dogs....

they are bound and determined to drive me crazy...
Last weekend Gobo broke out in a bad case of the itches. He seems to have a bad reaction to bug bites. Not sure if it was mosquitoes or if a bee/wasp got him, but he wasn't doing well. He scratched and chewed himself raw in a few spots. We dealt with it and he is doing much better, though is likely to stay shaved down and in pj's for a while while everything heals up.
This weekend, being a holiday to boot.. Willow decided that it was her turn to have some fun. I gave them some treats to distract them while I went around putting fertilizer spikes out for the veggies. The ones in the garden were fine, but there were a few pots of tomatoes on the back porch. She decided that I must have buried treats for her and dug one of them up and ate it.. I managed to stop her before she got more of them (she thought they were delicious..) and luckily they were organic spikes and non toxic, but I still had to keep an eye on her. She threw up a few hours alter and left some messes over night. All to be expected, and thankful it wasn't much worse. She's all back to trouble making normal now.
Just hoping there will be a nice long break before the next dog related excitement...

Why is it always weekends??

I was planning on trying to get a bunch of things done yesterday. It was warm and sunny, there were things I could do in the yard. We have a neighborhood meeting Tuesday night that I need to get paperwork ready for. I was trying to clean my desk and the kitchen. Laundry would have been nice to get done. Gotta start getting things ready for my step daughters to arrive in a month. Lots of things to do...
Nope. Instead we had a crisis. A small, furry crisis.

The big baby of the weekend has been our little 3 year old Pomeranian, Gobo. He was born with several birth defects and has had ongoing problems of one sort or another it seems. Last year he started having all sorts of skin problems and fevers. Vets couldn't figure out what was going on, because he'd always clear up the day before his appointment. We thought we'd figured out that he was having a food allergy, and after a few changes, she seemed to be all clear again. Yesterday something set him off and I discovered that he had chewed a large strip of fur and skin off his back. Not good. So I gave him a good shave and rubbed him down with some ointment and gave him some benedryl (vets had said it would help with the itching and fever) and put then he got all dressed in his little purple pj's to keep him from getting to it.
He was still all jumpy and itchy and the only thing that would calm him down was if I was holding him. So I spent most of yesterday with a little dog pouch strapped to my chest.
This was not the first time, and probably won't be the last time with him. I actually managed to get a few things done, (ok, I got my desk partially cleared and watched a bunch of Doctor Who online while he napped) so I was happy. Even though I didn't get all the things done that I'd really wanted to do, I simply can not feel as though I "wasted" a day being tied to the dog.
He is feeling better today and is currently napping on the other side of the room, though I suspect he will come over soon and want me to pick him up. Now that the swelling and redness have gone down, it looks like this round might have been due to some sort of bug bite or sting, which is much better then the other options for what might have caused it and it should start healing soon, though he will be in the pj's for a while.. (The bare patch is about 1 inch wide and nearly 3 inches long, so gonna have a big, itchy scab for a while..)
And yes, yes, he was named after Gobo Fraggle, though if people ask who are not familiar with our weird Muppet ways, we tell them it was a contraction of "good boy".. it just saves the headaches of trying to explain the entire history of Muppetdom.. and, honestly, that is kinds of how I got the idea for his name.. we couldn't decide which Muppet to name him after and once when I was telling him he was being a "good boy" it got kind of slurred into Gobo and it just kind of went from there.. though he's not much of a brave explorer... unless mommy's there to protect him. lol

weekend...

We got home just a little while ago from a 3 day workshop on adoption. I think that we are finally ready to move forward on this. There are a lot of apprehensions and fears, of course, but this workshop really helped work through a lot of those. I've been doing research into this for several years, but every time we thought we were at a place where we could start anything, something would always come up and put plans on hold. First it was our move and changes in Tom's employment, then my car accident, then Tom's deployment... It has been crazy making.. But we had this opportunity to go to this workshop this weekend and we jumped at it. If nothing else it got Tom up to speed.
There are still many things we have to decide and figure out, especially funding (anyone got about $15,000 I can have?? heh) But we will get it all sorted out. Next step will be setting up an interview with the case worker and getting all of our paperwork. That won't be for another month though as Tom will be doing his National Guard training this week (to make up for missing it this weekend for the workshop..) and then goes back up to work at the end of the week.. but, that will give us time to let all the info settle and decide how we want to proceed.
I am starting a separate blog just to cover our adoption journey, though things will likely get mentioned here as well. if anyone cares to follow it from here.
Sadly this weekend also saw a terrible, terrible sickness hit us this weekend, though Tom fared much better then I did - he didn't get all the vomiting, lucky stink.. We are getting better now, but it was not fun. Whatever we had seems to be what Bailey and Gaia had last weekend. We thought it might have been food poisoning for them, but this appears to confirm that it wasn't that... ah well, at least we all survived. Might have made us seem a bit anti social though.. we didn't want to spread this to anyone else if we didn't have to...

recovery.. is this what normal people feel like?

I don't know why, but lately I've been noticing how different my life is then it use to be. About a year ago (March 2009) I went to see the doctor for some respiratory problems I'd been having. I thought at the time that they were related to the volcano that had gone off earlier, and really only went to seek help after I literally couldn't breath while at the chiropractor's. (Still occasionally go there after 2007's car accident.)
Anyway, when I walked in, they did the usual weight, height, blood pressure thing. And then they sat me down in a bit of a panic and tested for blood oxygen levels, which then seemed to panic them even more and they drew blood to test for iron levels immediately. I left that day with an appointment for more blood work, a prescription for blood pressure meds and some inhalers, and a seriously high dosage of iron.
My blood pressure was somewhere around 240/120.. level 4, super high stroke risk levels. My oxygen levels were bordering on my coming home with an oxygen tank, and apparently somewhere along the way, I've become seriously anemic.
After a summer of lots more testing at several specialists, it was determined that I have an enlarged heart, a murmur (no surprise on that one, my mom has one, too), and severe sleep apnea. The Apnea may be responsible for a lot of the other things that are wrong, so hoping that after a few years, if I'm careful and lucky, I might be allowed to come off some of the meds.
Back then I was sleeping for 10-12 hours a day, or more. I was always tired, never had energy for much of anything. It had all come on gradually, and some of it wasn't noticeable until after the car accident, and that was likely why it wasn't noticed sooner. After the accident there was lots of pain, my weight went up again due to the inability to move much and decline in my diet, and i really thought all of what was going on was a normal part of the whole "hey, your car was accordioned, be happy you weren't" experience of the accident recovery.
But this year, this year I am really seeing a difference. The sleep apnea may have been a problem for me for most of my life, it would explain a lot. Most days now I can get up around 6 in the morning and have no problem going all day til about 11 at night, and even then sometimes I'm just not tired enough to fall asleep right away. True, every once in a while I still feel like a short nap in the afternoon, but those are the rare instance now, not the norm. I have energy, I can do stuff in the morning and still have energy to do stuff in the afternoon and evening as well! This is new territory for me again. I vaguely remember being able to do that years ago, but it all seems so long ago now that I'd forgotten what "normal" was.
It's kind of like when I was in 5th grade and got glasses. I didn't know what it was like to actually see things before then. I thought the blurry, fuzzy world I'd always seen was what the world was like. I didn't know any better. Then I got glasses and the whole world opened up and became new and wondrous. It was great, and so is this.
I am sincerely grateful for this second chance to experience the world with vigor and energy that I've been given. I've always commented on how much of a miracle it was that I wasn't injured more in the accident. As bad and painful as it was (and still is at times) I know that it could have and, based on my x-rays maybe should have been, worse. But that visit to the doctor's last year was just as important. Without it, there is every chance that I wouldn't have made it to be here today, things were that wrong with me. But I am well on the mend now, just need to get the blasted weight back off.. :)

And I'm going to need all this energy. This week my oldest stepdaughter and the 2.5 year old grandbaby moved in with us! (The defacto SIL was already here, he came up and started working while she packed everything up) They will be with us until further notice while they save up to buy a house, and we're so excited to have them here. It will be good practice.