report to this individual. Of course, this clipping is coming in the form of theatrical sighs, and slamming of doors and stomping around (literally) and repeated requests to change this comma, no, a semi-colon, no, a comma!!! No, not like THAT!!! THIS WAY!!! CHANGE IT TO A SEMI-COLON!!! WHY IS THERE A SEMI-COLON THERE?!?!? I TOLD YOU I WANTED A COMMA!!!

All. Week. Long. And, somehow, the situation which precipitated this mess has morphed from the Machiavellian actions of a bunch of other people to being ... all my fault. But not to worry. This Person has assured me, no, promised me that Person will 'protect' me from the situation, despite my many faults. Because Person, as Person tells me I know full well, is the kind of person who just wants everyone to get along. And, despite my flaws, Person loves my work even if I am an abject failure in terms of getting along with my colleagues -- who, though it pains Person to say, are in need of protection from my feckless, heedless self. And even though I am woefully deficient when it comes to knowing when to use a comma or a semi-colon. Empires and grant applications have failed for less!

WTF?

For those who are interested, and those who are not, I work at a university, but I am not tenured, nor will I ever be. I'm a staff scientist, not faculty and therefore, my only job security is the quality of my work. Which is the one good thing to come out of this week, the reassurance from people who actually matter in terms of keeping my job that they, and everyone else who had front row tickets (or even nosebleed seats) to this week's little Community Theatre production of The Prince know full well what happened, who was at fault, and that no blame is being attached to me, either for the situation or the actions of said individual. That, in fact, my work is valued enough that a lot of things will be rearranged to enable me to work independently of this person, should I feel it necessary. It's my call.

This was very good to know. It is very easy, in an academic setting -- and in industry, to get in trouble merely by association with a troublemaker, even if you yourself are blameless. It is also the single biggest mistake anyone can make in their professional life to assume that they are irreplaceable. Everyone is replaceable -- even if the ship does in fact sink without you on it afterwards, it will not stop you from getting tossed overboard in the first place.

Unless you're tenured, that is.

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it at this point. Unlike some people I prefer to avoid acting from emotion wherever possible, so I said that I'd like to take a few days and let the situation diffuse a bit before I make any decisions. While this week sucked donkey balls, and while the general craziness has been escalating with Person for a while, I have a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude towards Person, and Person's feelings matter to me as does Person's professional standing which will be at least a little dinged if I metaphorically jump on my desk and yell PHXCK THIS , YOU CRAZY PERSON, WHEN IT GETS SO BAD THAT I END UP HIDING IN A LADIES' ROOM IN ANOTHER BUILDING JUST TO GET AWAY FROM YOU AND YOUR NUTTINESS AND GO HOME CRYING EVERY DAY, I'M OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!

And, while I am not the smartest person in the world, and while I have more than my fair share of immaturity and character flaws even at an age where I shouldn't have them, I am reasonably certain that this situation and the underlying issues which triggered it will not be solved by a precipitous, emotional exit which would basically be just how Person would act. And we can't have that, can we? I mean, I guess we can't have that.

All positions have their Issues, and there is always That One Person (or Those People) at any job, and back in the day, I used to rail against those Issues and Those People. It wasn't Right, or Fair that Those People should be allowed to cause all these Issues! Someone should Do Something! It took me a long time -- much longer than it should have -- to realize that my bitching and moaning and gossiping and backbiting in these situations made me part of the problem. Not part of the solution.

But, time marches on and the tides crash against the shore day and night and wear you down to where you reach a point where you can be accepting and philosophical about most of these workplace dramas, and learn to avoid them where you can instead of gleefully jumping into them with your gums flapping and your arms waving. They come, they go, they come again but so does Friday and the world keeps spinning regardless of what happened at work today. You get to where you can put it in perspective and leave it all at work at the end of the day.

Except when you can't, when you go home crying like I've done every day this week. That's when the situation may be bigger than your ability to leave it behind, and where it may be time for a change.

Elle