i have a perfectly good excuse for not being around in a few days - i had a long weekend - and not the positive, relaxing kind.

i took thursday and friday off from work - thursday to get grace fixed and friday to attend a conference that ran friday/saturday. thursday went well - it was nice to have some downtime at home, run a few errands and take care of the cat - something i'd been "meaning to get to" for 2 1/2 years. (i hear you tsk-tsking.)

friday morning, i went to the conference and thoroughly enjoyed about half of it. but it was kind of lonely. isn't it crazy how you can be surrounded by 1,000 people (literally) and still feel lonely? that's the difference between being alone and being lonely. i left the conference that afternoon ready for some personal, meaningful interaction with a human - any human. as i headed back to the freeway in a city i don't know very well, i realized that something didn't look right... street numbers were going down, and i didn't seem to be approaching the road i needed to turn onto. so i turned around. but then i recognized a part of the route, and new i was going back to the church the same way i drove to it that morning. so i turned around again, this time praying that the street i needed to turn on would magically appear, despite being numerically out of order with it's parallel streets. no luck. so as i got further and further away, realizing i was heading east instead of west, i cried. i just wanted to go home. i just wanted to talk to someone. finally, i got to the freeway, having gone so far east that i picked up the freeway miles away from where i'd gotten off it that morning. a nightmare, leaving nothing but a sour taste of redmond in my mouth.

not having much energy that night, matt and i decided to go out to dinner and then rent a movie for our datenight. i relaxed and felt a little more cheerful (until i found a hair in my half-cooked burger) and overall far more positive than i had felt arriving home. we settled in for our movie, and my little convalescing kitty crawled up into my lap for some well-deserved TLC. that's when i noticed the gaping hole in place of her tightly-sewn incision. noting the length and depth, i realized that there was no way the body would heal that on it's own, and calmly accepted the fact that she'd have to go into the emergency room. after a phone call to warn them we were coming, i loaded her up and headed down.

let me interject something: matt does not love cats the way i love cats. in fact, it would be a stretch to use his name in a sentence involving the phrase "love cats" without grossly overexaggerating (e.g. "matt loves cats") or grossly underexaggerating (e.g. "matt does not love cats") his true feelings. but let's just suffice it to say that matt does not love cats. he merely tolerates them for my sake, because he knows i love them, and he loves me. he's a good man that way.

let me also interject that this incident is coming off an "encounter" we had merely a week ago in which he pointed out that he's tired of them and may have actually used the phrase "i wonder what it would be like if we didn't have cats". and he doesn't like spending excessive amounts of money on them. so you can imagine his train of thought and where this story is going.

so we arrive at the vet, wait 45 minutes for the vet to tell us that she most certainly needs to be sewn up, and oh by the way, it will cost at least $345.

i explain our situation to her, that $345 is simply impossible, and is there any way we can reduce the costs? she decides on an alternative method of anesthesia, which costs less but does require staying the night in the hospital (which costs more), but would save us about $60 in the end. oh, but she forgot the cone the cat would have to wear to keep her from licking the stitches because that's what got her here in the first place.

so i left the cat there and went home to break the news to matt. you can imagine how that went. i finally got into bed well after midnight, and decided i'd sleep in, pick up the cat and get out to redmond (again) missing only the general session/worship service of day 2 of the conference.

saturday morning i was up and at the vet where the final total, after cone, hospital stay, drugs, etc, came to $330, making the entire event (including the original spaying) come to a whoppin' $400. the vet sent us home with multiple medications that i would get to administer to her twice/day for 7 days (yippee!), including some kitty-valium, which i think would've been better suited for my husband.

by the time i got home, and matt got home from his bible study, i was exhausted. he talked me into staying home so we could spend the day together, and agreed to buy me the CDs of the workshops i'd miss. i was glad for the excuse to stay home. i offered him the valium, he declined. ;)

so i'm glad to say that taking saturday to myself was actually quite rejuvenating, and i needed it after that very long friday. sunday was a blast - i had a full team of teachers in kids church, so i took advantage of that rare opportunity to attend the worship service. kids church ran smoothly - we had a record number of kids and my teachers said it was one of the best days they've had. afterwards, i had lunch with a handful of our 4th & 5th graders to get their insight on how we could make the ministry more relevant to them. they're such an amazing bunch of kids and we had so much fun together. it was a great way to end the weekend.