New Catmobile and Bad Knee

The last few days have been nuts.

I struggled to find a replacement for the Catmobile, since the old one has multiple problems. I contacted private sellers realizing I'd get a better deal since dealers have a markup to make profit.  

I found one in Bend, but it was on 04 Scion, but...low miles.  However, it was overpriced.

I'd need to find a loan to get any used car, even an old one.  So I began asking people I knew and one friend said "Sure".   Without hesitation.   However, she had visitors coming from out of state and was very busy.

In the meantime, I found an 06 in Portland, some slight body damage, low miles, for a really good price, half the price of most Scions that have more mileage.  I jumped on it.  Then came the moving parts of the car drama---getting that loan in hand and finding a ride up to Portland.

I did not expect another moving part!  My knee!  It's been hurting lately.  I've been wearing a brace.   It had hurt so much I tried to make a doctor appointment but I could not get in for a couple of weeks.  I settled on seeing one I don't know next week.   My knee would not make it.

My ride came to get me, to go to Portland.   The seller up there expected us.  I had the loan in hand.  I turned to make one step up from the garage into the house, and my knee collapsed in an explosion of pain, with an add on snapping sound on the backside of it.  I doubled over, unable to stand on it, screaming.

Ah shit, I thought, through the tears and the pain.  THE CAR!   I wanted the car badly.  I also wanted heavy duty pain killers at that point.   My friend, the driver, went and got ice bags from my freezer.  She tried to call people she knew, who might go with us, and drive the car back, if we still went.

Finally I said, "Let's do it."   I had crutches in the corner of the garage from some old injury.  Good thing.  If I put no weight on my leg I could bear it.  There was a lot of cursing and sudden screams of pain on the trip up.  We stopped for aspirin.

I told the seller he was nothing like I expected.   After hearing all the stories of murders and robberies of craigslist buyers, in parking lots, or them finding out that great deal car they just got is actually a stolen vehicle, we ran through scenarios, and what to do if this or that happened.   April was going to hang back in the car, doors locked, engine running, for instance, as I went to meet the seller.  With my knee now unable to bear weight, I told her, if anything goes wrong, save yourself.  I'm too slow but the crutches will slow them down.

We arrived at the location and the seller was not a criminal, not a gang member, doesn't even have a record, I'd guess.   We were not surrounded by armed thugs  demanding the hard fought money in the envelope.   "Hmmm," I thought, this is nice!

It was all over in about 20 minutes.  I was going to drive April's automatic home, thinking that might be easier on my knee.   Then I realized the manual transmission Scion I'd just bought has the clutch on the left anyhow, so it'd be the same no matter which car I drove.  I had not driven a manual in over 20 years, but it came back in a flash.  I LOVE THE CAR!

I stopped twice on the way home, to rest my painful knee.  By the time I got home, it was so painful and swollen I wanted to scream.  It was then I went to the ER.   Nothing is broken, the Xrays said, but probably something is torn, the doctor said.  I need an MRI, but first I have to go to my regular doctor and then be referred to an orthopedist and then maybe an MRI would be ordered.  How many months will that take, I thought.   I got an immobilization brace, that is very difficult to maneuver with, given it turns my leg into an unbendable log.

I took a taxi to the ER and also back home.  Nice guy driving.

I took a pain pill, had been assured it was not an opiate, since I am allergic, and went to bed.  This morning I woke and suddenly flushed burning hot all over.  My skin was hot to the touch.  This turned to cold and clammy with sweating.  I tried to get to my phone, thinking I was having a heart attack, but felt I was passing out, and quickly got the floor so I wouldn't hit the floor.   I lay there half hour at least.  I got up off the floor, telling myself to quit being a wimp, that if I was going to die I die, but I'm not going out laid out on the floor barely dressed.  And I need to get the litter boxes clean before the ambulance or hearse comes.  I looked up the pain pill side effects online and there they were:   hot flushing, cold and clammy, hypo tension.  Ok, calm down, toss the pills out or give them back.

Two people have already asked me for "extras".  WTF?  I will not be part of destroying people's lives who have addictions and weaknesses to them.  I'm taking them to my pharmacy, who has a destruction program.  I now feel having an obvious injury makes me a target for addicts and dealers.  WTF, I'll say again, what is this world coming to.   The pills are gone now.  They're no good to me, the way I react, and its no good having them even in a drawer.  I don't feel safe with them here, because of all the addicts.  I had to get them gone!

A friend came up to help me clean litter boxes and she took me grocery shopping  I am grateful.  Now I have to sleep again.

The three kittens from the Lebanon junk pile went to some friends of a friend today.  Goodbye kitties!

Cheyenne and Jersey, not pictured---Dakota

The Mountain Shadows resident who traps caught three more, two of them tame, and one of the three is owned.  Honest mistake.  She thought it was the gray male left behind by one trailer.  Instead, its his son, adopted as a kitten by another trailer.  I got both fixed.  She's going to contact the people I got the teen fixed for a year ago, make sure they want him back.

Here he is.  He'll probably be returning.

 And she caught this fixed torti, whom she has fed awhile.  I got her fixed over a year ago.  It's sad.  Now she must find a new home.

 The other tame boy she caught is super skinny, skin and bones really, with diarrhea.  He's not fixed and she's still got him.  We're trying to find somewhere he can get help.  I gave her wormer for him today when she came over.

I am supposed to trap tomorrow, several places.  I hope that goes well.  Looks like I'll be riding shot gun with another trapper and be mainly "supervising".  Another word for it is back seat drivering.  Or something.

I'll get a photo of the new improved Catmobile. It is just like the old Catmobile, only silver and one year younger, and a decade younger in road miles.