Thursday Thirteen: 13 things connected with fibromyalgia

As Mommy's realizing that she has to change her life to accommodate things she thought would just go away (but now she knows are part of her fibromyalgia), she has 13 things that affect us as well. Well, sometimes not us in particular, but the household.

1. The radio. Daddy likes the radio on or the tv on when he's got other noise as well, like playing a computer game on the laptop or watching another tv show online. Mommy's sensitive to noise, so the volume has to go down a bit.
2. Music for sleeping. Sometimes, Mommy needs to put on cd's to help her sleep. Instrumental music and classical stuff, jazz sometimes. We like to be in the bedroom while the music plays, because it calms us down as well!
3. Sleep times. Mommy now takes a nap after she gets up. This makes sense to us, because cats need a lot of naps during the day too. We know when it's her nap time and when it's her regular sleep time, and we make sure she is surrounded by purrs. Tabby is by her pillow, Skylar is by her side or her feet, and sometimes others of us are in the room as well. We send out delegates to be with Daddy when he sleeps, too, because he sleeps better with purrs as well. Starla's his designated sleep buddy at the moment, and Skylar goes out there when he's sure Mommy's resting well.
4. Alarms. Mommy sometimes turns her alarm off and then falls back asleep, forgetting she's turned the alarm off. This has happened for two days with her awake alarms for medication and for Skylar's medication. Rori and Tabby make sure she's up by coming purring up to her for pets. She wakes up to pet them, then realizes that it's time to get up.
5. Walking around the house. Mommy is having a little balance trouble because of her new medication (Lyrica), so we make sure to observe very closely. Sometimes she says we're too close, but we're only trying to be there if she falls so she lands on something soft.
6. Temperature. Mommy and Daddy were playing a game with the heat before she realized that was part of the fibro, so the game continues. All the heat pours into the bedroom, so that's good for Mommy. Daddy takes naps on the couch, and he only sleeps in the bedroom when his back isn't bugging him as much (or when they have "private" time). Sometimes it gets too warm in the bedroom for us, so we come out to the main part of the house.
7. Not working. Mommy doesn't work right now except for her art business, so she's home all the time with us. That's wonderful! Daddy still goes to work, and we hate to see him leave! We all wish he could stay home as well, but someone's got to earn money for our food and litter. ;)
8. Food. Speaking of food, Mommy is supposed to eat healthy. That means more yummy things for us to sample. Rori likes soy yogurt; Smokey will eat anything with potatoes, including jo-jos; Tabby likes to lick up the soymilk from the cereal bowl; Skylar snoopervises the cooking like any good chef would.
9. Brain-fog. Mommy has brain-fog, also knows as fibro-fog, which means that sometimes she doesn't remember words or loses track of her thoughts. For us, that means sometimes we have to remind her to scoop our litter box twice daily. It's not a big deal for her to forget things sometimes, so we gently remind her of what needs to be done for us and she writes notes to herself about other things.
10. Chores. Daddy does a lot of the chores, because it hurts Mommy to do some of them. He loads the dishwasher and takes the big loads of laundry downstairs. Then Mommy unloads the dishwasher when it's done and does the laundry, putting the small loads in the washer and dryer from the piles Daddy brought down. Daddy uses a lot of towels because he works outside for his job, so he takes a couple showers a day. It all adds up. When it's downstairs, though, then it's easy for Mommy to put in the washer.
11. Love and purrs. Sometimes, Mommy and Daddy get overwhelmed with all the changes and everything, so we make sure to give them extra attention. We're very good at that!
12. Humor. We make sure to play and do things to make Mommy and Daddy laugh every day. They also joke around a lot more now.
13. Hope. Seeing us figuring out new things and interacting with each other offers Mommy hope that the next day will be better. She's actually doing really well, but it's a big change.
    

13 things that happened yesterday

For this week's Thursday Thirteen, we'd like to present 13 things that happened yesterday at our house (photos are Starla, SpongeBob, and the candles):

1. Mommy went to the doctor's twice. She's getting tested for things that may have caused iritis (inflammation inside her eye). She's ok, though, and over the iritis, but we'll know more when the lab results come back. It's probably just a random thing, but they want to make sure.
   
2. Daddy's dad went home from the hospital. He had a urinary tract infection and a staph infection for a week, but the antibiotics worked well enough that now he's able to be at home again.
3. Starla came inside to visit.
4. Rori hissed at Daddy when he went to lie down in the bed, because it meant she had to move.
5. Smokey treated Mommy like a big squeaky toy, chewing on her hair, climbing up her jeans to get to her belt while she was getting dressed, jumping on her, tracking her fingers for pouncing, and taking the shoelaces away while she was putting on her shoes.
6. Carbon swiped at Starla, thinking she wanted to play.
7. It snowed, but didn't stick.
8. SpongeBob came inside, with disastrous results (see our previous entry).
9. Mommy cleaned up after the disaster.
10. The power went out in the whole neighborhood.
11. Tabby chased flashlight beams and candlelight.
12. Carbon snuggled with Mommy and Daddy on the couch.
13. The power came back on, but we still had the lights off for "cozy effect" for a while and enjoyed the atmosphere.
    
    

Thirteen of us! (part 2)

Big-headed black stray tom kitty

Shadow, spayed & eartipped feral

Dot, eartipped and neutered feral (not around since last year)

Boo-Boo Kitty (Little Bit's & Smokey's mom cat), neighbor's cat

Little Bit, neighbor's kitten

Orange-headed kitty, unfixed stray tom

Starla, outside foster kitty and the kittens' cousin

Outdoor fluffy buddy, unfixed feral tom

Click here for part 1

Thirteen of us! (part 1)

Rori (alpha kitty/big kitty of the house)

Carbon, perennial kitten

Skylar, 9-year-old "old man" and chief snuggler

Tabby, "class clown" and working therapy cat at nursing homes

Smokey, foster kitten

Click here for part 2

Pet Products reviews

Our T13 this week is a review on HubPages of our favorite essential pet products. Most of them are for cats, but some are for dogs as well. You can read it here. We are also taking requests for HubPages articles that we can write (we'll hijack Mommy's account on there and write our own). You can request them from us on the sidebar of the one we wrote this week.