Updated: Can’t Catch a Break

Sometimes, you just have one of those days.  Others, one of those weeks.  For me, it’s going on a couple of weeks now.  But, life has taken a turn for the better!

Dude got the H1N1 vaccine at school roughly 12 days ago.  Guess what I came down with 24 hours later?  Yup!  You guessed it!  A week later, I felt better except for a cough I still haven’t kicked.  But, on Wednesday, the day my in-laws were to arrive at our home for Thanksgiving festivities, I seemed to get the mother of all cold sores!  Family pictures?  Oh, please!  I’d rather not!  

I spent a week being sick, last Wednesday running around and cleaning like mad in the morning, entertaining my mother and my in-laws in the evening, then up at the butt-crack of dawn to begin cooking our 25 lbs turkey so we could eat early enough that my mother could drive back to the Seattle area and arrive home at a reasonable hour.  

Yes, I said 25 lbs turkey!  It was an absolute monster!  And it took 5 hours to cook.  But, in the end, it was the best turkey I’d ever eaten, if I do say so myself!

It slipped out that my in-laws don’t consider the Corporate Prince and I really married since they didn’t attend our wedding.  Well, it was a marriage ceremony held in a judge’s chambers for legal purposes and we didn’t get to have the planned family “wedding” we had hoped for due to circumstance.  However, after almost 3 years you’d think they’d just accept that CP and I are legally married.  But, evidently not.  And this was discovered when we mentioned that we are thinking of renewing our vows this summer.  Suddenly, after hearing this, a lot of thing became clear.  Well, hmm…

So, I cooked myself silly on Thanksgiving.  Food was devoured, complimented and appreciated.  And now everyone has gone home so life can return to normal.

How was your Thanksgiving weekend?

 

PS Forgot to tell ya’ll that Kitty is no longer interested in horses.  She went so far as to tell me to get rid of Maddie.  So SG, I got a pony that needs riding…  Interested?

Back Soon

Hi Guys,

I’ve got a lot going on right at the moment.  Stuff that needs to be sorted through and figured out before I can talk about any of it here.  But, don’t worry!  I’m fine and doing well.  Some cool things have happened, but I’ll tell you about them when I have a minute.

Take care!  I’ll be back soon!

Psst!

Hey!

Guess who I just met in person?  I met SquirrelGurl and Stormy!  SG is just as nice in person and she’s pretty wonderful too!  She snagged some siberian iris that were in a giant clump needing to be divided for me (so I can plant them), got all muddy and brought them out!  Wow!  What a friend!  I will have to think of something very awesome to pay her back with.  Eggs and flowers, maybe?

Stormy is sweet and little and cute!  Compared to my 3, he’s just so teeny!  We hope that Storm Dog comes to play some more real soon!

Thanks for the flowers SG!  Hope you guys come to play again soon!

Wordless Wednesday: Cats

Merlin

Mo

George

Autumn

 

 

Testing

Playing with my phone to see if this works. Scroll down to see recent posts.

Creeped out

I have to say, that since the burglary, I’ve been pretty jumpy here at home.  Mind you, I’m not a jumpy person.  I don’t scream and I’m not easy to scare.  But, in all honesty, this past week there have been times I’ve been uncomfortable here.  And it’s not just living in the woods.  Heck, I grew up in the woods.  It was the city that always bothered me until now.

Every so often, I get this feeling like I’m being watched.  Actually, I experienced the same sort of hair raising feelings starting a couple weeks before the invasion.  The closest neighbor up behind us is at least 7 acres away with lots of trees and brush in between.  What’s more, Luna sometimes goes ballistic looking up the hill behind the house.  Yet, I never see anything.  And that’s usually the direction I get the creeps from.

Both dogs are sticking close to the house since the incident too, going no more than about 100 yrds.  They used to romp all over the place, going down the the creek, which is out of sight and patroling on the hill above the house.  None of that is happening now.

Freya seems to have changed greatly as well.  She didn’t even challenge the UPS guy when he dropped my phone off on Wednesday.  Instead, she hung out at the bottom of the house near the side door, and just did a basic bark.  Not an alert bark, not a “I don’t trust you” bark, just a couple high pitched barks.  

She’s also not using “selective hearing” anymore, nor has she gone out hunting this past week.  Actually, she spends most of her time inside or sunning herself on a deck or near the front of the house.  She’s calmer, more submissive, quieter and…  older.  Really she just seems like she’s really aged since that night.  Aged in a way that I either didn’t see before or that I wasn’t expecting to see for a couple more years.   Honestly, until last weekend, I’d have said she was in the best condition and health of her life.

However, in the last week, a 40 lbs skunk has taken to drinking out of the water trough.  Really, it’s a HUGE skunk!  The think really drains the 20 gallon bucket I’ve been using for Maddie.  Now, I know that she drinks out of it and so do the cats, but we saw the skunk drinking and there was less than half the water left after the skunk was finished.  And I had just filled it a short time before.  Maddie’s only objection is that the skunk is odiferous.  She tells us so with some snorts and showing some phlemen.

We’ve also gained a raccoon in the rafters of the garage.  Or at least it was there the other day when I parked the truck, hissing and growling at me from above.  For more than a month I’ve been blaming Luna for garbage strewn around the front of the house.  I even moved it to where she can’t get it.  Then things like diapers and shoes that aren’t ours started showing up.  And a Mike’s Pink Lemonade box, something we’ve not drank in this house.  Apparently, our friendly raccoon is an alcoholic with a shoe fetish.  Wish he’d leave the neighbor’s garbage at the neighbors.  Or only bring useful stuff over.

The coyotes got really brave again this week.  The neighbors got some boer goats a couple weeks ago and a buck just this last week as well.  Apparently, the word got out and the coyotes came up to the goat pasture (at the bottom of my driveway) and the billy goat gave one the what-for.  Coyote chitter and excitement turned into coyote yelping and then coyote voices moving off into the distance.  

All in all, nothing that should leave me with a feeling of being watched.  But I still feel it from time to time.

*side note: I did discover that while nothing more than a soda and a dozen cookies were missing, all my court papers having to do with the custody battle had been gone through.  Hmm…

This ‘n’ That

I got a new phone on Wednesday.  The Corporate Prince loves his iPhone so much that he wanted to get me a similar android phone.  Since our carrier doesn’t support the iPhone, I now have a myTouch.  And, guess what?  It has a book reader on it!  I will never be bored again!  Ok, at least not while I wait for CP to run some errand in some tech-geek place and 10 minutes turns into 30.  I can always read now, where ever I am.  It’s like carrying a public library in my pocket!

I am two books shy of reaching my 35 books read goal for the year.  I think I should come up with a different goal for next year.  Instead of quantity, maybe I should focus more on quality.  There are many of the classics I either haven’t read or don’t remember (a couple knocks on the head will do that to ya).  With Kitty soon to start High School (junior high is through 9th grade there), maybe I should brush up on things that she’ll be reading.  Then I can encourage her to read more of the classics in general.  This will be made even easier for me with my new phone!

Dude is on a field trip today to an art museum and then Oregon’s historical museum.  I am a little worried about how he’ll do.  His last field trip was in 1st grade, before the ADHD diagnosis and it was a nightmare.  While he’s doing better, the field trip opens up a lot of scenarios for disaster to strike.  However, I need to have faith that he is more capable of managing his behavior and that his teachers are equipped to head him off at the pass before he can cause any real disruptions to those around him.  And, I didn’t want to deprive him of such a great opportunity.

We attended Dude’s school conference last week.  He is doing very well.  We discovered that he has some anxiety with test taking and that we need to work on his test taking skills over all.  Until this year, Dude has never taken a math or spelling test.  So, if he gets stuck on a problem, he will stop and work on it until he solves it rather than skipping it and coming back to it at the end.  He is improving though.  At the beginning of the year, Dude would have 8 math problems out of 100 done on a timed test.  Now, he’s up to 53.  He still needs reminders before the test that it’s ok to skip a problem and then later go back to it.  Dude is so linear in his thinking that this is a concept he struggles with.  The teacher gave us some worksheets for Dude to practice taking timed tests with, so I’m sure that will help in the long run.

My mother and my in-laws are coming for Thanksgiving.  They have never met.  My in-laws have never been to my house.  Ever.  Not even while traveling and visiting here in Oregon.  It’s not that they’ve not been invited.  Rather, I think it’s more that they’ve been uninterested.  I’m a bit nervous and stressed.  

My mother has been to visit here in Oregon.  She hasn’t been to this house yet.  I’m excited to be able to show it off to her and show her around town.  There’s a spinner’s yarn and craft store I know she’ll just love to visit downtown.

I’ve decided that I can’t live with the green that looks like Kermit was massacred in Kitty’s room.  I’m sure in part that this is because my in-laws are coming and they’ll be staying in her room.  But maybe part of it is that it’s such a bright color and Kitty has a habit of changing her tastes every couple of months.  So, I’ll be repainting once again.  This time we’re going for something a bit understated with a hint of Hollywood Regency.  The colors were decided based on a “use what you have” decision.  Besides, she’s just going to clutter up the walls with posters and show ribbons anyways and it will be a color decision I can live with.  (Hmm… guess I’m turning into an old fuddy-duddy!)

Getting anxious about finishing up the barn and getting Casey moved home.  We’ve decided to use the hanging hardware from the goat stalls to make a sliding door and single stall in the barn vs. one giant run in shed.  This way, if someone gets hurt or needs to be isolated, I can stall one of them.  Also, it makes feeding them separately easier.  Essentially, the barn will be two stalls, but you’ll have to walk through one stall to get in and out of the barn.  The horses will still have free access to come and go, but we’ll be prepared just in case we need to stall one or both of them now.

Now that winter is approaching, we’ll be shifting our focus on improving and re-doing the inside of the house.  Painting, flooring and new counter tops are on my wish list.  We’ll be starting with painting.  There’s a lot of house to paint so it’ll take some time.  

Well, that’s what’s running through my brain today.  What are you thinking about or planning for the near future?

H1N1 Confirmed In Cat

The AVMA just released the following information: 

“A 13-year-old cat in Iowa developed signs of a respiratory infection after several people in the household were ill. Preliminary testing was positive for 2009 H1N1 on October 29, and the results were confirmed on November 2. This is the first report of a cat infected with H1N1. The cat has recovered from its illness. 

To date, this is the first cat confirmed infected with the 2009 H1N1 virus.” 

To read the full press release – go here

Here are some tips to help keep you and your pet healthy: 

* If you are sick, see your doctor. 
* If your pet is showing a problem, see your veterinarian. 
* It is a good idea to wash your hands before and after handling your pets. This is just good common sense. 
* Do not expose your pets to other sick pets. 
* Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough, and toss your soiled tissues in a covered waste bin. 
* Good preventative measures can help keep you and your pets healthy. That’s good advice any time of year, but especially during flu season. 

There are other zoonotic diseases (diseases that can be passed from pets to people). 

To see a list of these diseases, go to: 

http://www.petplace.com/cats/diseases-you-can-catch-from-your-cat/page1.aspx 

http://www.petplace.com/dogs/diseases-you-can-catch-from-your-dog/page1.aspx

Speaking Of…

Well, it’s been a long, long time since I shared  pics of Luna.  So, here ya go!

Luna 6 months

I am not as big as my shadow...yet!

Yes! I hears you!

Ear flaps are for aerodynamics!