A few days off

I haven't put anything out here in a few days, but not because I haven't been doing anything. No, I have been pretty busy, but life is getting in the way. I'll throw out the good stuff first.

I had an interview with a team leader at a real estate office near my home on Tuesday. I firmly believe I will not be working for this particular firm. I'm sure they would be a great fit for a lot of agents. I'm not one of them. The interview was well over an hour long and she was pretty positive towards me. She even went so far as to tell me that she really wanted me to work there. I'm just uncomfortable with some of their practices and I'll leave it at that.

Our favorite agent, Miss Deb, came over on Wednesday and I spoke with her for several hours about the firm where she works and real estate in general. I adore Miss Deb. She's one of the main catalysts for me starting down this path. She has always been the shining example of good customer service of all the agents that I have personally worked with on real estate transactions. She had a lot of good insight and ideas. She also gave my name and number to her broker so I'm hoping to hear from her fairly soon.

I had coffee today with a gal from my real estate classes. I had really enjoyed speaking with her in the classes and I thought she would be a great one to stay in contact with. I wasn't wrong. I still really enjoyed spending time with her and hope to get together on a regular basis. We're both just starting out on this new adventure and I'm hoping we can help each other as we go.

So that's the good stuff.

The not so great stuff concerns my animals. As most of you know, I have a menagerie of characters from the animal kingdom. Two dogs, three cats, one guinea pig and a bunch of fish. For personal reasons, I don't have birds. Personally, they freak me out.

I love my animals. They have comforted me when I've been sick or lonely or just having a tough day. They make me laugh with their antics. But they also make me cry. Because eventually, no matter how much I love them, they come to the end of their lifetime. Their lives are much too short for my liking.

Almost exactly two years ago I had to have my 17 year old cat Spike euthanized. He had suffered from liver problems for a while and had gotten to the point where the three times weekly hydration therapy that I had to administer weren't enough. Rather than go to sticking a needle in him daily, I made the decision to have him put down.

I am now in a similar situation with my older dog. Lu (AKA - the Intellectual) is our 11 1/2 year old dalmatian. She's been on thyroid medication for at least six years. She was diagnosed with a heart murmur about five years ago and has been on increasing dosages of different medicines for about the last three. She currently takes eight pills a day. She's an absolute champ about it, just takes the pills out of my hand and waits for her cookie. But the pills aren't working any more. She's now entered in to congestive heart failure and it's getting worse by the week. She's coughing throughout the day now instead of just a few times a week. And every once in a while, she loses her balance and has even fallen over. She always gets up, but I can see in her eyes that she's scared. And it's not right of us to keep her around because we'll miss her so much when she's gone. Mister C is traveling today and tomorrow and again on Monday. I don't know when exactly we'll be taking her in but I know he wants to be there for it. Because for all she's given to us we can't ask her to die alone.

But it gets worse. Because I also have Rex (AKA - the Idiot), my 14 1/2 year old cat that is rapidly declining in health. He used to be a robust (read: fat-a$$) 14 pounds. I would guess he's somewhere below five now. He does eat, but he's wasting away anyway. He hasn't slept with us in months. He can usually be found sleeping on the couch or on top of me if I'm sitting down on the couch. He's never been the smartest one in the pack (even when in a pack of one) but he's always been sweet. And he's always been extremely tolerant of Master J carrying him around. I suspect if Master J had been a girl, a certain black cat would have spent the majority of his waking hours wearing a bonnet and a hoop skirt. And probably would have been okay with it.

The thing is that both of these animals have been around since before Master J was born. I'm not sure how he's going to deal with losing both of them in rapid succession. I'm not sure how I'm going to.