My Valentine's Day

Chris woke me up at about 7 a.m. this morning, and told to come upstairs. He had already run back upstairs by the time I was dressed, and so I opened the bedroom door to find a trail of Hershey's Kisses leading through the hallway, up the stairs, and into the kitchen.

As I came up the stairs, I saw Chris sitting at the kitchen table, smiling.

I went into the kitchen, and saw what Chris had set up: A big white teddy bear holding a red heart pillow, a heart shaped pillow covered in red hearts on a black background, a square pillow with pink hearts on a red background, and each corner has a little pom pom on it! (Oh, these pillows are incredibly soft!!!)

There was a BEAUTIFUL card leaning up against the teddy bear. And everything was candlelit: on the left hand side in front of the teddy bears was one tall pillar candle, and one smaller pillar candle, both 'romance' scented, on square glass plate candle holders. There was a lead crystal goblet style candle holder filled with more Kisses on the right. Just centered from those, was 6 votive candles that came in glass holders, 3 on each side of another Kiss.

That was my Valentine's Day present from him!!!

We had a great day, too. We drove to Glendon to have tarot and palm readings done, and Pat (The psychic) got a lot of things right about each of our 'past's'. We learned a lot from her, of what we may or may not be able to expect, and so we will probably forget all about it until a few years from now, when we'll find the papers we wrote stuff down on. Then we will see how accurate her predictions were!!!

Some of it was cooler than other parts, but for the most part, was good!

I have pics of the above gifts set up, and will post them when I have time...

:)

  ___  ___
 /   \/   |          |
 \        /
  \      /
   \    /
    \  /
     \/

Yay!!!

After a few days of pain and swelling, Patches is doing tremendously better.

Unfortunately, until his sutures are removed, and probably after for a few days, we still have to carry him up and down steps to make sure he doesn't tear his wound, or bleed, or anything else. I am sure he feels like he is being punished, because not only have we not been letting him sleep up on beds, for fear he will jump off and hurt himself, we are feeding him MUCH LESS human food, and the stuff we give him is meat, lean of course.

Even when he tries to tell me he is okay with chocolate, I still won't give it to him...

And the little porker also tried to convince me he didn't get fed this morning. ( Dad gives him his morning pill(s) and feeds him his morning and evening meals, so that we can accurately keep track of how much food he eats ( he is a little overweight... for his mix of breed) and he sat by his food dish and kind of looked at me then at the dish, and back at me, as if to say, hey, Dad disn't feed me, so you better...)

For the record, I checked his pills (I marked his twice daily antibiotics with the date and a.m. and p.m. respectively, so that we could make sure he doesn't miss any... just in case!), and I figured if he got his pill, there is no way Dad didn't feed him.

So I cuddled him instead.

I am not sure that made a difference in his appetite!

* * * * *

In other news, we are now settled in M&D's basement...

...awaiting and continuing to search for jobs...

and I am actively trying to get my health back into a more, well, healthy range.

I have an appointment to talk to a dietician, and a therapist... just to deal with random life crap, help figure out my mental blocks, you know?

* * * * *

Thanks to everyone who found their way here from Illustration Friday (or otherwise) and who commented on my last post, and wished Patches a speedy recovery. With all the people thinking of him, he has recovered spedily, but, not quite done yet. On the 13th, sutures come out, and I am sure he will not be a happy puppy after that.

I use the term 'puppy' loosely, considering Patches will be 6 on April 7th!!!

* * * * *

I find I have been thinking about Pookie a lot in the past few weeks. The thoughts come and go, bittersweet memories that bring tears to my eyes.

(Anyone who missed the back ground on Pookie - a.k.a. 'Boo', click here to read more.)

It is starting to feel weird how well we've all adjusted to life without her, although I am certain she is on our minds often. We still have the toy dog she treated like a baby when she was in heat, and would chew in between cycles, and her collar on it. Together, they sit atop the t.v. in the living room, where I am sure we all glance at it from time to time and pause to remember her.

Sigh. :) I can't wait to see her again. She was so good!

Anyway, I am tired, and have a nasty hedache, and am going to try to sleep! I can't believe how late it is! Crap! I will have to get up early and suck it up through tomorrow...

Moi.

I miss Patches

This morning, I had to drop off my [parents'] little dull-black coloured fur ball to the v-e-t to get knocked out.

He had to have an x-ray taken of his bladder, because we noticed he has had blood in his urine the last few weeks. The last few weeks consisted of the following: The v-e-t gave him antibiotics but they didn't do anything, or at least nothing to fix the real problem: he had a stone in his bladder. They used a sample of his urine (another story) to determine that this was the issue, by doing a urinalysis to see if there was crystals in it. Then they informed us our options:

1) try to do a regular x-ray while Patches is awake, to try to see if there was stones in his bladder or not;
2) anesthetize Patches, inject air into his bladder, x-ray. The air would show up dark on an x-ray, and make it easier to distinguish between the white-appearing stones, and normally white appearing organs.

Since if we were to go with option #1, and it didn't show anything, we would have to go to step #2 to ensure there wasn't anything, we skipped #1, and (easily) arranged it so that if they did indeed find the stones, they would call me and let me know, before just going right into surgery. They did call, and let me know that they found a large stone, and that they would be taking it out soon.

While I had the v-e-t/s-u-r-g-e-o-n on the phone, I also asked when I could take him home, and what other steps would be required to prevent another one from forming. (It was obviously diet- related, and when I called at 5:30 to see how he was doing, they asked me all sorts of questions about his diet, food intake, treats, etc). I was informed that we should be cutting back on the amount of treats we give him, and also NO MORE HUMAN FOOD!!!

Anyone who has ever been in our house has undoubtedly noticed the two beady eyes that stare up at you if you are eating, or are in the general vicinity of the kitchen. Mostly, it will be hard for us to not feed him extra food, because the steroids he is on for previous breathing-related problems makes him hungry. Knowing that alone makes it difficult not to give him small pieces of meat... cheese... bread... veggies... okay, okay, anything we happen to be eating, including very rarely, a small bit of chocolate.

Yeah, so to fast-forward to today: Patches ended up having surgery to remove the stone, and I can't pick him up until tomorrow afternoon.

I wish animals didn't have to go through this crap. They just don't understand why they have to go to the "evil" vet who knocks them out and makes them hurt when they wake up...

I wish I could feel the pain instead of him having to. At least they would give me meds for it if needed. For Patches, it must be like being tortured.
I know it is the best thing for him, to get the surgery done, but still. He doesn't know and understand that. I think he thinks we are doing this to him because he was bad or something.

I will feel better when i see him tomorrow.

:-)

-B

Oh, and we are out of our house in the south... got full dd back!! yay, pay bills...