Lame, lame, lame

1. Jason's grandmother's husband's health is worsening, with an episode last week that involved things like fainting in a restaurant, not having a pulse, being resuscitated, staying in the hospital for three days, hallucinating, losing control of some functions, etc. He's not a blood relation, but he's a really nice guy - the kind who is always the first to give little kids high-fives at Thanksgiving - and it's awful to hear he's hurting. We're thinking of you, Bill.
2. The kitchen renovation estimate we received on Monday was only a couple thousand more than our target, and it was just barely within the realm of reasonable justification ("yes, we could get it down to the target, but then we'd have to live with no tiled backsplash and no Corian ... and I think the kitchen is going to look kinda cheap without those."). As we're about to sign the contract, Jason notices that the estimate doesn't include the cost of the cabinets, which we'll be purchasing ourselves through Ikea. Add the roughly $3500 for the cabinets, and we're getting into "seriously over-budget" territory. I got to spend my free time last night totalling up all of our liquid assets to see how much money we actually have to throw at this thing, and totalling our income and expenses for each of the last four months to see how quickly we're burning through our savings right now. Good news - breaking even (ish) each month, and even with the higher pricetag, we'll still have a reasonable amoung leftover for emergency funds. Now we just have to decide whether we really want to dump this much money into the house, given that we've already got one of the higher-priced houses in the neighborhood. Keep your fingers crossed that we don't need a new furnace, roof, and car all in the next year :\ Oh, and they can't start work until January. Gah!
3. Zach and I both had medical appointments today, and both of us had to fast for them. So not only was I ravenous, I got to clean up about 10 spots of Bella's "oh-my-god-there's-no-food-what-are-we-going-to-do" stress-provoked cat puke out of the carpet. And the kid had two accidents. I spent a good portion of today up to my armpits in paper towels soaked in other animals' bodily fluids. Yay.
4. The napalm-conquering recurring crotch rot? Now thought to be contact dermatitis. Throwing out dryer sheets, changing toilet paper, changing soap, applying hydrocortisone, taking antihistamine. Fun. And they never did do the "you might have diabetes" test, so I starved all morning long for nothing. I'm all, wait, don't I need to pee in a cup, and they're all, not unless you really want a souvenir.
5. Zach needed to go to the vet to get his shots and to get a peanut-sized lump on his noggin checked out. It's been there for about two weeks, and given the placement and the occasional crustiness of it, I assumed he had gotten hooked by Bella and just had a mild infection or something. Vet thought the same thing based on phone conversation, and he asked me to bring him in fasted so they could possibly sedate him and drain the thing. Only when I brought him in, they started using words like "biopsy" and "possible melanoma" and "$500." I brought him home tonight so he could be in comfortable surroundings, but he has to fast again overnight (eat fast, buddy, I'm storing the food away as soon as I hit "publish") and go in first thing tomorrow to remove the lump. I think it's funny that the vet sits down with you with an estimate of what it's going to cost to do the procedure to discuss whether you want to do it ... you never see that in a regular doctor's office. "So, Mr. Brown, your son may have skin cancer. It's going to cost $500 to remove it and find out - should we go ahead with that or just let him die a slow painful death of unknown causes? Hmmm?" Zach can be an annoying little puker whose bad habits way outweigh his good traits, but I got all choked up thinking about him possibly having cancer. He may be annoying, but we've got a long, annoying history together, and I'm not in a hurry to end that (or have to explain it to the kid).
6. I posted the most hilarious description for my ugliest item in my etsy store yesterday. Over the course of less than 24 hours and with only minor plugging by me, it got 450 views, eight "favorites" and three pages of comments in the forums about how funny the description was, how cheap the price was, and how it was going to sell so fast. Sucker's still sitting there gathering dust in my shop. Come on, doesn't anyone want to be seriously unattractive buy really warm?
7. Jason ordered three things for me from various etsy shops for my birthday. Thanks to the wonders of business trips where Jason can't access etsy from his company computer, postal holidays, and the vagueries of shipping, I've received one of them. And my birthday was last Thursday. On the positive side of things, it's a really nice present, which will look really nice in my hideously over-improved kitchen. People who feel sorry for me can feel free to buy me any other items from this store that include that turquoise color in them somewhere ... it may not make me feel better, but at least I'll be well accessorized while miserable.
8. Oh, and apparently today is "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" day, at least on the Toddler calendar. We do not have nearly enough chocolate in the house for me to deal with this.