ferret naptime

and here is my little boy, sundance (aka sunny d) napping. oy. now THAT is what i'd love to do right now. maybe i can grab a nap tonight before fry and i have a fire? ah, i love our summer evening bonfires in the backyard.

with six you get eggroll

welcome to the family, marley!



yes, for anyone keeping track i am now the mom to SIX fuzzbutts! little marley was looking for a new home. her mom had gotten a promotion at work. which is great, especially in the current economy, but it wasn't so great for little miss marley because promotion=more responsibility=more work=less ferret time.

i went back & forth for a while if i should adopt marley or not. yes, i have five, which is a lot of ferrets. but then, on the other side, cassidy seems to really miss lily because nyddah is sundance's BFF, & podo & doodle will kind of pair up, which leaves cass all on his own. so i was thinking it may be nice to get a little girl to see if she'd bond with cass, or at least somehow even things out. & then Z told me i couldn't buy love & that it'd be wrong to try to replace lily in cass's heart & i'd be evil. so then i was thinking no.

well, two things happened while i was in cali. the first, i decided to tell E that if cass & lily seem super upset to be separated that i would let him take cass most of the time so the two of them could be together. i know, that's super huge to give up one of my ferrets. but i really want my kids to be happy & if cass is really happiest with lily i want that for him. i also just put the marley issue out into the universe & said if she's meant to be part of my family then she will be, & if not i hope that she finds a really great home.

i had emailed marley's former mom before i went to cali & spoke with her & told her i was going out of town & i'd talk with her again when i got home. well, after returning to MN little marley was still looking for a place to live. i then decided to get a second opinion. i asked E what he thought because he knows how much work ferrets are & he'd be the one that i would wind up asking to watch her (&my other fuzzies) if they need a sitter. he didn't even hesitate & told me right away to adopt her. that pretty much blew my mind because i figured he would tell me "beckah, you have five ferrets, that's more than enough, you don't need another one, you crazy ferret lady." guess there was just something in the universe saying little miss marley was meant to be part of my family.

she's a smart little girl with TONS of energy. she fit in right away with the gang. i had E's ferrets for a few days because he was really sick. so when i walked in with marley tonight (er, saturday night) she right away wanted to play & run with the other kids. i held her for a little bit & then picked up the other ferrets one by one to sniff her, but then she wanted to just run & dook & play. there weren't any tempertantrums or bickering amongst the kids. they right away just accepted her as another one of them. she also seems to be in ferret 7th heaven with all of the fuzzbutt toys that i have & the fact that she went from being an only ferret to haivng five siblings. as i type this she & doodle are cuddled up together in the plush fish in the cage.


i've kind of considered changing her name from marley. it's a cute name, but it's not exactly what i would have chosen. she does answer to it though, which makes me feel a bit guilty about changing her name. & then there's the fact that her other mom really loved her & i feel sorta bad changing her name. i didn't feel bad about changing sundance & cassidy's name from what they were previously cause they didn't answer & i couldn't pronounce them anyway. & nyddah's, well, that was another situation. i did leave podo & doodle's names. so guess it's a toss up. i was thinking if i did change it that maybe i'd change it to harley, it rhymes with marley so she should still answer to it & it's super cute. we'll see what happens with that.

here are some pics of marley (harley?) with her new siblings & cousins (E's kids are her cousins. harley (i think i'm going to see if she answers to that) is the one in the middle with the two dark patches on her head with podo above her. doodle & nyddah are missing from this picture, but otherwise the rest of the gang is there. the fuzzbutts all really love each other, which makes me happy.

my life is messy

so E called me late friday evening. one of his ferrets, moxie (my favorite one & one of the ones that i asked him to give me in the break up) was sick. she'd been at the vet earlier that day, but she was sluggish, stumbling around, & had a small seizure. yeah, i know, scary. he called me to ask if i had any ferretvite, which is a high calorie supplement to give ferrets when they are sick. it can be given to healthy ferrets too, a bit at a time, as just a multivitamin, but it's also good if your ferret is sick to help them get better. basically he suspected that she had insulinoma. basically that is the ferret version of diabetes. well, with fuzzies since they're such tiny little guys they can go from being a little sick to seizing & dead VERY quickly. so poor moxie was having trouble walking & had a small, or a couple small, seizures. well, since she's my lil girl i had to rush right over to see her, ferretvite & all my other treats in tow.

i did have plans for friday night, but the universe was somehow working towards me taking care of my moxie because my plans fell through about five minutes before E called to tell me she was sick. what would i have done if i would have still had plan/been out with my friends & E called me to say mox was sick? i'm really not sure. she's my little girl & i adore her to pieces, but i also know that he can't expect me to drop everything in my life at a moment notice because he needs something. & there was a part of me that wanted to tell him i was busy, even though i wasn't, just so he doesn't think he can expect me to come running whenever he calls. but, if something would've happened to mox i would have been devastated that i didn't get to spend just a little more time with my baby.

this whole being civil & remaining friends for the kids is hard. WAY hard. not like i hate E or anything, because i don't. but seeing him & knowing that there is a wall between us cuts me. i know it's trite & over used & totally cliche, but it feels just like a knife being twisted in my chest. & i'm starting to think that maybe i shouldn't see him at all for a while. i want to talk to him & i miss him, but seeing him kills me right now. & i don't know how much longer i can keep torturing myself.

welcome to the new year! (scare tactics, gremlins, ghosts, & the scary stuff)

welcome to the new year! despite the less than sunny subject line the new year has been pretty good for me. i rang in the new year at a house part at my place (luckily i wasn't hosting, the people upstairs were, so i didn't have any clean up or have to deal with any people in my actual place). it was about 3 hours into the new year & i'd been groped, received some indecent proposals, & an invitation for a threesome. so yeah, pretty much hit the ground running. since then it's been more craziness as i try to balance everything without dropping anything, most noticeably myself &/or my sanity.

for 23 days i had 9 ferrets so my life was pretty much insanity 24 hours a day. E was out of town for christmas & new years so i had my 5 fuzzbutts along with his 4 from december 18th through january 10th...technically i gave him his ferrets back on the 10th when he got back in town, but i'll say i had them through the 10th since i did have them most of that day. i will say though, my place does seem kind of a little bit empty without his ferrets here. but i do like the decrease in the amount of poop in the litter boxes & that i'm not always having to keep track of 9 ferrets, each of which is cunning & has 4 legs & can move a helluva a lot faster than me. for a while i felt like the count from sesame street "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. . . .1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. . . .1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. . . . ." i always had to count them at least three times once they were in the cage to be really really sure that i hadn't missed one of them after play time.

not even a month into the new year & i have had some scary moments. or, rather, scare tactics used on me. i'm still seeing my therapist every week for my eating disorder & then my nutritionist every other week. so the first wednesday of the year i saw both of them & within an hour & a half i had the crap scared out of me. my therapist told me that if i don't start eating again, really actually nourishing my body instead of the mindless eating bullshit, that it is a very real possibility that i could end up being put on a feeding tube. yeah, that does NOT sound like fun. i've worked with residents at the group home that have feeding tubes & even if it was a temporary tube through my nose instead of a g-tube or j-tube (both of which require surgery to place a port into the abdomen, the g-tube goes into the stomach & the j-tube goes directly into the intestines) it would not be good at all. i really don't want to end up needing a feeding tube. after my therapist i saw my nutritionist. she flipped through my food journal & talked with me & towards the end of the appointment told me that she's really surprised that i haven't had to be taken in & given IV fluids because i'm not taking in anywhere near enough fluids. i really wanted to cry when i left but i didn't because #1 it wouldn't change anything/help me #2 i knew they were both right #3 i didn't think i could spare the hydration that tears would generate.

i've been noticing that my eating disorder definitely cycles & i'll go through periods of not eating/restricting & then i'll swing back the other way & snack almost uncontrollably. neither of which is good for me because when i am eating a lot it isn't anything that is really redeeming. it's junk food that i know i shouldn't have, but in a way i almost feel unable to stop myself from eating it.

it's weird to know that i've been dealing with this since i was 7. my god, that is so fucking young! a friend of mine has a daughter that age & i look at her & i think she's so little & so innocent & that when i was her age i had a huge problem that i manged to keep from everyone & it scares the shit out of me for her. & i try not to obsess too much about this, or talk too much about it, because i'm sure the people around me are sick of hearing me obsess & whine about food, but right now this is what my life is revolving around. my life is my eating disorder, my fuzzies, & E. i have peripheral things that i deal with like money, work, the weather, cold/flu season, etc. . . but my life pretty much revolves around the first three that i listed.

i was out with my friend tina recently (i hadn't seen her since july) & i was telling her about my life/what's been going on & when i was talking about my eating disorder she said i talk about it like it's a real person. & it sometimes feels like it is a real person, or actually, more like an evil little gremlin that is always perched on my shoulder peering out & whispering in my ear. some days i do better & i can barely hear it & i'm OK, & other days it's really loud & insistent & i can barely hear myself think.

there are days i fight back. about a week or so ago i was at work & two of my coworkers were talking about going out to eat for lunch. & normally they'd invite me to go with them but my lunch was at a different time. so they were talking about heading to chipotle & they were debating if they should be "good" & go to jimmy john's or be "bad" & head to chipotle. i've been listening to talk about being good vs bad in relation to food a lot lately at work & all of a sudden something in me snapped & i interjected myself into their conversation & said "food isn't good or bad it just is!" & then they got super silent. awkward! it was a slightly crazy thing to say, but it felt good too. & i've had my bad days. like admitting to my therapist that i'm really afraid of feeling hunger again because if i feel hungry then it'll be harder for me to skip meals. or like last week at work when the supervisors gave us "nacho bar" for lunch i made my sister dish up first so that i could stick my finger in her cheese & try it because if the cheese tasted in anyway like peppers i wouldn't be able to eat it. (my therapist thinks my sister is really understanding & really nice because she let me do that....i'd totally do the same for her. she just doesn't care that much about peppery tasting cheese.)

it's been almost a year since my surgery & the past (nearly) twelve months have not been at all what i expected. then again, i'm not sure that i even knew what to expect after my surgery. i don't think that i did. i know i didn't. i went through the program at HCMC. i talked with people that had the surgery. i read websites & blogs. but i still feel like i went into the whole thing blind. i do not in anyway regret my surgery. i'd still do it again if i knew everything that would happen. right now eating & food is a really tough thing for me, it's the demon that's there every day: awake or asleep it's there. but i'm also now dealing with a problem that has been an underlying issue in my life for over 3/4 of my life. & it does feel good to know that i'm taking positive steps towards healing. & that i'm dealing with this now so that i don't pass down my food issues to my kids.

but, back on track. back to blogging. still juggling.