Monday, December 31, 2007

New Years Wishes

I took this picture on the last full moon. It was the wishing moon. I thought it would be appropriate for this post. I don't usually make new years resolutions, because I find it so depressing when I don't complete them. This year I am making New Year Wishes.

This year I wish for a new home. I wish for THE new home. I wish for organization, I wish for creativity and the time to use it. I wish for strength to accomplish the big goals and the small goals. I wish for friends and I wish for peace. I wish for happiness for myself and everyone.

Here is to one more wish, I wish a Happy New Year to all!

Blessings,
~*~

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Holidays or Lazy days...

I was so looking forward to having time off during the winter break. I only had to take 3 vacation days from work and would end up with 11 total days away from work. I had so many things I wanted to get done, so many projects. So, what have I done this week, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I have sat on the sofa and watched movies for days. Every day that I did nothing, I felt what little energy I had was draining away. I've slept very late every day and have napped as well. I have not knitted one single stitch and my house is a regular disaster. I hate this time of year. I always get like this right between Christmas and New Years. I was finally able to get moving a little today. I slept late but had to be at the vet by noon to pick up more medicine for the beastie, so I got up around 9, took a shower and headed out. I stopped for gas, picked up the medication at the vet and then went to the grocery. When I returned home I was able to keep going and cleaned most of the kitchen, cleaned the litter boxes, swept the floors, did several loads of laundry and worked on cleaning up my bedroom. It had become the storage room when I cleaned out the computer room and hall. I made a little headway, but there is still a way to go. I hope to have the energy to work on it tomorrow.

I'm already dreading going back to work. I don't have to return until Wednesday, but there is some work I have to do remotely before then. I am determined to go back with a better attitude and to keep my mouth shut about things. There is so much there that bothers me, but there is really nothing I can do about it and I can't afford to get fired, so, zip it! :-)

I've been thinking more and more about "the property". I still have my treasure map of it and have a candle that burns for it every day. I've also been working with Saint Expedite to bring it to me quickly. I still love that place and want to live there. But sometimes, I feel that I should just make the best of things here. Maybe I should put up my fence to block out the neighbors and just work as best I can here. I don't know any more. The thought of all that peace and quiet, of all the land that would be mine. It just makes me smile and makes me feel at ease. I'm so tense here all the time. But am I making myself tense?

Oh well, enough of my rambles. I'm going to finish watching Baby Boom (a top five favorite of mine) and then who knows... maybe I'll work on the afghan, or start my second pair of socks.

Blessings,
~*~

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Continuing yesterday's post...

I realized last night, after I had posted, that I left off the anniversary part of the post. Well, the anniversary was on December 22nd and it was my 2nd blogiversary. :-)

Happy blogiversary to me. :-)

Blessings,
~*~

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Gifts and Anniversaries

Well, I'd say I kind of racked it up this year in the gift department. I received one of these for Christmas. It is pretty cool. I've been playing with it and have just finished downloading all the music on my laptop to it. Let's see, what else did I get...

The Bourne Ultimatum DVD
Supernatural Season 1 DVD
Charmed the Final Season DVD
NCIS Season 4 DVD
Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong cd
Daughtry's cd
an LL Bean barn coat in blue
a pair of shoes
Euphoria perfume gift set
several pairs of travel socks
Naturewood pattern Butter Dish and Square Baking dish
a gift certificate for a mani/pedi
the Oceans' DVD 3 pack
a gift certificate to Amazon.com
a gift certificate to a local shopping center
a Steelers tree skirt
and a lot of cash

Wow, that is a lot of stuff. :-)

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend and that Santa brought you everything you wanted!

Semi good news in the doggie department. No cancer in the spleen, but there is some sort of infection in the small intestine that seems to be causing a lot of weight loss. I have to take him in tomorrow in order to get his weight checked and also an exam. They are saying that if he doesn't start to gain weight within a few weeks, they may want to do an endoscopy. I have no idea what that is, but it doesn't sound good.

Anyway, I have another week vacation and I'm hoping to be able to stay home and enjoy it. I have a few projects that I want to work on at the house and I'm going to try to start on them tomorrow after I have returned from the vet.

Well, I'm off to catch up on my blog reading and watch some movies.

Blessings,
~*~

Friday, December 21, 2007

Yule Greetings


Happy Yule to everyone and happy whatever you celebrate to everyone. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.

(Sorry for the blurry tree post, for some reason I can't get a decent picture of my tree this year.)

Blessings,
~*~

Monday, December 17, 2007

Doggie post

Meet Dylan, my four-legged baby, otherwise known as The Beast. He has been talked about here before and there have been pictures of him here and here too. He is a black Labrador Retriever and turned 10 years old this past November. He is one of the sweetest dogs you could ever meet. He is a big dog and has a big bark which has not helped the myriad of migraines that I seem to be afflicted with on a semi-regular basis.

When Dylan was six, he was diagnosed with Diabetes. For the past four years I have scheduled my life around his insulin shots. He can only eat special dog food designed for diabetics and he gets two shots a day, 12 hours apart. When he was first diagnosed he was a nice big lab and weighed in at around 110 pounds. Now he is down to around 84 pounds.

After the second year of changing the amount of insulin every couple of weeks I asked the doctors if they could look to see if there was something else wrong with him that could be causing more problems. They said his behavior was normal for diabetics. I felt they were wrong.

Over the past several months, his insulin requirements have jumped dramatically and he has been having more of his “spells”. He has seizures and episodes where he is very wobbly and can’t walk up and down stairs or get up and down from the bed. A few weeks ago I rushed him to the emergency vet at midnight on a Friday night because his eyes looked as if they had sunken into his head. They diagnosed him with something called Horner’s Syndrome, which is a dying of the nerve endings around the eyes and causes the lids to droop.

Last Tuesday, I happened to be home during the day due to a migraine, when he had another episode. I took him to the vet and the new doctor there did some tests that came back relatively normal for a diabetic dog. However, she was very concerned about his constant episodes and wanted to do more testing. Today he went in for an ultrasound of the abdomen and also to have his ears checked. She was planning to lightly sedate him so that she could get a look down deep into his ears, the middle ear, I think.

She called a few minutes ago and said that the ears looked good, except for being dirty (they were just cleaned last week) and a slight infection. The ultrasound showed an abnormal nodule on his spleen. They aspirated it and are going to do a cytology (sp?) on it to see if it is a regenerative tumor or something else. She said that with the regenerative kind, there are normally more than one at a time. She is also concerned that he has a pancreas problem. She said there is a lot of muscle wasting around his head and also in his legs and that the pancreas problem could be causing that because his body is probably not getting enough nutrients from his food to help him and he is literally starving to death.

I’m very concerned about him. I have already lost Jade and my Grandmother and an uncle this year, not to mention my dad’s 16 year old lab. I don’t know if I can take another loss right now. I may be jumping the gun, but I just don’t have a good feeling about this.

As with Jade, I don’t want Dylan to be in pain. He always looks like so sad, but I don’t know if that is the Horner’s Syndrome or if he is in pain. My mum said yesterday that I need to think about how far I’m willing to go to diagnose his issues and treat them. I spend about $250 per month on food and insulin for him. That does not include all the vet trips and tests they have to run to monitor his condition. I know today’s bill is going to be a huge. I will be surprised to get out of there for less than $500.

Well, I just felt like talking about my dog today. Hopefully, these latest tests will reveal the problem and a suitable treatment will be found.

Blessings,

~*~

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Finally feels like December...

It finally feels like December here. For the past week or more it has been the high 70's and today the high was 38. It is currently pouring rain and 35 degrees. I wish the temperature would drop just a few more degrees so we could have sleet or snow. I love winter. I love the cold and would love to have snow and cold for most of the year. I do need some spring and summer so I can grow my herbs and vegetables. But I really love the cold.

I baked cookies today. I cheated and used a toll house mix that I got at Costco, but it was fun and the house now smells like pine trees and chocolate chip cookies. I'm planning to take them to work to share this week. Tomorrow I'm making chocolate dipped pretzels and peanut butter crackers that will also go to work.

I'm currently watching The Notebook (I'm so gonna cry) and am getting ready to edit some pictures to go in a photo album I'm giving as a holiday present. I need to get them edited tonight so I can get them printed. The photo paper that I'm printing on says they need to sit for 7 days before being put in a frame or album, so I'd best get busy because I have to have it wrapped and ready to give on the 24th.

I'm almost finished with my sock. I had to go back to my teacher and get her to help me fix a big hole I'd made and couldn't figure out. Maybe tomorrow night I can work on my sock.

Well, I'm off to edit photos.

Blessings,
~*~

Friday, December 14, 2007

Enough with the migraines...

I can't take it any more. I think my head is going to explode! Since my last post I have not been able to get rid of the migraine that started on Monday of this week. I ended up staying home on Tuesday and Wednesday although both days I had to take the beast to the vet. I went back to work on Thursday and am at work now. I really don't want to be here, but I don't have a choice. I just keep reminding myself that when I leave work next Friday I will have 11 total days off. :-)

I should hear back from the vet today about the beast's test results. The results came in yesterday but the doctor was off and no one there could tell me what they found. On Wednesday, they had me bring him back for second urine catch. It seems that the concentration levels are way too low. I'm not exactly sure what that means. She wanted to redo the test to make sure there wasn't an error in the testing and then we would talk about what it means and the options. I will say it didn't sound good.

Last night I was in bed at 7 and stayed there until 5:40 this morning. I wish I could say I slept all the way through, but I didn't. :-(

Well, I'd best get to work. Have a great day.

Blessings,
~*~

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Migraines... and surprises

It is one of those days again. When I left work yesterday I could feel a migraine starting to build. This morning it was full on pain. I decided to stay home from work and rest, but The Beast had other ideas. About 30 minutes after he was fed, he started going into seizure mode and I had to run him to the vet. It took about two hours before I could get back home. They ran tests on him and I should get the results tomorrow.

I've not been able to lay down and rest so the migraine is still raging. I don't know what I'm going to do about it. I have to go to work tomorrow. Since I couldn't rest I've done a little work on my computer/craft room. I hung a strand of lights that took me almost an hour and I tested them first but when I finally finished hanging them and plugged them in, half didn't work. Ugh...

I refuse to take them down now so I have to figure out how to fix them. Not tonight... maybe tomorrow night. :-(

On the surprise front, on Sunday I ran into a person that used to be one of my best friends. This is the person that I went to New Orleans with. Sunday was just Hi and Hi. I couldn't talk to her and didn't know what to say. Yesterday I get two emails from her within an hour. The gist of the emails were that she might like to talk and that seeing me made her realize how long it has been since we spoke. I just didn't know what to say. I waited until today and then wrote back. I don't know if I've done the right thing or not. I basically said that I was also surprised to see her and that maybe we could talk sometime. I don't know if this was the right thing to do or not. I haven't heard back from her, but in all honesty I don't expect to.

Well, I'd better go. It is almost time to feed the kids. Maybe I should see about finding me something too.

Blessings,
~*~

Sunday, December 09, 2007

send in the clones...

Are you kidding me?

I don't know who these people are, but can we please have the REAL Pittsburgh Steelers back in the game?

Ugh...

new theme

I really wanted a wintry theme for my blog, but I can't find one that I like that I can make work. So, I went through Blogger's options and chose this one. I needed something light. The dark background was beginning to depress me.

I'm watching the Steelers vs Patriots game now. It is currently halftime. I know... thrilling right, you are just so glad you know this about me. :-)

Not much knitting has been going on around here lately. Mostly just sleeping, wrapping presents and well, more sleeping. Today the temperature reached over 70 degrees. It sucks! 70 in December? There is something just so wrong about that. I think this week will be warm and it will get cold again next Sunday. I really hope so. I need cold and snow!

I thought I'd spend some time surfing. I may try to figure out this whole template thing and get one that I really like. We'll see...

Go Steelers!

Blessings,
~*~

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Quick news flash...

This morning when I got out of the shower... it was S.N.O.W.I.N.G! Snowing! Just light tiny flakes, but it was SNOW!

:-)

Blessings,
~*~