Good Bye Old Man
Yesterday was a rough day for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I had to bury my old man ferret Smokey. In 2009 we got a pair of brothers from a ferret rescue, and at that point they were several years old already. Bandit passed away several years ago from Insulinoma, and it was one of the hardest things I had been through. I feel like maybe him passing quickly was a godsend. For the last several months Smokey had been deteriorating of old age, and it was hard to watch him go through it. For the last couple of months we had kept him in a separate cage in our bedroom, where he could have easy access to food and water since he was not moving around very well at all. His hind legs simply did not obey him any longer and he had developed cataracts in both eyes.
Our goal was to try and keep him as comfortable as we could until he passed. The old man had some fight in him because there were several nights that we were certain he would not make it through til morning. When morning came it was still friendly and very much alive. When we got up yesterday morning we did our normal “check to see if he made it through the night”, and he seemed about as normal as he ever does. Raised his head, sniffed my hand and went back to sleep. While we were out running errands yesterday it seems like he passed in his sleep because he was curled up in the same little ball he always was.
I am thankful at least that it seems as though he went peaceful. He was a good boy and a friendly ferret, even though he never did bond as tightly to us as his brother did. The above photo is of him in much better days, snuggled up with one of our girls Shiloh in the hammock. Bandits passing was so sudden and jarring, but with Smokey we have had months to get used to the idea and just tried to make him as comfortable as we could. So while part of me is definitely sad that he is gone, another part of me is relieved that he no longer has to struggle.
The Big Clean
Pet funeral aside, yesterday was a good but very tiring day. If it tells you anything I managed to hit 10,000 steps on my fitbit before we actually went for our evening walk. As I said before the house needed cleaning badly, and I got up and around yesterday morning and picked most of it up. However there are still a few deep cleaning projects that need to happen. We needed to run to the bank, so we got out and about and did some shopping. The shirts I had been wearing were getting huge on me, and my wife would visibly sigh each time I wore one of them that now hung from my shoulders like a drape. JC Penny was running a door buster sale that we just happened to luck into without really meaning to. I picked up a bunch of new and better fitting shirts and this prompted me to remove a ton of older shirts from the closet.
Similarly both myself and my wife needed new bathing suits. I found a nice pair of trunks that are far more colorful than anything I have ever bought in the past, and she found a nice one-piece at Old Navy. All of the shopping inspired her to come home and tear apart the closet both figuratively and quite literally. The bedroom for several hours yesterday was a warzone, and among other projects we cleaned out the catch all corner that had jewelry, perfume and lotions on what used to be a typewriter desk. For some time I have been hauling around a cabinet to go into that corner that we picked up on craigslist, but simply lacked the time to do the necessary cleaning to make room for it. It fit in nicely, and honestly could have been a bit bigger.
Similarly she tore apart the bathroom that joins to our bedroom and set up one of those wire divider shelves underneath to segment what is normally just one big space. My biggest contribution was culling my wardrobe by literally half and folding it neatly for a garage sale. As mentioned yesterday in a few weeks we are getting pulled into a garage sale, and I am wondering exactly what else I will be selling. I have tons of compact discs in my office, that I simply never listen to anymore. The idea of listening to a CD just feels foreign, since I stream almost everything thanks to Google Music. I don’t feel the need to own music any longer, I just want access to said music when I want it. As a result I am probably going to get rid of my entire collection, but I seriously doubt any of the regular garage sale fare will want the type of stuff I listen to. Not a single CD could you really classify as “pop”.
Transistor Gushes
Finally last night we recorded our seventh episode of Aggrochat. Once again Rae was travelling, so since Dallian has been so gracious to be a kind of unofficial fifth member of the cast, he stepped in at literally ten minutes notice. I called the episode “Transistor Gushes” because quite literally… that game has hijacked the podcast. For those who don’t know we keep a running shared Google document for the show notes, and during the week we jot down ideas, and recycle ones that we didn’t get to from previous weeks. This week the only thing mentioned is Transistor written in 72 point font, with a much smaller blurb below it that says “things that are not Transistor”.
