Holding my breath until tomorrow

In re: moldy orchids, apparently some types of mold are beneficial and this is one of those types. I’m not buyin’ it, and I’m repotting them stat, as all I can find is one stupid photo of mold on orchids online. You’d think a community as obsessed with plants as the orchid community would have made full use of the ability to post photos to the internet, but evidently not. I can find a description of beneficial mold which reads like this – “white fuzzy mold I see on my soil” I mean, really. What is that? Not clear at all. And crazily unhelpful. But the plants look superhealthy so I’ll wait until they stop blooming and then repot in new medium. I’m currently drying them, to help inhibit the growth of whatever it is that’s using my babies as host.

Honey did ok last night, she wouldn’t eat well and we had trouble putting lip props in and keeping them in. she also refused to take her pills and we had to shove them down her throat, which made me cry because I know it hurt her and I hate that. I coated the pills in butter, came at her mouth from the side and shoved them between her teeth on top of her tongue, then held her nose up and stroked her throat so she swallowed them. She didn’t manage to spit any back up but I did bump her gums with my nails a few times and I know I scraped some layers of skin off. It breaks my heart that she lets me do things like that to her that have to hurt but she just stands there and lets me do it. I feel like a monster. Tomorrow is her last radiation treatment, and our final consult with the vet, and then the side effects get nasty. I’m not going to post any more current pictures of her until she starts healing, because I know I sure as heck wouldn’t want anyone to see me if I was that hurt.

OMG I slept! (2 more radiatoin sessions!!!!)

Last night Honey went to sleep on her own bed for the first time in over a month. She was lying on her side with her head hanging off her bed, sort of with her nosicle pointed down towards the floor, and we stuck a lip prop in her mouth and she went to sleep, breathing well. Unfortunately we were both so freaked out because she was sleeping on the floor (is that bad? Should we worry? Should we call her?) that we didn’t get to sleep until around 1:45, to be woken up by Honey getting on the bed and laying on me at about 2:12 (by ‘on me’ I mean curled up tightly against me, with her chin and a paw on my leg or stomach. That’s her favorite) so I covered her in a throw, stuck in a lip prop and wadded a shirt up under the side of her head, as she cant breathe unless her head is tilted to the side. I woke up at 6:35 with my alarm and neither she nor I had moved. I feel like a total glutton for getting 4 hours of sleep at once. It’s awesome.

The bad news of the day is that my orchids have MOLD in their potting matrix. I have no idea what to do about this – I looked some stuff up online and it says to repot them as soon as they’re done blooming. Shoot, I have no idea how long that will be, as they both just bloomed, and won’t they die in the mean time? it also said to “wash their roots to insure no mold spores remain” apparently these people think mold spores are about the size of small pebbles, because there is no way you can “insure no mold spores remain” without soaking the roots in boiling acid. Anyone know how to fix this??

Pictures from yesterday

My little window garden. The other orchid in bloom is older, its an oncidium. the purple one is new and its a dendrobium.
pansy-lookin' dendrobium flowers.

The best coffee ever. EVER
At Versailles

Really - it's that good.

Honey eating!! and me (quickly) getting over my dogfood aversion. When we were done (she almost ate an entire can!!) the entire kitchen was covered in flecks of gruel-consistency dog food and I had to take a shower and do laundry. But she ate, so we're elated.