Kitty Baths

Finally, I’m feeling a lot better.  I worked a full day yesterday, then headed over to the St. Catharines Flying Club for their Friday gathering.  I had to drive to work yesterday as I picked up a couple cases of water for a co-worker.  They were the big honkin’ cases from Costco.  I figured I would carry them both at the same time from my car to the office.  Ugh, that was dumb.  Oh well, I made it with only a hernia and multiple pulled muscles and ligaments:

That should make her happy for a few months.

The get together at the airport was really nice.  I kinda embarrassed myself at the end of the night though.  One of the employees was telling me about the baby Killdeers up on the roof.  Even though I was wearing a skirt, I didn’t hesitate to climb up onto the roof, checking first that there was no one behind me!  They were so cute.  We only saw two, but he said there are four.  Check out these little cuties (popcorn on legs):

I love their little spindle-shanks:

The embarrassing part is when I was driving back home, and passed a bunch of adult Killdeers just past the hangars.  They were all upset because one was hit by a car and dead in the middle of the road.  I called the Flying Club and asked if they had a shovel.  Started crying at that point – I’m so sensitive when it comes to animals.  I feel so bad because he came running out, thinking it was the Club cat that was hit!  I felt horrible.  He brought a shovel and dug a hole in the gravel, as I picked up the bird with my bare hands and brought it over.  I’m such a dork – he must think I’m a complete loser!  Oh well, I drove him back to the Flying Club, used about half a bottle of hand sanitizer and headed home.

A flight instructor I met up with last night wanted to go for an aerobatic flight with me.  We met back at the airport this morning.  The clouds were rolling in but there was a nice clearing just north of the airport.  He loved the aerobatics and was surprised at how forceful I have to be with the controls.  It was a great flight and I’m glad the landing was decent, considering his career!

Back home, I decided to try and get through my big stack of aviation magazines and newspapers.  I was a little shocked when I turned the page of my COPA magazine and saw my ugly mug:

Once the nausea passed, I got up and prepared the kitchen sink for a few kitty baths.  I took video of Boo getting dried off and meowing quite loudly, also of Mya’s bath.  She screams like she’s being killed.  You can see the videos on my Video Page, scroll down to the bottom.

Today’s symptoms: Felt pretty good today!  Just a little weary from my flight, but  plan on chillin for the rest of the day.  My sinus headache is kinda bad today, but I can tell I’m still swollen inside from the surgery.

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/28/2012 2:44 PM

Ninja Kitty

Still having a pretty bad week, symptoms wise.  The good news is that it’s getting a bit better.  I had the day off today (compressed), so Jan and I decided to go to Costco.  As usual, we stopped at Timmies first.  A woman next to us asked us when Wal-Mart moved into the Fairview Mall.  We didn’t know it had.  She pointed over to the new Wal-Mart sign, off in the distance.  It’s funny we didn’t know they were taking over the old Zellers store, which has been closed for over a year.  I’m kinda glad because I think that mall needs a boost. 

We bought a few essentials at Costco, then wandered around the mall for a bit.  Only a few sections of Wal-Mart are open at this point, so we didn’t spend too much time there.

I’m still a tad weak, so we didn’t make it a full day of shopping.  We sorted our loot back at my apartment, then Jan headed home.  I spent the rest of the day relaxing and trying to teach myself a few moves with my new kamas and nunchuk.  Just as Boo was resting next to my Sai during my last post, here she is next to the new weapons.  She must be a ninja kitty:

From practicing today, I’m bruised, battered, calloused and blistered, but I’m surprised that I’m kinda catching on!  It’s a fun little hobby.

Today’s symptoms:  Still rather weak, but better than yesterday and quite a bit better than Tuesday.  I’m really looking forward to feeling even better tomorrow.  Hopefully the weather is decent this weekend so I can go for a flight, since I’ve grounded myself this week to recover from all of my flights last week.  Life is awesome!

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/26/2012 8:05 PM

Bad Day, But Life’s Still Good!

Today was one of the worst days I’ve had in a while.  The fatigue was unreal, pains all over the place, a really bad headache, painful spasms in my right leg (with no warning – how rude!), poor balance and my vision started to blur in the afternoon.  I feel absolutely miserable and I’m having a really hard time faking feeling good and being cheerful.  I didn’t want to be around people or even talk to anyone today.  Probably would have been good to stay home today, but I still would have felt like this plus got more behind on my work.  It was really hard not to be totally bummed about this stupid illness today – it’s hard to imagine that it’s always going to be like this, if not worse.  They really need to get crack-a-lackin on a cure!

On a bright note, no matter how rotten I feel, I still have the cutest cats EVER!  Check out little Boo all snuggled up to my Sai:

Weapons were always my favourite part of martial arts (I took Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing, with a bit of Judo).  I actually just ordered a couple more weapons to start learning.  Jan received them in the mail today, so they aren’t in my paws just yet.  I’ll post pics in my next blog.

More cute kitties – I’ve never seen three of them up on the cable receiver:

Here’s another pic of Boo, clearly in spaz-mode:

We had quite a storm last night.  I put my iPhone into fast-camera mode and took over 300 pictures.  I caught one lousy lightening bolt:

Sorry this was a somewhat negative blog, but I guess that’s life sometimes.  Tomorrow will be better.

Today’s symptoms: Blah – I won’t relist the symptoms from the first paragraph. I normally don’t like time to rush by, but I can’t wait for this day to be over and to crawl into bed.

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/24/2012 4:16 PM

 

Day Off

Today was my compressed day off.  Jan came up to the apartment this morning and offered to help me clean my windows.  I felt bad that I couldn’t do them all, but I was so weak this morning – I’m not sure why.  I figured after my big meal last night, I would wake up feeling strong and sassy!  My friend from work and I went to the new restaurant downtown called Gord’s Place.  Great food – I had the pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries:

Yum-o.  My friend didn’t believe me when I said I was going to clear my plate, but I did.  I only had some oatmeal around 10:00 that morning, then did an aerobatic flight in the early afternoon.  Thought I would save lots o’room for my dinner noms, and I’m sure glad I did.  Great food and I’ll definitely go back.  Speaking of the flight that day, I flew over the Wise Guys golf tournament again this year.

I was told everyone really enjoyed the show, performed by Vyctor.

I passed this neat little design on the way back to the airport:

Back at the airport, I noticed these little yellow finchy/oriole type dudes in a puddle under a plane:

So cute.

Ok, back to today.  Jan and I went over to the PEN Centre after doing my living room windows.  We of course stopped at Timmy’s for our usual coffee and bagel/muffin.  I was on the hunt for a few more skirts while Jan was looking for summer shoes.  Hello, you would think she would have started the search a couple months ago when the weather started getting hot.  Oh well, better late than never.  I ended up buying one soon into our search.  We then decided to go into a store I normally never go into.  I don’t know why, since I do not have any chemical sensitivities that I’m aware of, but walking into this store almost kills me.  Within a minute of being in it, my nose and eyes start watering, I get a headache and I get a little wheezy.  Weird, eh?  I tried holding my breath, while quickly running from rack to rack.  Unfortunately, I did find a skirt I wanted to try on.  Things were watering at this point and the garcon in the change room was looking at me a little funny.  As soon as I tried it on and decided that I would buy it, I ran out of the change room, threw the skirt at Jan and ran out of the store.  She rang it through and was laughing at me while I was standing out in the hall.  I feel bad that I was able to find what I was looking for, but Jan didn’t find any shoes.

Once we left the PEN, I dropped my folding bike up off at the bike shop where I had the tire repaired last month.  Something seems to have gone amiss, because the tire went flat again the day after it was fixed (and I didn’t even ride it).  So, the bike shop folks told me to bring it back and they would fix it again for no cost.  Great service, eh?

Back home, I just chilled for the rest of the afternoon.  I think everything I’ve been doing for the last couple weeks has really taken a bit of a toll on my wussy body.  Just one more flight to do tomorrow, then the Flying Club event on Saturday (Saturday – see, I got it right this time!), and that’s it for my plans.  I think I’m going to tone down the flying a bit next week, since it’s doing a number on my physically and financially.

While chillin’ on my couch today, I started drooling as the smell of BBQ came wafting into my apartment.  Oh, it smelled so good.  Turns out they were having an event at Community Care next door.  I was going to put on a red shirt and run down there for some noms, but was too tired:

While I was craving BBQ, Mya and Pinky decided that they were craving water.  Of course, they can’t drink out of the nice, new fountain I just bought them.  Instead, I had to turn on the faucet in the bathroom.  Dorks:

Little did they know, they would be in the kitchen sink soon.  Well, at least three of them.  Abby, Boo and Pinky were all due for a bath (Mya doesn’t seem to get as oily).  Abby was up first and only gave a couple little whimpers.  Here she is looking like a purrito while getting dried off:

The other two kitties weren’t quite as pleasant.  As usual, Pinky growled through the whole experience and Boo screamed like she was being murdered.  At least they don’t hold a grudge.

Today’s symptoms:  Very weak, especially when I first got up.  It got a little better during the day.  Still having a bit of that MS hug symptom.  Other than that, just the normal headache and a few aches and pains here and there.

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/19/2012 7:44 PM

Resting Up

Having a great week thus far.  I took up a guy from the Flying Club for an aerobatic flight on Monday.  He loved it!  For me, that’s the best part of being a pilot (especially an aerobatic one).  Since I headed out to the airport in the morning, I drove to work that day.  Not something I typically like to do since the rate doubled a couple years ago to $8.00 a day.  Mind you, I would have had to drive anyway because my sprained ankle is still, well, sprained.  Anyway, on the way home, I almost got into a head-on collision.  I was turning left from a side street and there was a dork coming out of the parking lot across from me.  I guess he figured since he was going straight and I was going left, that he had the right of way (despite the fact he was coming out of a parking lot – hello!)  Anyway, it happened so fast, I can’t completely remember if I gunned it to get out of his way or I slammed on my brakes.  I had to stop a car length away due to the traffic lined up for the red light.  It was extremely close.  I would include what I yelled at him but I would like to consider this a family-friendly blog.  The timing was ironic because I just spoke with an OPP officer in the morning.  The guy who was charged with careless driving when he hit my car (over $2000 in damages) and took off, has his court date in October.  If it was going to be in St. Catharines, I probably would have gone, but I really don’t want to take time off of work to drive to Niagara Falls.  I asked the officer if I attended, could I bring a group of friends and we could all heckle him from the back of the court room.  The officer strongly advised against it (party pooper!)

Yesterday, I was informed that I had made a grievous error in my previous blog.  I indicated that the social event at the Flying Club was on Friday, when it’s acutally on Saturday.  The “informer” indicated that due to the enormity of my miscommunication to my bloggers, he may never forgive me.  Also, I ruined everything – EVERYTHING!  They’re considering cancelling the event and even shutting down the Flying Club.  I’m such a failure.  *** lowers head in shame ***

Despite it being the hottest day of the year (around 35 degrees), I’m too cheap to put on my air conditioner.  Actually, with my apartment windows shut, the curtains closed, fans going and the dehumidifier on all day, it’s not too bad in here.  I’m still conscious, anyways.  After having my dinner noms, I decided to refill my month supply of meds and supplements.  Fortunately, I had two kitties to help:

I’m really looking forward to my flight over the Wise Guys golf tourney tomorrow.  Hopefully the weather is a tad cooler.  I don’t think I could have flown in today’s heat – it was like a kick in the face as soon as you walked outside.

Today’s symptoms:  Unfortunately, today was a fairly bad day.  Tons of pain all over, experienced the MS Hug, and lots o’ fatigue.  Can’t wait to wake up tomorrow feeling much better!

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/17/2012 7:29 PM

iKitties

People have been saying how great the photos are they take with their iPhones.  I guess if you’re snapping a still photo, then yeah – it can be pretty decent.  I took a pic of iAbby with my iPhone last night, which turned out to be surprisingly quite iNice:

Thought I would try taking a few other iCute photos.  iMya:

iBoo:

And iPinky:

Not bad, iEh?

Today’s symptoms:  I’ve been out quite a bit more than usual, so I’m much more fatigued today than “normal.”  Looks like it’s going to be a busy week with flights Monday, Wednesday and Friday, plus a social event at the airport on Friday.  Looking forward to it all, though.  Just need to chill for the rest of the night and get some iStrength back. 

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/15/2012 4:32 PM

Bikers Galore

We just had another Friday the 13th, which of course meant a huge gathering of bikers in Port Dover.  I always love it when I can take a few hours of vacation from work to go flying:

I had another pilot fly with me since I was still a little gimpy from my sprained ankle.  We headed out just after 1:30.  The weather was decent, although storms were a’brewing to the North.  Since the weather was good, there was a great turnout of bikers:

You typically have to book a hotel room years in advance.  Thus, many folks camp out, as you can see in the top of this pic:

There were quite a few boaters and a float plane off the shore too:

After flying over Port Dover a couple times, I decided I needed to visit the little Pilot’s room, so we headed up to Brantford Airport.  Unfortunately, they were repaving the entire apron, so I was unable to take the bathroom break I needed.  Fortunately, I made it back to St. Catharines without an accident.

I wasn’t the only one enjoying yesterday’s nice weather.  I let the kids out on the balcony and Pinky went into full blown spaz-mode:

All four of them were out there tonight.  I’ve never seen any of them up on the air conditioner before – rather cute:

I was able to go flying again today.  I took a female pilot-in-training for an aerobatic flight.  She had a blast!  I’m taking someone else up on Monday morning, then I have two charity golf tournaments to fly over later in the week.  I’m sure they’re really getting sick of my mug at the Flying Club….

Today’s symptoms:  Feeling pretty good!  Still dealing with the sinus headache, but it’s getting a tad better each day.  My sprained ankle is much better today and a nice shade of blue!  No major MS symptoms to report – just a few aches and pains in my left leg.

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/14/2012 7:54 PM

Cankle

I’m dealing with a little bit of an injury from last night.  I was stupidly over-tired and my balance was pretty bad.  I should have been wearing a shirt that says “I’m Not Drunk – I Have MS!”  I was walking on the grass when I twisted my ankle and went down hard.  It was a little sore when I got home, but nothing major.  However, when I woke up around 4:00 to go to the washroom, I put all of my weight on it – the pain was so intense and unexpected that I blacked out!  Tee hee!  So, here I am with a sprained ankle.  It’s so swollen, I look like I have a cankle!

I’m such a dork.

Jan and I went out to Burlington for my Tysabri infusion this morning.  I finally decided to have the blood work which will let me know if I’m positive for the antibody that causes Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML), which is a fatal brain infection associated with us Tysabri folks.  Frankly, I really don’t want to know if I’m positive.  I already agreed to start this medication knowing I had a 1/1000 risk of getting PML.  I think that’s what the odds are if you’re positive for the antibody.  I’m not going off the medication regardless, so what’s the point of knowing?  All it means is that I’ll have to get an MRI every 6-12 months if positive.  Oh well.  Whatever happens, happens!  Back to the infusion – I have some good news and some bad news.  The bad is that I won’t be seeing the nurse who usually does my infusion.  She’s so nice and we get along great.  The good news is that they are starting an infusion clinic in St. Catharines!  Yea!  No more almost hour drive up to Burlington.  It’s only about 5 minutes from my apartment, so it’s perfect.  My infusion next month will be here at the new clinic.

After the infusion, Jan and I were going to go shopping but I certainly couldn’t hobble around.  She came back to my place and we played with the kids.  Yesterday, they were all out on the balcony watching a moth:

I heard some crunching and sneezing, plus no longer noticed the big moth when I went back out.  I’m going to assume one of the weirdos caught it.  Yuck.

Anyway, went to see the doctor who did my sinus surgery.  He said I’m still really swollen plus I have some scar tissue that he wants to chop away at.  Since I was way too squirmy today, he said I should come back in a couple months.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be squirmy that day too, so good luck to him!

I’ll be flying over Port Dover for the Friday 13th massive motorcycle gathering.  They are estimating about 150,000 people tomorrow, so it should be a good show.  Since I won’t be able to control my rudder pedals and brakes, I’m having another pilot go with me so he can do the taxiing (steering on the ground is done via the rudder pedals) and to help me with the rudders while taking off and landing.  He’s never been over the bikers on Friday the 13th, so I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of it.  At least the nice flight will be a little payback for utilizing his feet!

Today’s symptoms: A little more fatigued than usual today.  Since my infusion, I’m very achy and my skin feels super-sensitive.  I’ll rest well tonight and be great for my flight tomorrow!

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/12/2012 3:16 PM

Happy Cats

It’s been a great weekend.  I took up a friend for a flight yesterday – perfect weather for it.  Although not as humid as the past week, the heat really did a number on me later in the afternoon.  After getting back home from the airport, I was able to do a few things around the apartment, then the heat kicked in.  I spent the rest of afternoon and evening vegging on the couch like a blonde blob.

Jan and I met up this morning for our usual Sunday visit.  After she toddled back home, I headed to the airport.  Our Recreational Aircraft Association meeting is tomorrow, and I offered to take up members for an aerobatic flight.  I have a few people that would really love the experience.  Since I just had my sinus surgery a couple weeks ago, I was a little nervous about doing aerobatics (slightly fearful my head would explode).  Thus, I did a little test flight today to see how it would feel.  Fortunately, it didn’t cause my noggin to hurt any more than it already does.  Yea!

On the way home from the airport today, I hit Pet Valu.  I just spent almost $100 on kitty litter last week, and today was another $100 on food.  Also, their water fountain was really starting to leak, so I had to buy a new one.  Ugh.  Once back home, I set it up for the leery kitties:

I took these pictures about half an hour ago and Pinky is still sitting over there.  She’s so weird.

Also today, I had to give my friend downstairs her key back.  It was really nice kittysitting Big Head:

Such a sweety.  I’m sure he’s glad mommy is home.

Speaking of sweet, I’m laying on the couch with my laptop across my lap.  As you can see, I’m not alone:

Today’s symptoms:  Still dealing with a bad headache, but at least it’s not getting any worse.  Just a few MS aches and pains today, but nothing to write home about!  Life is good!

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/8/2012 4:07 PM

True Love

It was my short day today, so I decided to use my time off to get some schtuff done.  My mother came to my office and picked me up at 1:45.  We stopped off at the apartment so I could pick up my airplane log books and cable receiver.  Before we left for the PEN Centre, we put the “family” stickers on my car.  How perfect is this family?

At the PEN, we waited in a rather long line to exchange my receiver.  Yawn-fest.  We then went to Shopper’s Drug Mart to get my passport photo taken.  It turned out looking like a Jim Henson creation gone horribly wrong.  Oh well.  The good part about being at Shopper’s was that my Aunt’s favourite person was there.  I off course got my picture taken with him.  True love:

Next, down the hall to the passport office.  It used to be right across the street from my office, which was quite convenient.  Mind you, parking-wise, having it at the PEN Centre is way more convenient for everyone.  Once that chore was over, we drove out to the airport so I could drop off some tarts for the Flying Club and put my log books in my plane.  As usually, the folks at the Flying Club were very appreciative of the noms!  On to Home Depot next so we could by a replacement garage door opener for Jan, as she seems to have misplaced hers.

On the way home, I got the brilliant idea to go out for dinner, as I was having a huge-o hankering for fish and chips.  We went to The Heritage, which is a couple blocks from my apartment.  Here is the before picture of my noms:

And the after noms pic:

I couldn’t believe I couldn’t clean my plate.  I think my stomach shrank a bit from not eating too much since the surgery.  I guess that’s why one of my nick names is Celery Stick.

Back at the apartment, Jan headed for home and I went to my co-worker’s apartment to pick up her key.  She is going to be away this weekend and I am babysitting her kitty, which I have befittingly renamed Big Head:

He has a goliath, but insanely cute noggin.

Man, that was a very busy day.  Je suis pooped!

Today’s symptoms:  Still experiencing a really bad sinus headache.  The MS pains were still there today, but not as bad as yesterday.  My balance was wonky too, but I’m sure that was due to the heat.

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/5/2012 5:48 PM

Post-Op Flight

I was feeling well enough to go for a flight on Sunday.  It was Canada Day, so I flew over Niagara Falls and Fort Erie to watch the fireworks.  I finally figured out how to use Fireworks mode on my camera.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work out too well:

Yup, the pictures suck.  Actually, I checked my camera when I got home and I may have inadvertently changed the setting.  I tried it again on some fireworks the next night, just outside of my apartment – still bad pics.  Oh well!  It was a fun flight, so it was worth it.

I had my first day back to work since my surgery.  I cried a little when my alarm went off this morning.  My headache started within about an hour of being at work (I start at 7:15) and progressively got worse.  I really didn’t think I would make it till 4:45 – it felt like I was run over.  I developed some pretty intense pains in my bones by the afternoon too.  Regardless, I made it through the whole day and got quite a bit done.  I’m a little behind after taking a week off, but I’ll be caught up by the end of the week.

Little Mya took a nap while leaning on me last night.  How cute is this:

I’ve never seen a cat sleeping sitting up like that.  Weird.

Someone had to be taken away via ambulance this weekend, just across the street.  I usually put on my emergency services scanner (iPhone app) when I hear sirens nearby, but I missed it on this one.  Geesh, talk about nosey!

Yup, crappy pictures of fireworks, the cutest cat EVER and a few emergency vehicles.  That’s the extent of my excitement over the last few days.  Sad, eh?

Today’s symptoms:  Very bad headache that I’m still dealing with now, plus some pretty intense MS pains.  My balance is a tad wonky too.  I’ve decided I’m going to feel much better tomorrow!

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/3/2012 6:33 PM

Crazy Cats

I can’t believe I took the whole week off work to recover from my surgery.  I’m glad I did though, as it seems to be taking fairly long to get my strength back.  Today has been decent though!

I’ve been thoroughly entertained by my whack-job cats over the past week.  I just took some pics of this little brawl between Boo and Pinky.  Mya appears to be the ref.  “Pinky, what are you doing?”

Looking back at her target and getting ready to pounce:

“Guys, knock it off and grow up!”

Dorks:

Whenever I go out on the balcony and tap on the glass, Abby jumps up on the ledge (inside) and meows like crazy.  She’s so weird:

I guess I shouldn’t be calling them weird, considering what I did the other day.  I decided to make a pot of coffee.  I was so excited when I heard the machine shut off.  I bounded into the kitchen, only to see this:

Yes, I forgot to add coffee to the machine.  Duh!

After all of Boo’s craziness, she collapsed into a cute, sleeping heap, next to me on the couch.  Really doesn’t look too comfy:

I don’t know what I would have done without them during my recovery.  They certainly kept me company and entertained!

Today’s symptoms:  Feeling pretty good today!  It’s the first day I have not had any blood on my face when I woke up!  Things seem to be healing really well after my sinus and septum surgery last week. 

Posted by Lizzy McFly at 7/1/2012 4:06 PM