The cold snap has inspired me. Well, that and Pinterest. I finally convinced all the men who do various projects in the park to SAVE EVERYTHING! No scrap is too small. I am the only one allowed to discard raw materials.
I have been absent here due to Wi-Fi issues. I could read and I could comment ....... if I had the patience to type v e r y s l o w l y and wait for the letter to appear before adding another. This is supposed to be my outlet for relaxation and I found the method to be causing me much stress.
Stress is plentiful in my life, being married to HeWho is apt to surprise me with a NEW CAR! Not actually new, as in fresh off the sales lot, but new to me, nonetheless. My previous car is sporting AAA stickers and being used to make calls to motorists who have locked their keys inside their cars, or have run out of fuel, or might be in need of a jump start. I liked the Jeep okay. I don't get excited over which vehicle I drive. I just want it to be fueled up and offer no mechanical issues while I am at the wheel. I am easy to please.
HeWho rescues motorists also tends to break things. Things like the seat adjuster. The one in the Jeep is stuck in the setting HeWho prefers. I call it "laid back". Being a short person, I prefer to actually sit up enough to look over the steering wheel. So, instead of fixing this, he just obtained a new car. I don't like the color, but it is a nice ride. A Ford 500 with all the bells and whistles, but the exterior color is that light taupe/gray color. I call it "pavement".
My objection to this color? Blends with pavement and lends to cars pulling in front of me ...... because they don't "see" me. I want to be seen. The Jeep is red, but yellow would suit me just fine. School bus yellow or maybe neon green. Yellow is the first color you notice in a car lot. Why do you think the school bus is yellow, taxi cabs are yellow (or they used to be).
Another annoyance is the sneezing. Not me, but my mate. He sneezed all day long yesterday. Loud explosive sneezes. Instead of bowing his nose, he sniffs deeply. This drives me nuts. And if that is not enough, he leans in to kiss me goodbye this morning as he was leaving to take Toni Louise to get her stitches out. Just like Hillbilly Mom, I do not want his sneeze germs! I don't even want to shake his hand and I debated whether I should sleep in the same bed last night. I figured the barrier of three dogs should keep me safe and filter the germs.
So, here sits the "new" car, and while my parking lot is huge, I still object to having 5 vehicles for two people. Keeping my fingers crossed for a mild day with no wind. I plan to empty the 3 offending vehicles of personal items and post them on Craigslist. That is the plan.
Toni Louise had her check-up this morning and I am happy to report that her bladder is shrinking back to it's normal size and has good tone. Means I no longer have to squeeze it. I was afraid I was hurting her because of all her stitches. Her master took her and reported that she was not at all afraid and wagged her tail the entire time.
I took advantage of the wonderful weather today and cleaned out on of my many gardens. This one was full of dead cosmos and tiger lilies with spent leaves. After I did that, I decided to go ahead and paint the fence.
I cleaned so hard, I broke my rake! I confess that I wondered what I could make out of the broken handle. This picture does not capture just how big this pile of weeds is.
This rake is not in great shape, but the handle is intact. Took three trips with the little trailer pulled behind the golf cart to clear all the debris.
I hope I have this much energy tomorrow! I managed to do laundry and cook, too! Not to mention filling the pill boxes and ordering prescriptions for HeWho has no idea what his pills are.
I roasted a cauliflower. It was really good. It takes 90 minutes and I was pushing the limits of hunger, so that may have been a factor in the taste. Takes little time to prep and the you can just forget about for 30 minutes. It is covered tightly with foil for the first 30 minutes, then uncovered for an hour.
I have found that roasting my vegetables makes the flavor more intense. Smells better, too. I used olive oil and kosher salt. Next time I think I will add garlic and some fresh ground pepper. Of course we did not eat the entire head, so I am wondering how the leftover half will taste.
I can always cover it in cheese. HeWho loves cheese will eat it .......
I arrived at the animal hospital at 11:30 this morning to take our Toni Louise home. She was happy enough to see me, but she seemed to like the new vet as much as she liked me. Remember, she is the dog of HeWho stayed behind to handle all the folks needing propane.
I was shown how to manually express her bladder. The tear in her bladder was up high where the ureters from her kidneys empty into the bladder. We need to completely empty the bladder to prevent infection and to help her bladder tissue resume it's normal size. It was stretched so big, it tore! Then he went over all her medications. She has some pain meds and some powerful antibiotics, as well as medication for nausea. She is still very sick.
The vet admitted to me that he was not optimistic about her prognosis when he took her into surgery. Two vets and a technician worked on her for almost 3 hours. Not only did they have to clear her bladder of all the stones and blood clots, but they had to irrigate her abdomen and get all the urine out. She handled the ride home just fine.
When she saw her master, though, her tail wagged like crazy. She is definitely happy to be home. Cujo and Wall-E were ecstatic. I am sure they thought she must be in heaven with Oscar. Toni Louise wasn't as happy to see them as they were to see her, and she let them know it! As they attempted to sniff and lick her she growled at them. This is when I knew she would be fine.
My little canine family is intact again and I am looking forward to a good night's sleep. I shall now go squeeze my dog's bladder before I lay me down to sleep.
I suddenly feel drained. It has been a long day. The vet just called to let us know that our Toni Louise made it through surgery. We had no idea just how sick our girl was.
She has been acting strange since we lost Oscar, but all three of them have, so I didn't think much about it. For about a week, though, she has been listless and not eating much. Again, I didn't think she was sick. Last week when we went to bed, lifted her into our bed the others and climbed in next to them. To my utter surprise, she stood there and peed!! In my bed ...... on my blanket. She looked shocked, like she couldn't believe what had happened.
The blanket, my blanket that I sleep with every night, did save the sheets. We scolded her and HeWho is her master took her outside again. Our routine was regained and I didn't think too much of it.
Yesterday I knew something was wrong. She didn't want to eat and she could not seem to settle anywhere. Toni Louise has a special place she likes to stay when her master is absent. She created a dark lair behind my chair and under a blanket stand. When her master is present she is in his lap gazing lovingly into his face. Last night she didn't want to sit with him and I discovered that she had vomited. Twice. It was undigested dog food.
Bedtime was a nightmare. For me, anyway. HeWho sleeps deep was unaware. Poor Toni Louise was restless. She would tap-tap across the wood floor, her signal for me to get up and lift her into the bed. Once there, she would lay down then get up, then come over to me and position herself next to me as close as she could. She was trembling, so I knew she was either scared or in pain. Since there was no thunder, I figured she must be in considerable discomfort. She was in and out of bed all night and vomited 3 more times.
My vet has closed her practice, so I spent the morning researching vets in our area. I have used the vets in our town before and found them to be lacking in compassion. We got an appointment with a vet in my Walmart city.
A soon as he picked the dog up he knew exactly what was wrong. She had peed on me in the car. It was dark, but hard to tell much about it on denim other than the fact that it smelled wrong. Really pungent. He said her bladder was as hard as a rock and whisked her off for an x-ray, saying it could be stones or a tumor.
We sat there in silence. I could not imagine losing her so soon after Oscar. I was hoping for stones. After watching cancer slowly take my dad away, I don't know that I would put her through that.
It was stones. Seems crazy to be happy about that. We thought she might have a bowel obstruction, since she kept going outside and assuming the position and producing no results. We were wrong.
We signed the papers necessary for surgery and parted with a considerable amount of money. Toni Louise was rushed away to be prepped for emergency surgery and we headed home to wait for a call.
They took her to surgery around 4:00 and he called after 7:00. He said they removed "a whole bunch" of stones ranging in size from a grain of sand to a marble! And, she had a hole in her bladder, urine leaking into abdomen. I am amazed that she did not complain more. She whimpered a couple of times today, but a stranger would not have thought anything was wrong. She was as loving as she always is and wagging her tail. She greeted the vet tech and was eager to go through the door to get pictures of her belly. She is curious about the world, while my Cujo would refer to stay right here for the remainder of his days.
We don't know when we will get our girl back. We have wait for tomorrow to see how well she responds to the medications. The stones will be sent off and analyzed to try to determine what could be causing them.
In the meantime my dogs will be dinking bottled water. Our well water is hard and full of minerals. We are missing Toni Louise. Seems strange to have only two dogs!
I learned something this past weekend that I found to be disturbing. Someone stole a battery from one of my seasonal campers. We have never had a serious theft problem here. Maybe some firewood. Just this weekend a camper decided to help themselves to freshly split wood.
Favorite Kamper DJ and HeWho delivers wood to site were busy downing trees and splitting the wood where the felled trees were, then loading the split wood to take to the wood pile. The people even asked me if the wood was free for the taking.
I assured them that it was not free and gave them the price for a bundle of wood. They did not offer any money or order any wood.
I gave the incident no more thought. It was pretty cheeky to assume the wood was free, but it was certainly not the most outrageous thing I have ever heard. The people even commented that they could not imagine working that hard to give something away "for free". I learned later that didn't stop them from taking what they wanted.
HeWho splits wood witnessed the taking. He says he told them that the wood was not free ........ but did not ask for payment! Sometimes I just sit in awe of him, and not in a good way.
But, back to the battery. I know who did it! A few months ago I had a woman call me to say she wanted to live here to "get away from my abusive husband". She was calling from another state and told me this because my initial reaction was to say that I was not having this in my park. She then went on to tell me that her husband had struck her child and was going to prison ........ BUT, she was not planning to divorce him, since he was retired military and she felt she deserved the benefits due her. I really didn't care, but for some reason people feel obliged to spill their guts to me.
Now the woman hands the phone to her mother and the woman gives me her credit card information and goes on to tell me to charge the first month's rent to this card and "anything else the kids need". I agree to do this, all the while thinking "the kids" she is referring to are her daughter and grandson. You know that old adage about assumptions .....
The day comes for the arrival of the woman fleeing her abusive husband. She comes in to register in a questionable "outfit". Not everyone can pull off the "Daisy Duke" shorts. Most especially those of us who might be prone to carrying extra pounds. Then the BOYFRIEND came in. A string bean of a man, about half the size of his companion. I was thinking the shorts she had on would have fit him better, as I waited for her to fill out the information. The boyfriend decided to engage me in conversation and I was appalled to see the condition of his teeth. Meth mouth is what we call it in these parts. I see it a lot in the local population.
In retrospect, I should have just turned the around and let them find another place to live. But, the mother vouched for them. I have been surprised from time to time when I give people the benefit of the doubt, not often, but occasionally. This was not going to be one of those times.
So, they pulled in and set up. She seemed to have an endless supply of short sorts that were too small, but would pour herself into every day. It was just the two of them the first two weeks, then suddenly they were gone for few days. They returned with a U-Haul full of household items. I happened to be across the road at another site to witness the assortment of belongings scattered all over the site and may I just say that it was quite a sight, indeed.
Noticing two children had been added, as well, I took the opportunity to tell her she would have to clean up the site, I could not have all the furniture and personal belongings scattered about. I knew then that I would have tell them to move on at the end of the first month. Things just got worse as time progressed. The motor home they arrived in belonged to the mother and looked okay. However, it was brought to my attention that they were washing dishes outside in two coolers with no lids. They were not hooked up to the water hydrant, but had a hose going in through the door.
On the eve of their departure, many of their neighbors wondered how they would make their escape, since it was well known they had a dead battery. When Kamper Jackie was telling me the story of checking the camper batteries of their camper an their son's ......... I suddenly knew who took it. Just call me Sherlock.
One of the advantages of living in a small community is the short voting line. Wait, did I say line? There was no line!! I walked in and presented my driver's license and was handed the ballot. Easy.
Got my sticker and am home again. Not even 30 minutes out of my day. I am really looking forward to the end of the political ads. The Wi-Fi is even working a bit faster today. When Sprint repaired the whatever on the tower they slowed everything down. It is driving me crazy. I am typing faster than the letters are appearing. And I don't really "type", I do a two finger pecking thing.
The weather has been crazy warm here and today we have a cold drizzle. Winter is coming. Time to gather all my potted plants and find spots to put them for the winter. Today I will be digging up the banana tree that still holds four lonely green bananas. I will harvest them and place them on the counter to see if they will ripen. I am not all that hopeful.
I hope you all vote today! I am off for date with a shovel.
No internet for THREE days! So wrong to deprive me of my daily pleasures! Just wrong. Sitting in the office with no entertainment. No blogger, no pinterest, no spider solitaire to while away the hours. Not to mention being unable to check on-line reservations.
So many opportunities for a scathing depiction of idiocy to relate to my readers. Now that I can, I can't think of one. My coffee has grown cold and a fence waits to be painted on this last warm day before rain hits. I can sit no longer as the great outdoors is calling to me.
