December 1-4: Cat health, TTRPG reminiscing, food, and exercise

Sunday, December 1

We kept a close eye on Lyric on Sunday; she'd started eating again a little, but she still wasn't eating wet food and she wasn't eating much in the way of kitty treats or dry food, either. She went in and out of the house many times on Sunday; it felt like every time she went out, she wanted to come back in a few minutes later, and vice versa. The weather hovered just above freezing. 

Eliyahu and I went to the park in midtown so (1) we don't have to walk up steep slopes and (2) I could get bubble tea afterwards. (Eliyahu also gets a drink from the bubble tea place, but they don't get boba in it and it's really for my benefit.)  During the walk, Eliyahu suggested I could dictate stories about my roleplaying games and characters over the years, after I'd told them the nth anecdote about an online game. I used this approach when we got home, and got many words out of it. My word count for Sunday was 8525 -- not all of that was dictation or about RP games, but most of it was. I tried to remember as much as I could about my face-to-face games. I haven't done any local face-to-face RP since moving to this area over twenty-seven years ago, but prior to that I'd had regular in-person RP games for most of my life. I didn't go into my pre-high-school games because I remember so little of them, though. 

Because I haven't done regular face-to-face games since I was in my 20s, most of my TTRPG experience is online. (Okay, "tabletop roleplaying games" is a weird way to describe online gaming, but the games I'm talking about here are much closer to TTRPGs than to the kinds of RPGs normally associated with "online". I've done lots of MMOs and some CRPGS too, but those have way less roleplay and human creativity than the online games that have humans playing all the parts of PCs and NPCs.) The online games have been almost entirely text -- I can only think of one time that I tried to do RP via video. Because of that, I still have records or access to records for almost all of them. One game, "Just Trust Me", may not have a complete archive; I have a chunk of it on my computer, including a finale log, but I'm not sure I have everything. I have a different chunk on a CD somewhere, from when Envoy sent out CDs of the full Sinai/Mirari/Trust Me/Mutant Chronicles archives to anyone who wanted one, as a kind of distributed backup system. I know the CD didn't have everything, but it's possible that between the two, I've got an intact archive.

I also have the only complete archives for Game of October and the online World Tree game I ran, because I never posted those anywhere but I did assiduously record and download them. Since I was the GM, I was the only person present for every session, so I'm the only person who had the opportunity to get all the logs.

One Mirari log was accidentally overwritten when a file of the same name was uploaded to the website, and that one is gone forever, alas.

Anyway, dictating about the written games feels odd because the full logs are available and make more interesting reading than me trying to describe them would. But digging up details from my memories on the older ones, where nothing exists but memories, was an interesting exercise.

Lyric came back inside when we got home, but she still didn't have much appetite and she was still drooling some. Around 9PM, I gave her a gabapentin because I assumed I'd be taking her back to the vet on Monday. The vet prescribed them because she's anxious and aggressive during vet visits. The prescription is "one in the evening and one in the morning before she goes to the appointment." I've given them to her before five vet visits, I think. In past cases, the effect has been subtle; she'd be a bit more mellow at home, and significantly less stressed at the vet. She'd still spend the entire trip to the vet mewing in protest and still try to get out of the carrier/examination office/etc. But she didn't hiss or claw. 

So after I gave her the gabapentin, I let her outside. She came back in a little later, ate a little dry food, and conked out in my lap. She stayed there, almost motionless except for her breathing, for two hours. When I got up to go to bed, I picked her up and took her with me. She barely woke and made no protest, which is absolutely unlike her: she hates being picked up in the den. (The designated picking-up rooms are The Kitchen and The Living Room; I can pick her up there and she's fine, even purring. Anywhere else is Strictly Prohibited and invites angry rebukes.) I put her at the foot of the bed on my side, where she usually sleeps during the cooler months. She stayed there, almost motionless, until 2:30AM. Her breath around Sunday evening/Monday morning was absolutely foul, so bad I could smell it from several feet away. I didn't realize it was her breath until Monday morning; I'd press my nose against her side and her fur had no scent, so I thought maybe the odor was something else in the room. Then I checked by her mouth on Monday and ooog.

Monday, December 2

I called the vet at 8AM. Since Lyric was eating, they made the appointment for Tuesday. I asked them to call me back about the unusual gabapentin effects and to make sure it was still advisable to give her another one or possibly two for the new appointment. They called me back that afternoon and said to give her just one in the morning. By midday Tuesday, Lyric was eating more. By afternoon, she'd actually eaten all her usual third of a can of cat food and a little more: more than she usually does at one time. By evening, she seemed perfectly normal. 

I forget what else I did on Monday. Some more dictation about old TTRPGs and a bit more for The Secret Dragon outline. This was a comparatively light day for writing, only 4070 words (yes, only, most of it was dictation rambling; it doesn't take nearly as long as even typing something like this does. Writing decent fiction takes me much longer.  Working out a complex outline is slower still.) 

Tuesday, December 3

Lyric still seemed healthy and eating normally on Tuesday morning. She no longer had any of the other symptoms of being unwell, either: her breath was back to normal, she hadn't sneezed since Saturday, and she'd stopped drooling. So I cancelled the appointment. I figured if she relapsed, I could schedule another one, and I didn't want to put her through anasthesia and all the other stress of the vet when she appeared fine. 

We got grocery delivery on Tuesday morning. I'd ordered chopped onions with the plan of making more pasta sauce in the next day or so. The odor of the chopped onions was so pungent that I decided to make pasta sauce right now, because it was that or freeze them immediately. I didn't want them in the fridge for even a few hours. 

So Eliyahu and I had angel hair with tomato-mushroom-cream sauce for lunch.

For writing: more dictation, more notes. Total word count in 4theword was 4699.

 Wednesday, December 4

It's almost 11AM on December 4. I've been playing Race for the Galaxy until my hand ached from using the trackball, a sure sign that it is Time To Stop Playing Race for the Galaxy. 

I thought about writing, but I didn't want to start a monster in 4thewords because I wasn't sure I could write quickly enough to defeat it in my current unmotivated state. I could, of course, write outside 4thewords. Or I could start a monster and not worry that I might lose to it. Or I could start a monster and use dictation to finish it if I was making notes for The Secret Dragon too slowly. 

Or, I mean, I could play another game of Race for the Galaxy even though my hand hurt from using the trackball. Always an option!

But I have stopped playing Race for the Galaxy (FOR NOW) so yay?

The only other things I've done today are (a) get out of bed (b) play a little Time Princess (c) eat breakfast and (d) watch Vicorva's Twitch stream. 

Lyric has not eaten much today and I am side-eyeing her hard. She seems otherwise fine, with none of the other symptoms from Saturday through Monday. So I haven't called the vet yet. I probably will at some point today.

Eliyahu has made a concoction of rice, butternut squash, and chicken that we'll be having for lunch. It is almost done! Just fluffing now.

This afternoon, Eliyahu and I went for a walk. Weather was pretty nice for it, for December: 50F with little breeze. I took my sweater off and left it in the car. Eliyahu, from Canada, walked in long sleeves with a light jacket zipped over it, thick mittens, a scarf, and a warm knit cap. I remain mystified why they didn't overheat like that.

I haven't gotten much exercise lately because the weather has been bleh and I am lazy. I drove to the park for the walk instead of walking around the neighborhood. The bubble tea place near the trail (and 10 minutes from my house) is closed until January so not much incentive to drive up there. But there's another bubble tea place near a park in midtown that's 20 minutes away, so we went there. This time we made three circuits of the park instead of our usual two. I don't know how long the trail is and different websites give me different estimates, but I'm guessing it's between 1.25 and 1.5 miles. 1 lap takes us around 25 minutes.

We got bubble tea, and then came home. I've done some more dictation to beef up today's wordcount, and finished up this entry. I'll work some more notes on The Secret Dragon next.