I wanted to apologize to DA people I've been erratic with both replies and updates. I'm having an all-around nasty time as we move into winter, and it only seems to promise to get worse.
The first and foremost thing on my mind is that my cat, who people have said is more my familiar than my pet, who rode in the airplane cabin with me when I moved across the country, has terminal cancer with no hope of a cure. She's expected to go sometime right around Christmas. I don't even have words for how much this hurts. She's fourteen, but as a siamese/manx mix who's healthy in every other respect, I'd fully expected to have years still with her. Up until she developed a tumor on her face, even the veterinarians couldn't believe me when I told them her age. I've never had a pet this long, or that I was this deeply attached to, so this is putting me on an emotional roller coaster right now.

Add to this the continued financial troubles of being unemployed, and the holiday stress that comes of not being able to buy presents for people. In this past week alone I have developed a sinus infection serious enough to need scary horse-pill antibiotics, a man my roommate and I had been helping as caregivers died, which is sad and somewhat unexpected. We also have a bedbug problem in the apartment we're struggling to eliminate (we think it came from new neighbors who just moved in next door and we share walls with), and my roommate and I have been scrambling making stuff to sell enough that we're not sleeping much.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm really not in a good mental state these days, and I'm sorry for it. Regular responses will resume when/as I can brain.