There are a ton of songs about Julia, but the one sticking in my head right now is John Lennon’s elegy to his mom. I can’t get it out of my head. It’s so haunting, so evocative of how I feel right now.

My friend Julia Case died last week. Some of you may have known her as mornhyland. She had a lot of diverse experiences in her life, a lot of wonderful things but also a lot of sorrow. She was deaf-blind, and suffered from bipolar disorder, PTSD, DID, and possibly other mental illnesses. She was in and out of mental hospitals pretty regularly, but underneath all that she was a brilliant mathematician who loved technology, and that’s what we frequently talked about. Every time I mused about wanting a new cell phone, she’d give me the lowdown because she knew all about those things. We talked about programming and other geek toys. She had an answer for techie questions I never thought anybody would know, and she had that answer ready within minutes of me posting to Twitter or LiveJournal.

Julia had been going through some hard times recently. She moved from Massachusetts to Oregon, and she broke up with her wife, to whom she was legally married (in Massachusetts anyway). She sent me a message on Twitter not long ago, so distraught over her breakup that she asked if she would make it through. I told her yes she would, because she was one of the strongest people I know. She had survived SO much. And really, things were starting to look up. She had interpreters in her college classes, she had just gotten a dog named Chance from Project Pooch, and I believe she was intending to train him as a service dog - guide or therapy, I’m not sure which. She had just gotten hearing aids (one day after I got mine) and was having a hard time adjusting to all the new sounds. She was also taking mobility training, learning how to guide herself with a white cane and so forth. She talked about wanting to learn Braille. I honestly thought things were looking up, but something was obviously wrong.

Julia took her own life on Wednesday, April 23, 2008. She was 39 years old. I will miss her very much.

Well, we made it to Las Vegas. Unfortunately I am typing this on my Sidekick, because I forgot the Ethernet port on my computer is fussy. If I have a chance and/or can figure out where to go, I will buy an ethernet PC/MCIA card to make up for it. Fortunately the 25-ft Ethernet cable I bought was a good buy, it reaches much futher than the one they provided.

The flight was fine, except for the guy sitting behind us who reeked of weed. Then we found out he was going to the Venetian, too, and he ended up on the same shuttle bus. He turned out to be really annoying and very high, so I took his picture and put my camera back in my bag…I thought.

We were tired and not feeling well so we checked in, ate at Noodle Asia, which had pretty poor service (not enough staff), and went back to the room for a nap. Then we wanted to find some soda to keep in the room, because the tap water in the bathroom was terrible. So we got ready to go to the Fashion Show Mall, and that’s when I discovered my camera was missing. I called the agency and told them what to look for, and they said they’d call back if they found it.

I picked up an iPod sync cable at the mall, but the cheapest digital camera was $150 plus you had to buy a memory card. We ended up at a mini-mart to buy sodas (and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which I am having now - cheaper than a drink at a bar) and got a couple of disposable cameras with flash. Then we came back to the hotel, and I bought a $50 “keychain” camera at Brookstone. I took it back to the room and discovered that its maximum resolution was 640×480, it didn’t have a rear display or flash, it only had 16MB internal memory…not good enough.

So I returned that and got my $50 back. And then I went to a shop called Photo Magic and bought a Kodak C533 and a 256MB memory card for $172. It’s a real camera…real expensive, but so much better. If my old camera is lost, then this is a good replacement. Aside from a couple of pictures at Dulles and the pothead jerk on the shuttle, I think all I lost were cat pictures - including one of Truffle with a tampon in his mouth. I’m trying to remember that at least I still have my wallet, my Sidekick, and my laptop. But I lost the camera, the cable, the memory card and spare memory card I had, and the Belkin iPod sync device that would have allowed me to store photos on my 80gb iPod.

Tomorrow we are going to the Grand Canyon, so I had to get a good camera. But I still can’t believe the old one is really lost and gone. I am hoping it will turn up when we leave at least. I can’t believe somebody might have taken it. I’m sad about it, like you wouldn’t believe. And of course I blame myself…the last I saw it was on the shuttle, so obviously I left it there. Sigh.

My wife says to stop looking at the airport status page, but I can’t help it. She says there’s nothing we can do and I should give it up. But when this is what it says, how can I not be sad that they pushed us to Saturday?

Due to RWYS CLOSED/SNOW & ICE, the Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) was closed as of Feb 14 at 05:00 AM EST. The date/time when the airport is expected to reopen is Feb 14 at 12:30 PM EST.
General Departure Delays: Traffic is experiencing gate hold and taxi delays lasting 15 minutes or less.

How can that not make me sad? We could have gone. I know we could have gone. They canceled our flight too far in advance before they saw how bad it really was going to be, and it wasn’t really too bad to fly. But she says to stop focusing on it…sigh. I don’t mean to complain…I’m just documenting how I feel.

This is a paid post I actually have a reason for taking. The product shown at left is ES Clear for Cat Cancer. I didn’t mention it, but the one-year anniversary of Empress Wu’s death was on January 12th. When she died, I thought the pain would never end…it went on so long. One year later, I find it is greatly diminished, but I still miss her terribly. When I was tagging old posts and I got to that point, I could barely read them to see what tags they needed.

Our little Wubie’s death was ultimately caused by lung cancer, which I don’t think is too common in cats. The immediate cause was pneumopericardium, which is air in the sac around her heart. She had breathed too fast since we got her, like she was forever trying to catch her breath; a few months before she died she was diagnosed with asthma. But it wasn’t asthma, it was lung cancer, and it took my kitty away. She was a month or two shy of seven years old, and she was the only cat in the house who always looked to me first as her mama, rather than my wife - I am usually the “backup” mama to the other cats.

ES Clear is a natural product specifically formulated for cats with cancer. I don’t know if it would have helped her or not. It seems like it’s not trying to cure the cancer, but rather give the cat a better quality of life. Wu was only really sick for a day or two, and she seemed much happier in the oxygen cage at the vet’s office, but I would have tried anything to make her more comfortable.

That’s all I can write, I’m afraid. Writing this entry was harder than I expected it would be.

Today was a bit of a bummer due to the first snow of the season. We were supposed to run errands, then go bowling, then go have cake at my in-laws’ house. The errands were going to include picking up a PS2 memory card, because when I tried to play one of my birthday presents yesterday, I realized that my only PS2 card has died…somehow. I have some games on PS1 cards, but whatever was on my PS2 card - including my 860m katamari - is gone.

I was really looking forward to the bowling and cake, because it was going to be kind of like a birthday party. Last night my sister-in-law went out to dinner and had friends over, and I could hear them downstairs having fun, and we weren’t invited. (Remember, her birthday is the same day as mine.) So next year I’m hopefully going to have my own party, but for this year it was going to be bowling and cake today…and I didn’t get it. We’re going to go over for cake anyway sometime this week, but the party atmosphere won’t be the same. I’ll hopefully be getting together with my mom this coming weekend (?) so we’ll see how that goes.

By the way, I’ve had a few margaritas tonight. So forgive me if I’m not making much sense.

Toadstool is gone. It was a long time in coming; she almost died in January and then again in May. We were living on borrowed time for a long time, and her quality of life had gone sharply downhill. In the end, we decided to stop giving her water; she was drinking it willingly but it wasn’t bringing her back and so it was only prolonging the inevitable. Last night, when we were trying to go to sleep, she was crying quite loudly from the sink (she liked it there) every 20 minutes, but we couldn’t do anything for her. So we gave her a couple of Ativan and she was peaceful through this morning. She was so peaceful that when I woke up at 5:00am and peered at her in the dark (she was in a basket on our bed at this point) I thought she was already gone. A came home to check on her around noon today, and she was almost gone. She stayed with her through the end, giving her morphine to ease her passing. She died at about 3:30pm and A arranged her in a basket (picture here) so I could see her when I got home.

She had a good long life - 16½ years. You can read her final missive at hello_grumpy. It’s quite fitting, really…that’s just what she would say.

It’s been two weeks since my kitty girl had to leave us. I am doing much better but looking at this Catster thread still brings tears to my eyes. Recently we were driving on Route 29 near Fairfax Circle, near some condos or townhouses (something residential), and we saw several cars pulled over to the side of the road and a group of people standing in a circle around something in the middle of the road. As we drove by we saw it was someone’s golden retriever (or another large dog) who had been struck. That really wrenched my heart. I’m so glad we got to be with her, that we got to say goodbye, that she died peacefully. My torn heart just went out to the owners of that poor dog.

Wu is still in her little white box, and her picture is propped up in front of it right next to the TV in our bedroom so we see her all the time. (We had kept her in her favorite basket, but Toadstool only let us do that for a couple of days before reclaiming it.) Her urn is on top of the TV, and two of her favorite toys - the ring from around a milk jug and a thick little piece of black cord - are on top of her box. I don’t know when we’re going to put her in her last home. I can still see her in front of me on the table, see her fall as the drug went into her veins. Sigh…it seems I have mostly pushed the grief aside in favor of things like birthdays and legal drama, but when I think about her it just keeps hurting me. So I’m crying at the moment. I haven’t been able to look at her final picture lately, but this one is on my laptop’s wallpaper and this one is on A’s laptop wallpaper.

Oh, I miss my kitty girl.

Hi everybody. I’m hanging in there okay. I was very sad at home this morning, and when I got to work I was looking at cremation jewelry so I was still kind of mopey, but I’ve been goofing off for a while so I’m doing okay now. Wu is always somewhere in my thoughts, but I find that I am able to relax at least and not get stressed out. We received the UPS tracking number for the urn this morning, and A brought her to the crematory. They were done with her by a little after 12:30 so A will bring her home tonight. I assume they give us a little box temporarily. I want to keep her up in the bedroom with us for now because that’s where she spent most of her time. I couldn’t do it last night because there was still a cat in the box, but I want her close. I’m so glad I made this decision, I’m glad we’re keeping her in our home. Part of the reason is that she was never allowed outside (she was already declawed in front when we got her) so it would have been weird to put her out there, and eventually she would have been gone. We have buried a couple of chinchillas and a hamster out in the yard, but that spot has been grown over now, and that was several years ago so I doubt there’s even anything left. I don’t want that to happen to my Wubie.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet what the hardest part was. When I brought her to the vet Wednesday night, she looked very ill. But they had her in an oxygen cage, so she was breathing much better. When we went to visit with her before they did it, she looked fine. She was alert, she recognized us, she gave me that wonderful picture. Even when they brought her out of the cage and put her on the table, she wanted to jump down from there. It was unbelievably painful to put her to sleep because she looked healthy. If she had been droopy and sick, it might have been a little easier, but she looked like she was ready to come home with us. It just about broke my heart, and I’m going to stop this paragraph before I cry.

I’ve had a stomachache for most of the day and I’m not sure why. It’s not quite nausea, just discomfort. I have been playing online pretty much the whole day. I do have to stay until the end of the day, though, because I can’t pick up my food until 5:00. I used to leave a little early on Fridays but I can’t do that anymore because of the food. By the way, I’m proud of myself for sticking to my diet yesterday - I really wanted to eat crap just for something to do, but I didn’t do it. Also, I lost four pounds last week, but so far this week I’ve only lost half of one. Quicklinks will probably return tomorrow; they auto-posted yesterday but I took them down because it didn’t feel right. Obviously nothing new was added yesterday, so I’ll put the ones that posted yesterday into the auto-post for tomorrow.

We’re going to have to do it. I am on my way to the hospital where I will meet A. This was so fast. Turns out she has air in her pericardia, the membrane around the heart. The root cause though is cancer, not heart disease or asthma. I doubt I’ll go back to work today. Please keep the e-hugs coming.