The rain has finally stopped for a day and we’ve got a nice, bright, sunshiny day here in Coventry. Eddie is complaining about how I won’t kiss him because his mouth smells like tuna from his lunch. Chaucer is sleeping somewhere, and Pickle is in her cage, curled up into a little cinnamon-bun shaped ball of fur. Everything is unpacked, and I’ve been slowly going through my crafting pile to get rid of things that I don’t need or won’t ever use.

We’re getting used to living here; it’s a quiet neighborhood, and the only excitement we’ve had lately is a squirrel falling from the roof, hitting our A/C, and landing in our wind chimes. And I slept through that. Even the loud motorcycles across the street have left I’ve started crocheting a bit again, this time an afghan for us, mostly while Eddie and I make our way through the 1st season of X-Files on DVD.

Last week was busy at work. I was the beginning of the month, meaning that we were filling pretty much nothing but heart meds and birth control, with the occasional pain killers thrown in here and there. The company is running a promotion right now where people can get up to $120 in gift cards if they transfer their meds from another pharmacy to us, so we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place at times. On one hand, we’re getting it drilled into our heads that they lost a lot of business during the merge/takeover last year, so they want all the business that they can get. On the other hand, this type of promotion attracts more of the type of people that no pharmacy wants: the ones who go from store to store, filling things at several different places at a time depending on who will fall for whatever line of bullshit they’re trying to use this week and who has the better promotional offer for prescription transfers.

We were talking about how cynical the job makes you, and how little faith we have in humanity after working there. I mean, we’ve got to deal with the fact that we need to treat every patient as though they are either a complete imbecile or junky. We need to specify that suppositories are to be unwrapped and are to be shoved up their asses, not swallowed. Oral antibiotics are to be swallowed, not applied to the ear with the infection. When a person comes in with a prescription and says, “I’m paying cash,” we immediately jump to the conclusion that they are one of the sketchy variety and assume that they have insurance and do everything possible to bill things out properly, including calling to the nearby chains to check them out.

Naturally, this makes everyone hate us, except for the little old ladies who think we’re wonderful.

We’ve been letting Pickle have free run of the bedroom and living room here, figuring that the most un-ferret-resistant rooms would be the bathroom and the kitchen. While she doesn’t care about the kitchen, she loves to try to follow us into the bathroom while we do our business.

Last night, Eddie tells me to hold onto Pickle for a minute while he gets into there and closes the door. All is well and good for about 5 minutes, when I hear Eddie open the bathroom door and call me to come check out what’s up. He’s holding her up and says “Your ferret….”

It’s never good when he refers to Pickle as my ferret.

“Your ferret was in the cabinet under the sink. There must be a hole in the bedroom closet.” Sure enough, I turn on enough lights to see into the bedroom closet and discover that there is a 8″ x 4″ hole in the wall that separates the closet from the bathroom, and it leads directly into the cabinet of the bathroom. I’m sure that if I check out under the cabinet, I’ll discover that there’s a bunch of ferret food and some toys, like she’s built herself a little fallout shelter under there. Eddie should be picking up some of that expanding foam today so that we can plug things up, since she seems to have no problem getting into the closet, even with the doors closed.

I figure that since we’ve moved and now share the house with an additional 3 animals that haven’t really been talked about so much, I should profile the new guys.

This is Jazz. My father, a farrier, was never one to say “no” when a client offered him a new kitten, and so towards the end of the year my sister came into the house shouting “we’ve got a present Mom!” my mother knew we had a new addition to the family. My mother is presented with this tiny ball of silver and black tiger-striped fur and asked if it was a boy or girl kitten, and what its name was. “Dad said it’s a girl! Her name is Princess Jasmine,” said my sister with glee, having named the kitten after her most recent favorite cartoon character.

My mother held up the little kitten, the runt of its litter, and checked what sort of… um… assembly it had. “I hate to break it to you both,” my mother said, “but Princess Jasmine is a boy.”

These days he’s known as Jazz. He outgrew his “runt” phase after a year or two and has become one of the biggest cats I’ve ever known, topping the scales at about 30lbs. He’s furry as hell, and brushing him is one way to guarantee that I’ll be sneezing and coughing up cat hair for the rest of the day. Now about 15, he’s getting old, and he’s getting mean. Walk to close to him and he’ll take a swipe at your leg. In fact, I’m fairly certain that shortly after this photo was taken, he attempted to eat my face.

This also marks my 4000th post! I’m insane!

I’m really, really tired of this heat. I’m tired of the humidity. I’m tired of being clammy all the time and sticking to myself when I’m trying to get to sleep.

I’m tired of seeing my poor animals laying on the floor all spread-eagle and miserable in their fur. Neither of them is happy like this, and it sucks that there’s nothing we can do because a tiny a/c won’t cool off the entire apartment and anything bigger than the smallest model will blow the circuit breaker after 2 minutes. And neither of the animals appreciates being dunked in the water to cool off.

I’m tired of people coming into the store and saying “Boy are you lucky to be in here! Har har!” like they’re the first people in the world to have thought it up. No, we’re not lucky, we’re working because we have bills, and you’re not funny. The pharmacy doesn’t get the a/c flowing through the pharmacy’s vents because our manager doesn’t think that it’s a huge priority to fix since the rest of the store’s vents are working just fine - to the point where it’s cold out there sometimes. Those of us under the lights and wearing the white coats are warm as hell.

Is it fall yet?

While house sitting for my mother’s animals, the only really ferret proof room in the house is the bathroom. The cabinets are all locking, the little trash basket has a heavy lid, and Pickle can run around and play with her little toys without getting into trouble. Last week I put her in there while we had dinner, and went back to get her an hour or so later. I open the bathroom door expecting her to be right there as usual, but there’s no sign of Pickle anywhere. I check the cabinets to make sure they’re all closed, check the tub and behind the toilet, and right as panic sets in and I’m firmly believing that she’s managed to teleport out somehow, I hear a little sound behind me and find that Pickle has made herself a nest out of my mother’s tissue box.

A full tissue box.