Portmanteau Present Day: THEY'VE BREACHED THE HULL!

In light of things that happened as mentioned in my last post I have been having a pretty shitty life the past week. I've been getting by though, and in spite of us ending up with -$$$ in our bank after the tests for Bosch, we made it through most of the week ok. I'm working a lot at the coffee shop to try to make some extra money and do not have a day off for almost three weeks.
I was beginning to feel the weight of everything dissipating from my shoulders, until last night.
I will preface what I'm about to relate by mentioning that 2 weeks ago our lawnmower and weed-wacker were stolen from our back yard. It was some kind of serial-landscaping-crime spree taking place in our alley, I found out. 4 of our neighbors also had yard related stuff stolen from them in the space of a few days. I was pretty disgusted, but still thought to myself: "it could be worse, they could be breaking into our house, or something".
Last night when we got home our back gate was W I D E open, I felt my stomach drop remembering that sight from when I came home to the missing lawnmower.
Initially everything looked them same, nothing missing in the yard. I checked the lower door going to the basement and it was open! It had been forced open. The deadbolt being ripped from the concrete wall and frame lying shredded on the floor. I still did not see anything really missing. I was completely freaked out at this point. We had the cops come, filed a report, they even sent a crime unit over to try for fingerprints, which they didn't get.
The first thing I worried about was the fact that we have a cat door on the door going down to the basement and I had to inventory the kitties, they were all there.
All in all, it looks as though the only damage was the door which we have barricaded by screwing 2x4s into the door until we can replace it.
Strangely they did not take anything from the basement, there was a lawnmower we borrowed from a neighbor, Phil's kid-Harley, a bike, tools, my ballet clothes, a fish tank, tons of stuff! not even touched! The most lucky thing is that we had a dead bolt on the door leading up to the main floor, AND that we have a big vicious sounding german shepherd that probably tried to bite the rat-bastards heads off.

When does the shitty-life-experiences marathon end? I need off this boat.

Portmanteau

Retrospective:

We had a really good time in KC with friends. There was something for everyone, drinks, hot tubs, spanking, music, bruschetta, underage lesbians, hulahooping, rain and strawberries. The only thing we didn’t get to do that I wanted to do was the Nelson-Atkins. That will have to be another trip in itself. On Sunday evening we had the pleasure of seeing the Legendary Pink Dots. All the Dots were great, but the venue sucked. At first sight, it seemed quite cool – the newly renovated Grand Emporium, which is one of the oldest bar/music venues in KC. It was quite different than the old dive – almost sterile really, but kind of sleek. Sadly once the music started so did the rattling of the ventilation system that they left exposed to look arty, or something. Through the whole concert unless you were within 15 feet of the stage, the rattling became an annoying distraction from their music. I am not at all impressed with the new Grand Emporium. If they are promoting themselves as a place to have shows they really need to work out the sound issues. Anyhow, the concert was awesome. Afterwards Niels Van Hoorn came out, as he usually does, and co-mingles with the audience. We talked to him until the bar kicked everyone out. My friend Stephanie told him to call us as they were coming through St. Louis the next night and would be staying there before going to Chicago (they weren’t playing in St. Louis). Niels said he would, but we just laughed it off as improbable.
We got back to St. Louis Monday afternoon pretty tired and were just relaxing at home, at which point I noticed our cat, Bosch, was looking a bit thin. Nothing too alarming but I decided to take him to the vet the next day for a check-up. Around 8 that night Stephanie called us to say that Niels had phoned and wanted to have dinner.
We ended up having dinner with Niels, Martin and their friend Guido who isn’t in the band but was touring with them. It was a really fun night, somewhat surreal; it felt like hanging out with friends, not strangers that we had recently met. We didn’t get home until three that morning.
The next day I took Bosch to the vet, as he was seeming weak and was starting to worry me. The vet informed me that Bosch was really sick and wanted to run test on his blood, do x-rays and keep him over night. I let him do the tests but took him home so I could take care of him. At this point he was getting weaker and really looking bad. I couldn’t understand how he could so suddenly seem so sick. The vet thought that he might have feline leukemia, regardless of the fact he had already been vaccinated for it. Unfortunately none of the test results would be back until the following afternoon. I tried feeding him and it did not seem to help. I waited about two hours after we got home and then decided to take him to the emergency pet hospital the vet told me about. Bosch at this point couldn’t really hold his head up on his own. He seemed to be breathing heavily and his eyes kept loosing focus. I was starting to panic inside. I don’t really want to go into the last few hours of that night, so I will end this by saying that we decided to let the doctor put Bosch to sleep. It was really awful, just writing this I feel like I might break again. He was the sweetest, softest kitty and it broke my heart to have to say goodbye so soon to him, and I can only hope that we did the best thing for him.
The outcome is that he did not have anything contagious and my other cats are in the clear, that was the only relief to come from the whole thing.

To Be Cont’d….

Proof of Origin

Women are from Zorkon 9

I love Mark Morford

A birds eye look at my life

This weekend I am going to Kansas City for a few things that I'm pretty excited about:

Art
and
Music
in addition I'll be able to hang out with some friends that I haven't seen for awhile and most likely drink, eat and be merry. I've been working on the yard and house and other stuff that this little mini-vacation will be a nice break.
I will try to post some pictures, for real this time, of the garden and the progress that we've made this past week. Finally have some herbs planted, including three kinds of basil. I will be able to go into the pesto business by the end of the summer if it all does well and doesn't get stolen by rat-bastard thieves.