When morning came, for the first time in months the fire was out, Jo's place was empty, and the room was very still. -- Little Women

At first Chris decided to spend the money to get Megan ultrasounded ($300+). After we talked about it yesterday, we instead decided she should be put down. There's no guarantee they can find out what happened to her and no guarantee she'd survive treatment. She has absolutely no flesh. She can't jump up any more, but is still the sweetest, sweetest little girl.

I wish I could translant her personality into one of my cats. They come out to stare her down and she just looks at them quizzically, so they slink off and fight with each other. Megan is a good girl. She's currently curled up between Chris' room and mine, waiting for him to wake up and wanting me to come pet her.

So I will.

Megan is not looking so well after seeming to rebound. Her hip bones are sticking up through her fur and she's completely stopped eating. I can get her to consume a high calorie nutrient if I put it inside her mouth but if any of it lands on her fur, she lets it sit there, even the fur around her lips.

Her personality seems unchanged though, which is a good thing. She's friendly and comes out to talk, then disappears into Chris' room. She's just wasting away. :/

We're taking her to the vet this morning.

On my last trip to Hawaii, I had one (well, two) culinary desires. One was fulfilled several times and was mentioned just a few days ago: coconut napples :)

The other was going to an okazu-ya. We were never lucky enough to get to any of them on a day they were open, or when they had any food. I gave up (being at the mercy of my sainted mother) and returned to Seattle unsatiated.

One of my favorite memories is walking to school from St. Louis with Rina and stopping by St. Louis Delicatessen to buy lunch. We would then eat whatever we'd bought for lunch for breakfast instead, especially on the days when they still had pork hash (which was like fried mashed potatoes with the merest hint of pork, but sooooo goooood).

Rina and I could pack in the calories; she's the only person I knew who wasn't on a diet, so both of us would go to a restaurant and eat every course on the menu, then stop by a drive in to get fries with gravy later on. Having a friend you can share a meal with is a wonderful thing, especially when you can eat like a pig and so can your pal! But I digress.

I'm determined to have pork hash this trip, so I took a spin through the internet to see what places might still be open and are convenient to where I'll be in Waikiki. I am not renting a car since everything I need would be mostly within walking distance, including coconut napples.

Whoever this guy is, he's pretty funny. :) I especially like his recommendation on parking at some of these places: bring a truck to intimidate folks, or limp as you cross the street so drivers will slow down for you. Heh :)

Alas, I have but two hands. Now when I come home, there are three cats that want me to scritch their necks and I can only get two at a time.

Megan is recovering from the trauma of the move. She's spent most of the past month beneath the windowseat I had made from plastic shelves, hiding from Mittens and Melody and apparently not eating. Chris and I were becoming concerned as we could start to feel Megan's spine through her fur when we petted her. She'd also stopped grooming herself, which led to us butchering her behind to remove some matted fur and excrement that got stuck to her butt. Though it was pretty distressing for Chris to have to hold her down while I bathed and clipped her, I pointed out that there was no way she could possibly be comfortable with all that stuff on her.

She doesn't seem to hold it against me, probably because Chris had gotten her some canned food and I've been giving her a teaspoon of it every morning. She hasn't fattened up any, but at least she's finally eating again. And I spent some time combing through her fur, slowly working out the worst of the knots. It's obvious I'm no cat groomer, since the trim job left her hindquarters rather ugly, but she's looking more like a fluffy cat than a dirty fur boa.

Saturday as Chris and I watched Full Metal Alchemist, Megan came out to sit on his lap. Then she pushed her furry little face into my water glass and helped herself to a drink. Ever since that moment, she's decided that I'm okay and now when I walk in the door, Megan comes out of Chris' room to chat with me, while on the other side of the room Mittens and Melody come out of my room.

Which is great! Except that I only have two hands, which leaves one of our cats (I've been picking a different one each time) meowing at me most unhappily.

For months, I've been poking through various candy aisles looking for the dark chocolate M&Ms. To no avail, everywhere I looked, these guys were gone! Sold out! Missing! Aieeee!

Yesterday, Bruce asked me whether I'd left him something on his desk. I have in the past brought him chocolates at See's if I happened to stop there at the mall, or a bottle of his favorite Jones soda from Sbux, so it wasn't a question out of the blue. Except that this time, it wasn't me. A mystery! He'd gotten 2 bags of the Dark Grail of M&Ms!

It turns out the gifter was Candyce. Naturally at game night, I pounced upon her to find out where she'd bought them. Which location I am not publicizing here, though I did tell Bruce where she got them so he could likewise stop by after work today to get some. :)

I will say this: they have a whole shelf of them, marked down to $2 per bag. I hope there's still some left by next payday.

Spent parts of my weekend playing Sims2. At least in that world, I can control (somewhat) who lives and who dies. Went into work for a bit on Saturday, only to find someone else had changed a file someplace that borked one of my quests...and of course, no one else there who'd know why or whether I could fix the other file so that my stuff would work again. I hate being so dependent upon others.

So if they said we had to evacuate our area for whatever reason, would I? I don't know. I remember when our unit was in Japan for an exercise and things were going wrong in all sorts of different ways. Tempers were short. I had a particular task and I knew how to get it done, so I continued to work at it because it was about the only thing that actually was going right that day. Someone yelled at me to go do some other thing that someone else had screwed up and I responded that I had to keep on my task because I knew what I was doing "even if nobody else does."

I suppose it sounded like I was commenting on everything that was going wrong, but I was only thinking at the time that I truly was the only person who knew what my particular task was; nobody else knew what it entailed. My comment was taken the other way, of course, which led to more yelling directed at me. Somehow inside me, that whole incident transmuted itself into a really fierce independence, which is another way of saying a need to be in control. I hated being bossed around. I liked when there were things that I turned out to be the only person who could take care of them. I want to fix the world and make it stronger, safer, better.

And at night, I want to curl up against someone and just forget everything. I'd even pay for air conditioning so that curling could be done in comfort. I miss having someone to hug me and tell me everything will be all right...but then, I'm not sure I've ever had anyone like that.

So maybe I wouldn't evacuate. Or maybe I would.

What I can't seem to wrap my mind around is that Dianne and I were just talking about Rayann in the past two weeks or so. Neither of us had spent much time with her in our recent years, but she was a part of our gang in high school. I don't know what else to say right now.