Turkey Day

We're hosting Thanksgiving at our house.  For my in-laws.  Ma and Pa King  were supposed to come, but poor old Pa King is laid up in the hospital after spine surgery #4.  No turkey for you!  Just kidding.  He's struggling, but hopefully this is going to help decrease his pain and keep him mobile.  I will put him in a tryptophan coma next year.

So, the real reason we're hosting Thanksgiving?  Because my mother-in-law doesn't do Thanksgiving like my Mom does.  Shhhhhhhhhh, don't tell.  The first year I ate with them it was cold turkey and peas from a can.  Last year it was hot turkey, but no stuffing.

Cold turkey, canned peas, and no stuffing?!?!

There should be a law.

Of course, come tomorrow evening I may be eating humble pie.

We shall see.

Lazy Sundays

Jason and Luke go to church.

I sleep in.

Then I watch a movie or tv shows that they don't watch. 

It is glorious.

Most of the time, when they get back, I haven't even showered yet.

It's now a day of chores and preparation.  I figure I have to take it slow, because these days, Sunday hosts the best night of television!  The Walking Dead, Homeland, Boardwalk Empire and, well... Breaking Amish. 

Don't you judge me.

Some pics...

 Here it is!

 We sold our 6-8 seat table in favor of a 4 seater that can expand to 6 with the hidden leaf.  It suits the space much better.  Now, I'm still not in love with the wall color, but it's the 2nd one, so we're going to stick with it for a while.

 Despite having 600sqft MORE than our apartment, somehow we lost space.  Without a mud room or pantry, we're struggling to find spots for everything.  I added this little sideboard to house more pans, though I'll probably switch it to pantry items this weekend.

 See the backsplash?  Yep, I did that myself!

 We have a beautiful bay window!  And the silestone countertop was a gift from our wonderful friends.  I removed a DISGUSTING gray laminate top and used the silestone to create a breakfast bar area on the island.  LOVE IT.  And got the two chairs to complete the look... plus they can be used at the table if we expand it for company.

Mom loaned me this sofa table after the fire.  When we moved in here, I didn't have a place for it and told her I'd give it back.  Then I realized it would fit perfectly into the bay window (whose space was totally unutilized).  Now I'm not giving it back.  Plus, it's Otis's favorite place to lounge and be the neighborhood watch.

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!

I'm having coffee and blogging from my house.  MY HOUSE.  So exciting!  We're still finding places for everything, but it's coming along.  We've painted most things (haven't made it to the bathrooms yet, maybe next weekend), and yesterday I tiled the kitchen.  By myself.  It's awesome and I can't believe I did it.  Today I'm in search of storage solutions for the kitchen and bathroom before coming home to start my garden.  Actually, I'm sprucing up the garden that's here, and I'll really do a garden next year.

Lulu loves the fenced yard, and she's spent a lot of time running around, chasing a soccer ball and chewing sticks while I grill, sit on the step, or drink my coffee.  The cats are scoping out their favorite windows.  Poor Otis, the window sills are narrow and he is wide, so I put the screens in yesterday and left the windows open.  It's a cool, beautiful morning (again) so he's getting fair window time in.  Oz can balance her little self anywhere she'd like, and I think she lords that over him.

I promise I'll post pictures soon.

The inspection on our house is Thursday, and the appraisal on Friday.  Hold happy thoughts!

In which I reveal the things I won't talk about.

Sharing my life with Jason's ex-wife and her new fiance is, well, pretty weird.  Believe it or not, I'm a pretty private person.  I don't like to discuss a lot of things with anyone.  Sometimes it's hard for me to discuss things with Jason.

Take, for example, my struggle with debt and spending.  I'm ashamed of it, so I won't discuss it, I just work on it.  After the house closes, I'm working with my bank to consolidate and decrease my debt load.  If I didn't have the debt I carry, we could have afforded a home closer to The Force.  (But I still wanted to keep my job, which couldn't have happened if we had moved to the same neighborhood, but anyway.)  They are living in one of the most expensive areas in the new town.  Houses START at $300k there.

Take, for example, my apparent infertility.  Heard me talk about that?  No, not so much.  After trying to have a baby for 6 months with no success, I saw the OB (since that's what magazines say you should do when you're of "advanced maternal age", like me) and found out I don't ovulate.  Enter some medication, and now I ovulate like a champ, I just can't get pregnant.  If this keeps up, I'll be in a new house doing some new kind of treatment that may or may not work.  I have a hard time talking to anyone about it, so I just don't.  I don't want to talk to my best friend, or my family, or really, even my husband, about how disappointing this all is, and I prefer if they just don't ask me about it.

So imagine having to pack up your life and move to a new place so you can stay close to your stepson.  We chose a place close enough to him to maintain our custody agreement, and close enough to my current job that I won't have to get a new one.  We had the amazing fortune to find a house right off the bat, that's well within our affordable range, and everything seems to be moving along swimmingly.  Today her fiance (who is a very, very nice man, and I believe has no ulterior motive) comes and sits next to me at the t-ball game and asks to see a picture of it.  Asks if it has room for an "expanding family" and says he imagines us with a little girl who likes to play dress-up, and that the extra room in the home would be perfect for that.  (He has a boy and twin 5 year old girls, by the way.)

I just say, "that would be nice".

Holy shit, I'm a grown up.

Holy shitballs, Batman, we're buying a house!

The decision has been made to move to stay closer to The Force, as he moves with his mother and her new marriage.  We looked at renting first, but the area where we want to live doesn't have much in the way of rentals.  Then we figured out how we could buy a house, and we're doing it.  Holy shit. 

In 2 weeks we have gone from internet searches, finding a lender, finding an agent, then to seeing our top 5 picks.  We saw 5 houses in 1 day, and put an offer on our favorite 2 days later.  The owners countered, and we accepted.  Holy shit.

We're going through the bank stuff now.  Holy shit.

We close on May 23.  Holy shit.

I'm going to own a home at the ripe age of 37.

Holy shit.

I highly recommend checking out your local community theater groups.  Jason and I went last night, and it was great.  The food was okay, but watching our southern friends try to pull of a British accent was priceless.

Priceless.

Bulldog blues

So, Lulu, she's been big on the vet lately.  Not that she's really into it, but she's had to go several times in the past 2 months. 

As soon as we got her home, she broke out with some kind of rash on her belly.  Got it fixed up with a steroid shot and an antibiotic shot.  Then in October, she started to break out in hives and developed a urinary tract infection.  More steroids and antibiotics.  Hives cleared up most of the way, and as soon as she went off the antibiotics they came back again.  A short course of steroids and antibiotics with some improvement, and the knowledge that she probably has some allergies that needed diagnosed.  Her skin didn't improve a whole lot that time.

So, we did the allergy testing and found out she was allergic to some of the things in her food as well as some grasses, trees and weeds, several molds, and dust mites.  Good, well now we know what to attack... with doggy allergy shots.  First round of allergy shots lasted 3 injections and she had a reaction to them.  The ramp up with fast and hard, and she just didn't tolerate it well.  So, a week off and back onto them with a slower ramp up.

But all this time, she's looking worse.  Her hair is falling out and she's getting bald spots in addition to general thinning.  The skin around her eyes and mouth have turned a ruddy pink.  And her knuckles are balding.  KNUCKLES.  The allergy medicine really wasn't helping her much.

Then on Tuesday at doggy daycare, Speedy (who I love) nipped Lulu in the eye.  It looked like he just got her lower lid, so I wasn't too worried.  But it didn't look so good Wednesday morning, so I took her into the vet to have it checked.  I saw the 3rd vet in the practice.  He's never seen Lulu before.  He checked her eye, declared it to be fine, then asked what the hell was going on with her skin.  We went over the history: rashes, steroids, antibiotics, mange checks, allergies, allergy shots, scaled back allergy shots.  Seriously?  What else can be wrong with this poor little dog?

He asked me if he can scrape her to check for mange.  Again.  The third time.  Okay, if you think it might give you more information, go ahead.  I told him I was committed to staying the course of recommended treatment, but I wasn't sure we were fully on course yet.

He literally scraped her face with a razor to make it bleed.  It's how you check for the mites.  Lo and behold, there it was.  A demodex mite.  My girl has an inherited type of mange.  It's not transmittable dog-dog except at birth, and isn't contagious to humans.  But it's causing her a world of trouble.  He put  her on antibiotic therapy, a yeast medication, and a bath/dip combo.  He told me to come back after a month of this treatment for a check-in so he could make any changes in her treatment plan, and assured me that she would be doing much better. 

Finally, I feel like we might have all pieces of the puzzle.

I want a baby cow. Seriously.

Oh hell...

So, Lulu's allergy shots aren't going so well. 

She started last Wednesday, and has a shot every other day.  After the second dose (Friday), she started having an increase in her welts and redness.  I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, and they seemed normal again on Saturday.  The next dose was Sunday, and today the reaction is quite significant.  One call to the vet, and we're off shots for 7 days, then to start a new schedule next week.  Great.  Poor little dog is losing hair, getting lumpy, and is going to look a hot mess on her birthday in a few weeks.

True story.

I have an African-American patient.  Old, demented, hilarious.  Tells me all kinds of crazy shit, and usually tells me at least twice each time I go. 

Today she says, "Would you believe my grandfather was a VERY rich white man?  It's true.  We had a HUGE house, just like white folk had."

Love her.

Finally!

WE HAVE SNOW!!!!

And Lulu loves it!

I don't write anymore.

No, not just here.  I just don't write anymore.  I don't write at work, I type.  I type on facebook.  I type, I type, I type.  But I don't write.

I used to write letters to my Gram.  Lots of letters.  I love the feeling of pen on paper.  And I love pens.  I am more than mildly obsessed with them.  I've tried to journal in the past, but it's no good.  Those are just letters to me.

I need to feel pen on paper again.

So, who wants to guess how much allergy testing for a dog costs?  Ummmmm, nope, more than that.  Nope, still more.  Nope.  Oh well, I'm not telling, but you get my drift, right?  Poor Lulu.  Hopefully between finding out what she's allergic to, and adding a supplement to balance out her zinc and fatty acids, she'll be feeling better soon.  Having a spotty dog is one thing, but a pink spotted dog is totally different.

And here I sit, in my bathrobe, snuggling with the pets and watching the birds on the porch.  It's a rainy Sunday, and I feel like napping all day.  Maybe I will.

Hello, my name's Tiffany and I put clothes on my dog.  Seriously.  Lulu gets cold, and she hates the rain.  So I bought her a winter coat, a belly warmer, and a raincoat.  This is the belly warmer.  She likes it, and it still shows off her wrinkles!

Poor Lulu is still having a lot of problems with allergies.  She's still on the "elimination trial" for food allergies, and hopefully will get to start eating real food in the next few weeks.  But this week she has the blood allergy test that will tell us exactly what all she is allergic to.  In the meantime, she is covered in hives.  She did much better while on prednisone, but she has to be off it for a week for her allergy test.  Benadryl is just not cutting it for the poor little dog.  Hopefully soon we'll have some answers and a plan for getting her more comfortable.

One thing she's definitely allergic to?  Underwear.  Seriously.  She ATE a thong, then threw it up while Jason and I were eating dinner.  Nice.  That is a true story.

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh, Sunday mornings...  If it weren't for knowing that tomorrow is Monday, Sunday would be my favorite day of the week.  Sunday morning is definitely my favorite morning, though.  You know why?  Mostly because I'm alone in the apartment, snuggling with the pets, sipping coffee, and most recently, watching a TON of  Cesar Millan's "Dog Whisperer". 

Seriously.  I LOVE THIS SHOW.  Lulu has not been without her challenges.  While Pooh King was very easy to train, Lulu is proving to be a little, ummmm, stubborn with a few behaviors.  Plus, it was so long ago that Pooh was a puppy (15 years!) that it's hard to remember what having a puppy is like sometimes.  She's doing so well, especially compared to the hyper, untrained mess she was when we got her... but still, work to be done.  We've conquered not rushing the door when someone knocks, but now we're working on car chasing.  Rather, we're working on NOT car chasing.   It's a challenge.  Yes, this dog...

I guess I should finish taking down the Christmas decorations.  Jason took down the tree, and a lot of the indoor decorations, but I still need to do the porch decorations, and the things I inherited from my Gram.  It's just a little.

Christmas...

 Santa left a note.  It had to be read VERY carefully...

 Whew!  The news was good.

Jolly the Elf was very helpful this year...

 Otis

 Lulu Velma Norton would like her stocking, please.

 Our new stockings

 The Great and Powerful Oz

 The neighborhood watch...