Category Archives: Family

She’s Going to Need a New Memory Card

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Last weekend, Matt and I took Kayla to Las Vegas for her inaugural trip.  The trip was conceived due to the Criss Angel Cirque du Soleil show.  Kayla is a big fan of Criss’ and we thought she would love the show.  And we love her and Vegas.  So why not combine the three?  It was almost not meant to be, as that Kayla girl is a very busy girl.  But we finally picked a good weekend to go.

We arrive on Friday, hop in a cab to the Palazzo.  Which continues to delight.  Kayla reacted to the room pretty much the same way I did in March … complete with open jaw and giddy over the remote controlled blinds and curtains.

After we checked in to our room (that is 2 for 2 on the Palazzo having our room ready at 12:00), headed out for lunch.  We went informal to the Cyprus Market at Caesars.  Its maybe a half mile away, but it took us half an hour to get there.  It was so incredible to watch Kayla looking at everything.  She looked, she took a picture, she took a picture with her phone, texted it to someone, repeat.  It was funny.  That was pretty much the pattern of the weekend.  But it was okay, it was funny.  It took us five hours to go three miles down the strip.  Hey, you have a better way?  Didn’t think so! ;)

We did the “Eiffel Tower Experience”.  I have always wanted to go up there.  It wasn’t that thrilling, but at least I can say I did it.  Dinner was at The Rainforest Cafe.  They seated us in the bar, despite being with a drinking minor, and after asking us if everyone was over the age of 21.  I was disappointed in that.  I really wanted Kayla to see the animals get upset when the thunderstorms started.

Criss Angel show was just okay.  Needed more music, less dancy artsy fartsy diabolical bunnies.  I suppose if you are a die-hard Criss Angel fan, then its the show for you.  I thought it was better than KA though.

Saturday was rides day.  We headed to the Stratosphere.  The first thing we rode was “Speed: The Ride” at the Saraha, as that is where the monorail drops you off.  That is the second best coaster in Vegas.   A short walk to the Stratosphere.  Kayla and I rode the Big Shot.  I really like that ride, I wish it held us up there longer so that we could see Vegas better. That is the highest view to see Vegas from, and its over in an instant.  Matt and Kayla rode X-Scream, which I opted to skip this time, as the first time was enough for me.  It really, honestly gave me a panic attack and made me cry when we rode it the first time.   Matt, my hero, didn’t chicken out and went on there with Kay.  He was close to not doing it, but he was very brave.  Insanity is not that scary, its actually pleasant, but since I get motion sickness and didn’t feel like spending the day nauseated, I opted out of this one too.

For the first time ever, we visited “The World’s Largest Gift Shop” so Kayla could do some shopping.  Headed to Circus, Circus to show Kayla that amusement park and Matt and Kayla rode the best coaster on the strip.  Too bad its in the worst casino/hotel.  Too many people, too many kids.  Inconvenient location.  I would probably battle the kids and ride the coaster every time we went if this was more centrally located.

Dinner at Stripburger. My favorite place in Vegas.  Where they make homemade veggie burgers and the fries come in such a large portion that you need to share.  They used to have “Cakes in a Shake” but they don’t anymore.  A shame.  It was fun to be drinking a shake and have a chunk of cake get stuck at the bottom of your straw.

Mystere was the show of the evening.  The best Cirque du Soliel show that I have ever seen.  Matt agrees.  It was just as good, if not, better than the first time.  Kayla said “wow” at least 50 times in the first 45 minutes.  After that, I lost track.  It is highly acrobatic, and I always want to join them on the trampolines.  That just looks like fun.  I would have to say if you have time/funding for just one show during your stay in Vegas, this is the one to see. Really.  It’s that good.

Sunday came too fast.   We ate at Grand Lux Cafe in the Palazzo, where I get this unique breakfast thing that I can’t remember the name of, but also has awesome pancakes, and we’ve here, French Toast.  Visited the Secret Garden (baby animals yay!), Madame Taussad’s Wax Museum, which we walked through twice, because we were at the end when Kayla realized she left her sunglasses with Hugh Hefner.  Nobody stopped us from walking back in there and going through backwards.  We were able to recover the sunglasses.  And you’d be surprised how long it takes to get through there if you stop and take pictures of three people at even half of the statues.

Kayla made a new friend of the Coca-Cola bear.  We didn’t buy any M&M’s at M&M’s World (yes, really).  Kayla and I rode the coaster at NY NY, which is just okay.  Its too rough to be good.  Headed over to the Rio, which is a really really fun casino over in Carnival World or whatever they call it …except for when the shows are dark.  :(   We ate at the buffet, which we were told by one of the chefs is THE largest in the world.  It really is big!  And it has gelato on the buffet.  Since that stuff cost $10 a scoop elsewhere, you’d better get some while you’re there.  Penn and Teller were, as always, great.  They changed the opening.  I liked the older one better.  And Penn missed one of the psychic jokes.

At the Rio buffet, I asked Kayla how many pictures she took.  She was at 477.  I had nicknamed her Snappy the day before.  That is why.  And also why she’ll need a new memory card.  :)    Matt and I have about 47 pictures.  And they are mostly of us at the wax museum.  Ha ha.

So that was basically our trip.  We look forward to our return in December when we will be running the marathon.  We are deciding between staying at Planet Hollywood, our original plan, and Mandalay Bay, which is the host hotel.  Normally, we wouldn’t consider Mandalay, as its at the far end of the strip, and we’ve been trying to stay central, but seeing that it is actually the finish line of the race, that makes it a big contender!  We’ll keep you posted!

Matt’s take:  http://matt.riffle.org/2009/08/11/las-vegas-trip-august-2009/

My Day With Baleigh

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On Thursday,  I spent the day with Baleigh, my cousin on my husbands side of the family.  She is 12 years old and she is quite the young lady.   I drove to her house and picked her up, and that is a 75 minute drive, and I am not a fan of driving.  I did make a wrong turn and went into the next town over, but I easily rectified the situation.   Driving back towards this end of town however, I did miss my exit and had to go another way.  The problem with that was that I didn’t know how to get to the zoo from there.  So I grab the GPS and make her look it up.  She read me the directions and I said “Is there any mention of Route 28?” she said “No” and I said that the directions were good enough for me.

I knew the first part of the directions and I had a different way of getting there than the GPS and so we laughed at the GPS saying “Recalculating”. Its really funny how I swear that voice is showing beligerence when it has to “recalculate”.    We eventually make it to the zoo.

It was a perfect day for the zoo.  Cloudy and not too hot, so the animals were active.  And boy did we hit a jackpot year with all the baby animals.  We didn’t see the young tigers, or if we did, we couldn’t tell.  They were born last year.  We did see the two baby elephants, both girls, who were born last year.  I was surprised at how small they still were, but considering how big they have to get, I guess its not surprising.

My favorites though were the water babies.  The sea otters were rollicking in the water.  Rolling around, jumping.  So cute.  I think we watched them for a LONG time.  The baby beavers were cute too.  And there was the little sea lion.  She was born in mid-June and was still being nursed.  She was walking really well and swam really well, but she couldn’t get on the rocks in the middle of the tank.  She tried really hard but she just couldn’t make it up there.  I hear that she was able to do it today though.

Petting the kangaroo was a nice highlight too.  Every time I go to the zoo, I hope they are close enough to the path for me to touch, but never until this year.  I expected them to have wiry fur, but they were soft.  Baleigh crawed through the stingray tank and into the meerkat habitat.  She laughed at me when I ran from the “Bat flight” display.  But she was just getting even with me for laughing when she ran from the Hornbill.

After the zoo, we headed back to my neighborhood because it was the day for me to pick up my weekly vegetable box from the local farm.  While we were at the host house, we saw two domestic kitties.  The black kitty was owned by the family and he was really friendly. There was also a stray who was a buff tabby with white paws.  He was a cutie … he had the extra toes on each front paw.  The stray was also very friendly, and we don’t know what happened to his owners. I was talking to the neighbor there and discussed getting him neutered.  Cross your fingers that she does it!

Now it was time for dinner!  We texted Matt and then headed to Station Square and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, where I forgot to order fries, as my other cousin says that they are the best.  I ordered green beans instead.  But then we had dessert.  I had a rum cake, and it was really tasty … and really small.

We rode the Monongahela Incline to the top and took pictures of the City and walked all the way up Grandview Avenue, and down the Duquesne Incline.  Then walked to the Station Square parking lot and came home.  I got lost in the parking garage.  Really, I did.  :)

We were all exhausted, we uploaded the photos, Bay and Matt watched Hannah Montana.  Eventually we all went to bed.  Matt and I (surprisingly for me) were up at 9:00 and Baleigh slept to 10:30.  I must have worn her out!

Friday morning, we dropped some paper off at the shelter and took the quick 10 cent tour.  She was invited back to hang out in medical another time.  We drove back to her house (why does that trip seem so much shorter when there is someone with you) and I came back home and was glad to not have to drive again that day.

I really enjoyed myself.  Baleigh is so smart and pretty and she is a joy to hang out with.  She helped to make my birthday week one of the best I’ve ever had!

A Tale of Two Trips, Part II

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July 10-13th took us to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit my sister, my nieces, nephew and brother-in-law.

Friday:

We left in the morning to go pick up Kayla before heading to the airport.  I had built in traffic time and chat time to our schedule, and it was a good thing I did.  We ended up leaving a little late (of course).  Kayla was ready when we got there (of course).  Matt innocently asked her “Have photo ID?” and she said “oops” and went up to get her passport.  Guess what?  She couldn’t find it.  And, at that time, she didn’t have another form of photo ID.  She calls her mother and her stepfather to see if they knew where it was.  We helped her to ransack her room.  No passport.  Time was a-wasting.  We were now officially running late.  So we grabbed her birth certificate, voter’s registration and social security card and prayed to the TSA gods that we would be allowed on.  Worst case scenario is that we had a nine hour drive ahead of us.

We get to the airport and to my delight, there was no line at the USAirways check-in counter.  I checked my bag and Matt checked Kayla’s for ease of ID problems.  The security line was also blessedly short.  We picked a line where the TSA screener looked pleasant.  He let us through without too much ado.  He called someone over, probably a supervisory sort.  That guy said “I don’t have a problem with it if you don’t. You can call Mr. X if you’d like” and he said “I don’t have a problem with it”.  Whew!  And now that we only have to show our photos one time, that was that.  Thank goodness Kayla was 18, or we might have gotten more problems.

We land in Raleigh around 3:00 and head to my sister’s ‘new’ house.  The rest of the day was just exciting. The girls and Owen so happy to see us.  I got the biggest and strongest hugs ever from Ginger and CoCo … at the same time.  They are just the sweetest kids.  All four of ‘em.  We basically just hung out at the houses.  Looked through Ginger’s box of momentos from China (Saturday was her “Gotcha” day anniversary).  Kayla and I put temporary tattoos on the little girls.  Renee’ made us spaghetti for dinner (meatballs on the side).  We hand cake and presents for Maddie’s (delayed) birthday, and we watched Spy Kids 3.  (Not recommended).

Saturday:

We went to the beach.  It was only a two hour drive. I think if I lived two hours from the beach, I would be there every other weekend.  Seriously.  :)   Last year, we tried to go and we had storms all the way down.  We picnicked in the cars and headed back.  This year, however, it was wonderfully perfect weather.  The kids all argued who would sit next to Kayla.  They couldn’t remember that she only has two sides.  Eventually Owen relented and came in our car.  He was a pleasant passenger, telling us all about his recent vacation in Tennessee, asking us if we were going to Pigeon Forge, and commenting on “that Ford is a piece of crap”.  Also, after a period of silence from him, he pipes in with “With the Dish Network you can get over 100 local channels”.  I nearly peed my pants!

The beach wasn’t too busy, but we still had to fight to find a parking space.  When we got to the beach CoCo declared that she had to go to the bathroom and Kayla innocently said “Oh go in the ocean” and CoCo ran down to the water, stayed in the sand and pulled her pants down.  LOL.  Those kids!  We called her back and she came (good girl).  Renee’, CoCo, Ginger and I went to the bathroom and left the other kids there.   When we got back, we put on sunscreen and we took the girls to the edge of the water.

The rest is just us hanging at the beach for about three hours.  Everyone but me got sunburned.  The two little girls had sunscreen and kept having it reapplied, so I don’t know how they still got it.  The rest of them all varied from zero to just one (too late) application.  Score one for my plant based sunscreen.  Too bad its being discontinued.  Damn Aveda!  Maddie rode home with us this time, but she slept for part of the trip and the rest of it, we talked about how tall the tallest man ever was (8’11.1″ and 8’5″ for the currently tallest living man)  and how small the shortest man ever was (2’4″).  The iPhone helped us.

When we got back to the house, my sister started dinner, some of us took showers, most everyone got aloed.  We ate dinner.  Owen wanted to watch Spy Kids 3 again.  Adults groaned.  And Owen brilliantly had the suggestion that the kids watch their movie in their parents’ bedroom and we can watch the other downstairs.   Everyone liked that and us adults watched a good movie, who’s title eludes me at this time.   We all slept very well that night.

Sunday:

Everyone slept in.  Eventually we got up.  Hung out in the yard.  Eventually we rounded up the troops and headed to Little River Park.  Stopped for Slushees.  Ate pierogies.  The highlight of the day was Maddie’s concert.  She has been taking guitar lessons for two years. This night, we built a fire and she played for us.  She is terrific!  And so much improved since Christmas!  She played really great then, but you can definitely hear how hard she has been working.  We made S’mores, drank some wine.  The kids went to bed.  We hung out in the gameroom talking and stuff until we all pretty much fell asleep.

Monday:

This day was much too short.  Basically we got up, had breakfast and kissed the kids goodbye.  Had I known that Maddie and Owen weren’t in school, we would have taken the last flight of the day, but we thought they would be going back to school.  They had switched schools since the last summer visit, when they used to go back the second week in July.   North Carolina has the option of year round school.  Which I like.  They do get a lot of the summer off anyway.

And that concludes this wonderful, albeit, too short trip.

Hallie’s Wild Ride

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Some of you know Hallie.  If you have read any of the three previous posts, you’ve at least heard of her.

The craziness started last week during one of my nightly visits.  She was sitting on my lap and her nail got stuck in the blanket.  When she jumped down, her leg was askew.  It was sticking out and hanging.  It was very disconcerting and freaky.  I didn’t know what to do, but was getting up to get the carrier to take her to the emergency room.  But the leg went back to normal.  Whew.  I didn’t think much more of it.

A few days later, when I trimmed her nails, the leg popped out again.  I was able to put it back.  That is a level of freaky that I didn’t think I’d ever get to.  So I called her vet who explained that it the nerves have deteriorated and could no longer control the muscle.  He said the leg needs amputated and set me up for the next available surgery day, which was yesterday.

All weekend, I wasn’t sure if I did the right thing.  I was nervous.  I didn’t want her to lose the leg, although I understood why it happens.  I have seen dozens of animals recover quickly from an amputation.  It’s no big deal.  Until its your pet of course.  I just felt that there is something more wrong with her.

She had been losing weight over the last year … and I felt that there was something wrong with her, but blood tests showed nothing remarkable.  High calcium and high platelet count was it, neither of which tell us much and she was on a wait and watch status.

Well, in the last two months, she has lost an additional half pound.  The vet was very concerned about this and called me immediately.  He felt that it is too hasty to amputate … that we need to get behind the weight loss first.  So they gave her a dental cleaning since she was under and drew blood and gave her an x-ray.

The x-ray confirmed the doctor’s original thoughts and diagnosis, and amputation would be the proper thing to do.  It is her elbow that is actually messed up, not her shoulder.  A feline leukemia and FIV test is also negative.  Her blood tests showed regular platelets (meaning that the previous elevation was due to stress, as we found out, that can happen), and high calcium and CPK.   Nobody really knows why cats get high calcium or what to do for it, and CPK is an indicator of muscle wasting, which we know she has, you can see that just looking at her.  The high CPK can mean something with her heart or it can be cancer.

We won’t know unless we do some further testing, seeing a specialist who would probably give her an ultrasound and/or exploratory surgery.   Since she almost didn’t wake up from the anesthesia, we are not going to proceed.  It’s too risky.  We’ll keep her on a wait and watch basis, and if she gets sick we will deal with it.  I am accepting that she has cancer, and since there are no malfunctioning organs, I would imagine its an immune type or a bone cancer, although that is NOT a diagnosis my vet can give us at this point.  And, in case you are wondering, she is only six years old.

She was shaved for the amputation and also along her back where she had some mats … she looks very goofy right now.  I hope to add a photo of that to this post someday.

She was rightfully angry when I brought her home after spending the night at the vet.  She growled at me (and she has never done that) while inhaling food and when I was visiting with her, she pretty much just snubbed me.  So I’d say that she is doing just fine!

Thanks for reading.