"No time to 'splain, let me sum up"

Hello, remember me?

Are you tired of reading the archives just yet? (there will be a pop quiz, later, btw)

Are you maybe wondering what the hell happened to the Tapdancer, that she hasn't been posting for almost a week?

Life, my friend - life has a way of being messy and needing a bit of a cleanup, from time to time.

Let's see, where did I leave off? Ah yes,...the field trip. The professor came home safe and sound, albeit an hour late, so I have no fingernails left - that last hour was the worst! He had a great time and I'm much , much better now. Thank you to everyone for being so lovely and supportive of my crazy uber mom tendencies.

There's been a lot going on this past weekend and into this week, besides my not-so-quiet jangling mother nerves. Ms. Q had to take some time off from work because she has killed her right hand with tendonitis. Seriously, the poor girl is basically one-handed right now, and taking meds to keep the pain at bay. The fun part of this is that she is a WILD woman when she's doped up on pain killers. Besides the oddities she bought from a late-night (nudge, nudge) home shopping channel (and I'm forbidden to tell you just what kind of oddities - I was forced to swear on it, dammit!), she also started a blog while under the influence of said painkillers. There's just the one, drug-induced post right now, but maybe, if we all go over and leave encouragement, she'll spill her guts about her recent shopping spree (oh Puhleeze, Ms. Q - it was such a good story!!!). You can find her here. This is Ms. Q regaling us with her late night shopping exploits:

Bea and I had to head down to the coast on Tuesday, to get our newest feline, Simon, neutered and all his shots. I took a couple of others for rabies, etc. boosters and Bea took her little Siamese daughter, Bella for her yearly checkup.

Why would we drive almost 3 hours to the coast to see a veterinarian, instead of going to a local vet? Two very big reasons: money and competence.

The cost of a vet visit in the greater Raleigh area is akin to going to see a human doctor, and I'm going to say it for the world to hear - every vet we have seen locally is incompetent when it comes to diagnostics. They never seem able to figure out what's wrong with an animal unless they perform every test in the book, and even then, they pussyfoot around. I'm not talking about one cat, one time, one doctor; I'm talking every time we see a local vet the bill is sky-high and the care is low quality. I had to insist that the vet not do an x-ray or wire Rikki's mouth shut, when he fractured his jaw, and you know what? He mended perfectly. When Jezebel got a bacterial infection of the intestinal tract, the vet insisted we do 3 x-rays and a barium enema (450.00) before she would finally put the poor thing on antibiotics. When Jasper had an obvious tumor in her throat; a tumor so big she couldn't eat, the local vet said, "Wow, that's a real honker!" and did nothing else for her, for an entire month, while my cat slowly wasted away before my eyes.

Down near Atlantic Beach, there is a veterinarian we know, who has been in practice for over 30 years. He works with one technician, on a shoestring, and he is the best damn doctor I have ever met. He's saved so many animals from death's door for us that I'm often tempted to see if he'll do my checkup as well, opening the door, of course, for many lewd and coarse jokes, which is just icing on the cake of how much I love Doc!So we took a portion of the furry herd down on Tuesday to see our favorite man in green scrubs, and then we headed over to the diner for a bit of lunch. I love this old place - its been down at "The Circle" at Atlantic Beach since the 1930s, so its not shiny, but it does have character. And the gyro was pretty damn good, as were the hush puppies - mmm, hush puppies!
We yutzed around the coast for a few hours, thought about going to the Aquarium, but as it was rife with schoolkids on a field trip (shudder), we just drove around for awhile and then headed back to Doc's to get the "kids".
Everyone got a clean bill of health, except poor Bella, who had a bit of a nasty surprise hiding in her mouth. Bea is going to be writing about this soon, so I'm not going to elaborate, but suffice to say, we were both a bit weepy on the ride home.

I have cookie making duties for my classes this week, so I won't be around a whole lot, but JOY of JOYs! The guys are going to Richmond this weekend, so Mommy is going to get that weekend of sweet silence after all. Yay Daddy!!!