Life With Sass

Sassy, or Sass, as I call her, has fit right into our family. It was like she was created just for us!! She is very playful, yet she mellows out nicely too.She does not like to be alone and cries if she thinks everyone left her. She curls up on a dining room chair during school and she is definitely a lap cat!!!And what cat would belong to a quilter if she did not like quilts??? Sass loves them!Kyle put it best when he said, "Sassy makes my heart happy again."UGH!!! I can't believe I have a cat! I am not a cat person....or I should say, I was NOT a cat person, but now I am!! I now know what Winona knows!

Today, Saturday, is a slow day here. It use to be that Saturday was a HUGE cleaning/laundry day, but since Sweetheart is home, that all changed. Now Saturday's are more fun days. Movies and quilting....maybe a game of cards or Yahtzee. I picked up "Julie and Julia" and plan to watch that later today. First though, I think I will clean up my sewing area.It is a bit messy and my friend and neighbor will be coming over one day next week to cut her first quilt. I am thrilled about that, and can not wait to see a quilter born!

Thank you all so much for your prayers and thoughts regarding my family situation. I have faith that God's plan will be revealed in all of this.

Have a wonderfully blessed weekend!!!!

Sharing My Heart

I can not begin to express how much your comments and e-mails have meant to me. Thank you all so much. The love we felt for Hope was something I never would have imagined happening. She was just a cat for cryin out loud, but oh how she touched our lives. I well up just thinking of her. We buried her in our garden out back. My son Bud came over and dug up the frozen ground and we buried her in a box the kids made. It will now be called "Hope's Garden".

I have not shared my life lately. You know I am usually an open book. It has been a very rough couple of months here. No need to share details, but I will share that just after Thanksgiving, Bud and Rachel separated and are now going through a divorce. Rachel and the kids live with her parents over an hour away. It has been like a death in the family and I am, of course, concerned for my grandkids. This will be very hard on them, especially TJ who does not like change at all. Bud has them every other weekend until visitation is worked out through the courts. I do not assume any divorce is easy, and this one is no exception.

Enough of that. You can, maybe, see why saving Hope was so important to me. I could not save my grandchildren's family, but maybe I could save a cat. Well, that was not meant to be either. I am not sure why God brought Hope into our lives, or if He even did. I know she helped us more than we helped her. Last night was a sad night here. My little kids cried themselves to sleep. Zach sobbed for over an hour in his bed last night. He did not want to come with me or Sweetheart when we asked him. Charlotte was crying too. This morning her eyes were all red and puffy. Kyle was very quiet and spent the evening in his room. He had been spending a lot of time holding Hope in the evenings. I felt very guilty for putting my kids through this.

What could I do to make it better?Meet Sassy. Sassy is a 10 week old kitten who I got from the shelter this morning.
She is a sweet little thing with a black and pink nose and someone cut off her whiskers and one eyebrow.
This gives her a "misfit" look and I knew she would fit right in here.
The whiskers will grow back as fast as the smiles came back on my kid's faces!
Charlotte said, "Hope would like Sassy, Mom."

I know there is much love here to be poured out on a little black and white cat with no whiskers and a lot of attitude....which is where the name Sassy came from! I think Charlotte is right. Hope would like Sassy!!!

Hope Is Gone

Though she was only with us for a short time, she touched our lives in a way that will live forever. We loved her very much. I hope she felt that.

Friday Night Sew In

I am joining the Friday Night Sew In over at Handmade By Heidi. It will be February 19th. My goal is to get the Hidden Star to a completed top that night. It could be a long one!!!! Feel free to join in. Just click on the badge and sign up. The next day, we can all visit each other and see what got done!!!

For those Hope lovers, she is still with us, though she is having some "episodes" that may be seizures. She is very weak this morning only able to hold up her head. I plan to have a full day of pumping fluids with the needle and lots of holding and loving. I feel like it will go one way or the other very quickly here. I am not giving up!

A Hope-Ful Update

Things with Hope have certainly been eventful. The above pic is from last week. Her wound is no longer bandaged and has formed a very nice scab. All closed up and healing nicely. That is the good news. The bad news is, last night she could no more than hold up her head. Once again, I was stunned to find she survived the night. She had 70 cc's of a baby food meat/pedialyte soup yesterday given orally with a syringe in 10 cc increments. That stuff stinks and she is not a dumb cat and soon learned to close her throat so she could spit it out. Still I pressed on, unwilling to give up. This morning she was holding her head up better, but still unable to sit up or stand on her own. When she needs to use the litter box, she struggles to get up and I carry her over to her box and hold her up while she does her business. I got a very welcomed e-mail this morning from a blogging friend who has experience with sick animals. On her advice, I contacted the shelter lady again.....since she is mentioned so often I may as well call her by name.... Jane listened as I asked pleaded BEGGED for more help. I asked for a bag of lactate ringers and a needle. She finally said she would do her best and within the hour, Jane was at my door with a bag of ringers under her shirt (keeping them warm) and some hypodermic needles and a 60 cc syringe. She showed me how to put the fluids under her skin with the needle. We are putting 30 cc's at a time in her and that is wonderful!!! It takes me hours to get 30 cc's of the "soup" in her. Hope is cooperating for the most part, but has some fight in her yet. Jane only got 23 cc's in her before she pulled away and the needle came out. I got the whole 30 the next time, and the time after that I only got 15 before she started to pull away. We will continue to give her up to 180cc's a day of the ringers, sub-q, through tomorrow. I ran up to the store and got some of the stinkiest wet cat food in liver, as she is anemic, and for the first time in a couple of days, Hope ate on her own. Not a huge amount, but she ate. She is able to sit up now but is quite wobbly. She still is unable to walk at all. I am hopeful, as always, that she will pull through. It has been decided that if she does, Hope will stay with us for the remainder of her days, whether it be 1 day or 10 years. She is our cat now!!!!

Hanging On To Hope

I am not sure how many more of these catchy Hope titles I can come up with! I was certain this mornings update would be titled, "Hope Is Gone". On Friday morning, the shelter lady came and took Hope to the Vet. When she left, Hope was walking on her own, eating, drinking and she had even pooped before she left. I would say she was 70% better than when we brought her home. The vet did blood work and assessed the wound. She said the wound would heal, but that Hope was so dehydrated she "could expire at any minute". The shelter lady called me and told me that she wanted to keep Hope over night and pump 300cc's of fluid into her through IV. Yesterday she brought Hope home. She could not even walk. She kept falling down and dragging her hind quarters like a wounded soldier in a movie. She worked so hard to get to the litter box that once she got there she just laid in it. I had to hold up her body so she could go potty and then I carried her back to her box. The lady told me she did not give Hope fluids because her "fluids were dried up". The vet said for them to help her would cost more than PAWS (the shelter) wanted or I could pay, and she probably wouldn't make it anyway. She is eating thimble fulls and I have to syringe water/pedialyte into her. She did not rally like before and I was sure she would be gone this morning. Hope is still alive, hanging on, still unable to walk and can barely meow. Sweetheart is upset. He thinks taking her out and drawing blood and her being in a cat carrier for 30+ hours was too much for her. I have put so much "hope" into this cat....too much I am afraid. I have clung to the process of helping her recover like an obsession. I felt like I could not help all the other things going on in and around my life, but I COULD help a dying cat. Now I am not so sure. Maybe we should have named her Faith.

Ok, onto other things. My grandkids came to visit and spend Friday night with us. They are a delight!!! Emerson is a busy little thing and since she started walking EVERYTHING is new to her. You can almost hear her thinking, "Hey! I never saw that before....let me touch it!" She saw a picture of her self and squealed in delight saying "Baby. Baby". She enjoyed playing the piano with PawPaw.She is so on the move I could only get good pics while she was in her highchair or being held. Since Kyle has moved upstairs, Emerson's bedroom in my house is gone. She slept in Zach's room which meant Zach and TJ slept in our room. TJ had a fitful night of tossing and turning and MAJOR teeth grinding like I have never heard before . At breakfast he seemed well rested, though irritated with my camera antics.

Emerson wakes up all smiles and ready for a new day of discovery.

Today, we will spend some time with them again and I will need to come home every hour or so to give Hope more fluids. Luckily my son only lives a few miles away!

Say an extra prayer for Hope.

Still Hoping

Hope is quickly making herself a part of the family! NOT what I wanted. How in the world will we let her go? She LOVES the guys in the house....especially Sweetheart who is NOT a cat person. I will catch him baby talking her and rubbing her ears often, but he brushes it off saying he "feels sorry for her". She still loves her box and sleeps there often.
I was told to remove the bandage after she had been on the antibiotic for 24 hours. It looked terrible from all the ointment. It is now drying out and looking better, but still ICK! That is raw flesh near her shoulder. For an emaciated animal she is quite the finicky eater. She turns her nose up at the most expensive of cat foods and wants fresh cooked ground chuck or oven broasted chicken. She gets her nails caught in the Berber carpet and can't get loose and, SOMEHOW, she got her tail stuck on the top of her back paw. It looked like maybe some of her antibiotic got on her tail and as she slept it "glued" itself to her paw. THAT was a sight to see! There is always something with this girl! Now she has not pooped in 3 days! Yeesh!!! Maybe it will not be so difficult to let her go after all! LOLJust because I need to laugh, I will share this, which gave me a nice chuckle this morning when I found it in my inbox.

Keeping Hope Alive

Hope is still alive....it should be for all of us, but here it also means that our visitor is still with us. She sleeps a lot, but don't all cats? She is actually sleeping curled up like the cat in the picture and not sleeping in a semi-sitting position like she is uncomfortable. She is eating small amounts and drinking the same. A wonderful woman from the local shelter came yesterday and brought her some antibiotics and assessed her wound. She will be seen on Wednesday, after the meds take hold, and have a leukemia test and also have that wound checked. She thinks maybe Hope was up in a car motor that got turned on. The wound is old and it is too late to stitch it up. If they have to do anything to it, she will need to be put to sleep and I (and the lady) doubt her weak state of being could take that. I am so afraid the vet will say she needs to be put down. I think I would decline that at this time. I have SO MUCH going wrong in my life right now (we all go through those periods in our lives where everything goes wrong at once) that taking care of this cat is giving me something positive to focus on. Something of value, ya know?

My sweet mom was interviewed on the local news. You can see her by clicking here. She is the second lady interviewed and her home was NOT broken into.

Off to get Kyle ready for work!!! Have a wonderful day!

Prayers For Hope

We rescued this sweet thing today. She is very ill. Skin and bones, dehydrated and very weak. I am not sure she will make it. We cleaned her up, dressed a wound, gave her medication for tape worms, and are giving her water from a syringe. She is loving her warm spot in a box wrapped in Charlotte's old robe. Lots of purring and though she is too weak to play, her head follows a toy crocheted rope the kids made for her. She can not walk without falling down but since she does not appear to be in any pain, we decided to wait til morning....the vet I talked to would want to put her down. The kids want to give her a chance. They are calling her Hope....hoping she makes it. PLEASE say a prayer for Hope tonight.

Zach just hollered down to me that she was drinking water and eating some high protein "special" food we bought her. Maybe there is Hope.

Help, I'm Trapped In Here!!!!

It's been a while since I posted. I always realize that when my mom asks me if I posted on the blog. Since finishing up the big project, I have had some trouble getting back into my routines. Instead of picking up my needle, I picked up a novel.

GREAT book and I have the next two ready to begin. I did, however, get my quilting groove back in the last couple of days. (I think the book helped in that department!) I have been hand quilting the Pink and Brown and turned a corner on the edge.....The Hidden Star piecing has picked up again. I decided to change the size and layout, so I needed to cut 2 more blocks to add to the 40 I already had planned. Now it will lay 6x7 blocks instead of the 5x8 I had planned for the super single water bed my son had back when I cut this quilt!Very soon, I will be helping a friend cut out her first quilt....a Jacob's Ladder. One of my favorite blocks, as you can do so much with the layout and create a totally different look with one single block.

Zach has done some creating too. He put this 3-D dinosaur puzzle together with NO help at all!!!He has carried it with him everywhere he goes since putting it together! Thank you, Miss Cindy!!!!
I have also been working on my fitness routines. Ugly Betty the treadmill and I have been together alot the past week. I have dropped 4 pounds in 5 days, so it was worth it. Have you ever seen the movie, The Nutty Professor with Eddie Murphy?There is a scene where he falls asleep and dreams he gets fatter and fatter until he is like this HUGE creature and everyone runs in fear of him.It is a terrifying dream for him. I had one similar last night. I was not as tall as a skyscraper, but I kept getting fatter and fatter and I was yelling for someone to help me and that I was trapped inside all that fat! That is about how I feel! I am lost in here....I need to get out, but no one else is going to rescue me....I have to do the hard work. I plan to up my treadmill time to 2-3 times a day instead of once....I only can do 30 minutes right now before my legs scream at me to stop! That is so sad!

Well, I don't want to end this post on a fat note, but I have nothing else to share....I am going to spend the afternoon piecing the Hidden Star blocks and the evening quilting. Lest you think I have let my chores go, I have already spent my morning doing 4 loads of laundry and blessing my house with a mop and a dust rag! Now it is time for fun!!

Phase 5 and Some Kids

Phase 5, and the final phase, of the big project was to create a space for the kids. They had the Man Room, which you know Sweetheart and I took over. This was not accidental, as my children are very hard on things. I would assume all kids are. The Man Room was, at less than a year old, showing signs of "wear and tear". Sweetheart repaired all these things before we "moved in". Now we have Kyle's old room empty and it is a perfect spot for the kids.Their chairs and bookcases of DVDs and videos (yes, we still have VCR here) make it a room they can enjoy.The closet in the corner is a great place for games and puzzles. This table is already holding a jigsaw puzzle they are all working on.Kyle also gets use out of this room. I have a strict rule....NO FOOD UPSTAIRS! Kyle brings his morning cereal and his afternoon snack down here to watch TV and eat. There is really nothing they can do to this room. The carpet is industrial strength, so even the most apt picker can do no real damage, and the walls are cheap paneling. Zach calls this "The Little Man Room". So now our project is complete!

I had some grandma time this weekend. TJ spent the night. He and Zach had matching pj's.Emerson played the piano, ever so gently at first then she built to her finale of pounding on the keys!!She is finally walking and was very proud of herself. Every time she made it across the room she clapped!!! We had a nice dinner. TJ ate non-stop all weekend. He must be going through a growth spurt, cause it is impossible to get him to eat!Here is a rare photo....all 4 of my children sitting at the table together....just my kids. What a sight that was. Sweetheart and I both noticed at the same time. It was a nice sight.They are a raggedy bunch, but they are ours!

Charlotte learned several new things at crochet class....a granny square, a shell stitch, and how to sew in her tails.She sure loves to crochet. I am so glad she has that. I spent the time hand quilting. In the afternoon I spent more time at my machine piecing the Hidden Star. Today I plan more of the same. Right now I need to get off of here and jump on Ugly Betty! I really dislike walking a treadmill, but I am motivated, so off I go!