Thursday, April 30, 2009

News

Obama administration official: Chrysler will file for bankruptcy now that negotiations with creditors have collapsed.

from CNN.com
Tweet, tweet

At first eating five or six Cadbury eggs for lunch seems like a good idea - while you are painting the exterior of your house, putting 24 inch rims on your Mini Van and laying new sod simultaneously, but a few hours later you won’t be able to pull yourself off the couch. If the Powers That Be didn’t want me to eat so many of them they wouldn’t have been selling them for a penny each, that was a .49 discount! Per egg! . They don’t age well, you know. The good news is I have a new lawn, My van is bangin' and the outside of my house is pink.

I also joined Twitter, (but not while under the influence of candy eggs) where I can now “follow” such luminaries as Matthew Perry and Diablo Cody as they muse on topics such as watching CNN on Virgin airlines to picking at dried mascara. Heady stuff. Rainn Wilson posts all the time, There, he just posted like forty-seven times about corn. Really. Twitter is for people who are too ADD to blog.

I like it though! I follow someone named Dpressman because Matthew Perry told me to! Perry also wants me to see 17 Again but I liked it better when it was called Freaky Friday and Jodie Foster was Zac Enron. I’m forty, I don’t have to know his name. HA. I’m not going to go see it, don’t tell Matthew Perry. I will totally buy the Sunset Strip DVDs when they come out. I’m sure he’ll be pleased. Maybe I’ll “tweet” when I buy them.

I seek out celebrities. It makes me feel a little like a stalker. It makes me feel a little like a celebrity too. I have two followers and I don’t know who either of them are, they are not Matthew Perry or Diablo Cody. Why would Joan or Joe Average follow Joan or Joe Average? I mean really? I don’t seek out people I don’t know there because I don’t really care enough about Joan Public’s cat issues or how Joe Guy feels about his new Ipod. It’s really hard to care about my life in 140 character increments. But it’s all different if its someone famous navel gazing at 140 characters at a time.

Up until a few months ago I thought Demi Moore invented Twitter to get Ashton something to do while she was at the gym.

Back to reality. Dogger and I went on our third therapeutic walk today and we got farther then we did on our last couple. This time we made it two houses in one direction before we had to turn back and two houses in the other. I have to keep telling her to put her foot down. The longer we walk the more she uses the foot/knee but I do have to keep telling her to use it and then I’m note sure how much weight she’s actually putting on it and how much of it is just to make me shut the f up. She gets really tired out from these trips. This afternoon we’re going back to vet to get a check up and I’m going to ask for another course of anti-biotics and more pain meds, not the same antibiotics though and maybe not as high a dose. A maintenance dose if they do that as much as I don’t want her to be on ABTs forever I’ve noticed her leg is still warm and the wound is still a leetle mauvey in one place. I also don’t want her to spend eternity in an E-collar.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Cooler Heads

WHO says only 7 swine flu deaths not 152.
Birds of a Feather

I had a rough day at work, the upside being  that I still have a job and the downside being that a handful of my coworkers are as dumb as I suspected they were. I get to keep coming to work but I get to keep working with idiots. Also? completely non-related to the Idiotpaloza, I am now on Twitter!

After work I watched two hours of Curb Appeal and  fed and watered everything that required feeding and watering my leafy pets outside and my furry pets inside  as well as taking Dogger on a  therapeutic walk and cleaning out two cat boxes. I decided it was time for some Diana Time.

Literally and figuratively I decided it was time to get back on the bike. The bike which had been living in the car since last fall, had been  taken out of the car and locked up outside the back door "temporarily" since Dogger hurt herself .The bike has been outside for a while. I had kept saying to myself that I was going to go out one evening and get some exercise but something always came up and somebody always needed something. That's life in the woman lane, everyone no matter how furry gets what they want before you do. Anyway, I had finally arranged for some "me time" and I was ready to roll.

Or not.

The front tire was flat. No soft, not a little spongy, flat. I said "Okay! I'll just pull out my bike pump and I'll fix that in a jiffy!". Okay, I didn't utilize "jiffy", it was probably "Me go make tire round now again".  Anyway, I found the pump and attached it to the tire. And attached it to the tire.. And attached it to the tire. It kept popping off and spraying me with brown water, over and over again. I was burning daylight here and didn't have time for this kind of  low comedy. I was also afraid that somebody somewhere was stranding there with a clipboard taking notes and laying bets on how often I was going to repeat the behavior before I figured out it wasn't getting me to the cheese and I need to try going the other direction. After more tries than were necessary to learn that I was doing it wrong, I locked up the bike and decided that if I was going to be outside feeding the neighborhood mosquitoes,  what I really wanted to do was to water my morning glory seeds.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Furloughs, pay cuts ordered for state workers


RALEIGH — Gov. Beverly Perdue today ordered unpaid furloughs for all state workers, public school teachers and higher education employees, in an effort to balance the state budget in a struggling economy.


All state employees will see their paychecks in May and June reduced by a total of one half of one percent of their annual salary. An employee making $50,000 per year would see his or her pay reduced a total of $250 during the next two months. An employee making $30,000 would see a salary cut of $150.


In return, state employees will be given 10 hours of flexible time off, which they may take between June 1 and Dec. 31.

I've never been so happy to get paid so little.
Just in time for flea and tick season

Increased Scrutiny of Flea and Tick Control Products for Pets -- Signs of the Times News:
Updates

Those of you with cats know how fun it is to travel with a cat that doesn’t like traveling. Now, imagine the joy of road tripping with two such animals. Other Kitty is going to be staying with me while my parents are out gallivanting across the globe and boy is she thrilled! She loves being with me and she and Tiny and Dogger are all very best friends! Yeah. Right. I’ve had fever dreams that weren’t that outrageous.

In reality Other Kitty is quarantined camped out in the downstairs bedroom. Saturday night I thought that she might be ready to come out and join the party but that ended badly and she hasn’t been out since - Like she has a choice, she can hardly open the door on her own, I have not let her out of the room since then. I have visited though, Sunday afternoon I took a book in there and got on the bed and read my book and I kept expecting her to jump up and visit with me but she never did, instead she stayed under the bed and growled. I did not feel the love. Time passed. Monday after work, I went back to visit and lo and behold, I felt the lurve! Later, I went back to watch House and she was my best friend. Sadly, I had to go check on dinner and Tiny snuck in as I was leaving and I didn’t notice. I came back and chased Tiny out again bur Other Kitty went under the bed and didn’t want to be friends and wouldn’t watch House with me.

Dogger. Dogger is walking on all four feet! Sometimes!. Okay, in reality, she’s still hopping but not all the time! Her incision is just about healed but not all the way so the E-collar stays where it is. To be honest, if I knew that she would be wearing that thing for a month I would have sprung for a nicer one but hind sight and all that. The antibiotics regime is finished and the infection seems to be cleared but I have noticed that the leg is still a little warm and that is not the best sign. She is feeling so much better though! She smiles and wags her tail and I’ve noticed that she’s stretching like she hasn’t done since before the accident! She does the doggy shake, shake, shake in the morning and I’ve had to start using her pinch collar to keep her from pulling on her leash! So those are all good things.

The surgery was March 30 and now it’s a few days short of a month since the surgery and she’s still not baring weight on that leg full time. I joined a Yahoo group for people with dogs with the same injury Dogger has/had and there are a few other dogs on the list who had surgery around the same time Dogger did and those dogs have been on all four feet for at least a week, but those dogs didn’t have Doggers raging post-operative infection either, so that really slowed down her progress from the very beginning. I had thought her wound was a little drippy but it turns out it was a lot drippy and that can be a sign of infection and in her case, it was.

But, the wound is about 98% closed and there is no more drainage of any kind. I gave her a bath over the weekend and she tolerated it well. She’s walking a lot better and seems to be on the road to recovery, so far. She goes back to the vet on Thursday.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Busy, Busy, Busy

Friday evening I went down to see my parents and to have some work done on Minnie, Saturday afternoon, I went back home and planted my gift azalea, in the course of digging the hole, dug a hole deeper than any hole I have ever dug that was not on a beach! Sand really gives you an inflated sense of your innate strength ability to dig holes, there should  really be warning labels on sand shovels.


Please note sand is not representative of real dirt.

 The dirt in front of my house was not nearly as sensitive to my needs as it should have been and lets not even speak of my existing shrubbery,  I'm having a sit down with their root systems ASAP and we're going to talk about some changes to their policies and procedures as to  moving aside for new additions to the landscaping. This time I took prisionrs, next time around I'm bringing a truck and a tow line and I will be implementing some key personnel changes.

In my mind, the dirt and those plants belong to me and they should have yielded to me without me having to jump up and down on my shovel like a cartoon character, really it was like a stick missing its pogo. But I finally got it in. Please note it is not as close to the patio as it may appear.
The plants root ball is much larger than foliage would suggest.


Friday morning I wore a jacket to work because it was a little brisk, by Saturday night I was horrified to discover that the window unit a/c upstairs was no longer working! We went from jacket weather to Oh, my gawd I am going to die from the heat! in thirty-six hours. It was springy and then it was summer. Like that. I haven't turned on the house a/c yet but I know it will be soon.

The quandary about when to turn on the a/c is a yearly issue. I hate to turn it on before the middle of May because I arbitrarily decided that May was too early to switch the system on when I could just open windows, I should be taking advantage of the fact that I am lucky enough to live in a house built in the  precentral air era and was as such  designed to take advantage of cross ventilation. I should just open the windows and stay still.

I'm pretty sure in Dallas  the a/c went on in the middle of February, but the climate was different and very few homes around were built before the advent on central air and were not built with an eye towards providing ventilation,  and I had thin blood.   I feel like such a pussy now that I'm here and my blood has gotten thick from the cold, first I had to get used to the cold and now I can't tolerate the heat.  Years ago before my pussy-fication I laughed at 85-90 degrees! That was springy and pleasant! No need to turn the a/c on for that! 102-105? Sure, now  it's gotten a little warmer, feel free to turn on the a/c. Now? 85-90 degrees and I'm clinging to my a/c unit and bitching about the heat.

While I was down seeing my parents I got a chance to tour a beautiful  kitchen garden. it had lovely raised beds and home-made plant braces and even better? It was all grown from seed!.  it was so natural and homey, it was a real Mom and Pop garden.

It makes my garden look down right corporate in comparison with my store bought plants and pre-made plant braces and fancy red plastic "mulch". The other garden didn't have to put "mulch" in quotes because it was actual MULCH, it didn't need  the asterisks.  My Gawd! I'm growing a Wal-Mart in my back yard!  It's a good thing I didn't chose to make hating Wal-Mart  into a lifestyle choice or I would be having some deep issues now. My garden is very nice and I am not a farmer. I am a gardener. A newbie gardener. A newbie gardener that doesn't have the patience or the intestinal fortitude to grow  from seed. A newbie gardener who likes garden bling. Sue me


Speaking of the garden. Last year I thought I was such a garden bad ass that I would buy some raspberries and grow my own and have raspberries whenever I wanted them? Total huberious. Well. Above is  an actual raspberry flower growing on one of my plants! Shocked? I was. I saw that the plants had white stuff scattered around but I assumed it was just bird crap!  I mean, really, who would have thought that my raspberry plant might actually produce raspberries

Sunday, April 26, 2009

HAPPY   SUNDAY    !!!!!!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

HAPPY  SATURDAY   !!!!!

Friday, April 24, 2009

Friday Kitten Blogging

Beginners Birding.
!!!!!

Dogger used her knew knee! She tentatively put weight on that leg!
A Happy Customer is a return customer.

\
Diana,

I'm sorry but I can't replace one plant from the collection. A refund in the amount of $3.33 for the cost of the Tangerine Mama is being processed.

No argument, no wheedling, no finger pointing. I should have known they were rock stars because my order was packed beautifully for shipping, arrived on time and in great condition. I took a risk ordering plants through the mail and they more then exceeded my expectations. When I had a problem, they solved it. Wow. That's what I call really good customer service. I'm just not accustomed to being treated that well by vendors and I told them that too. It's important to let a company know when they exceed your expectations as well as when they miss the mark. I emailed them late Tuesday and Thursday they got back with me. Burpee offers excellent customer service. 

I thought I would just try, the plant died and you know, I mean if you don't ask... You never know and while a new plant might have been cool and  they certainly don't sell Tangerine Mama at Wally-World.  I am more than satisfied with the refund. I will most certainly order my plants from them next year too because they offer a great product and I can be secure that if anything does happen Burpee stands behind their products and offers offers excellent customer service  I had a problem and they solved it. Period. Great company and great service, I wholeheartedly recommend Burpee for your seed and plant needs.

I was feeling so flush with success with this that I decided to take on my vet insurance. They finally under wrote Dogger, which is nice but reading the small print was decidedly not as nice. I knew they wouldn't cover her Addison's  and I had my doubts about her knees I had assumed there wasn't anything else they could decide to not cover. I  mean once you have said you won't cover the pricey chronic disease or the expensive acute orthopedic issues what's left?

Her teeth.

I brush her teeth. I used to brush them a lot more frequently than I do now but I still brush when I can, which is more than some people. The vet has never touched her teeth, ever. However, on her chart it says that she is undergoing ongoing dental treatment!  Because I brush her teeth!  I saw it under the list of things they consider a pre-existing condition and I went through the roof.

I sent an email,  where I calmly and rationally and without a single expletive explained the misunderstanding and left it in their hands. I don't think I should be punished for being responsible and doing routine maintenance of her teeth. I've always taken good care of her teeth and if something does happen to them it should be covered. If I never did anything to them and just let them rot I would understand... No, I wouldn't, I would expect my insurance to pay to fix them. It made me mad, I'm paying them $30 a month in the hopes that they would pull my fat out of the fire if I ever needed it.  So far they have left me to burn.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

More fun with me!

Since we're on the topic of my old age related ills, lets talk about my thumb.

Back when I was forcing The Kitty to live despite his better judgement, he knew he was dieing while I "knew"  that he was going to live because of the sheer force of my will - He bit through my thumb while I was force feeding him. It bled a little but it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. My cat was dieing.

Now, months later its a big deal because the thumb is going through some changes.  The good news is that sooner rather than later I will have a shiny new pink nail, I can see it there, waiting for the old nail to let go but old nail seems to be in no hurry to move on to the next phase of it's life. If that grosses you out you should be living with it, its even grosser in real life and it hurts.  To spare both myself and others the adult content and graphic  nature, I wear band aids or tape on it and they both make me crazy, the nail throbs but the adhesives on the tape and band aids makes me want to lose my mind. I don't know whats worse, the band aids or what's under it. I have learned that my thumb pretty much warms the bench  when it comes to digging in the garden, my thumb is absolutely first string when it comes to trying to wash my hair.You learn things over time.

Well enough about my thumb. Wednesday was Administrative Professionals Day!!!  and I got a prezzie!

Isn't it pretty? Its so much better than a bouquet they got me last year. It's  going to look really nice in my yard. I have another azalea on the other side and next spring they will be a nice matching pair. Thursday, management is taking all the support staff out to lunch. It's good to have a job.
Signs of the Times

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Ancient

I am old.It's one thing to know that in theory but it sucks in practice. I don't mind being older right up until I get smacked in the face with it: YOU ARE  FORTY!  its one thing to be forty, I mean everyone I know is forty or about to be. My Face Book friends can't go a week without at least one of them having their fortieth birthday announced so I'm not freaking out about it, too late for that anyway but it is quite another to feel forty.  On your average day I don't feel that old but DAMN I'm old.

I have been sore for the last two days because I went on a tour of houses! and now I'm sore. I would understand if I walked fifteen miles or ran a 5k or rode my bike four hours, none of those of course things I would ever do, but if I did do those things I would fully expect to be in pain. I walked for a total of about three miles and I want an epidural. How sad is that? Go on a leisurely stroll on a lovely day , walk with no hills, no uneven surfaces, nothing even vaguely trying or sore-making and yet I am sore.

I am so old. I really need to get back on the bike so that I don't freeze into place -  but I don't think the bike is going to have much affect on the sore feet and knees. I think Doggers bad knees were some how contagious because  my knees feel like something bad happened. I am totally feeling her pain now. It's not so bad on soft surfaces but it sucks hard on concrete or whatever they made the floor of at work. Ouch.

I also think it may be time for new shoes because the old ones are not doing the trick anymore and I would guess don't offer the support that my aging joints need. Darn it. I hate shopping for shoes, I all ready knew that I was going to need new sandles for this summer but I might also need new walking shoes too. Man, this being old is expensive. I think as long as I am spending money, I'll go look at  cardigans and house coats while I'm out, maybe I'll get one of those little wheeled carts

I'm not so old or in pain that I wasn't able to go out and find my broccoli plants, so yay me. Since I went neo-Gardener with the designer plants - one of which has all ready died, RIP "tangerine mama",  I decided to go old school and plant my green-bean seeds as an experiment.

In honor of Earth Day, the finished garden!


Oh. Happy "Administrative Professionals Day" to my fellow secretaries and office drones.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Photo-blogging Madness Tuesday!

Yesturday was all about my "kitchen garden", today is all about other peoples' flower gardens And speaking of kitchen gardens? If anyone in the greater Raleigh area could hook me up with some broccali seedlings, that would be way kewl because I hit Lowes and Wally-World and didn't find any. Sad, very sad.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Ms. Green Jeans, 2009

My plants arrived! Yay! On Friday! Yay! As I was leaving town for the weekend... Boo! They did really seem to enjoy the road trip and were good travel companions.

I spent Saturday looking at other peoples lovely old homes and their gorgeous gardens and then came back home and did an entire Saturday worth of work in two hours Sunday evening on my garden.

In the beginning...


And then  after a lot of work and help from my Dad, we really started cooking with gas! But gardens need more than enriched soil and healthy limits to do their job.



I got the hoses arranged but then I began to some issues with the soaker hoses that I blamed on a lot of things that weren't actually the problem. I had two problems : I have two hoses but all the water was being used up by hose #1 and there was no water left by the time it hit hose #2; Problem two was that I had originally hooked Hose #1 directly to the faucet and I was having a lot of problem with water loss because the soaker hose soaking everything in its path between the faucet and the garden - this was solved with a suggestion from my Dad to get a short length of hose that would go from the faucet to the soaker hose in the garden to stop the water waste, Brilliant! but...

 

I still was having a problem of too much water and water pressure on one side of the garden and not nearly enough of either on the other. The water was making it to hose #1 but there wasn't any left for hose #2. Half the garden was a wetlands and the other was a desert. My Dad solved this one too. He suggested adding a splitter to the extension hose and the problem was solved immediately. Now the water pressure was equally shared and so was the water. I also ended up replacing the too long hose #1 with a shorter hose. But as a modern, with it gardener I wasn't done yet! There are more layers of over-thinking to do before we can turn this box'dirt into a garden, note the red "mulch" for the tomatoes, its' supposed to be beneficial. We'll see.




 Now it was onto the problem of keeping the water in the garden where it belonged and keeping out  what did not. The only plants I want  at the party are the ones on The List. I'm all for volunteerism but  I draw the line at  weeds doing  their community service  hours in my garden. It changed a little from this image as I ended up have two rows of tomatoes.
Finally

The  mail order tomaotes and peppers are in, the "mulch" is down and the cadges have been deployed. I even had time to get my compainon  marigolds in and I am hopeful that I'll be able to get my broccoli bought and planted this week.  Tommorow I'll post the images from the flower gardens I visited.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

HAPPY    SUNDAY     !!!!!!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

HAPPY    SATURDAY    !!!!!

Friday, April 17, 2009

Friday Kitten Blogging

I was a very busy girl last night.  Went by the post office after work to mail package to a friend, filled Minnie tank, picked up the forgotten kitten chow, baked and frosted a dozen pink cupcakes, kept an eagle eye on Dogger, packed up everyones stuff for our weekend trip to my parents place, cuddled Tiny, filled the dishwasher, did a load of laundry and took a shower.

What I did not get done? Write an Entry. Oops, I knew I forgot something!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Better than ...

Dogger is doing better. Not great, not even particularly good but she's doing better. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say Monday she was at 1 and now she's at 3 1/2 . Not great but better. She has achieved laying down unaided but when she walks it is  like a very old person with severe arthritis and sore feet. It's not pretty. A very old person with severe arthritis and sore feet wearing an E-Collar- An E-Collar she thought she had seen the last of. I think along with her anti-inflammatories she could also use an antidepressant.

The one thing that has not changed since March 22 is that Dogger is still  weird. Wednesday she decided out of nowhere  that she does not like her water bowl anymore, she thinks its scary and she won't drink out of it and she's not interested in drinking out of anything else that might be posing as a water bowl either. She will drink water but only if it has kibble floating in it and while she will eat that kibble she will refuse it after it has gotten too wet and after the kibble has gotten too wet she won't drink the water it's floating in either. She will eat her kibble if it is dry.

I attribute this to it taking longer for her to eat, under normal circumstances she sucks down her food before it gets a chance to get too soggy, she doesn't like it when it changes texture. I don't know why all of a sudden she's eating more slowly. I don't understand. Oh, and? She won't eat her food at all if it is raised off the ground, now its "bad" and she can't eat it. Her food has always been raised off the floor but all of a sudden she won't eat it if its off the floor. I think the infection went to her brain.

Shockingly, Tiny is still around. He is a furry spot of joy in my day. He's happy, he's healthy and best of all his surgical incision healed properly. He's bouncy and joyful and loving and still wants to play all the time, he was bouncy and joyful and loving and wanted to play all the time when he was eight hours out off the table. He is walking sunshine.

I am neglecting my little sunshine terribly now and I feel really bad.  I want to spend more time with him but every minute I'm paying attention to him is a minute I'm not spending with Dogger and she needs me so much right now that I can't leave her. Tiny should be hating me, I would feel better if he was hating me. The Kitty would certainly be hating  me and letting me know how bad a person I was being and I would deserve it but Tiny just keeps puttering around exploring and discovering and being so happy about everything he finds along the way. He makes me so happy.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Baby Steps

2000 mg Amoxicillin (antibiotic), 400 mg Etodolac (for pain), 100 mg Tramadol ( for pain). 7 pills a day, not counting her existing Addison's pills, so really 9 pills a day.  Again. Substitute Cephalexin and you have what she came home with initially and what I thought we were finished with. Dogger pills okay but nobody wants to swallow that many pills and three of them are huge. Lets hope they do what they are supposed to.

 It's almost as though the last almost three weeks didn't happen. Except almost three weeks ago she was kind of weight baring on that back leg and now she isn't. Sigh. I wish I had a reset button. Sadly, there is no such button and the last almost three weeks did happen and she has lost a lot of ground. Lost the ability to bare weight on that side, lost muscle tone and weight she didn't need to shed.

This back sliding had started to happen  before this weekend when Doggers leg started to feel a little warm and by Monday she couldn't sit or lay down on her own. She was standing up when I came in first thing in the morning and I thought that was a good sign. Yay! Look at her standing up on purpose! She was still standing when I came home at lunch and when I came home after work as well. This is not a good sign.

It took  me until 6pm to get her to lay down and then it wasn't as much her being able to do it as it was me figuring out how to physically shift her into a laying down position without hurting either of us. This was not fun but it was worth it because Dogger was able to sleep for the first time in 24 hours. I fell asleep too. Baby kitty spent two hours bouncing off us. Neither of us was up to caring.

I called the vet first thing AM and took her in over my lunch hour. Here's to hoping I don't mess it up this time.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Lets see...

The good news is I got a great tip about a very helpful yahoo group dedicated to dogs with orthopedic problems and it is a font of information, the bad news is that Dogger lost the ability to lie down on her own and I couldn't find reference to that anywhere. I also am beginning to think that Dogger isn't putting any weight on her back legs at all and all her weight is being carried by her front legs. I'm calling her doctor first thing. Oh? and the back leg weakness? could also be her Addison's flaring.
Back to Life

Damn. This week is going to suck, I mean last week was all about having Friday off and a three day weekend and four day week and that was just so great. This week? The knowledge that there isn't anther day off for another month.

If I was to be polled on the subject, I would say I prefer having a Friday off to a Monday. How much stuff do you have to do every Friday? Nada! You don't have to do jack on Friday! Weekly tasks on Friday? Show up! You have to show up, its not like the dreary unjoy of all those Monday tasks - Monday, is all about things you have to get done Monday. I've also noticed that a week without a Monday always feels longer than a week without a Friday.

Speaking of last week, my marching orders after Doggers' surgery was to keep her in her box and off her feet. Fine, two weeks on crate rest? In our Sleep! She and I both know the drill there and while we don't love it, we get it. This time, keeping in mind her other bad knee, I thought it would be a good idea to not stress that knee more than necessary by keeping the weight off it - So every time I took her out to do her business, I held up her back end with a towel. It seemed like a good idea.

Dogger had her first official post op appointment Thursday evening. The good news? No more crate-arrest and the E-collar is now not a 24-7 part of her wardrobe. The bad news? Two weeks post op Dogger does not put any weight on her new knee. In real life? She's supposed to, I kept a towel under her hips and carried her back end everywhere she went for two weeks so that I could protect her old bad knee from over work and instead I just bunged up her new knee from under work! Bad idea.

My marching orders for the next two weeks is to have no more good ideas and to make her walk on all four feet. Damn it. So far its been three days and she isn't and she can't. She yipps often and steadfastly refuses to use that leg and I don't know what to do. The doc said to "walk her slowly" and to find hills for her to "walk up". He says the new knee is ready for action and needs to be used. Dogger won't use the knee! Dogger won't straighten out her leg! I can walk her slowly all day but it doesn't make her put weight on that leg. I looked online for rehab protocols for her surgery and I couldn't find any. I'm kind of freaking out.

Okay. One less thing for me to be freaking out about : The Garden is tilled and is ready to go. I even got my soak-er hoses arranged! it took a while and another trip to the store for an extension hose, but, finally, at long last the hoses, the timer, the dirt, compost and fertilizer are all together and are now waiting for me to get both kinds of rubber mulch down and for the vegetables to arrive.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

HAPPY   EASTER   !!!!!!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

HAPPY    SATURDAY   !!!!!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Friday Kitten Blogging

GOOD FRIDAY

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Want!

Honda Element goes to the dogs
Yay for us!

Year sixteen was another fantastic year for the Bunny Drive. We collected 1,184 bunnies, chicks and other furry critters.
It's Friday!

I don't what day it is where you are but where I am today feels a lot like Friday. It's feeling Friday here because North Carolina holds on to its past as a theocracy and since Friday is Good Friday, I and the rest of the State Employees have the day off. So today is Friday.

Ha.

This weekend is Garden D Day. It will be tilled, it will be raised, hoses will be laid and rubber mulch will be put in place. In the rain if necessary because this shit is getting old and I want this thing done. My plants are scheduled to arrive between the 20th and the 28th and I want  my babies' nursery to be ready for them.

 I was not able to find green bean plants, which made me sad, but I was able to find green been seeds - Which does not make me happy but does cause me less sadness  because the seeds, unlike other kinds of seeds can be sown directly into the soil. This makes me happy. What has made me actually happy is to discover that broccoli is also a warm weather plant and I have a chance to try again with my baby brocs and hopefully this time I'll actually get broccoli.

Yes, this year I am concentrating on growing things I want to eat. No squash no cucumbers and no eggplant.  I'm still planting six different tomatoes that I'll have to disguise in order to eat but I can live with that subterfuge. I do eat peppers and that's good because I'll have six different  (sweet) varieties to work with.

Peppers, green beans and broccoli plus six different colors and varieties of tomatoes. Wow. Hopefully this years  new and improved super soil with amazing tilled action will help produce many, many of each and be-still-my-heart, larger vegetables. I was happy with my peppers last year but even I know that they were too small. The ones I saw at the store and at the farmers market were enormous, mine at home were dwarfy and my skimpy tomatoes were hardly impressive. I  don't blame them alone, my large tomatoes were not a massive variety  to begin with - I blame this on trying to grow them in solely in compost, which was not maybe the best idea. Soil is important too and I wasn't using any because I didn't have any.  The native dirt in my yard is made up of equal parts dust, shredded dog toys and pollen.

 This year I want to be impressed and even better I want my garden to impress. This year I'm going to give them a really nice nursery in real store bought potting soil, tilled native soil and of course, compost dirt. Not to mention the raised bed, the addition of soaker hoses,  timed watering, tomato cages and rubber mulch. Garden hubris aside, I would like to get something out of  all the work that this garden has all ready been and will be over the next several months besides sunburn and muscle strain.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

It's funny because its true


Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work
Flashback

I was puttering around the house, watching Divine Design and wishing I had a pile of money to drop on Candace Olsen so she could wave her hands over my house and make it divine. I think once she got over her initial horror that she would really be able to make  something out of it,  ideally, she would do the whole place, in reality she seems to limit herself to one room but since she did a dining room that looked to have the same square footage as my entire downstairs, I think she could muddle through.

Now, as long as I am dreaming, if Candace Olsen is doing her thing inside, then Curb Appeal could do their thing outside at the same time. I don't know if HGTV does cross-overs but I think it would be good test case for them. I also think that CA could also take care of my backyard as long as they were here anyway.  Talk about a HGTV Dream House!

While I was thinking about everything an unlimited budget could get me, the phone rang.

Insert cliche sound of record needle scratching across surface

It was a Detective from Wilmington and after he assured me that everyone I know was all right and that I wasn't about to be arrested, he asked if I knew how my North Carolina drivers licence number got on a South Carolina drivers licence, so  I told him and I was able to come across with my report numbers and names of the Detectives in Raleigh and Cary that I haven't heard from in a year.

 I hadn't thought about her in a while, well, actually, I think about her every-time I look around and see a restaurant full of potential purse thieves, and every-time  I get lost because she stole my GPS, and every-time I can't write a check at the grocery. Come to think about it, I think about her a lot. The good news is I no longer think about arranging for her child  to be grabbed up by CPS and put into the system because she used he/she as a prop while she stole from stores using my identity, and I also no longer imagine jailing all her relatives because they potentially accepted stolen goods from her and of course I wanted  for her to be  in stir for forever - After I had a chance to publicly shame and humiliate her.

Insert cliched  thrown gang sign  I play for keeps. Yo.

But the truth is, I don't hate her anymore. I hope she has moved past that ugly, desperate time of her life and is happier, healthier and in a better place financially and spiritually and is supporting herself and her child doing something that she can be proud of. Something where she doesn't have to hurt other people. I hope she is okay.

He explained that she or whomever she either sold my info was still using it!  THAT BITCH!!!!AHHHHHH!!!! KILL!! MAIM!!! DESTROY!!! CALL CPS!! AHHHHHHHH!!!  The "good" news is they have moved past stealing purses and "people" all together and are now stealing checks from mail boxes and are concentrating on picking on business. Using my drivers licence number. They got one guy's business for $1600 and he didn't discover it until her was doing his taxes and going through checks and found one that wasn't from his bank and he hadn't signed and yet had his routing and account numbers on it. He called the police who then called me. I don't really understand where my misbegotten drivers licence number factor in to this but it played a part. Yay.

I told the Detective from Wilmington that they found her and  if they needed charges pressed, if they needed someone to come to court, if they needed someone to be aggrieved, I was there. I really want to meet her

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Another Tuesday

I think Dogger walked a few halting steps on all four feet!! She was limping but she had weight on both hind legs. Of course, then she wanted to get where she was going and she was back to hopping . I prefer to think of it as warming up for her role in our Easter pageant.

The other day a co-worker brought her black lab into the office and all I could think of was Look at that dog walking on all four of its feet. Man, she's not limping or favoring any of them. Look at her walking! Look at her gate! Its so smooth and unlabored. Wow.  That is so cool. . I miss my dog.

I was looking at my calender today. If (when) I get the house refinanced, which should save me lets say, conservatively $70 a month and I take out the state refund, $350 and I put them into an account, and I do more scrimping, and Dogger  if heals quickly, I could maybe, do the other knee sooner rather than later. If I can schedule surgery two on the eight week anniversary of surgery one, then if all things work out like they should, then eight weeks post that, Dogger would be recovered from both procedures  a week before we leave for vacation. That would be my dream.

But. We're at nine days post op and she's still in recovery. Her ankle is less swollen and the wound in clean. She is still hopping a lot but I don't think she's in pain and she's eating, drinking and voiding normally. I read somewhere that at four to five days post op she should have started to bare weight on that side. She's not, at least not full time and I think it might be only on accident when it happens. I think I'm abetting this non-use by using a towel under her hips whenever I take her out of her crate to prop her up and to try to conserve the other knee. I really do not want her to re-injure that one. The good news is that all that weight lifting is good for me.

Lets see. The flowers I spread all over the front of the house on Saturday are now huddled in the corner of my patio covered by a sheet because we're under a freeze warning for the next two nights.  I wore shorts and sandles over the weekend and now I'm scouting for sweaters.

Oh, and for my fellow House fans... Kutner! Dude!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Sunnyside Up

We finally scored a pretty weekend! And I despite the fact I had about six hours of Curb Appeal banked on my T-Faux, I actually went outside. Thanks to the many hours of CA I've been watching I started to notice how little of it my house has. It's cute, but not really appealing. I got up early  Saturday and mowed the yard, which helped, but not enough.

I decided to do something about tarting my space up.  I needed flowers. I had two plastic planters waiting in the basement  and the two that wintered outside waiting to work.  Did you know that with a power drill at your side there are very few containers that can not become planters? I mean really. If it can be drilled through, it can be filled with dirt. You don't have to spend a lot of money on something that calls itself a planter, if you think something would be a good planter - Make it into a planter!

Okay. I had the planters, I needed to go to get some dirt. I waited in line at the dirt store for forty-five minutes! Everyone in Raleigh had the same idea. Post dirt gettage, I needed flowers. Wallyworld was kind enough to put some very nice flowers on clearance because they had gotten a little old. Not dead,  not diseased not out of season just old. I got them for half off. They had the same, if younger flowers for six dollars a pot. Dumb.

Wally didn't have my bedding plants so it was onward and outward. I discovered after a online search for soaker hose tutorials that I needed a widget thingy for my soaker hoses. A widget that by the way you can't buy on the open market! I didn't know that until I went to every market I could think of though.  You have to have a special flow limit-er or pressure reducer to properly use a soaker hose.  The $8 fifty foot soaker hoses I bought don't have the same kind of reducer - They have kind of the same thing but not really. I broke down and bought a $14 dollar twenty-five foot hose because it did come with one. I'm just going to out it first in the line and let it do the job. I could have done more driving around but I just wasn't in the mood. I had planting to do and I still hadn't found my bedding plants.

Stop number four for the morning I found my bedding plants. Finally, Curb Appeal somewhat achieved.

This year my azalea bloomed, last year it didn't.
Planter Detail
Deck Appeal!
After I worked on my flower garden, I went and looked at a garden on a larger scale at the  Raleigh Arboretum .

Sunday, April 5, 2009

HAPPY      SUNDAY     !!!!!!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

HAPPY   SATURDAY    !!!!!!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Friday Kitten Blogging

Sleep Worker

I've spent all day at work thinking that what I really want to do is to curl up under my desk and nap. I mean there are a lot of staples under there and it's kind of dusty and the floor is hard but it just seems like such a good idea.

I'm drowsy, it would be not a good idea to sleep at my desk so what's a better solution than to nap under my desk? I would be out of sight, sleeping peacefully and its not like anyone is going to come looking for me - Interested parties would look in the door, see that I was not in my chair and then go away! They would assume that I was running something somewhere or "down the hall" or whatever. I could conceivably be under there for hours.

It doesn't help that the sun hasn't come out all day and the sky is the color of a gray crayon and the light is filtered all weird and its just somnolent. I don't want to be awake because the weather is working against me staying awake. If I was supposed to be awake it would be sunny and clear and nice - Instead its overcast, gray and drizzling. No one should be expected to stay awake during the day in weather like this.

Oh and now someone wants me to scan something! Am I coming into their office and making giveing thm work to do? I think not! You would think that it would be obvious to the fact that I am curled up in a ball in my desk chair that I am not up to this! Gawd.

Oh and now its raining! That'll help with keeping me away. Dark, rainy and dismal! How is conscience supposed to compete with that? its not even fair. If I was conscience I would call foul on that because its just cheating. Now I want to sleep at my desk! I don't even want to waste the time it would take to get under my desk. If I were to turn my office light off at this point I would probably fall out of my chair.

I went to bed at a reasonable hour and everything; I woke up kind of early but I didn't get out of bed so it really didn't count as being awake as far as I am concerned because for me "awake: is defined by being weight bearing, vertical and performing tasks. I woke up naturally and looked at the clock, ascertained it was way to early to be awake and went to not-asleep-but-not-awake. I was fine. Tiny was not. Tiny sensed the change in my heart rate and decided that even with my eyes closed I was very much awake and he saw an opportunity to make me feel loved. In his mind I was clearly lonely and sad and he was the only one who could save me from this horror. Such a thoughtful little guy.

So now I want to sleep under my desk, the only place I can get any rest.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

In and Out

I decided to not go home at lunch today. I know, bad dog mommy but when I walked out of my building it just seemed cold and kind of damp and windy and I decided I didn't want to expose Dogger to any of those things right now. I also don't really want her to spend too much time out of her crate. She's supposed to be crate-fast for two weeks and I don't want to risk injury because I'm projecting how much I hate being stuck in enclosed spaces. She might like enclosed spaces! She's a dog, they like caves.

I served my penance though. Instead of going home I went to my McDonald's for a happy meal and ran into Overly Familiar Counter Guy for the first time in months. I didn't think he still worked there. I think it was Gawds way of telling me to eat a protean bar and ride my bike at lunch instead.

Life on Mars is ending tonight. I really like that show and I wish it had more of a chance. The British version only ran 16 episodes but the shows there are engineered to only run a very short time and the stories are designed to move along faster and wind up faster. We get used to shows running almost indefinitely and the stories having more time to evolve. E.R is also ending this week, speaking of "indefinitely and evolution". I can't believe its over. What am I going to do during from 10-11pm on Thursdays? I've been watching E.R since it started and now it's over. Do you know how many Fridays I've woke up thinking Yay! it's Saturday! only to remember Wait, E.R was on last night. It's Friday. I'm going to miss those people, I grew attached to even as I grew tired of them.

The show did that on purpose. A new cast member would join and every storyline would be All About Them for weeks,and they would force us to love the new guy - and then we would ignore them for a while as they geared up for the exit of another cast member and it would be All About Them for weeks and the would force us to loath the old guy until they finally left. The chief of the E.R was always an officious asshole who was Going To Make Changes Around Here until they got beaten into embracing the idea that It Is Different Down Here and finally joined the slacker fold. You could set your calender every season because something crashed into or blew up or opened fire onto the E.R or the loading bay every year. I mean big things, big PTSD causing conflagrations that mostly just slid off their collective backs like water off a duck - Unless they became raging alcoholics or drug addicts or killed themselves. No one developed a tick or got a little neurotic at that workplace.

I liked that when a co-worker left or as was the case most of the time, died violently that they stayed gone, most of them at least and there was very little pining for them, just like in real life. I liked the constant coming and going and now all of them are leaving. Sigh.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Post Operative Anxiety

Hi, My name is Diana

Hi Diana!

My name is Diana and I am an over-protective Dog mommy.

Let me explain, as we all know Dogger had surgery on Friday. Sur-ger-y. A surgeon cut into her leg and rooted around.  I've been a lucky girl, I've never had surgery and I have never lived with an incision. And? If I had,  there is a very good chance that the incision would be covered up! I would not be looking at the wound. The wound would be hidden from view.

I think for dog surgery,  bandaging the wound would have  placed the procedure  outside my price point.  Doggers incision is right out there in the open. I have nothing to do but watch it all day. I watched it starting to look red and her ankle looked very swollen and when I came home at lunch, I watched a leetle bit of blood appear. The wound was red and swollen and appeared to be bleeding!

And she has squealed! She's made terrible dog-in-pain sounds and I can't have that, she can't have that. I called my vet and explained my dog was squealing and needed to get in now, now, now or failing now, I could do later. Later worked. Do you know what else I had scheduled for later? My precinct meeting! I had brow beaten my chair about scheduling it and now I couldn't go! Do you know how many precinct meetings I've missed? One, I've missed one, but that wasn't my fault really because I didn't get a notice... But that was years ago . Lately, I have not missed a meeting even when everyone else has and I've sat there like a nudge by myself. I take these precinct meetings very seriously, I didn't miss this lightly.

I did  technically attend the meeting. I signed in. I called ahead and told my chair that it wasn't going to happen and arranged to meet him early. He gave me shit and I gave him money for our precincts dues. I'm still going to be a delegate.

Post kissing my  precinct chairs ass, I raced to the vets. I tied Dogger down in two different places to keep her from doing the happy-dogger-dance-of-joy she likes to do in the car. We got to the vet and were ushered into an exam room where I finally met Doggers surgeon! He was wearing a tie decorated with happy cocker spaniels! So cute! He looked at Doggers leg and checked out her incision and cankle and said she was fine and the wound was healthy and clean and in good shape. It turns out I wasn't seeing bleeding, I was seeing dried blood that got wet. He explained as she starts to use the leg more there will be fluid escaping and its not a bad thing and it does not mean gangrene is setting in. The cankle will go away.

They didn't charge me for the visit.