Thursday, April 26, 2007

Mashup and GREAT start for the day!

This is a great mashup. Thanks Kerstin!

More later. Today has started as a good day. DS won the code word of the day contest at RadioDisney on the way to school. $500 bucks ain't bad for a 10 year old, y'know? Oh yeah, THAT was the prize. Me? I've won a haircut. DS? He gets $500.

Go figure. Tee hee!

I was so excited for him.

Oh and to continue the fabulous day for DS, tonight is when we have tickets to see the local production of High School Musical.

Zippity do DA!

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

What a great cause!

I found this over at the RAOK board (thanks Allena) and I thought I would post it for others to see as well:

Crocheted squares are welcome and appreciated as well.

Color choices for squares: Maroon, Burnt Orange, White, Black. Please knit or crochet squares out of the nicest, softest yarn you can afford.

Please mail squares to:

Mosaic Yarn Shop
880 University City Blvd.
Blacksburg, Va24060


Thank You to all participants!

xoxoxox,

The staff of Mosaic

Monday, April 23, 2007

Long time, lots of stuff

So, the last time I left you all with a real post, my Mom was here visiting. We took her to the opening weekend of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. and had a great time. The blooms were amazing this year. The entire basin was lined with them and they were gorgeous. My mom and I were both excited about the majesty of the blooms and all was right with the world.

We also took Mom to Guapo's for dinner (FAB food) where she had a sangria, I had a LARGE margarita and we both got the giggles. It's strange to think that I am actually old enough to get tipsy with my Mom and not worry about it. When did THAT happen? She was the one I always was most afraid of whenever I came home even after the slightest amount of alcohol. I never was, and still am not, a big drinker and I can count the number of times that I have been truly drunk on one hand but, something about Mami always made me nervous if I had ever had any amount of alcohol. Now, here we are getting tipsy together. Tee hee. Fun times.

Great weekend, great company, great time. . . . until we came home. We had left Sunny at our Vet's boarding for the weekend. When we went to pick her up on Monday morning something wasn't right. She came to me but she didn't run, spin in circles or prance as she usually does. She laid at my feet and waited patiently for me to pay the bill. Huh? The girls commented that she had been extremely quiet during her stay. Huh? MY socialite puppy? She turns those eyes on you and mesmerizes you into taking her out and carrying her along with you. What was up? I stood there worried a bit and one of the techs came around the counter. Then she licked her nose and we both noticed that her tongue was extremely pale. EXTREMELY PALE.

Fast forward, she has been diagnosed with Auto-immune hemolytic anemia. Her immune system has turned on her and is destroying her own red blood cells. We can't pinpoint what triggered it: she's negative for all parasitic and tick-borne diseases (but there are many diseases where no specific test is available for them so, who knows) and there aren't any signs of any tumors or other malignancies. Our vet says that sometimes one NEVER knows exactly what triggers this process. Looking back there were signs: she was less likely to bring a toy spontaneously than before; she was content to play fetch for much, much shorter periods of time; she would lay in her crate (usually just a night time thing) during the day rather than on one of her "daybeds" strewn around the house and she had been eating less than usual. Not any one of these things seemed like a red flag at the time and yet here we were. She was pretty sick and is still recovering but the doctor feels that she is no longer in imminent danger of dying (yeah, we were at that point) as she had responded extremely well to therapy.

She remains on steroids and antibiotics and we are monitoring her blood counts closely. We will always have to be aware of this process in her: she MUST be on tick/flea preventative programs; she MUST be on heartworm preventative programs (both year round regardless of weather conditions) AND she will always get minimal vaccinations from now on. We have to be careful to not stimulate her immune system into attack once again. She will have routine bloodwork done now on a regular basis and she will be on/off steroids depending on her blood counts. But, she is responding, she is peppy and she is 90% back to her normal self again.

OK, so that was trauma #1 (yes there was more) since I last spoke with you so, I will leave you with that and will be back with more PLUS pictures of the DC trip and of the FABULOUS yarn my hubby bought me while we were there (Yea, he's good to me - most of the time >wink< ) as well as of the jewelry that Mami and I made.

ribbit