Bullets... or numbers really.

Hello blog. I realize that I have a lot to share with you, but since I only have about 10 minutes, we'll just do a quick list, then maybe I can come back and expand upon those things at a later date.

1. I started a new job this week. I'm now working from home doing medical transcription. It's not the glorious, quick money sort of job that the schools would lead you to believe, and the market sucks when trying to find a job, but I have one, and I'm loving it, even if young children in India are making more money in sweatshops than I currently am.

2. I still work at the vet on Saturdays until January, and might actually ask to keep that position for a while longer while I work on my speed and increase my production. Otherwise we won't even be able to afford the ramen noodles J is so fond of.

3. Speaking of J, being home with him has really allowed me to take some to the stress off of his little shoulders. He's already showing less anger and frustration, and we're getting school work done. He's even (finally!) learning to read and taking an active role in it. Makes it all seem like it's the right thing to do.

4. We took in a new dog about a month ago. He's a sweetheart, even if he does chew up anything in his path and seems to think the floor is a much more suitable toilet than the yard.

5. We still miss Kelli something awful.

6. Mocha's been not feeling well for a while now. We've attributed it to her arthritis, mostly, but when she started having diarrhea I took her in for a checkup. Her labwork looked fine, so we just sort of shrugged and figured it's just part of her getting old. After two really bad days we did x-rays today. It ain't good news. There's no fixing it. So, we'll begin preparing ourselves for another big loss here soon.

7. And so we don't end this on a sad note-- Jonas has joined Cub Scouts and is loving it.

All blogworthy things, and I hope to revisit these topics soon, but just wanted to get them all on here so that I'd remember and feel more obligated to come back.

Little bits

I haven't really found the time or the burning desire to blog lately, but I wanted to update in some way. There's been plenty going on around here. It's just been hard to find the time to put it all together in some sort of orderly fashion.

Consider this an extremely disorganized rundown, since I have about an hour to myself (bliss!) and don't want to spend the whole thing in front of the computer.

Where did we leave off? Oh, Christmas, right.

Since then, we've had a birthday around here. The nephew turned 10. Hard to believe it, but it's true. He's no longer a baby, or even really a kid. He's in the double digits, and seems more like a young man every day.

Of course, he wasn't too grown up for a Pokemon birthday cake, which I had the pleasure of making. Anyone here ever had to try and make frosting red?


My original plan for the cake was to make it an actual ball, but I had to bake the hell out of it to get it done in the center, and it was dry and gross. After tasting a little piece of it J gagged a little and asked "Is it still going to taste like this when it gets to the party?"

You have to appreciate the honesty there. So we baked a second cake at the last minute, and just a plain round cake had to do. I didn't even out the layers very well. Did you not read that comment about last minute? Seriously. It may have still been warm when he blew out the candles. Also the reason you can see chocolate crumbs peeking through the white frosting. Oh well. No one deemed it ugly, and everyone agreed that it was moist and delicious. There was only one tiny piece leftover, too. Not bad, considering it was 4 layers thick.


What else? Well, for Christmas Granny and Daddy Dave bestowed upon my son a bug vacuum and this little kit of tubes and bubbles and connectors and magnifying glasses. I waited the appropriate amount of time for him to forget about the thing, then tucked it into a box in his closet, hoping he'd forget it's there. Anyone in my family can attest to my dislike, and maybe even my fear of six-legged crawly things. But J has a mind like a steel trap, and he adores this particular gift. So I pulled on my big girl panties the other day, and we took the bug vac to the yard to try and catch us some.

Here's my budding entemologist inspecting his find.




Thanks Daddy Dave and Granny!

On the knitting front, I finally completed what I've officially dubbed "that damn sweater" that I started for J back in October or November. It's not that it was all that difficult. As a matter of fact, it was just that boring. I couldn't bring myself to work on it most days, simply because one more inch of plain grey stockinette was going to kill me. It turned out well enough. The sleeves are a bit too long, but but it fits him well otherwise. I could have made it an inch wider, perhaps, just to make it easier for him to get into and out of on his own. But it doesn't really matter anyway because he refuses to wear it, opting for his store-bought fleece hoodie. He says that "the yarn one is too itchy". He's right. It's not the softest yarn in the world, and he does have sensitive skin. But I intended for it to be worn over a long sleeved shirt, so didn't think the itch factor would bother him so much. Oh well. Did I mention I finished the damn sweater?





Moving along... we've had a cold spell here the past week. The temperatures have even dropped below freezing a couple of times, and J needed a new hat to wear. I'm the world's worst hat knitter. I don't have any idea what it is about the simple hat that baffles and eludes me, but my hats always turn out terrible. Either enormous, or too tight, or too short, or big enough to pull down over your shoulders. I can't knit a hat to save my life. But I do have a lot of this yarn, so I figured it wouldn't be wasteful to give a go to some stranded knitting. I mean, it's only about 30 total rows from cast on to weaving ends, so it's not like it was a major commitment or anything. I started this hat, the Polar Knits Skull Beanie, just before dinner time, and finished it before tucking J in for bed. I'm quite pleased. The pattern was simple enough that it wasn't overwhelming, and I learned that I'm not too horrible at the whole stranding thing. There's certainly room for improvement, but this one, amazingly, fit J perfectly. Made me want to cast on about 100 more of them! Yippie! I did have to alter the pattern a little, though. With 6 pattern repeats this wouldn't have fit anyone, so I scaled it back to 5. Easy enough.



Finally, here's a sad little picture of Kelli. Her Mama dresses her funny.

The best acquisition ever

A few weeks ago J's school held a swap and shop where all of the families were encouraged to bring in an unwanted children's or household items they no longer needed. Everyone was free to take as much as they wanted or needed, and anything leftover went to goodwill at the end of the day.

J picked out a little pretend doctor's kit as his treasure, and it's been the greatest toy ever.

That first day he spent about 3 hours treating me as the sick patient, which meant that I got to spend 3 glorious hours lying on the couch doing absolutley nothing while he examined and took care of me. Why didn't I buy him one of these a long time ago?!

When he tired of this game, he moved on to veterinary medicine in which I learned the true patience of one very adoring dog.

Poor Kelli was put through the ringer, and loving laid there and allowed Dr. J to perform all sorts of tests.

Blood pressure measurements:


Very thorough ear exams:


And even a blood draw, which was, of course, followed up with the application of a bandage:

(Isn't that the cutest thing?)

This dog may, on most days, be the bane of my existence. She might pee on my floor every time the neighbor's dog barks too loudly, and she might annoy the hell out of me with 3 am nudges. She might occasionally swipe entire pork chops from the counter hot from the oven. She may even wag her tail so hard that she busts it open on corners, walls and any other hard surface it contacts, leaving a spray of blood that rivals CSI murder scenes, but this- her undying love and gentle patience with J is the reason that she'll always, always remain a part of our family. Good girl, Waggy Dog.

Healing in Progress

I do realize that not everyone likes this sort of stuff, so if you're the type that can't stomach cuts, scrapes, and other sorts of owies, turn away now.

I've been taking progress pictures of Mocha's nose every couple of days just to sort of document the progress. I guess it's some sort of perversion that's rubbed off from work where we get to see some really gnarly wounds and stuff. It's fun, and often amazing, to watch the healing process. That, and Mo really hates going to the vet, so it's much easier for me to take a picture in and show it to the doctor rather than make her suffer the indignity of kenneling for the day.

So here they are- in chronological order.





These first two are from the day after surgery. You can see the bruising and inflammation. And, of course, you can see the pain in her eyes and demeanor. Poor girl. For the first couple of days she looked like she was a sharpei mix instead of a chow her nose was so swollen.



After the inflammation went down, these cracks appeared vertically down the front of her nose. They were there all along, but became deeper and more pronounced with the swelling. Don't they look awful?

What? You want a close up? Ok.


And here it is a few days later- looking much less inflammed and more healed than before.


Tomorrow she gets her sutures out and she'll be almost good as new. The scars will make her look tough, I suppose. I'm just glad that it has healed so well. I guess I'm incredibly fortunate to work where I do, or my dogs are, at least.

And kudos to the first person to identify this mystery object: (don't worry, it's not an animal part)

Not for the squeamish

This isn't a great picture. It was taken with my cell phone last night before the doctor sewed up the dangly nose bits.


She's home now, and aside from a little swelling and a pitiful looking shave-job you can hardly tell it was ever injured at all. Let's hope it continues to heal well. Noses are hard to heal up because of their very nature- wet, rough texture, always into something, lickable at all times. But I'm hopeful. She's in good spirits and sleeping away at my feet. She's a good old dog.

And it's not a good time to be an animal in our house. We mourned the passing of poor "Spaz" (J's favorite goldfish) yesterday. He fought a good battle and lived a long (for a goldfish) life. May his little tail flutter in fishy heaven.

Does it ever end?

Just when I thought things were getting back to normal around here something had to happen to throw us for a loop.

This afternoon my sister let the dogs out to do their thing, and they got into a scuffle- through the privacy fence- with the neighbor's dog. Now, I'm not claiming innocence on my dog's part here. Kelli is a loudmouth and got the neighbor's dog (also a loudmouth) going. But it was poor old Mocha that stuck her curious nose through the fence for a sniff.

According to my sister, the bloodshed was incredible. And from the looks of my house, and her clothes, she's not exaggerating.

Fortunately, I work for the best vet's office in the county, and we have the best surgeons in the state. Dr. J reattached what he dubbed her "been through a cheese grater" nose in a way that makes it look almost natural.

Kelli didn't go unscathed, either. She's got a puncture on her cheek and a cut on her nose. She'll get looked at and the precautionary antibiotics tomorrow.

But to make things even worse, the damn neighbor dog later in the evening attacked my sister while she was outside cleaning out her truck. Now, I don't want to start a feud with the neighbors over their dog, especially since they're good folks, and their dog has never been an issue before, but do I wait until it's one of the kids that sticks a finger through the fence?

Hopefully lessons have been learned all around.

I'll post the gory pictures tomorrow.

Still alive... sort of

A visit to the pediatrician revealed that sweet J-man is suffering from his first case of strep. Poor boy. He was so sick by Monday morning that between puking everwhere, he managed to sleep through the entire doctor's visit, and didn't even stir when they gave him a throat swab, and more amazingly, three suppositories. THAT'S sick.

Look at that pitiful face:

And that's after some recovery- not at his worst.

We're all sick, actually. Hubby was the last to catch it, and he's suffering through the worst right now. It's not exactly happy times here. But we're slogging through, and I'm actually feeling quite a bit better today. Well enough to be upright without the world spinning out of control around me.

Even the dog seems to want to be in on the action. She's got a case of chronic happy tail, meaning she beats her tail against every surface, rendering the tip a bloody mess. Anyone whose ever owned a happy tail dog knows what the aftermath looks like-- an apparent murder scene that would give the folks at CSI a run for their money. So, being fed up with constantly cleaning my walls, floors, doors, and furniture of blood spatter, she is now sporting the latest in doggy fashion.



The E-collar is simply to keep her from chewing the bandage off of her tail. It'll have to stay on for another week or so. The only other option is tail amputation, and while that sounds mighty tempting to me- never having to deal with this problem again, and never having to worry about excited little welts all over my legs, I just can't justify major surgery on a perfectly healthy dog simply for my convenience. We'll wait for her to do some major damage, I suppose.

But this post isn't all bad. In the time that I've been home, and able to sit up straight, I've managed to finish spinning my first ounce of really pretty roving, and I think that I did a pretty darn good job of it, considering I'm still such a novice.
Lookie!

Now to spin up the second ounce, and get them plied properly.

Back on my birthday I was given a rather hefty gift certificate to yarnmarket. I was holding off, trying to decide what I might like to spend it on. I mean, it's not every day that I have a whole lot of yarn money, and I didn't know if I should blow it all on one extravagant piece. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if I were to buy a sweater's worth of extravagant yarn, it'd only get an opportunity to be worn maybe once a year. So, instead, I got sort of a pupu platter of sock yarns to play with, a half pound of pretty roving, and some new needles. I've always wanted to try bamboo needles, but I'm not a fan of DPNs. So I got myself some Crystal Palace bamboo circs in size 2 and 3, and also an Addi Turbo in size 1. I was afraid I might break a size 1 bamboo too easily. I can't wait to try them out. I think 2008 will be the year of socks for me. :)



Here you see all the goodies- sorry the picture sucks. It's been not so sunny lately. I've got Tofutsies in "stand on your own two feet" (the bluey-purple one) and "tenderfoot" (the pinker one). There's also Maizy in Chameleon, which is totally out of my usual color scheme, but I love it. Two balls of Regia Landscape Earth, and Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Les Fleurs. The Regia and Lorna's look to be quite similar in color, which they did not appear to be on the website. I love them both, but probably would have chosen a different color if I'd had a true idea of how similar they are. Oh, and don't miss that big old bag of fluff in the back! That's Cherry Tree Hill potluck roving. I can't wait to play with it. :)

And that is all there is to report from here. Haven't done a whole lot of knitting or spinning this week due to all the germy warfare going on. Hopefully that'll change soon enough.

An Ode to Animal Control Officer Jeanine

I have so much to tell you guys about-- Christmas and the amazing gift my parents gave me. But I'll have to save it for another day when I have more than a couple of brain cells still functioning.

This post, instead, will be dedicated to Jeanine, the super-nice and super-agile animal control officer who saved my dog's ass tonight.

After a horrendous day at work today, all I had in mind when I came home from work was a shower and a beer and parking my butt on the couch for a while. When I pulled into the driveway, I was relieved to see that hubby was already home, and was leashing up the dogs for their walk.

As I got out of the car, Kelli saw something, probably a raccoon, and took off after it, nearly pulling Wil over. She took off into the woods, dragging leash behind her.

Sure enough, the dragging leash got tangled in the underbrush somewhere deep inside, and although we could hear her struggling, she couldn't get free. We dug around in the shed and found a pair if hedge clippers and while Wil started cutting limb by limb through 20 or more years worth of underbrush to try and locate her, I drove the car as far in as I could without tearing out the engine, trying to get a path started and a light on her.

She thrashed and whined and gasped for air, as her choker got tighter and tighter as she struggled. We talked to her calmly, even though we couldn't actually find her, and as she fell silent, panic set in. She was suffocating herself.

I ran next door and borrowed the neighbor's pole saw, but when we plugged it in, it blew the circuit, and we couldn't get it to work.

So, I called animal control and in came Officer Jeanine to save the day. She was small and mighty and weilded her machete like a pro, ducking and diving under prickly pepper tree branches with the skill of a cuban sugarcane farmer. In no time she had cut her way through nearly 50 yards of the gnarliest underbrush you can imagine. She cut Kelli free just in time.

I've always held the animal control officers in high regard, but now I have an even greater respect for them. So, thank you Jeainine. You saved my dog, spared me a heart attack, and totally made my kid's night with your flashing lights and fancy truck. We would have never freed her without you.

Not quite peace on earth, but it'll do

Through a strange and lengthy turn of events, we took possession of another dog last week. She's a wonderful girl, and Jonas has been absolutely smitten with her since he was an infant, so there was no question about whether we'd take her or not. The only real roadblock to her coming to live with us, and the reason she hadn't done so sooner is the fact that she is not necessarily the most mellow of dogs, and our existing dog, Mocha, isn't real keen on sharing her space. Plus, Mo is getting older, and sometimes is grumpy. Our fear was that Kelli (the new girl) would, in excitement, jump on Mo, causing her to growl, causing Kelli to become defensive, resulting in bloodshed and mayhem. Let's face it... our house is small and there aren't a lot of places for large dogs to escape to. They're going to have to get along if they're both going to exist.

So, consulting our behavior specialist at work, we gathered the necessary strategies to help their transition, as well as a bottle full of valium to calm tense nerves (the dog's, not ours), and we brought Kelli home.

The first night was chaos- the two of them driving each other nuts, but it ended well, with both of them sleeping through the night and no problems. But, that next morning, when it came time for breakfast, a little disagreement occurred, and so I took Kelli with me to work, afraid that they'd fight while we were gone.

Last night, when we returned home, they both acted like they'd been roommates forever, hardly even giving each other the time of day. Today, more of the same. So, they may not love each other, and Mocha is feeling a bit mopey and upheaved from her throne, it looks like it's all going to work out well.

Here are a couple of pictures of the two of them. Kelli's the big brown girl- Mo's the fuzzball that doesn't photograph well.