Briefly,

1) No nibbles on the job front.  What I expected, but discouraging nonetheless.  I need time to concentrate and meet people in person so my all-over-the-map resume has some meaning to it.  I’m also concerned that I simply won’t find a job to cover my schedule.

2) Classes at USF start this week.  I’m now enrolled in both the chemistry and biology I wanted.  I should be estatic, but it just makes me so weary and decisions even harder – do I write off the non-refundable tuition to SPC or stick with it and make my schedule even worse?  It’s so disheartened to think of the time, energy, and yes, money, I put into to assuring my academic promotion when all along I’d get into these classes.

Not so briefly…we had a big scare with Sheba last night. 

We’ve known for over a week that someone else moved in with us here – a few hundred someone elses.  Returning to ground-floor apartment living has meant the return of fleas.  We talked with increasing frequency of frontline, but everything really came to a head Saturday night.

Frisco spent the entire night marching purposefully across the bed and my head.  I was pretty much ready to trade him in for a plant when around 2am we decided to get up for a while and I started petting him.

Then I realized he was marching for a cause – his neck was so flea bitten.

One awesome thing about ST is that he has the same values, principles, or insanity gene that I have so he agreed completely with the decision that 2am on a Saturday was the perfect time to get something done.  We couldn’t wait a minute longer.

I got out the flea comb, he got out the spray.  By 4am the cats seemed calmer and less parasictic hosts.

We went back to bed, got up around 8, had breakfast, did some shopping, then returned home for an afternoon of flea baths to really knock them on their asses.

Frisco and Roark went relatively calmly through the ordeal.  I’d never bathed Sheba before, but somehow I knew she was going to be worse.

She started out just as a expected.  Clawing at the proclein and giving her low, loud, moan.  But then something happened.

Instead of a purposeful strike at us or freedom, her legs sort of seemed to just flail.  ST held her gently down, then she flipped over and performed the most contorted flip that seemed very much against her will.  She stopped then, gasping for air.

We have guesses from seizure to heart attack to simply too much stress to allergic reaction to the soap.  While not knowing the cause added to our helplessness, it wouldn’t have aided us in her care.  She simply couldn’t breath.

ST picked her up to give her lungs more room.  After a few minutes we carried her out of the tub.  When an opening presented itself, she went right for the closet.  Not too strange, especially since the first few weeks she lived with me, she spent convalescing in one.

There was nothing we could do but offer towels to sit on (she definitely did NOT want to be dried), food (after we determined her breathing was better), water, and a litter box.

It was a rough night.  I got up around midnight and checked on the lump of fur hiding, not sure it would move.  But not only would she move, she came out and decided to spend the rest of the night in bed with me. 

Right now, she’s sitting by the patio like nothing happened.  Although I expect what we saw has some lasting damage, if only just making her older.

I, like most people I assume, view death very selfishly.  How does it effect me.  What will it do to me.  I’ve never wanted a person or animal to suffer, so I’m glad Sheba isn’t right now.  Because I just couldn’t handle losing her right now, in a way that I felt so responsible for.

She’s made such a recovery since the breast cancer detection.  It was easy to treat her the same.  But this weekend was like learning my grandparents will never travel again.  There are different set of rules for her now.