My mother's daughter

Meet my new old Venetian chandelier, installed in the dining room by me...and the house is still standing and no one got electrocuted! After the successful installation of the new old light in the master bathroom, I figured I could kick it up a notch this time around and hook up the fixture and put in a dimmer switch. And I did all of this without having 911 on speed dial (though I did call my dad for some guidance on the dimmer switch and let loose a couple of f-bombs for good measure). My dad, a carpenter, and my mom, an electrician (she taught me how to screw and strip with the best of them), are big do-it-yourselfers, so it makes me feel good to tackle some DIY projects at the house all by myself. As my dad said, this is what happens when Captain Husband goes away and leaves me to my own devices for more than a year. By the time he gets back, the whole place will be painted and wallpapered to the nth degree, with a vintage light fixture in every room. That'll teach him!

Weekend Update

Vintage Valentine's Day card from my collection of old stuff

Last night I got creative and bought a can of tuna, liquified it, and fed it to Josie with a syringe.  At first she was a little skeptical, but soon came to the realization that tuna is awesome and she would like some more, please.  She wound up eating a bit of the liquid grossness herself and then proceeded to eat from her dry food bowl throughout the night.  I was amazed.  So this morning when I took her to the vet's for her bi-weekly injection and fluids, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that she had gained four ounces since her last weigh-in on Tuesday.  The vet seems to think that I found a way to trigger Josie's appetite with the tuna and told me to keep it up.  We also had a very heart-to-heart talk about her condition and what would be best for her.  Basically, we've decided to continue in this course of action and do some blood work next week to see what her liver is up to and continue from there.  He also told me, very nicely I might add, that he'll let me know when he thinks its her time to go, and that he thinks she still has a lot of fight left in her, especially if I can keep her eating.  This is why I love Dr. Neff.  The other vet that was treating her (I won't name names) did not impress me with his bedside manner, and basically told me the first time I brought Josie in that I should consider putting her down.  He also referred to her as "him" and "it," never once calling her by her name.  I'm pretty much done with that guy.  Dr. Neff, however, approaches Josie's care in the same manner that I do; any improvement, no matter how slight, is significant and  cause for celebration.  I know she has a long way to go, and its uphill and snowing most of the way, too, but I'm hopeful and sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.

P.S. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Say hello to my little friend

I would like to meet the person who invented this thing and take him or her out to dinner.  Seriously.  You just add the cleaning fluid, plug it in, set it down on the nasty spot, and let it do all of the work.  And believe me, if you had seen the mess that I came home to this evening in my bedroom, you would have ran out the door to the nearest store to pick one of these babies up, too.

In other words Josie is not doing well.  That little peak that she hit last week in terms of recovery seems to have been a very short-term occurrence and she is now having severe diarrhea and has pretty well stopped eating and drinking altogether.  I actually had to get a one milliliter syringe and use that in order to get her to drink something by sticking it in her mouth and depressing the plunger (I also mixed her antibiotics in with the water because I am evil and sneaky like that).  The bottom line is that I will likely have to make one of the most difficult decisions in my life and that time will come sooner rather than later.  I'm referring to the proverbial big sleep, because frankly I can't handle calling it anything else at the moment.  I can't imagine that Josie is happy right now, nor can she really be feeling all that well.  She's lost half of her body weight, is severely anemic, and has liver disease.  I'm going to try and give her as much time as I possibly can to make a recovery, however slight, but if her condition continues to worsen, I'll have to do what's best for her.  Needless to say, I'm a wreck about the whole thing, so if anyone has any words of wisdom or advice for me, now would be the time.

Beginning your day in the grossest way possible in 15 easy steps!

Step 1. Get a cat, preferably one who has had past issues controlling her bowels.

Step 2. Outfit your bed in all white.

Step 3. Prepare for a night's rest.

Step 4. Allow cat to sleep with you in the all white bed.

Step 5. Awake at 3:30 am with an overwhelming feeling that something is wrong, but you can't put your finger on it.

Step 6. In the search for your glasses, you put your finger in something.

Step 7. Scramble groggily for the lights.

Step 8. Shriek in horror at the Rorschach-style nightmare your cat's bowels have unleashed onto the comforter, sheets, and the pillow your head had rested upon no less than two minutes ago.

Step 9. Remove the cat to the bathroom where she can be hosed down.

Step 10. Look into the mirror in the bathroom and discover you have feces all down your left arm.

Step 11. Shriek in horror and pull a Lady Macbeth for about 10 minutes, scrubbing until your skin is red.

Step 12. Slather some stain stuff on the bedding and load it into the washer.

Step 13. Remake the bed with new sheets.

Step 14. Realize it is now 4 am and you have to be up in about 3 hours.

Step 15. Try to get back to sleep and toss and turn for the next hour or so, convinced that you somehow missed something and the poop is still there...waiting for you to drop your guard.

Voila!

Special Friday Edition: If I were a rich girl

Ok, so here's one of the new things I've decided to do.  I figure I spend a good deal of time looking at auction catalogs and the like (its work-related, I swear), so I might as well blog about some of the things that I really, really like but could never afford unless I win the lottery or figure out that I am somehow the long-lost granddaughter of royalty or something, like in the Princess Diaries (no, I have not seen the movie, but I saw the commercials so I pretty much figured it out).  So without further ado, I bring you the first installment in my delusional Friday series (click on the pics to enlarge):

How sexy is this Pennsylvania chest on chest? What really does it for me is the funky carved ornamentation.  I mean, check out this quarter column:

Holy flying fylfots, batman!  The estimate for this baby is $20,000 to $30,000, but in this economy, it's really anybody's guess.  Condition is always a factor, and that part isn't really discussed too much in the catalog (of course, you can always request a condition report, and any reputable auction house would be happy to furnish one for you, fyi), so it does make me pause and wonder for a moment.  And by wonder, I mean wonder where it will go in my twenty-room mansion...I did say this was all delusional, after all, so I might as well go the full ten yards.  Has anyone seen Hans, my personal Swedish masseuse, lately?  I think I pulled something with all of this ridiculous daydreaming.

Roller coaster

July 1949 image from the Life photo archive

I apologize for the prolonged absence from my blog lately; January is always a crazy busy month for me, due primarily to the Winter Antiques Show, or what I like to call the Superbowl of the Antiques World.  Preparing for this show always takes a lot of time and energy, so its never a good thing to get sick with a nasty stomach bug right before go-time.  Oops.  In between the traveling to and from Washington, DC, and New York, I also found the time to worry incessantly about Captain Husband, who was away for two weeks on some sort of mission he couldn't tell me about.  I tried pretending that he was off somewhere in a tuxedo like James Bond, but that only helped a little.  On top of all of that, my sweet cat Josie got very very sick and was diagnosed with liver disease.  She's surprised all of us, including her vet, and is actually on her way to a slow recovery and is starting to eat again and display some cattitude once more--keep your fingers crossed.  In short, it has been an emotional month.  Here's hoping February will be better (CH is now safely ensconced at his base; Josie is getting better; no more shows until March) and I hope to return to some semblance of a posting schedule.  I might even add some new and exciting features!*  

*New and exciting to me, probably not so much to anyone else.  Sorry.