A few more pictures...

So it's been a bit of a rough week. I never realized just how present Riff was in our lives until now. He wasn't the typical aloof, indifferent cat... the kind who keeps to himself until he is forced to rely on the opposable thumbs of his human captors to open a door or pour food into a dish.

No, Riff was a "people cat." He always wanted to be where the people were. If we were sitting on the couch watching TV, he was curled up next to us. If I was cooking dinner, he was climbing on counters to inspect the produce or overseeing the culinary process from his favorite perch on top of the fridge. When it was time to work out and I did push-ups or planks, he would "help" me by standing underneath me so I couldn't collapse onto the floor. When I washed a load of towels or sheets, I would always dump the clean laundry onto the bed, and then wait a couple hours before I even attempted to fold anything -- because invariably, Riff would burrow into the pile and take a nap...

When we came back to the condo after being out for a while, Riff would be waiting for us just inside the door, greeting us with meows and happy tail twitches, as if seeing his humans was the best part of his day. We often wondered if he waited there for us when we were gone... did he lay on the carpet in the entryway eagerly anticipating our return? Or did he scurry over as soon as he heard the key in the lock?

But perhaps my favorite thing was that after I'd settled into bed for the night -- ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later -- Riff would jump up, snuggle up right against me, and spend the whole night keeping me company. This was especially comforting when Rick was out of town -- I never felt like I was alone in the condo, because my buddy Riff was always right there with me.

So it's been painfully obvious that Riff is gone. He followed me around like a shadow... but now, where my shadow should be, all there is is empty space. It's been strange, and sad, and very quiet... although to Piva's credit, she seems to be attempting to pick up some slack. She's been much more clingy this last week, and keeps loudly meowing at random times. She knows something has changed... I'm sure she misses Riff, too, even though she'd never admit it, because Riff had a tendency to antagonize her. :)

Anyway, I've been going through lots of pictures this week, so here are a few more:

Baby picture! :) This was a few days after Rick's sister found this little guy and gave him to us. To be honest, I wasn't even sure I WANTED another cat at the time... but it didn't take long for him to fit right in and become a part of the family.

About six months old... and probably trying to figure out how to get into trouble. I think I spent the entire first year of his life with perpetual scratch marks up and down my arms, because he LOVED to play... and he had very sharp claws. :) 

What, you don't have a cat in your fridge??

 This was one of his preferred ways of sleeping... he was actually quite comfortable like this...

Riff had a couple absolute FAVORITE toys... and he had the uncanny ability to swipe them across the slippery hardwood floor and directly under the refrigerator. He would then attempt to reach underneath the fridge to retrieve his toys... I can't even COUNT the number of times I had to pull out a flashlight and yard stick and fish out little rattling mice from the dark recesses of the Under Fridge.
  

This was the only time that Riff and Piva would sleep this close to each other: Towels. The great equalizers.

 And he loved hanging out in sinks...

  A lot...

What do you do with a Halloween pumpkin? Why, eat it, of course! :)

This guy made me smile EVERY single day. I could be completely depressed, having a horrible day, sad, angry, upset, whatever -- but every day, without fail, Riff would make me smile. Sometimes even laugh out loud. It's crazy how much I miss him -- I mean, he was "only" a cat -- but he really knew how to work his way into somebody's heart. If he only had five years to spend here, we were lucky that those five years were with us...

The last bowl on the right...

I've been thinking for quite some time that I should dust off my old blog again and start writing more often. This wasn't the post I had in mind when I thought about reviving this space, but since writing has always been one of the ways I tend to work through difficult issues, write I shall.

Yesterday morning, we got up, went through our usual morning routine, and then around 11, we packed up Riff for a trip to the vet. To be honest, I was actually looking forward to this visit. Riff had been losing some weight (although he'd probably been a bit on the chunky side to begin with), but had otherwise been acting pretty normal -- eating, drinking, playing with his toys, cuddling on the couch when we watched TV at night, etc. Still, the weight loss was getting worrisome, so we made an appointment with the vet. And then, about five days ago, he suddenly stopped eating. We tried all kinds of things to entice him to eat -- tuna (he ate a tiny bit of it), canned food (he ate none of it), packets of soft food in broth (he ate none, but Piva loved it), treats (he would eat a few if we broke them into little pieces)... we finally bought some "high calorie nutritional gel" from the pet store and started feeding him tiny amounts of it every few hours. He HATED it, but we felt like we had to do SOMEthing to provide him with calories until we got him to the vet.

We were able to move the vet appointment up a day -- we were originally supposed to take him in late this afternoon, but they had a cancellation yesterday morning. Rick and I both had the same thought -- based on the fact that Riff seemed like he WANTED to eat (he was still obviously interested in his cat treats... he just didn't want to eat very many or really big pieces), we thought for sure he had some kind of tooth problem. I was guessing he had an abscessed tooth, and we'd go to the vet, have it pulled, get him on some antibiotics, and viola -- he'd be normal old Riff again. So when we packed him into the cat carrier and his mournful meowling began, I assured him that he'd be feeling better in no time.

But when we got into the vet's office, and she looked at his teeth, she said they were fine. It wasn't until she started listening to his heart and his breathing that I knew something was really wrong. Before she even SAID anything, I could tell that something was wrong. She told us that Riff's heart didn't sound right... instead of the usual "lub dub" sound that a normal heart makes, his was making three different sounds, and sometimes skipping beats. She gave us the name of a veterinary cardiologist (yes, there is such a thing... I didn't even know...), but said that it could take up to a month to get an appointment. Or, we could go straight to the ER (yep, there are also veterinary ERs... I never knew that, either...) and go that route. We chose the ER...

After that, the rest of the day was a blur. As soon as we got to the ER, Riff was whisked away (literally... they were all business and brusk and rushed, just like a human ER), placed in an oxygen tent, and then sent for x-rays. We spent the next few hours learning that his chest was filled with fluid, and he had a possible mass pushing on his trachea -- which would probably explain why he sort of WANTED to eat, but couldn't eat more than tiny bits of food at any one time. At first, the vet's theory was some sort of cancer -- which would have been terrible, but at the same time, there are treatments available, even for pets. But to get a clear picture, they needed an ultrasound, and they couldn't get to it for another few hours. So Rick and I reluctantly left the ER, and decided to head home for a few hours.

It was around 6 when the vet finally called to tell us the results of the ultrasound. And as far as "maladies that can afflict a cat," Riff was hit with the absolute worst -- dilated cardiomyopathy. The "mass" that showed up on the x-ray was just his heart -- enlarged from working too hard for too long. And there was nothing that could be done... at best, our sweet, affectionate little guy had two or three days to live. The vet said that he could give Riff some kind of medication to try to stabilize him, but it wouldn't buy much time.

So last night, we made the difficult decision to head into the vet this morning to say goodbye. Neither Rick nor I was able to fall asleep very easily, and I was dreading what was coming. And then, at around 1 in the morning, the phone rang and woke us up. Rick went out to the living room to answer it. I think I instinctively knew what it meant, but until Rick actually came back into the bedroom and said, "Riff passed away," I didn't want to believe it.

Not my sweet boy, who'd spent nearly every night of the last five years curled up next to me on the bed while I slept.

Not Riff, who knew how to open the pantry door and drank straight from the faucet with water pouring over his head.

Not our Riff Raff, whose insatiable curiosity was alternately annoying and insanely endearing. 

Not the "baby cat" of the family, only five years old, with a good decade of playing and running and jumping and snuggling ahead of him.

The last 24 hours have been rough... We took Riff to the vet thinking that he'd be back to his normal self within a week. Instead, I've been dealing with the guilt of knowing that the last time he saw us, we were dropping him off at a scary, new place. And then we never saw him again.

The only comfort is knowing that nothing WE did caused this... Riff's condition was either genetic, or caused by a virus, which he could've had his entire life. And even if we'd caught it at the earliest possible point, we only would've been able to prolong his life by a few months. Basically, Riff was never destined to reach old age, for whatever reason... although at the moment, I can't imagine what that reason could be.

Almost exactly five years ago, we lost our Sheltie, Echo. A couple weeks later, a tiny little Riff kitten came into our lives. The day we took him to the vet the first time, the vet techs presented us with a cast of Echo's paw print:

Today, the vet gave us this, about ten years too soon:

Riff had a habit of tossing his toys into the water dish by his food, usually at some time during the night. I would get up in the morning, head out to the kitchen, and laugh when I'd see another water-logged stuffed mouse floating in the water. I could never figure out why he did that, exactly, but it was another one of those "Riff" things that we loved about him. When he stopped eating last week, we bought a variety of canned and soft food, hoping that he'd like one of them. Since we've always just given the cats dry food, we also bought a cheap plastic bowl to use for the canned food. But after a few failed attempts at feeding him canned food, I just washed out the plastic bowl and set it down next to the other bowls. Yesterday morning, after his last night at home, I walked out to the kitchen to this:

One last time, he tossed his toy into a bowl... only this time, it stayed dry. I haven't had the heart to move it yet -- I feel like he put it there for a reason.

In Peter Pan, Peter says that to find Neverland, you follow the "second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning." Perhaps in Riff's case, to find a Neverland full of scratching posts and catnip, he needed to follow the last bowl on the right... and straight on 'til morning...

Still here...

Yes, I'm still here... attempting to type a quick blog post as Piva sits thisclose to my computer keyboard (she has already hit the caps lock key several times... you're lucky I'm not typing LIKE THIS FOR THE ENTIRE POST :)).

It's been a super busy couple of weeks, so I didn't have much time to randomly toss thoughts into the cybersphere. (Not that the cybersphere wants for more random thoughts, of course. This place is already crammed full of useless nonsense...)

Can anyone believe that we're halfway through February already? And can anyone believe that there's a guy in an apartment across the street from us who still has his Christmas tree up?? Every day, I look over to that window on the sixth floor and see the tree, Santa hat planted on top, awkwardly holding its ground in the corner of Stranger Guy's living room. I'm wondering if I could get away with breaking and entering, if my sole purpose was to dismantle his tree...

Anyway, the highlight of the last couple weeks was the awesome snowstorm we got -- FINALLY. And yes, I really do love snow in the winter, so the lack of it this year was starting to feel very un-Chicago-like. Couple that with the fact that December was just about the cloudiest month ever (and I haven't checked the stats, but there's a possibility that it literally WAS the cloudiest month ever), and winter was taking on a decidedly depressing quality. While I LOVE cloudy weather if it's accompanied by snow, I HATE just plain cloudy weather.

And while I'm sure there are plenty of people in the Boston area (and the Buffalo area :)) who are sick of snow at this point, we haven't had nearly enough of the stuff to be exasperated with it yet. Besides, I live in a downtown condo and don't have to shovel, plow, or drive in it. Believe me, snow is a lot more fun when other people are doing all the work to remove it. :)

The one problem with snow in a city is that it doesn't stay pristine and sparkly for very long. Once plows start shoving it (and whatever else is on the street) into snowbanks, and people tramp over the sidewalks in dirty shoes, it turns from fluffy white powder to slushy brown mush.

But, I will say that the snow on my balcony is still, well, snow white. :)

The storm began with just a lot of falling snow, but by evening, the wind picked up and we were mesmerized by sheets of whipping horizontal snow outside our windows. Or at least I was mesmerized. Rick may have been indifferent... :) It wasn't quite as awesome as the blizzard we had the first year we moved here (when it was snowing so hard and it was so windy that the view from our windows was solid white), but it was good enough to make me feel like I actually DO live in Chicago. (I'm sure the single digit temperatures we're feeling this week will help, too.)

And while I would love more snow this year, spring is approaching awfully quickly. I just hope that guy across the street gets around to taking his tree down before Easter...

Things that go bump in the night... part two...

When I was a kid, my parents had a collection of coffee table books from Reader's Digest and National Geographic and Time Life. There were books about world history, and the solar system, and national parks... all with plenty of pictures to browse through, in case the wordy paragraphs got too boring. Every now and then I would pull one of these hefty tomes off the bookshelf and curl up on the couch (or just sit on the floor) and flip through pages until something caught my eye.

The books about World War II and the ocean and the universe were all interesting... but my FAVORITE book was this one:

In fact, even though I found this random picture on the internet, this could BE our old book. I mean, I'm pretty sure the cover on ours was just as creased and well-worn as this one...

Anyway... yes, the Mysteries of the Unexplained. This book was filled with supposed "true" tales of UFO encounters, people with psychic abilities, monster sightings, and ghost stories. And I say this was my favorite of all the coffee table books, but really, I had more of a love/hate relationship with it. I mean, sure -- in the light of day, when the sun was shining and the birds were singing, it was fun to sit on the floor near the bookshelf and read ghost stories. But as soon as darkness began creeping in, and the entire world, it seemed, fell silent, memories of what I'd read earlier in the day would pop into my head... and now, they'd seem so much scarier than they'd seemed when the sun was cheerily shining. I'd climb into bed, willing myself to forget about that famous picture of the "ghost" on the stairs:

   
Which, in reality, is probably one picture superimposed over another... but who needs reality when you're trying to fall asleep in your dark, quiet house? And I'd wonder... can ghosts get through the covers on my bed? Am I safe if I just hide under here? But no matter how many times I'd scare myself with this book, I'd always eventually go back and read more... which inevitably resulted in another night of hiding under my ghost-repelling blankets.

Now, of course, I'm older and wiser and no longer worry about things like ghosts or the Jersey Devil or alien abduction. That's not to say that I'm not unsettled when the springs in my window explode in the middle of the night, or when the light in the ceiling fan in my bedroom turns itself on at random times. But at least these things have logical explanations. At least I am reasonably certain that my condo isn't REALLY haunted by the ghost of someone who likes to read in the middle of the night.

And then something like THIS has to go and happen: Rick was watching TV the other night, while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom. I heard a sing-songy warbling coming from the living room, and assumed it was something in the show on TV. Suddenly I heard Rick call my name -- in a tentative, I-have-a-weird-question-to-ask sort of way -- so I went out to the living room, where the TV was now muted and Rick was searching the room for an unknown object.

"Uh, do we have something in this room that plays music??" he asked.

I thought about it for a few seconds, but couldn't think of anything specific.

"I don't think so... why?"

"Because something was just playing music over by the bookshelf."

That's when we both remembered that we DO have a music box sitting on a shelf in the living room. A music box that neither of us has TOUCHED in I-don't-even-know-how-long. Maybe not since we moved in to this place. I mean, I run a dust rag over it now and then, but haven't actually wound it up and played the music in YEARS.

I looked at Rick. "Wait, you're saying that noise DIDN'T come from the TV??"

"No -- when I muted the TV, it kept playing for a few seconds."

Whaaaaaaaaaat? What what what what what???

So a music box that hadn't been played in years suddenly decided to just play itself?

In the lexicon of "things that are creepy," music boxes that play for no reason are SERIOUSLY CREEPY. 

Rick's theory is that since he was watching some kind of action movie with lots of explosions and "shake the walls" bass sounds, the vibrations shook something loose in the music box and caused it to rattle off a few notes. I suppose that seems reasonable.

But you'd better believe that I hid under my ghost-repelling duvet that night...

 

Some Friday randomness...

Happy Friday everyone! I was deleting old pictures off my camera earlier, and found this one of Riff demonstrating the art of relaxation (I may or may not have posted it before -- I can't remember):

Speaking of Riff... he was drinking water from the faucet this morning, as he always does -- with his head directly under the running water. Meanwhile, I was drying my hair and had a cup of coffee on the counter next to the sink. Now, even though Riff seems to have no qualms about sticking his head into the path of oncoming water, as soon as he's finished drinking he shakes himself off like a dog coming in from the rain. Suffice it to say, my coffee was suddenly inundated with droplets of cat water. I drank it anyway. I can't decide whether this is indicative of my love for my cat, or my love for coffee...

So I recently tried (after years of seeing commercials for them) Breathe Right strips -- you know, those adhesive strips you wear on your nose to keep your airway clear while you're sleeping? Oh my gosh... how did I not try these things sooner?? I've always had allergy issues anyway, but when I started using my night guard a few months ago, I was finding myself really uncomfortable by morning... my throat would be sore from breathing through my mouth half the night, and I couldn't wait to ditch the night guard. And even though sticking an adhesive strip on your nose looks kinda silly, it helps SO MUCH that I'm not sure I can ever sleep without one again. So now my nightly ritual is something like this: I take out my contacts and put my glasses on, Rick and I watch a couple episodes of Star Trek, I put my night guard in, stick a Breathe Right strip on my nose, and voila -- I am the nerdiest nerd who ever nerded.

My poor treadmill was out of commission for a few weeks, after it developed the disconcerting habit of randomly shutting itself down and starting back up again. Fortunately, the few times this happened I had just started my workout and was still walking pretty slowly, so I was able to recover my balance. I don't know what would've happened if I'd been jogging at a good clip when the treadmill suddenly turned itself off... I probably would've keeled over onto the belt or launched headfirst into the console. I have a Landice, which comes with a lifetime warranty -- so we never have to pay for parts, just labor (although the labor charge isn't exactly cheap, either). The repair guy who came out concluded that not only was the belt worn down, but the wax underneath that prevents friction was worn down as well -- so the treadmill was having to work harder to move the belt, and ended up using too much power. And apparently when the treadmill realizes that it's using too much power, it shuts itself off... with no regard whatsoever for the human who is walking upon it. But now it has a new belt, a new coat of wax, and an overall tune-up -- so far, so good. Although I'm still a bit tentative when I'm using it...

That's about all I've got today... I hope everyone has some interesting weekend plans. My exciting plans consist of buying paper towels at Home Depot... I think that's about it. :) Although tonight we're heading up north to hang out with Connor and Molly (and also that other guy... whatshisface... Edgar? Earl?), so that will be the highlight of my week!

Have a great weekend!

Remember me?

Hey guys! I know, I know... it's been FOREVER since I posted. I took a nice, long, blogger break -- you know, took up skydiving, learned to speak Russian, mastered the art of origami (okay, it's possible that none of those things are true).

But I have rather missed blathering on about nothing in particular, so I thought perhaps a blog resurrection was in order. And to kick off my brand-new-yet-super-old blog, I'll begin with the story of the Thing That Went Bump in the Night:

Actually, "bump" is not the correct word. Rick and I were sound asleep at around 2 in the morning last night, when we were both jolted awake by something extremely loud. In my sound-asleep-two-seconds-earlier-and-now-startlingly-alert state, I was convinced that someone had thrown a rock at one of our windows. I half-expected cold air to come rushing into the bedroom at any moment, even though logically, it would take someone with a REALLY good arm to launch a rock at one of our third-story (which is really more like fourth-story, with the high ceilings in our building) windows and manage to break one. Still, I couldn't imagine what else it could be...

Rick, however, was convinced that a large picture had fallen off the wall in the living room and crashed to the floor. Since there didn't seem to be any freezing air blowing into the condo, I decided this was the more likely (and much less frightening) scenario. We both finally gained enough composure to tentatively venture out into the living room, flipping on light switches and double-checking window panes in the process.

And when we turned the corner from the bedroom to the living room, we found... nothing. Absolutely NOTHING amiss or out of place. The pictures that had been hanging on the walls when we'd gone to bed were still on the walls... the appliances on the kitchen counter were present and accounted for... the knickknacks on our shelves were in their usual places collecting their usual dust... and every window was intact. From the looks of things, there was absolutely NO explanation for the sudden loud noise that had shocked us from slumber (and caused both the cats to search the condo with alarmed-looking wide eyes).

Needless to say, it took me about two hours to fall back to sleep... and in the morning, Rick and I described dreams that we'd both had about discovering the source of the noise (mine, inexplicably, included Worf from Star Trek...). In the light of day, I walked around to all the windows again, still convinced that the sound had come from one of the windows near the bedroom. I raised the blinds by Piva's favorite cat tree as I do every morning, and there on the windowsill was a small piece of broken plastic. I was certain it hadn't been there the day before -- could this be a clue to what had happened? Or did Piva just find a random piece of plastic on the floor and haul it up to the windowsill?

I usually only raise the blinds about halfway, but now I pulled the cord to reveal the entire window. And there in the track on the side of the window frame were two coiled springs, obviously in a place they weren't meant to be. In fact, none of the other windows in the condo have springs in that track. I called Rick over to the window, and, using our amazing, Sherlock-Holmes-like powers of deduction, we pieced together what had happened. In the middle of the night (of COURSE it had to be in the middle of the night -- it couldn't have happened at 2 in the afternoon? Or when we were out of the house??) the springs that aid in opening and closing the window, and are usually housed in the lower frame, suddenly broke and popped (or, rather, I'm guessing, violently sprung) through that little plastic piece that ended up on the windowsill. Which resulted in a sound like a rock hitting the window, or a picture frame falling off the wall.

And while I'm assuming we won't be able to open that window anytime soon (although this is January in Chicago -- why would we want to? :)), at least we finally figured out where the sound came from.

Otherwise, our best guess was going to be a poltergeist...

Random stuff...

Hope everyone is having a great July! This week has finally started to feel like summer here in Chicago. So I have about two and a half months of tank tops and summery dresses before I'll need to start layering more. One thing I've realized about living here is that each season is a welcome change from the previous one... because winter can be so cold and snowy, spring flowers are extra colorful; and because summer can be so hot and humid, the crisp autumn air will feel refreshing. But not for a few more months... I've only started enjoying the summer...

I just read that Crumbs cupcake shop is closing all of its locations because of a dramatic decline in sales. This makes me sad, because we have a Crumbs just a few blocks from here that I've been dying to try ever since we moved here. I mean, this place made giant cupcakes... GIANT CUPCAKES!

How can people not be buying these things?? (Never mind the fact that I haven't bought one myself... I don't want to think about the fact that I may have single-handedly contributed to the demise of Crumbs.)

So the weirdest thing happened a few weeks ago. Rick and I stumbled upon the last few minutes of one of the World Cup games when the U.S. was still playing. And the crazy thing is, we actually started getting into it. When the U.S. scored a goal, we were yelling and high fiving like it was the best thing ever. I think we came to the conclusion that because so much NOTHING happens in a soccer game, when someone actually DOES score a goal, it's super exciting. Now I understand why those soccer announcers get so vocal -- GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!! Anyway, now that the U.S. is out of it, Germany is my team... Deutschland über alles!

They've been refurbishing all the elevators in our building the last couple months, focusing on one at a time so only one is out of commission while they work on it. One of the elevators in our building is just down the hall from our front door, and they've been working on it for the last few weeks. We're only on the third floor, so we usually just take the stairs anyway -- so it hasn't been a big inconvenience. About the only time we use the elevator is when we take recycling down to the basement, since we're usually hauling flattened boxes and lots of empty bottles, and the recycling bins are in the basement just outside the elevator. (Needless to say, since the elevator has been out of order, we have a lot of recycling piled up in the house... :)) But here's the weird thing: the entire time they've been working on the elevator just outside in the hallway, they've been HERE on the third floor. It hasn't been bothersome, really -- there have only been a couple days when the work was particularly noisy -- but I find it so strange. Why wouldn't they take the elevator down to the basement and work on it there? Or, if they wanted to work on a particular floor, why the THIRD floor? Why not the second? Or the ninth? Is there something special about the third floor? I've found this third floor elevator refurbishment so peculiar...

That's about all the nonsense I have today -- I have another recipe to share with you guys soon, so I'll try to get that up sometime this week! :)