A Crazy Cat's Life

Lately, there has been much discussion on the impact the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have on adjunct (part-time) teaching faculty .  Mainly, it involves colleges cutting down the amount of courses an adjunct can teach as a way of avoiding paying for health insurance. This does not surprise me one bit as colleges are always looking for ways of cutting costs, usually at the expense of the students.  More and more colleges are relying on adjuncts to teach courses rather than pay the much higher salaries with benefits to full-time tenure-track faculty. Right now, I am only--ya, only --teaching at two colleges and I wondered how this would affect me.  I usually teach 2-3 classes at "Rich Bitch College" and 3-4 at "East Podunk Rural College."  The former hasn't even hinted at the issue while the latter seems to be rather confused by it.  My department head there, who I shall refer to as "Hippie Chick" (and I mean this in a nice and loving way), seems to...

On Friday, one of our kitties passed away very unexpectedly.  Loki was going to turn 8 next month but the Fates saw fit to take him away from us too early.  He was our big orange "monster" who was one of the kindest and most gentle souls you would ever meet and yet at the same time was as dumb as a doornail.  I think the latter was part of his attraction because no matter how big he got he retained the innocence of kittenhood. Last week we noticed that he was not feeling too well.  I thought that his seasonal allergies were acting up but it seemed a lot worse this time around.  On Wednesday morning I took him to see one of the new vets at our local animal hospital as our usual vet was off that day.  She believed he had a bad upper respiratory infection and gave him some antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory to help him feel better.  I had hoped that would work but the next day he was much, much worse.  He had a hard time breathing and I took him...

I'm finally done working for the summer.  Both of the schools I teach at ended their last summer sessions this week.  Final grades are in so this means I get to enjoy the whopping three weeks I have off. Now before you sit there and go "well, I'm lucky if I get a week off," let me explain.  Teaching is a very mentally stressing job.  Not only do we have lesson preps but tons of grading.  And trust me, grading these days is not the easiest of tasks.  While I get a few good papers, a majority of them are written poorly with bad grammar and paragraph styling.  On top of that, I always get a handful of students that think "text speak" is appropriate for papers.  This truly hurts your brain when you read them.  On top of that, I taught three classes this previous session which also meant that I went from 8am to 9:40pm on most days.  The time spent between those classes was devoted to school related stuff (i.e., preps and grading).  I g...

One of our cats, Tasha, is a big scaredy cat.  She wasn't always this way.  She had been a lovely-dovey kitty though she's always been a bit skittish.  To be honest, I blame myself for the way she is now.  Back when she was a kitten I had to give her medication to clear up a suspected case of ringworm and I accidentally got the medicine in her mouth.  Ever since then, she will have nothing to do with either me or Bear.  Well, she tolerates Bear but she runs and hides from me constantly. I would really like to do something to help her but I'm not sure where to start or what to give her.  I know there are aromatherapy treatments out there but we can't really get near her to use them on her.  Does anybody have any suggestions?  I'll take any help that we can get.

...that I never get a chance to fully relax.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm finally getting some breathing room today but all of last week and all of this upcoming week are full to the brim.  With what?  Doctors appointments.  Joy.  The summer always seems to be the time when I have to do my annual appointments with the various doctors plus add in all of the health issues I've had in the past few months.  Literally every week day, it seems, is devoted to health care. Some good news: I had the upper GI series last week and that looked pretty clear.  No stricture.  Yay!  The process itself was rather nasty though as I had to drink this gods-awful stuff.  It wasn't barium.  That was the second liquid I had to drink.  This stuff was clear and was designed to show any leaks in my stomach.  Nasty, nasty, nasty.   The barium, in comparison, wasn't so bad and I got to watch it travel down my esophagus into my stomach, ...

When I don't eat I get cranky.  When I don't sleep I get cranky.  Combine those two things and I can be a downright bitch. As you know I definitely haven't been eating well and my new antidepressant is having fun with my sleep patterns.  I found out that I can actually function quite well on two hours of sleep.  I don't recommend it but it is possible. Besides being a typical, crappy Monday, today was also the day I got to see my WLS surgeon for a follow up and boy was I in a mood.  I had a whole list of things to ask him and was ready to basically ream him a new one if he didn't give me some answers.  As you know, he hasn't been very helpful since the surgery.  But today I was prepared.  Oh yes.  So what happens?  The damn bastard actually had a discussion with me, and a productive one at that.  He still seemed baffled by what was wrong with me but this time around he started to mention what could be wrong.  Rare moments...

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.             -- Terry Pratchett