Trusting God with your kids… and other stuff that’s hard. Like loving pets.

My daughter, who is not quite 16 years old, is in Nicaragua this week on a mission trip with her youth group. On the one hand I am totally excited for her; she is going to have a whole new outlook on life when she gets back. I am so proud of her for being brave, being open to what the Lord wants her to do in her life, for simply being willing. On the other hand, it’s kind of… well, it’s not freaking me out; I know God can take care of her better than I can. Even when she talks about the gross stuff that splashed on her while they were cleaning trash in the park, or while crossing the mega-polluted lake – Oh, Lord, protect this child!! I just… really miss her! It’s lonely and quiet here. Okay, the quiet part is kind of nice! We have been able to video chat with her a couple of the nights, so that was fantastic – to touch base, hear how her day went… it’s only been 5 days, and she has 5 days to go… it seems like it’s been a month! It’s cool, though. Especially cool to see how she is beginning to understand the world from a different perspective. As in, she doesn’t really have it as bad as she sometimes thinks!

Seriously, the hardest part has been yesterday morning. We were up getting ready to head out to the Farmer’s Market downtown, when my mom called to me that our dog had hurt her leg. Yup, I am pretty sure it’s serious.. in fact, I think she tore her other CCL… which can only be repaired surgically – and last time that cost us $1,500. Which:  A)we can’t afford and  B)now that she’s 12 and has lots of hip and joint issues I don’t think she can support herself on 3 legs anymore. It takes several weeks of that, for rehab… I don’t know that she’s got it in her.

So that totally stinks because she’s Kiki’s dog. Kiki specifically said when she left “No body and no animals can get sick or die while I’m gone.” Of course I told her there was no way I could guarantee that sort of deal; I don’t make promises I don’t have the total ability to keep… but to be honest I sure didn’t think anything would happen while she was gone! And you have to wonder – at least, I have to wonder – why now? why this week? Seriously?? Because we will take the dog to see our regular vet this week (the one we saw Saturday wasn’t sure, didn’t find anything conclusive) but no matter what, we can’t make “the decision” – if it has to be made – until our daughter gets home. And I don’t know how the dog will hold up… she can’t get up without assistance, although she can hobble about once she’s up… but pottying… well, she’s done one thing, but not the other, and I don’t know how she can when she can’t…well, she can’t squat, if you know what I mean. Sigh.

This is the hard part about loving animals, isn’t it? I guess it’s the hard part about loving any living thing. Because none of us lives forever. Not on this world anyway. Today I am feeling sad and worn and not all that thrilled about this life. I’m trying to remember that God has a plan even when it makes no sense. I’ve been there before, and lived through it.. not without pain or grief, however. Looking forward to the end of this week when my daughter will be home so I can hug on her, because that always makes me feel so much better. I suppose I also need to start thinking about, I don’t know, a hobby or pursuit or something, as this trip is only a tiny precursor to the fact that she will one day soon move away for, well, at least an extended amount of time, if not permanently. She only has 3 years of high school left, after all. Of course, I want her to move on – to college, Bible school, marriage… whatever life has in store for her! It is how it should be, no matter how desperately I will miss her. So I better figure out something interesting with which to fill my days, huh? Not sure how many pets I want….

A New Year, a change in the weather ~ yikes it’s cold!

Yeah, Yeah, I know. It’s winter. I live in Idaho. But seriously… this is ridiculous. Let’s see, right now it is… 7 degrees. They are forecasting that the temperature in the morning will be minus 4 or thereabouts. brrrrrrrr!! It used to be this cold, the first time we lived here. It just seems like it hasn’t been like this the last several years. But now? Global warming my eye. 

It’s so cold I couldn’t bear to make the outdoor cat sleep … well, outdoors. He has a bed – well, a blanket in a box in the shed – but it’s so cold! Poor kitty. So I made him a spot out in my dad’s garage, and dad didn’t argue. He says cats are spawn of the devil, but he has a soft spot in his heart for all animals, regardless. 🙂  It’s nearly 60 in the garage, so I think that’s a big step up.

It makes it rather hard to follow through – oh, shoot, to even begin! – that wonderful ‘resolution’ of getting out and walking every day! Yeah, I don’t think so!

Just as I’ve been typing this (altho I admit, I am also watching a movie, so it’s taken longer than you’d think) it has dropped to 5.5 degrees…

Thank the Lord for warm homes, fireplaces, snuggly beds and hot tea.

 

 

 

 

 

Update on Oliver cat boy

Again on the computer!  Sheesh.  This time getting checked out by the other cat.  He is doing fairly well… the swelling has gone way down, his paw is just a wee bit swollen. I am soaking it twice a day, but the holes don’t seem to be draining anything.  I’m not sure at this point if that is good or bad – cats can tend toward abscesses, so hopefully he’s going to just heal up without complications.  He’s using the litter box, so that’s a plus (for his health, anyway… not like I love cleaning it!)  He’s getting very anxious to get back outdoors, so we are really having to be alert to where he is so he doesn’t bolt out the door when the dogs are coming in or out.

Right now he is lying down at my feet under the table here.  I am rubbing his head with my foot, and he is stretched out with his legs on my leg.  He is such a sweet guy. When I try to rub Matty’s head with my foot (he also tends to curl up under the dining table when I am on my computer) he generally bites me!

Well, I’d like to head off to bed, but Alan and his buddy are out in the workshop smoking cigars and drinking… um, drinking… brandy, I think it was.  Some $70.00 a bottle stuff – don’t even ask me how ridiculous I find that!  Anyhoo, I was going to get Oliver settled out there in the shop for the night…  but maybe Alan will have to take that assignment if he’s going to be much longer!

What we won’t do for our furry friends

This is Oliver.  Oliver Twist – since he came to us as a stray and would get SO excited about the food we put out for him… all I could think of was that song from the musical, “Food, glorious food”!

In this picture he had just plopped himself on my laptop and turned it off.  He loves him so lovin’.  Well, since he is a stray who adopted us, he is outside most of the time, coming in once in awhile for some attention or to remind us it’s time to feed him. but then he likes to go out again. He’s actually gettting to be in more and more… after all, it’s getting cold outside!

Well, a couple days ago – when my little family was up in Seattle for Thanksgiving – he didn’t show up for dinner.  That is completely out of character!  My mom went looking for him, and she found him in the shed where he sleeps when he’s outside, but he wouldn’t come to her.  He cried and cried to her, but stayed put.  Well, the shed is a giant jumble of stuff my sister has yet to come collect to put in her new house (I mean, she only moved like, 2 years ago – you can see why she hasn’t gotten to it yet). So no way could mom get to him… he finally hopped down, but wasn’t using his one front leg… well, the next day we took him to the vet because it was huge puffy and hot to the touch.  He has two punctures in his paw pad and had a raging infection.  They cleaned it up (he wouldn’t cooperate though and they had to anesthetize him to do it) then he got a hefty dose of antibiotics and now he’s home.  Of course we have to keep him in until it heals, and I have to soak it twice a day in warm epson salts to try to keep it draining…

It’s doing much better, but one problem was that since he’s an outdoor cat, he doesn’t use a litterbox.  We had to buy one, and the vet said to use pelleted paper litter as the clay or clumping kinds could get in the wounds and cause trouble.  Well, yeah. Good idea.  He hated that stuff – I put him in the box and he immediately jumped out.  Hated it so much he didn’t go potty in almost 2 days, so I was worried he’d soon have a whole other problem!  I had a thought, so tonight, my dad, my daughter and myself spent over an hour crushing those paper pellets with mallets and hammers to make it more “dirtlike” and less roll-y.  Ridiculous?  Maybe.  But after we were done, I took him back out to the shop (he’s taking over dad’s man-cave until he heals) and when I put Oliver in that litterbox, he immediately squatted and I think he peed for 3 full minutes!!  Poor guy. I think he’ll be feeling much better now! Good grief, how much paper-pellet crushing will we have to do over the next week??

Must’ve been a Murphy’s Law kinda thing

In my last post I said I would try to look at the good things, the positive things going on in my life.

 So, it was just a few minutes later that Kiki and I managed to dump a glass of water over my laptop.  Yeah.  Then there was a big sizzle and that was that.  I sort of had a meltdown then.  Really.  As in, I scared myself because I freaked out so bad about it.  Yup.  It was bad. Fetal position on the bed.  Doubly bad (is that proper grammar?) because all the information for our business is on our laptop.  All my photos. Our life. 

Well, Alan saved my bacon… oooh, bacon… yummm…  oh!  I’m back – anyway, he fixed it.  So far, so good.  I still worry about it. 

But I’m okay now!  Not in a straight-jacket or anything… although I’m pretty sure I may be headed that way.

However…. Back to the dog – So, my dog is a good dog.  Totally well-behaved.  Never does anything naughty.  She’s kinda dumb, but sweet.  My parents’ dog, however, is another story.  He is like a 3 year old toddler.  As in, a pain in the boot-ay. 

He likes bread. Okay, he likes all food, but bread is the one thing he’ll steal out of the pantry.  If we don’t shut the pantry door when we leave chances are that when we get home we’ll find empty bread bags on the floor.  I guess we should just be thankful he doesn’t eat the plastic bags, huh? Well, the other day my parents both left, but I was home on the computer.  Now, I would’ve guessed that the dog lays around, bored, and after some length of time gets bored enough that he starts wondering “hmmm, is there any bread?”  It would seem I was wrong, because the second that my folks walked out the door, I heard a rustling in the pantry, and when I looked up, here came the dog with a brand new bag of bagels in his mouth!  The best part was the look on his face when I yelled at him!  Oh my gosh, it was hilarious – that deer-in-the-headlights look because he had absolutely no idea that anyone was home!!    Busted!!

Yeah.  That was a good day.

                         Good Dog.

              Bad Dog.

That darn dog!!

I logged on here  to post something semi-happy… you know, not all sad and grumpy like I usually post.  But then I had to go punish my parents’ dog for stealing the bagels out of the pantry!  So, I guess you’ll have to wait to hear me not-mope.  😉 Later!

Walking the dog

So… these aren’t all the best shots, but I can’t figure out how to get in and edit my slideshow… I guess you’re stuck with them! 

This is where I take my twice weekly dog walk after I drop Kiki off at the co-op school.  The leaves haven’t started turning yet, but it’s real pretty there.  Then we share a chai latte!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Traveling ~ moving ~ with cats and dogs

If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know that in the past two years, we moved across the country – and back again.  Yeah, we’re dumb like that.  Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time!  That is, the first move.  The second move was more in the line of desperation – “Dear Lord get us out of here!!” 

I thought I’d post some pics from our cross-country move;  today, featuring our cat and our dog.  To be honest, it wasn’t all that difficult traveling with them.  The dog loves car trips, long or short.  The cat, well, not so much, but give him a couple traquilizers and let him hide under the seat and he does okay.  The hardest part was probably finding hotel rooms that will accept 1) a big dog.  Most hotels these days seem to take little dogs, even though in my experience they are more destructive (or annoying) than big dogs.  But I don’t get to make the rules. 2) cats.  Finding a room that will take a cat is even harder than one that will take big dogs!  Thank the Lord and AAA, we did fine.  A shout out here to La Quinta!!  We used them all the way across the country – they were absolutely awesome!

One of the difficulties of pet-travel is that there doesn’t seem to be enough room in the car for everything.  I mean, geez, we have a 7 passenger vehicle with only 3 human beings in it, and yet with the animals in the car and all the paraphanelia that goes along with that, you end up with this:

Yeah.  All that interior space, and our luggage had to be on the outside.  Since the East seems to get ridiculous amounts of rain even in the middle of the summer (ick!) we had to make sure it was as water-tight as possible.  Alan and I got really good at packing this up every day!

The interior looked kinda like this:

Huh.  Can’t find the really messy interior shots… which is cool.  See, we had to take this giant crate for the dog (they have to be crated in the hotel room) and also her ramp because we have to be careful getting her into and out of the car since she had her knee surgery. 

So then we have them in the room with us.  Really, we have well-behaved pets.  (I wouldn’t tolerate any other kind!) They didn’t cause any trouble, except on the very last day.  I guess the dog had just plain had enough, and when we left to go have our hotel breakfast that morning she started barking as soon as we left the room and would not stop for anything… which is not like her at all.  We ended up having to take her to breakfast with us – thank goodness the weather was wonderful and the hotel had a patio area, so it ended up alright.

 

 You really need to be prepared when you travel with pets!

The room was nice and big so the crate fit fine.

The cat, of course, was curious.

They both seemed to enjoy the view.

These pictures were all taken on our last night, which we spent in Denver, Colorado.  I will try to post pictures of the entire trip, maybe one day at a time.  All of our moving has been a big pain in the haunches, and yet I am not sorry for the experiences we have had.  I’d be pretty happy to never move again, though.  Well, after we move out of my parents’ home and into one of our own!  Sheesh, I’m not ready to stay here forever!!  God forbid it!  Lol.

Sunday Sweets ~ Stuff I Like … Matt the Cat

Yeah, I’ll admit it.  I like my cat.  He’s not the sweetest, cuddliest cat I’ve ever had, but he’s better than the cat-from-the-devil we had when we first got married.  This one is awfully funny… not too coordinated…. I think I should make a whole blog about the goofy stuff he does.

We put the towel on the chair because he was always laying there and we didn’t want him to get my favorite chair dirty.  You see how well this worked.

One of his favorite places is on top of a printer.  He’s caused more than one paper jam by trying to attack the paper as it feeds through.

Here he’s listening to the squirrels that lived in the ceiling of our apartment.  Yeah, I know.  But he found it exciting.

He especially likes to get inside of places…

He was quite helpful when we moved… he inspected our boxes –

Inspected them closely –

Got inside of everything I was trying to pack –

or on top of what I was trying to pack –

Here he is inside of stuff again…

and on top of… (I needed this to re-wrap my Christmas decor – yeah, he’s real helpful)

disappearing under the curio cabinet –

Then, sleepy, lying in the weirdest position…

Honestly; I am more of a dog person!  But the cat makes for way more interesting pictures!  He keeps me laughing….

Wednesday, Wednesday

So, it’s late and I haven’t really got anything to say.  I thought of all sorts of information earlier today; all sorts of great ideas and topics… but it was a busy, busy day, and now I am just plain tired.  Today I had to get up extra early as Alan had a plane to catch, and tomorrow is a classroom day for Kiki so we can’t sleep in.  We need to research a science project idea, and get some stuff to do a history project… I was going to moan about, oh, I don’t know, something… but I think I’ll save it for another day!  I will just leave you with a picture…

How cute is my dog?!