Words mean things

It's been a while since I've done this. Blame my first two days on staycation being consumed by old, bad fanfiction (with some new, bad fanfiction tossed in the mix).

alter =/= altar

tenant =/= tenet

taught =/= taut

in tact =/= intact

How is it that people now don't know how to punctuate dialogue? I have no problem if the writer is from somewhere where the standard formatting is different, but isn't it still customary to do this? "Blah, blah, blah," he said. rather than "Blah, blah, blah." He said.


I reserve the right to add more as I slog along.

Staycation's all I ever wanted

Drove about 40 miles down the coast to the vet today. It was a nice day for a drive, but the vet's office didn't have signage, so I drove right past it. I knew I had, too, because the town is one that takes about ten seconds (if I'm generous) to drive through. I gave myself time, which is good, because I found a winery in the middle of nowhere before I found the vet and suddenly my helpful navigational app had me going the complete opposite direction I needed to go. I swear, I drove by the place five times before someone answered the phone and helped me with a physical description of the building.

I don't mind a "getting lost" adventure, except round about the time stupid Google was driving me out to the winery I smelled a bad smell. A very bad smell. Johnny, bless her heart, pooped in her carrier. Then proceeded to stand in it. *head dashboard*

Jury's still out. I started to get disheartened when the first thing he did was grab eye ointment. Poor Johnny, she is always goop-eyed no matter what I do. On the plus side, the ointment he gave me is what I buy through Amazon to have on hand and is the only stuff that ever works. Vet did hone in on the introduction of sweet Hank, who has kind of decided to be the cat everyone else hates. He's cool with it. I'm not. Vet asked if I could separate them. Which I could try to do, but what kind of life is it for a cat to be stuck in one room? If I could, I'd do upstairs cat/downstairs cats. But even that isn't ideal.

So, for now we're trying some homeopathic drops meant to help with anxiety and we'll see how it goes. Not sure how I feel about the vet doing no tests (barring the poop test, as Johnny had kindly provided a fantastic sample, which came back as clean as poop can be), but I've suspected for a long while this might be behavioral. Stress can manifest itself in very strange ways with any creature. Even though Hank doesn't spend hours and hours tormenting the other cats, his presence alone is apparently upsetting. I guess I could try re-introducing him by stowing him in one of the larger rooms and gradually bring him back into the fold.

*shrugs* I don't feel like any real headway was made.