Country_Kat

  Good morning everyone, it's finally Friday! It looks like there may be a 'game plan' with regards to my father in law. Everyone already knows that my hubby was struggling with being the one to make any sort of decision with regards to his dad. It had seemed all week that we were going to end up taking him out of the hospital today to bring him home on Hospice. Well, hubby had an appointment of his own yesterday evening and left from there and went straight over to the hospital to have a 'meeting' with pops' doctor and palliative care crowd in pops' room with him. They were able to wake pops long enough to get an answer or two. The hubby was able to ask him flat out, what HE wanted and pops told him that he wanted rehab, he's not ready to give up the fight. The hubby and doctor explained to him that he is going to have to 'fight' and actually DO the rehab and pops said he understood and that he would. Now that everyone actually knows what pops w...

A Pesky Rumble: Pink Bollworms Vs. Cotton Farmers Madeline K. Sofia Image of an adult pink bollworm moth USDA/ARS The pink bollworm — an invasive species that plagues cotton farmers around the world — has been successfully eradicated from much of the U.S. and Mexico. Eradication campaigns rarely work, but this one did. NPR food and farming reporter Dan Charles gives us the play-by-play to how it took two concurrent approaches to eradicate this devastating pest.   CAM

 Well, it's Hump-Day! While I own up that my heart isn't fully into this today, maybe it will be just what the doctor ordered and my soul and mind need. Maybe a break from the million thoughts running through my head will do me some good. It's like I've said before I guess, what's the point of living if you can't find a reason to smile and well, you all have always brought a smile to my face and remind me that I'm not alone! I also want to apologize for posting that thread yesterday then abandoning it. I don't think I've done that before and didn't "intend" to yesterday but things got a little crazy around here again. We had Little Man's speech therapy and then dealing with the hospital while they tried to get pops moved, figuring out where they were moving him, relaying info to the hubby and his aunt... all that sort of stuff. They did finally get him moved, literally while I was on the phone with the hubby that had just left work....

 Hey y'all. I wanted to drop in and at least give an explanation as to why I wasn't here last week and things might be 'spotty' for a while on my end. As all of you 'regulars' know, my family rang in the New Year with Little Man sick as a dog and in the hospital. The support from everyone here was and continues to be so very appreciated. We know, as far as certainty will allow us to know, it was Kawasaki Disease/Syndrome which is diagnosed through a process of elimination. He finally came home on the 2nd I believe it was. Then, not long after Little Man came home, my father in law ended up being admitted to the hospital and all we knew at the time was he tested positive for Covid. Things have not gone very good with regards to my father in law but I'll get to those details in a few. So let's go back to Little Man. He has done awesome in his comeback from Kawasaki. His follow up with his regular doctor, infectious disease and cardiology all went great. Ca...

Your Cat Isn’t Just Getting High Off Catnip A new study hints that plants like catnip and silver vine may also protect your feline friend from mosquitoes. For a lesson in euphoria, look no further than a house cat twined around a twig of silver vine. When offered a snipping of the plant, which contains chemicals similar to the ones found in catnip,  most domesticated felines  will purr, drool and smoosh their faces into its intoxicating leaves and stems, then zonk out in a state of catatonic bliss. But the ecstatic rush might not be the only reason felines flock to these plants, new research suggests. Compounds laced into plants like silver vine and catnip might also help cats ward off mosquitoes, equipping them with a DIY pest repellent that’s far more fun to apply than a greasy coat of DEET. Other papers  have pointed to the insect-deterring effects of catnip and similar plants. But the  new study , published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, is the first ...

 DROP in and leave us a joke, a video, a meme or a comment. Kat is having a rough time, so asked me to drop this Friday thread. We have a very small but loyal fan base here and it would be nice to see you folks drop by just to say HI.

 KAT asked me to pop up her usual Hump Day thread for her, her reasons being: Issues with Pops Issues with Hubby Issues with Daughter Inauguration Blues General Lethargy OK OK - all kidding aside Whatever your politics (and NO, we don't need to discuss it here), this is Inauguration Day, and I for one will NOT be glued to the tube. One of the advantages of now being fully retired is that I get to enjoy the day I WANT TO enjoy it, sans the 24/7 news cycle. The weather where I live has been idyllic considering the time of year: Just enough white, but still unusually warm, so me and Geri have been taking our constitutional every afternoon. I do want to extend my sincere wishes to Kat and her family for what they are going through, I consider her a dear friend and though I don't say it often enough, I do worry about her.  Life sucks sometimes, but life can also be such a blessing, so PLEASE bring YOUR blessings, in the way of a hopeful message for Kat, a cool video, a funny meme (...

  Good morning everyone! It's Friday!!! I do hope everyone is doing well this morning! We're all hanging in here as best we can. So far, pops has remained stable and has only been put on oxygen at night when they give him something to help him rest as they are worried about possible oxygen drops while he's asleep. Other than that and the blood pressure still remaining low, he's doing good. I think I may have 'irked' his doctor at one point when I asked about what they were doing to help 'treat' the Covid lol. She was good until I questioned why he wasn't on a treatment such as Ivermectin combined with high Vit D and Zinc, then her tone changed to that nasally, holier than thou tone asking why I would ask that. It was asked in such a way that if one read between the lines, it was why would a peon question MY judgement lol. While not going into anything that could lead to political discussion or something similar here on the blog, I simply told her tha...

Cheers! French wine, vines headed home after year in space Cheers! French wine, vines headed home after year in space This photo provided by NASA shows SpaceX's Dragon undocking from International Space Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021. SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule undocked with 12 bottles of Bordeaux wine and hundreds of snippets of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon vines. The capsule is aiming for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast Wednesday night. (NASA via AP)  AP CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The International Space Station bid adieu Tuesday to 12 bottles of French Bordeaux wine and hundreds of snippets of grapevines that spent a year orbiting the world in the name of science. SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule undocked with the wine and vines — and thousands of pounds of other gear and research, including mice — and aimed for a splashdown Wednesday night in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa. The Atlantic had been targeted, but poor weather shifted the arriva...

 Good morning everyone! I do hope everyone is doing well this Hump-Day! I swear, if it isn't one thing it's another. If it isn't too much trouble to ask for more prayers or positive thoughts to be sent our way, Monday, my father in law ended up in the hospital where, you guessed it... he tested positive for Covid. He's doing ok, his oxygen levels are good and high but they are having trouble regulating his blood pressure which is staying rather low. At least for now, he's stable though thank goodness. Little Man is 100% back to being his busy little self lol. He had his follow up with the infectious disease doctor and everything went well. Some more of the blood work came back where they were checking for 2 specific tick-borne illnesses and both came back negative. With those being added to the negative category, Kawasaki is pretty much the only option left. He also had his first follow up with cardiology and things were good there. They said to keep him on his one ...

 Good morning/afternoon everyone! Although it's later than when I normally post, IT'S FINALLY FRIDAY!!! I've actually been up since around 5:30 thanks to pain and was aching too much to even think about doing the thread. After getting some IB-ok's into my system along with my headache medicine, it's finally eased off enough I can deal with it. That and a long hot shower after Little Man finally woke up! Little Man seems to be 100% back to himself, screaming at his sister included lol. He did have a complete meltdown Wednesday when he figured out he was going to a doctor's appointment. I do believe this whole ordeal was so traumatic for him 😢. When he heard me and his dad talking about the appointment, he freaked, climbed into my lap and literally curled up in as tight of a ball as he could like he was hiding. When putting his shoes on him, he kept screaming and crying "but I'm home" 😭. He was absolutely terrified that they were going to keep him....

Unusual sex chromosomes of platypus, emu and pekin duck Extraordinary diversity of animal sex chromosomes Platypus has ten sex chromosomes  With its venom, duck-bill, egg, and milk, platypus features an extraordinary combination of reptiles, birds and mammals. Previous work showed that platypus, although undoubtedly a mammalian species, have sex chromosomes that do not share the same origin with those of human. It turns out that male platypus has five pairs of XY chromosomes (named as X1Y1, X2Y2, etc.), and none of them are homologous to the XY of human or mouse. These ten sex chromosomes pair with each other in a head-to-tail manner and form a chain during meiosis when sperm cells develop. The genetic makeup and the evolution process of such a complex and unique sex chromosome system remained unclear, because the previously published platypus genome is was from a female, and only a quarter of the sequences is was mapped onto chromosomes. Cutting-edge sequencing techniques  An...

Howdy y'all!!! Hi everyone! I hope that everyone has started the year off on a good note! As you all know, ours hasn't started off too great but it could have been worse. Although it seems that life keeps trying to beat us down, I try to remind myself of just how much worse things 'could' be. I think it helps me keep my sanity and keeps me grateful that things didn't take a turn for the absolute worst. These last 2 weeks have been a living hell though.  Too long; don't feel like reading version: Little Man has bounced back and is almost back to his normal self but has a crap load of follow up appointments for who knows how long. I'm still hurting like a son of a gun but I'll live 😉 It started simple enough, Little Man had a 'stuffy nose' that started on either the 22nd or 23rd (my days have all run together lately). No fever, no drainage, he simply sounded stuffy. Christmas morning was the start of our nightmare. The hubby and myself got up earl...