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Sunday, December 4, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Surgery!
Poor Jasper (he's the handsome guy in the main photo, at the front of the picture)!! A week ago tonight he was acting a little weird, but I kept explaining it away using various reasons. But when we were outside on last time out, and Lille ran into him a couple times and he cried out, I knew there may be many explanations, but only one thing to do: time to head to an emergency vet! I went up and reported this need to Al, and then looked up the location of the closest emergency vet, and off we went.
We thought we were taking Jasper because of a stomach issue -- I honestly thought he'd gulped down some rawhide or something that was stuck in his intestines. But the vet was examining him, and said, 'why don't you put him down and the ground and see what happens." So I did -- and Jasper can't walk!! Both Al and I look at her and said, "It's his BACK!"
If we were worried before, now we overwhelmed. His back! He's dragging his legs behind him!! What will this mean.
But the vet was good. She outlined a plan of action. Of course, it was a crazy expensive plan -- I'm sad to say that the cost was the one thing that broke through the 'overwhelmed', and I burst into tears. But we forged bravely ahead, handed Jasper over and waited for the surgeon's call the next day.
Indeed, then next day there were tests and an MRI, and then surgery. A call full of big words and incomprehensible actions-- other than 'prognosis is good' -- and no Jasper for another day. The dogs were depressed, the entire home out of sorts without our fuzzy guy.
And the next day, the great call -- he can come home! He'd peed, he was responding well, we could come get him!!
And so we did, and now he's home and doing SO WELL. Still dragging the back left leg a big, but walking with all four legs and getting stronger every day!! So amazing! And while the walking is wonderful, I have to admit that, for me, the best part is seeing that tail wag again whenever he sees me!
We thought we were taking Jasper because of a stomach issue -- I honestly thought he'd gulped down some rawhide or something that was stuck in his intestines. But the vet was examining him, and said, 'why don't you put him down and the ground and see what happens." So I did -- and Jasper can't walk!! Both Al and I look at her and said, "It's his BACK!"
If we were worried before, now we overwhelmed. His back! He's dragging his legs behind him!! What will this mean.
But the vet was good. She outlined a plan of action. Of course, it was a crazy expensive plan -- I'm sad to say that the cost was the one thing that broke through the 'overwhelmed', and I burst into tears. But we forged bravely ahead, handed Jasper over and waited for the surgeon's call the next day.
Indeed, then next day there were tests and an MRI, and then surgery. A call full of big words and incomprehensible actions-- other than 'prognosis is good' -- and no Jasper for another day. The dogs were depressed, the entire home out of sorts without our fuzzy guy.
And the next day, the great call -- he can come home! He'd peed, he was responding well, we could come get him!!
And so we did, and now he's home and doing SO WELL. Still dragging the back left leg a big, but walking with all four legs and getting stronger every day!! So amazing! And while the walking is wonderful, I have to admit that, for me, the best part is seeing that tail wag again whenever he sees me!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Yea, I know I suck
So much for the plan to post at least once a week, eh? But in the excuse/good news department, I said it would be a year of positive change, and part of the reason I've disappeared is because the Fiance and I set a date, so I'm actually getting married! I was not a proponet of the plan - I was pushing for a commitment ceremony, no marriage - but he finally wore me down, so off we go. My tax guy, when I told him, was like, "why?" I said, 'yea, well, see if you can change his mind when you get him in here for his appointment." Though now that I've spent a few hundred dollars in wedding invitations, I suppose we'll continue to move forward.
For all of you on the edge of your seat, the date is July 2, 2011. I know, right - three and a half months away. YIKES. Thus the reason my obsession has turned to the wedding, and not much is spared for the updating of the blog. After this week, I think I should be able to breath a bit more. I have a dress, I have shoes, I have matching invitations and RSVPs and return address labels -- even the stamps match (and are coded to different things - RSVPs, THANKS, etc.). I have sparklers and matchbooks, and spatulas are on their way (yes, there's a reason- explained later). So at this point, the wedding can happen - there just may be no tents, seats, tables or food beyond a Sam's Club party platter. But there's an appt with a tent person on Wed., and caterer tasting tonight, so hopefully this all will be decided this week.
Anyway, more later. Just wanted to let you know what's going on, and that I am thinking of you!
For all of you on the edge of your seat, the date is July 2, 2011. I know, right - three and a half months away. YIKES. Thus the reason my obsession has turned to the wedding, and not much is spared for the updating of the blog. After this week, I think I should be able to breath a bit more. I have a dress, I have shoes, I have matching invitations and RSVPs and return address labels -- even the stamps match (and are coded to different things - RSVPs, THANKS, etc.). I have sparklers and matchbooks, and spatulas are on their way (yes, there's a reason- explained later). So at this point, the wedding can happen - there just may be no tents, seats, tables or food beyond a Sam's Club party platter. But there's an appt with a tent person on Wed., and caterer tasting tonight, so hopefully this all will be decided this week.
Anyway, more later. Just wanted to let you know what's going on, and that I am thinking of you!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Memories. May be beautiful and yet...
Okay, I know my posts are generally dog related, and that I owe the next part of the story of how my four came to be, but if no one minds, I've going to address the 'blue' feeling I have this morning.
I've been making, over the past couple weekends, the seemingly vain attempt to clean off my desk. Or, as I've been thinking of it lately, the avalanche waiting to happen. And in digging about this morning, I found a booklet that was put together a few years ago, when a company I once worked for decided to have a reunion. And they pulled together old photos that people sent in, some news stories, and some people even had old memos -- or 'house correspondence', as it was called - that were included. And tucked inisde were some photos of me with former co-workers at a Christmas party. I was 27 or 28 at the time, and, in many ways, a different person.
In 1987, I sold off or packed up my life in Ohio, and headed off to Los Angeles. I had no job, no plans, but I was, at least, moving to a specific address - an apartment I had sublet from a friend of a friend (that friend being the only person I knew in LA at the time), with the only thing I really knew about the apartment being that it was supposed to have a good view of the Hollywood sign (and it did - from all windows). In my mind I had vague plans of living there five years, and then heading back to Ohio, I supposed, which is where I'd grown up and lived my whole life up to the point of heading my VW Golf on it's western course.
I had grown up in the '70s, and the TV was always full of images of Southern California. Remington Steele, Charlie's Angles, even the Dukes of Hazard I came to realize, after moving, had been filmed in LA, not Georgia. And there were other instances like that, after I moved. I caught an old Starsky and Hutch one time, and one of the guys - Hutch, perhaps - supposedly had an apartment on the top floor of a building in Venice that I, at the time I caught the show, drove past nearly daily (not a place with an apartment, but quite scenic). Even a Three Stooges that I watched one day found the 'boys' on a golf course called Rancho Park, which is a public course still in existence today, and right across from 20th Century Fox studios (and up the street from MGM). Of course, at the time the guys were caught on b&w film causing trouble and having their trademarked hi-jinx, nothing seemed to surround the course but the strawberry fields that West Los Angles was once known for.
Of course, I didn't leave for LA with images of these places dancing in my head like fat sugarplums. I simply wanted a change, and adventure, and to move away as far as I could. I knew on some level California had grabbed me as idea long before it became a destination, and I suppose this is true for many people. There's a reason the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing a song about the 'Californication of the world', and it's not all hubris. But I saw it more and more as I got there. Though I have to admit throughout my life there, I found little pieces of the '60s and '70s in CA most poignant. Los Angeles re-invents itself quickly, but occasionally things could be seen that took me back. The most treasured being the time I got to spend in the old Ambassador Hotel, which had closed about the time I moved to CA. Somehow a friend of a friend got a group of us into the hotel for an 'evening of performance art' (apparently this ended up being a bit of a controversy, because NO ONE was supposed ot be in there - it was a boarded up wreck - but by the time the shitstorm was really cranking up it was the day of the performance, and we somehow all got to attend anyway). I honestly remember not a moment of the 'performance art' piece, but have vivid memories of the abandoned pool area, the CocoNut Room and it's disco ball, the corridor of shops.
So I got to LA in September of 1987, a week after my 27th birthday, and was scared. New town, no friends, no job, no idea where anything was. And remember, this was before the magic of the internet and Google maps, GPS guidance systems, and so on. Dating was handled by ads in the LA WEEKLY filled with alphabet soup (SWF seeks SWABM, 6'0, trim for...); you got around with a paper map (in LA, an entire book of them, called the THOMAS GUIDE); and telephone books. And how do you learn of these things, without people? I remember learning about Thomas Guides because I went to a movie the first week or two I was there, which was set in LA and the person in the lead used one to get around. And I thought, 'wow, I gotta get me one of those'. ;-)
I would like to sit here today and write about all of this. And write about how seeing the reunion book made me feel. Get it all out on paper. But I have a TO DO list with other things requiring attention. So I hope I can re-examine some of this in future posts. But basically I wanted to lament that I missed the '70s in LA, because that always seems like it must've been a kind-of golden time there, when you could still afford housing and the city was still smallish. To lament the people pictured in the book and pix that I found, who I've lost touch with but wish well, and others who helped me and meant so much to me, and have passed away. To lament? Rejoice? In the girl in those pictures who is smiling so broadly, and who was so young. And lament not being in California, because lately I miss it greatly. I love my fiance, I love my dogs, I love my house, and I decided long ago that looking back and saying, 'I wish...' about something is a fool's way to spend time. But sometimes the feelings come, and I do wonder about alternate paths, and what might've been. Today's feeling is brought on by a friend in CA, with whom I spoke yesterday, and I was saying something about it being 16 here, and she was like, "Oh, yea, well 80s here this weekend. Planning on going to the beach this weekend. Remember those days? I don't want to hear complains from you about the cold - I seem to remember you making the conscious choice to move back. And after your Mom passed away, you could've dumped Al and moved back, before you got where this was. And your old company is hiring - I know cause i got a solicitation from them." Not that it was all said in a long flow like that, but all that was said through the course of the conversation.
And I cannot tell you how much I preferred my old job and my old company. No place is perfect, but for some reason that place just FIT. I would love more that my heart can bear to take Lillie and Jasper and Daisy and the Nut out to Will Rogers State Park, and walk the hills that were so familiar to me, and see the views across the city that I loved, see the horses in their stalls, see the deer under the eucalyptus trees, smell the air they scent. Drive home and stop at Ralph's on the way, and pick up something to make for dinner, and go home and flip on the set and cook something up. Or go over my friend Margi's and see her and her dogs. It's like an ache. It will fade, but right now it hurts.
The dogs are barking at a deadly squirrel, and I need to get back to my desk. So I'm going to go. But I dearly wish someone could come up with a transporter like they have in Star Trek, or something that could drop me into CA for a day or so. I miss home.
I've been making, over the past couple weekends, the seemingly vain attempt to clean off my desk. Or, as I've been thinking of it lately, the avalanche waiting to happen. And in digging about this morning, I found a booklet that was put together a few years ago, when a company I once worked for decided to have a reunion. And they pulled together old photos that people sent in, some news stories, and some people even had old memos -- or 'house correspondence', as it was called - that were included. And tucked inisde were some photos of me with former co-workers at a Christmas party. I was 27 or 28 at the time, and, in many ways, a different person.
In 1987, I sold off or packed up my life in Ohio, and headed off to Los Angeles. I had no job, no plans, but I was, at least, moving to a specific address - an apartment I had sublet from a friend of a friend (that friend being the only person I knew in LA at the time), with the only thing I really knew about the apartment being that it was supposed to have a good view of the Hollywood sign (and it did - from all windows). In my mind I had vague plans of living there five years, and then heading back to Ohio, I supposed, which is where I'd grown up and lived my whole life up to the point of heading my VW Golf on it's western course.
I had grown up in the '70s, and the TV was always full of images of Southern California. Remington Steele, Charlie's Angles, even the Dukes of Hazard I came to realize, after moving, had been filmed in LA, not Georgia. And there were other instances like that, after I moved. I caught an old Starsky and Hutch one time, and one of the guys - Hutch, perhaps - supposedly had an apartment on the top floor of a building in Venice that I, at the time I caught the show, drove past nearly daily (not a place with an apartment, but quite scenic). Even a Three Stooges that I watched one day found the 'boys' on a golf course called Rancho Park, which is a public course still in existence today, and right across from 20th Century Fox studios (and up the street from MGM). Of course, at the time the guys were caught on b&w film causing trouble and having their trademarked hi-jinx, nothing seemed to surround the course but the strawberry fields that West Los Angles was once known for.
Of course, I didn't leave for LA with images of these places dancing in my head like fat sugarplums. I simply wanted a change, and adventure, and to move away as far as I could. I knew on some level California had grabbed me as idea long before it became a destination, and I suppose this is true for many people. There's a reason the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing a song about the 'Californication of the world', and it's not all hubris. But I saw it more and more as I got there. Though I have to admit throughout my life there, I found little pieces of the '60s and '70s in CA most poignant. Los Angeles re-invents itself quickly, but occasionally things could be seen that took me back. The most treasured being the time I got to spend in the old Ambassador Hotel, which had closed about the time I moved to CA. Somehow a friend of a friend got a group of us into the hotel for an 'evening of performance art' (apparently this ended up being a bit of a controversy, because NO ONE was supposed ot be in there - it was a boarded up wreck - but by the time the shitstorm was really cranking up it was the day of the performance, and we somehow all got to attend anyway). I honestly remember not a moment of the 'performance art' piece, but have vivid memories of the abandoned pool area, the CocoNut Room and it's disco ball, the corridor of shops.
So I got to LA in September of 1987, a week after my 27th birthday, and was scared. New town, no friends, no job, no idea where anything was. And remember, this was before the magic of the internet and Google maps, GPS guidance systems, and so on. Dating was handled by ads in the LA WEEKLY filled with alphabet soup (SWF seeks SWABM, 6'0, trim for...); you got around with a paper map (in LA, an entire book of them, called the THOMAS GUIDE); and telephone books. And how do you learn of these things, without people? I remember learning about Thomas Guides because I went to a movie the first week or two I was there, which was set in LA and the person in the lead used one to get around. And I thought, 'wow, I gotta get me one of those'. ;-)
I would like to sit here today and write about all of this. And write about how seeing the reunion book made me feel. Get it all out on paper. But I have a TO DO list with other things requiring attention. So I hope I can re-examine some of this in future posts. But basically I wanted to lament that I missed the '70s in LA, because that always seems like it must've been a kind-of golden time there, when you could still afford housing and the city was still smallish. To lament the people pictured in the book and pix that I found, who I've lost touch with but wish well, and others who helped me and meant so much to me, and have passed away. To lament? Rejoice? In the girl in those pictures who is smiling so broadly, and who was so young. And lament not being in California, because lately I miss it greatly. I love my fiance, I love my dogs, I love my house, and I decided long ago that looking back and saying, 'I wish...' about something is a fool's way to spend time. But sometimes the feelings come, and I do wonder about alternate paths, and what might've been. Today's feeling is brought on by a friend in CA, with whom I spoke yesterday, and I was saying something about it being 16 here, and she was like, "Oh, yea, well 80s here this weekend. Planning on going to the beach this weekend. Remember those days? I don't want to hear complains from you about the cold - I seem to remember you making the conscious choice to move back. And after your Mom passed away, you could've dumped Al and moved back, before you got where this was. And your old company is hiring - I know cause i got a solicitation from them." Not that it was all said in a long flow like that, but all that was said through the course of the conversation.
And I cannot tell you how much I preferred my old job and my old company. No place is perfect, but for some reason that place just FIT. I would love more that my heart can bear to take Lillie and Jasper and Daisy and the Nut out to Will Rogers State Park, and walk the hills that were so familiar to me, and see the views across the city that I loved, see the horses in their stalls, see the deer under the eucalyptus trees, smell the air they scent. Drive home and stop at Ralph's on the way, and pick up something to make for dinner, and go home and flip on the set and cook something up. Or go over my friend Margi's and see her and her dogs. It's like an ache. It will fade, but right now it hurts.
The dogs are barking at a deadly squirrel, and I need to get back to my desk. So I'm going to go. But I dearly wish someone could come up with a transporter like they have in Star Trek, or something that could drop me into CA for a day or so. I miss home.
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