Tag Archives: health

2024 Hike Log

Last year’s hike log was a modest success, at least in that it kept track of each of my hikes.  So let’s do it again for 2024.

Date Location Distance Notes
1/13/2024 Green Swamp 4.3 mi
1/27/2024 Blackwater Creek 4.3 mi

…In The Way That Best Works For You

In my many years, I’ve had brushes with that hobby called fitness.  Somewhere in here is my short-lived attempt at appreciating CrossFit, which ended in puke.  I also have many instances of hiking, which is probably the most consistent of all my exercise methods.  I used to love to bicycle and in my later years when I would purchase a bike (happened a few times), the spark never caught, so it went nowhere.  I’ve owned and gotten rid of weights before like probably many people have.  But the one thing that has eluded me is enjoyment and consistent application of aerobic activity.  I know aerobics is important to building stamina, something I desperately need; something I’ve always needed.  But every means of getting it was not resonating with me.

Probably about 15+ years ago a product came into popularity that did pique my interest.  It was the rebounder, a durable mini-trampoline.  All the claims seemed to make sense to me, so I made the purchase and started a routine.  It didn’t last and the device went into storage.  Recently, I pulled the same rebounder out of the garage, dusted it off and started again after 15+ years of not using it.  My experiences then and now have been parallel, so I only need to explain this once.

Rebounding can be easy and it can be extremely hard.  The workouts that came with my device fooled me each time I’ve tried to make progress.  I’m going to try and be more motivated this time since there’s more at stake, even though the required effort is going to be much higher since I no longer have youth on my side.

To explain the rebounding activity, there’s two ways to do it, the easy way and the "real" way.  The easy way, which is the version you do in the first timers workout, you can just use the weight of your body and bounce on the rebounder.  Maybe you have to push a little bit with your legs to get back up again, but the telling part is that your butt is going up and down as you bounce.  That’s actually not the way you should be doing it, but because of the tempo of the workout, it is easy to do.  The first timers workout is under 15 minutes and I’ll be honest, it took me about a week or so to build enough stamina to get through it.  It was humbling.

I made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t settle for just staying on the first timers workout, but I knew what was waiting for me when I would advance to the beginners workout, since I’d been through it before and the memory was painful.  As memory serves, I eventually did get through the beginner workout and even added the abdominal workout afterward before I burnt out.  But, baby steps first.  The tempo of the first timers workout is at 100 bpm, like I say, it’s enough to just bounce on the device.  The beginner’s workout starts at 120 bpm for the warmup and then hops up to 126 bpm.  At this tempo, and absolutely at 126, you cannot fall fast enough to simply bounce and you are forced into rebounding the correct way.

To do it the correct way, you are essentially levitating.  Your butt is in near the same position the whole time and your legs are pistoning down into the rebounder.  It’s hard.  It’s really fucking hard to keep that tempo and not get winded.  But that’s what stamina building is all about.  So like I said, I finally made it through the first timers after days of trying to get to that level and now I hit another wall.  So far, I can get 7 minutes into the 30 minute beginners workout.  That the full warmup at 120 bpm and maybe 2 minutes at 126 bpm.

One more thing about rebounding at any level.  If you have a gut, which I’ve developed over many years, you’re going to notice some quick improvements.  Bouncing up and down is pretty crappy when you have a gut and you will instinctively clench your abs to prevent any flopping.  It’s also thrown out as reminders and encouragement during the workout to "engage your abs".  So what you get is sort of a mini-plank throughout your whole workout.  And it works, really fast.  My pants started fitting better in a very short time and I definitely have less floppiness and protrusion, so +1 for that benefit.

Now, on the topic of masculinity and rebounding, I’ve grown up through very weird times.  Aerobics was a craze in the 70’s.  And while you would see men participating in aerobics with outfits that were not very manly, those men were kind of mocked behind the scenes.  Real men worked out like Arnold Swartzenbanger and did feats of strength, not endurance.  But regardless, the aerobics men were fit and often really ripped.  They probably did weights as well, but were still stigmatized by working out with women in leg warmers.  While gay culture was growing in the 70’s and 80’s, it was still not accepted and men had to be careful how they presented themselves to avoid being accused of that.  (And it seems we had made so much progress and are quickly losing it again.)

I work remotely and my work computer is in my living room, which is also where I do my workouts.  Usually, I clean up everything before work starts, but one day, I did not put the rebounder away and it was visible in the background during a team meeting.  I got called out on it.  That stung just a little bit.  But my reflection on that feeling is pretty much is driving this post.  It doesn’t matter how you are getting your fitness, all the roads lead to the same destination.  If you are doing something you don’t enjoy, you’re not going to stick with it.  So I encourage you to try anything and everything until you find the method you like.

2023 Hike Log

So let’s try something different this year.  This time, I’ll just make one post and update it throughout the year with dates, location, distances, and notes.  That should be easier to maintain and I’ll be more apt to just put a quick log entry in here than trying to write a blog entry on a hiking trip.

So let’s start.

Date Location Distance Notes
1/7/2023 Colt Creek 3.6 mi
1/14/2023 Alafia 1.2 mi Thin trails with lots of opportunity to climb, but much more bike-oriented than hiker.
1/15/2023 Colt Creek 6.7 mi How long? How long? How long to the point of know return?
1/22/2023 Tenoroc 2.7 mi Blue loop; nice elevation changes and great views.
2/18/2023 Gator Creek 5.3 mi Deer Run loop. 1 tortoise, 1 gator.
2/25/2023 Colt Creek 2.7 mi No real hike. Just back and forth on spur trails.
3/5/2023 Colt Creek 6 mi First half of Yellow trail
3/21/2023 Green Swamp 3.7 mi First weekday hike after DST change
3/26/2023 Colt Creek 4 mi Second half of Yellow trail
5/30/2023 Gator Creek 2.3 mi Yellow trail
Laziness 0.0 mi
11/23/2023 Green Swamp 1.7 mi Something’s not right. No stamina. Need to start over?
12/5/2023 Green Swamp 5.4 mi That’s more like it. Still sore, though.
12/7/2023 Green Swamp 5.0 mi Tired, but not sore.
12/25/2023 Green Swamp 5.3 mi
12/30/2023 Gator Creek 5.3 mi Deer Run
12/31/2023 Tenoroc 4.3 mi Red Loop

Being Stupid Outdoors

Somewhere around 10 years ago, I got into hiking, which is a more impressive way of saying walking outside.  The local terrain doesn’t really constitute what I would call hiking, since it’s just flatland.  But regardless, it is outside and it is on a trail, so I can say that I hiked trails.  I was a hiker.

I did that for some time and eventually it kind of stopped being a thing.  I just slowly stopped doing it.  But recently, I’ve decided I want to start doing the hiking again.  it was a tentative beginning, I wasn’t sure if I would still enjoy a physical activity and honestly, I didn’t see any way it would be fun.  It sounded boring now, but whatever I was or wasn’t doing around the house was as much or more boring, so I also didn’t have much to lose.  And anyway I needed to do something to take positive strides in my health. 

I was 10 years younger back then, and as you get older, that nice round milestone becomes more and more significant.  However, I never have seen myself as the actual age I am.  Maybe I’m deluded or stupid or something, but I don’t think I am my age.  I probably think and act my age, but I don’t perceive myself that way.  The point I’m trying to make here is, however I was then, that’s how I think I am now, and I’m probably not.  And that’s not smart.  My new experiences with hiking have been a collection of smart and not so smart things; mostly the latter.  So I will chronicle the most recent events.

A couple weeks ago, we had a tropical storm moving in.  This caused me concern, not because of the storm itself, but because of the coming rain.  All of the nearby trails have been flooded from the summer monsoon and it pisses me off.  If there’s a couple days without downpours, the flooded trails can turn into muck instead of lakes, which makes the hike more tolerable.  The first time I had visited this particular trail, I had left the house and a mile down the road realized I did not change into my hiking boots, I still had my sneakers.  "It’ll be fine," I said.  "This trail is not as low as the other one I go to."  When I get there, right past the entrance gate – lake.  I had to go back home and change into my boots.  I haven’t made that mistake again.

Since that time, I’d been back to that trail and the water had gone down, mostly.  But today I was trying to get in a hike before the tropical storm hit.  I checked the radar and it looked fine.  I did not consider, and I should have known, weather here changes fast.  So I get a mile or so out on the trail and I’m seeing some dark clouds forming.  "It’ll be fine."  Then it becomes obvious that it’s not going to be fine and I need to get back to the car, like soon.  The moment of my realization was captured by my fitness band.

Screenshot_20210814-161341

I suffered a few minutes of downpour, but I escaped the worst of the storm, and there was no nearby lightning, which was the bigger concern, since these trails are open fields.  Lesson learned?  I got caught in another downpour on another day and I was far enough out on the trail to cause me to don my rain jacket I carry in my pack.  So, no.

Last week, I decided I was going to do a bigger hike, which at this point in my redevelopment is over 5 miles.  If you think that’s weaksauce, remember I am doing this while the temperature and humidity are over 90.  To reduce UV exposure, I wear a long-sleeve sun shirt, but I’m still wearing shorts.  I need to get some water-wicking hiking pants.  I reset my GPS and set my exercise band and go.  And very quickly, the sweat starts to go too, because I’m upping my pace to cover more ground quickly.  10 years ago, I could cover 5 miles in an hour.  Based on past hiking records, I move about 75% of that speed now and I need to get that speed back.

I have a trail map and I refer to it frequently, but it’s disintegrating from being soaked with sweat in my pocket.  At some point, I checked my band to see how far I’d gone.  My sweat-soaked sleeve had impersonated a finger and cancelled my recorded hike.  That had happened about 1.5 miles in.  No idea how far I’d gone since then.  I checked my GPS and it said I was about 2.5 miles.  Ugh.  Onward I went, referring often to the soggy paper map for what path I wanted to take to loop me around and back close to the entrance.

I ended up on an unmaintained part of trail and worse, it was flooded.  I thought I’d be better off pressing forward than backtracking so I navigated the water best I could.  Luckily none was over ankle deep so my socks stayed dry.  Still it slowed me down.  I checked my GPS to see where I was, relative to the path I had taken so far.  The GPS battery is dead.  Right now, I have no idea if I am better off going forward or backward or exactly where I am on the trail.  I really have no idea how hikers survived without GPS units.

As luck would have it (because it ain’t been brains), I had purchased replacement batteries and packed them just before leaving for the hike.  With a quick swap of batteries, I had GPS again.  And I saw that the GPS had died some time ago.  So now, I had no reliable track from either my band or the GPS to tell me how far my hike was today.  Yay.  I’m done.

The trail continues to be flooded, so at the first sign of a cutoff path that would lead me back to my prior track, I took it.  Granted, it was not on my paper map, so I was making an educated (if that’s even possibly appropriate at this point) guess.  The trail dried out and and I also continued to dry out.  After a certain point, your body won’t absorb moisture quick enough to replenish what’s been lost, and I feel I was there, or close to there.  I was mouth breathing at this point.  My gait was unsteady.  I was walking with a forward lean.  None of this was good.

But as I’m not writing this from the afterlife, I did make it back to my car.  Not without getting bit by a deer fly, twice.  It’s almost been a week and I’m still suffering from the bite on my knee.

Despite the stupidity I’d accomplished so far and my knee still swollen and itching (but not sore or painful), I decided to grab a quick hike after work yesterday.  Again, I planned this as a 5+ hike.  I would go to the trail nearest me to start as soon as possible.  I got on the trail at about 5:30.  The first mile was a warmup pace, then I sped it up.  I didn’t have a trail map, but had a decent memory of the trails and the path I wanted to take.  After a short trail ended in a tiny loop, I doubled my path and ended up on the big loop.  I had been on the trail a couple weeks ago and it was totally flooded, so I hoped things had improved.  I was pleased to see that the area that stopped me before was dried out.  And I kept going.

Probably about 50% of the way through the trail loop – lake.  About 30 feet of water with no high spots and certainly more than ankle deep.  I had plenty of expletives to summarize the situation.  I had no choice but to backtrack my whole track, which was over 3 miles at that point.  Not only that, but the sun was going down.

Once I got all the swearing out of my system, I just resigned myself to my fate.  And no point in pretending to be tired, sun’s setting, gotta go fast.  And so I did.  I upped my pace to the quickest of the entire hike and went back the entire length of the trail.  And lets not discount the fact that mosquitos really love dusk, in a swamp.

All told, that hike was 6.75 miles, accomplished in exactly 2 hours.  So far, my dumbest hike this year.  But there’s still plenty of days left in the year, plenty of chances to beat that record.

Screenshot_20210826-211540

Aerobic training effect: "Improvement".  Fuck you.

The Race Intensifies

Still watching the races, much to my dismay and angst.  Last night I had a moment of disbelief.  All those people insanely claiming, "this is all hoax!" and "It’s all fake."  For once, those people almost made sense.  And the reason for that was the pure incredulous of the numbers I was seeing.  I mean, look at this chart:

image

You see those tiny bars near the beginning around 6/1?  That’s 1,000 new cases a day.  Back then, that was an unbelievable number.  It had me shaking my head at the stupidity of my fellow residents.  These last few days, what can I say?  Well, we went through multiple 1k days, then multiple 2k days, then 3k days, then 4k days.  And then, things changed.  There was one 5k day, but there wasn’t a 6k or 7k day.  It went straight to 8k.  Then 9k.

What are you supposed to think when something like that happens?  If you follow the drama and opposing viewpoints, right around that time, it is claimed that the numbers are being inflated so that they can be reported lower later on.  But that doesn’t make any sense to me because you still have the record of the shit days.  You can say it’s better, but better relative to the worst?  The worst still happened!

And it just seems like there’s some sort of disinformation campaign going on, just like everything has been in the last three years or so.  But the data is still there and it’s just an argument over how to interpret that data.

While on that topic, in a previous post, I put up an image that I consider misleading.  Let’s revisit that.

Now let’s compare that to how things are right now.

image

In that old post, I said the chart was misleading because there was a delay as to when deaths were reported, so the true numbers were at the beginning of the chart and because of the delay, it would always look like the numbers were falling.  Well, look at the chart now.  Looks pretty flat, except for the most recent days, where you can expect less reported deaths.

So what’s going to happen is, as the deaths are reported (later), it’s going to make the chart look like it’s climbing, but the chart only has 30 days to work with.  As long as there is a 2-week delay in death reporting, that should keep the numbers pretty low.  But even if not, it will still look better.  It makes you wonder what a chart longer than 30 days would look like.

Watching The Races

I’ve been keeping an eye on the COVID race for a few months now.  The players I watch are all standout players:  FL, TX, PA, and GA.  Those are the places that have people that I know, so I watch their progress.

I remember when FL was the star, I seem to recall it was in the top 5 for a while.  But PA put forth a massive effort and shot right up the charts.  TX was a slow starter, but it’s been doing pretty well lately.  GA has always been mediocre, which I suppose is a good thing, honestly.  But FL is recently finding its mojo and is climbing in rank again.  Go, FL!  Obviously, no one is going to take the crown from NY, and NJ is probably always going to be second to NY (in everything), so there’s only so far you can go.

For three of my players, I watch their personal progress dashboards.  Two of them, FL and TX, use the same software, so it kind of gives some equal comparison of the numbers.  But in both cases, they use graphs that are misleading.  Well, they aren’t if you understand the data, but for casual observers and those that don’t want to put the minimal effort into understanding, the response could be either, "this isn’t so bad", or "this is great" when the reality is neither of those sentiments.

Take a graph from FLs dashboard:

image

Wow, that’s impressive.  Deaths are falling, and dramatically at that!  This is all behind us, let’s go party!

But there is a small disclaimer below the chart, for those that care to read: "Death data often has significant delays in reporting…".  That means that those low numbers in the near term are low because there’s no data yet.  Those numbers will rise as time goes on, but that’s just fine, because there will be newer, lower numbers to report as time goes on as well.

Here’s a graph from TX’s dashboard.

image

This is just dumb design: plotting two values, one that will constantly increase, and one that will remain relatively constant on the same scale.  This will have two effects.  First, the number of deaths per day (in blue) looks like a really small value.  And comparing 20 to 1,698 does make 20 seem very small.  But as the total number grows, and it will, every day, the scale is going to eventually have to be adjusted, and the daily value is going to be insignificant.

TX does the same charting with the number of cases, with the same effects.

image

Maybe its incompetency that made these charts, but in the current political climate, and judging that these two states have pushed very hard to justify their reopening plans, it might not be a stretch to think this is just propaganda.  The numbers don’t lie, they’re not telling you anything false.  It’s just being presented in a way that looks most favorable.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Last Friday I had to call off work unexpectedly because I was sick.  And when I say I was sick, it wasn’t like the usual can’t-be-bothered-to-get-up kind of sick.  This was the puking sick.

But also, it wasn’t that kind of sick.  First off, I don’t get sick.  Well, there was that one time I tried doing CrossFit and puked, but that was a totally different experience and reason.  Even when I had the flu, which is a really rare occurrence in itself (because I don’t get sick), I didn’t throw up.  Second, there was no reason for me to get sick like that.  I hadn’t eaten anything out of the ordinary, in fact, I didn’t even really eat anything for dinner at all.  I had no warning signs, it just came up on me quickly.  I woke up with massive stomach pains.

Obviously, I’m not telling the whole story, because there is a probable reason why I got sick, but I didn’t put the two together until later that day and had to get some confirmation from a friend and later, online.

Normally, when I go to bed, I leave a small kitchen light on.  It’s a single bulb light and I’ve discussed the special wiring in the Casa blog when I was changing it to LED.  Normally, as I say, that light is on.  But you can read in many places that in order to get the best quality sleep, you should sleep in complete darkness.  Since my sleeping has been variable for quite some time, I decided Thursday night to leave that kitchen light off, which does leave my house dark.

Despite the small change to my sleeping ritual that night, everything else was kept the same.  My additional sleeping aids of the sound machine and 1mg of melatonin were applied and effective.  And, right on schedule, I woke up at around 3am to go to the bathroom.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

But was out of the ordinary was the extra darkness.  I’m not sure if it’s like this for everyone, but when it’s really dark, and sometimes with my eyes closed, I feel like I can still "see" the room.  It’s like an infrared vision or like an x-ray.  Maybe it’s just a memory, because I have never considered trying this special sight in an unfamiliar room.  But anyway, I made my way to the bathroom using my night vision, still half asleep.

And my vision failed me terribly.  I misjudged how far into the room I was and turned straight into a door frame, cracking my forehead on the corner of the molding.  After a brief pause and some self-deprecating comments, I continued in the correct direction and rested my skull in my hands while on the toilet.  The return trip to the bed was less eventful and I fell asleep again quickly.

About two hours later I woke up with the major stomach pains and wandered back to the bathroom, where I chewed up some Tums to settle my stomach.  I had made it to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water when I got the unmistakable, undeniable, certain feeling that there was going to be some puking soon.  And I was correct.  However, there was nothing in my stomach.  Well, some Tums, but nothing else.

I went back to bed and reasoned that if I was sick enough to puke, and I don’t puke, I should call off work.  Oddly, my manager didn’t answer the phone, and his manager didn’t either, so I had to go to the third in command to submit my request.  And afterwards, I fell asleep for another 5 hours.

The rest of the day I sort of wandered around in a daze.  Food helped and didn’t make me any sicker.  I didn’t really feel weak.  I had no more nausea.  But later that afternoon, I had a memory somewhere about concussions causing nausea and vomiting.  Well, that makes my head injury seem a lot more important now.  After confirming with my friendly paramedic, and later reading about concussions online, yeah, that’s probably what it was.  If I was being extra attentive and sensitive, I could note that I had brief flashes of headaches come and go.

As it turns out, I guess I did take the best course of action and rested for the weekend.  Everything was pretty normal by Saturday, and I got some extra napping in, too.  Am I going to be any dumber for the incident?  I don’t know how I would know.  Wait, is that a sign?

That Time I Could Have Died

Here’s a story from my past.  It’s the time I left my home town for a job in a new city.  I had secured an apartment and moved all my belongings there, now I was there for good and unpacking and assembling things.  I had the weekend to get as much accomplished as possible before starting my new job.

I had my cat, Mess, to keep me company.  He was a pretty chill cat and the change of environment didn’t really faze him.  He settled in quickly while I kept doing my work.  But something was really weird about the whole process.  I couldn’t tell if I was just tired from the move or just overwhelmed with it, but I was constantly wiped out.  I could work for a hour or so, but then I would have to rest.  That’s not the way I was in my 20’s.

Regardless, I pressed on, taking short breaks to rest up while I kept unpacking.  In one of the boxes, I found my CO detector.  Living up north with gas heaters, it was a fairly normal practice to have one or more of these, especially where I grew up – so many old houses.  Without thinking much about it, I plugged the detector in and kept right on going.

You can probably tell where this story is going already.  And sure enough, in probably about five minutes, the alarm started blaring.  I’d never had the detector go off before, so I was confused.  Before I yanked it out of the wall, I saw the digital display said 150, which is the parts-per-million of CO detected.  I thought the detector went bad somehow from the move (decreased mental function, right?) so I plugged it back in.  As a normally-functioning person would expect, the alarm went off again.  So I grabbed an extension cord and ran the detector outside.  The display read zero.  Well, now.

I called the apartment office and explained the situation.  They told me that was normal because I was in a corner apartment next to the parking lot and car exhaust fumes would collect there.  I pushed back and said I didn’t think these numbers were normal.  Even if that was normal, WTF?  With resignation, they said they could have the gas company come out the next day and test it.  That’s about as good as I was going to get, so I went to bed in my oxygen-deprived apartment.

The next day, the office manager came over and we waited for the gas company.  When the worker showed up and knocked on the door, he had his testing device in his hand and he was pissed – legitimately angry.  “Do you see these levels I’m getting on my reader?”  I didn’t, but I took his word for it.  He came into the apartment and tested the different rooms and declared the apartment unsafe.  The apartment manager was highly embarrassed and immediately set me up with a furnished apartment until they could resolve the issue.

It turned out that the hot water tank in the apartment above me had a leaky flue, which was sending CO into my apartment.  So, problem solved and life went on.  But I always felt terrible for Mess.  I was able to leave the apartment for meals and whatnot, but he was in that CO environment 24 hours a day.  Cats sleep most all day anyway, so how could I tell the difference?  I guess he was probably lucky to even survive that incident, but he probably lost a lot of brain cells.

I live in an all-electric environment now and have always retained a slight distrust of gas-powered devices, despite the benefits they might offer like being cheaper or more efficient.  I also have a slight paranoia about CO.  This story came to mind because I recently just got my garage back at my house, so I can park my car in it, but I’m finding I’m (probably excessively and irrationally) spooked about the exhaust fumes from the car.  Maybe it’s time to buy another CO detector.

Changing My Tune With A New Band

I posted before about the recent death and dismemberment of the Microsoft Band.  I had pretty much given up on fitness tracking and fitness in general about a year ago.  In that time, as you might expect with someone not as young anymore, with more health issues than none, it had a detrimental effect on my wellbeing.

Without dwelling on the negative aspects of that situation, I powered back on again.  With a new blog tagline to lead the way, I began mentally preparing myself for change.  Positive change, I mean.  I’ve had plenty of other changes already.  Along the way, I happened to see something about a high-feature, low-cost fitness tracker, the Huawei Band 3 Pro.  Very interesting.

In my mind, I was just imagining it as the next version of the MS Band (which stopped at v2), but the design was more standard – no extra bits in the strap and clasp.  But, it did have the one feature that kept me from immediately replacing my MS Band – built in GPS.  And the price was about 25% what I paid for my last MS Band.  And it’s waterproof, which doesn’t mean much to me, but might for others.

I bit the bullet the other day and ordered one, in blue of course.  I’ll be able to use it this weekend.  In the meantime, I’ve begun walking on work breaks again, which is something that ended with the departure of AK, right around the time I gave up on my Band.  Of course I would begin this just as the furnace of summer heat is kicking on.  But a start is a start; building momentum and all that shit.

So, to remember a little about my last post, I’m putting my trust in a new company to let me use their hardware and software for as long as I can.  Will the hardware outlast the software this time?  We’ll have to see.  At least I won’t have paid too much for the experiment.

Parenting

Anyone that knows me well knows that I don’t have a fondness for children.  Those same people probably know that I have a great fondness for my own children, who happen to be feline.  Some people think it’s cheating to consider yourself a parent to pets, because animals are somehow less worthy of love and care than humans.  I’ll be honest, it is easier to raise pets than humans, which is why I do it.  However, this last week or so has leveled the experience between kids and pets for me.

One of my kids had the shits for an extended period of time and the other one needed caught up on shots (no anti-vaxxers in this household).  So I took them both to the vet and left them for the day for their procedures.  When I picked them up after work, I was given a prescription and a special diet for shitty.  Yay, we get to spend $50 for a bag of cat food now.

As soon I got them loaded in the car and we started moving, the big boy sneezed.  I was like, “no fucking way.”  Little girl had an upper respiratory infection early in her life, so I knew what a sneeze means.  Over the next couple of days, he seemed to be fighting it off pretty well.  However, little girl did not.  I took her back to the vet and got her diagnosis and a prescription.  $100 for meds!  And that’s where I felt like a parent.  I took my kid to see you and you got her sick and now I have to pay all this money for drugs and I have to dose her 2x a day and she’s going to hate it and what the fuck cat wants to eat berry flavored medicine?

Surprisingly, she bounced back after only about 3 dosings, which I think is impressive.  But, while she was improving, big boy was failing, hard.  I called the vet to get a second prescription for him, and unfortunately, I lost a full day in getting the new drugs.  If they could have told me the dosing for his weight, I could have just used some of my existing medication.  But whatever, my cat is miserable.

Having a sick, miserable kid makes you sad, which is my next parental experience.  All you want is for them to get better.  And his little sister wants him to get better, too.  I could tell by the way she would constantly check up on him.  And he was in really rough shape.  He wasn’t responsive to any stimulus.  For a couple of days, he didn’t want to get out of bed at all.  He stopped eating wet food because he couldn’t smell.  But he still had the energy to resist medication.

This cat has a big fucking mouth.  In fact, one of his potential names when he first came to the house was “mouth”.  It’s like a bear trap, and like a trap, he can clamp it right down and refuse to have any medication shot in.  My eventual success came when I switched from a 10cc syringe to a 3cc syringe.  He needed 12cc dosings, so 4-3cc shots was much easier with a skinny syringe than working with that fat one.

Big boy did not bounce back after a few dosings like little girl did.  It took a few days and the improvement was really slow, but faintly noticeable.  Yesterday, he turned the corner and I knew it when I went out on the patio to check on him and he came and greeted me with his tail held straight up.  It was a pretty joyous moment to see him happy again.  He still sniffled and sneezed, but his mood was improved and that was a sign that things are going to be ok.  Later in the evening when I checked to see if he was ready to come inside, he bounded away with his tail up.  After a couple of days picking up and carrying a limp and listless bag of fur, it was a wonderful sight.

And that’s the last parental similarity.  You want to see your kids happy.  I’ve been very lucky in my time to have not gone through the experience of having sick pets.  This last week or so has been revelatory in how much emotional investment you have in your kids and what they mean to your own happiness.