Whoa Nelly!

Smiles!
Lori

Farewell Mr. Kitty

We lost our beloved Mr. Kitty unexpectedly last week.  We knew when we adopted him that he had a bad heart and our vet warned us that it was a ticking time bomb which would eventually result in his sudden death.  I just didn't think it would be last Tuesday. 

We came home from work/school and couldn't find the cat.  We hunted all over the place and the longer it went on, the more concerned I became.  Dave came home and found him huddled behind the TV set, alive, but not looking so hot.  Dave pulled him out and sat him on the ground where we discovered his hind quarters were paralyzed.  At this point, we knew it was bad and Kira was hysterical as we packed him in his carrier and headed to the emergency vet.   They immediately began triage work on him and put us in a room to talk to talk to the vet. Unfortunately, it was as we feared.  His heart threw off a clot paralyzing the back half of his body, his overall body temperature was low and the back part of his body was cold.  He was in immense pain and the prognosis was grim.  We had an emergency family meeting and decided it was not fair to Mr. Kitty to prolong his suffering and made the agonizing decision to euthanize him.   It was horrible.  The vet brought him to us to say goodbye and after hugging and kissing him one final time, Kira and I left the room and Dave stayed while they did the procedure.  Kira couldn't handle being with him when he passed.

We gave Mr. Kitty a good home for the remaining year and a half of his life and he gave us much love in return.  While I hate that Kira had to go through this, it has taught her that sometimes the right thing to do is really hard, but you should do it anyway.  It taught her compassion and selflessness.  It taught her that it only really hurts when you truly love. 

Mr. Kitty was an incredibly loving animal who got a raw deal in life.  He's in a better place and my Dad is taking care of him now.

Sigh

Before I started my new job, we converted our formal living room into an office.  I was insistent on having real wood desks up here, so we purchased a modular wood office desk system from Pottery Barn.  The debacle on getting the furniture delivered is a story for another day, but I rarely get to sit at my desk because my darling daughter has taken it over.  Tonight, I sat down to upload pictures and she has permanent inked tiny little dots all over my table top.  If she were home right now, I would be lecturing her on being respectful of other people's property, but sadly she is at camp this week, so the lecture will have to wait until next weekend.  Lucky her...I will have calmed down by then.

Smiles!
Lori

POP of Blue!

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Lori

Spotted Plaid

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Lori

Candy Apple

I wore this outfit to work today.  It's not one of my more conservative looks, but passable.  I was feeling summery.  Plus, I wind up ironing a boatload of outfits weeks in advance of wearing them and I decided maybe it was time to "wear" down some of the stuff hanging around my bedroom cause I'm "starting to look like a horder".  That's how this outfit came about.  I also forgot about the shoes and discovered them again over the weekend...that was a nice surprise! 

Smiles!
Lori

Patriotic

Hi!  It's been a while since I last posted and decided it was time to get back on it because I've settled into my new job (for the most part) and I missed blogging.  What I found is I started not caring what I looked like outside of work and that's a slippery slope to just eating whatever I want, gaining a bunch of weight and wearing house coats, so I decided maybe I better do something about that before it hits the point of no return.   I kicked up my exercise, rejoined the Y, continue to box and am trying to watch what I eat.  I don't look good in house coats, so I gotta hold that at bay as long as possible!

Smiles!
Lori

So, What Happened?

Life has been interesting since we last chatted.  The reason I took a break from blogging is I had an amazing job opportunity drop into my lap and I decided to pursue it.  With all the work and stress involved in getting ready for the interviews, I didn't have any extra time to spend on blogging.  I couldn't tell you this in October because I didn't want too many people knowing what I was up to.

I actually got the job around Thanksgiving and spent a month preparing to leave my employer of almost 20 years.  There was a lot of stress involved with that too.  And a lot of tears.  It was tough leaving them because they were my second family and I'm amazed I actually had the courage to do it. It took a lot of soul searching, but I made the right decision.

I started my new job at the first of the year and it's been a whirlwind of onboarding activities.  I haven't had time to take shots of my outfits and honestly, I'm dressing more conservatively than I did before.  They do not appreciate the pattern mixing to the degree I'm capable of, so I toned it down.  A lot.  Except for the shoes....I need pretty shoes to be happy.

Then, my darling daughter had a bad accident at gymnastics and fractured and dislocated her elbow. Because of where the break was, she had to have surgery to fix it including some icky pins in her elbow.  The pins were removed last week and she's now in rehab to rebuild her strength.  She's hoping to continue competing, but we'll see in six weeks how much strength she's rebuilt.

So, with the exception of the elbow thing, all is going well.  I'm happy at my new job and most everyone is really nice to work with.  I'm looking forward to finishing out my career there because I never want to go through the stress of quitting again.

I'll try to take some shots of the more conservative me at some point once I feel more calm in my new life!

Smiles!
Lori