Wading in Self-Pity

I've decided that monthly blogging is the future! Or at least, that's how it's going to be as long as I'm addicted to facebook, and it keeps me away.

So, as this week starts, I'm wading in self-pity. Not wallowing. Not yet. Today, in fact, it's quite mild -- more guilt associated with the feelings of uselessness and helplessness. Yesterday was worse, in which I almost cried.

Why the drama? Last Tuesday night, I injured my ankle playing soccer. I knew instantly that it was worse than when I sprained my other ankle last February. (Which begs the question, why do I keep playing soccer when I injure myself once a year? Do I believe I'll suddenly become skilled and lose my innate klutziness?) Two of my teammates took me to the ER, where an x-ray revealed a fracture. For some reason, this made me feel a bit better. That my intense pain was from a "real" injury perhaps, not just another sprain. However, this feeling of almost relief was short-lived. Pretty much as soon as the fiberglass splint hardened on my leg. The Vicodin helped me feel a bit calmer, though.

Pulling out the old crutches didn't help. I've had them for twelve years now; I got them when I tore my ACL in my left knee skiing in 1997. A year and two surgeries later, I put them away. But they came out again last February, and again on Wednesday morning, when I returned home from the ER.

I was doing OK, though. The boys and Hubby were helping me around the house. It was mid-winter break, so the boys were out of school, and we didn't have anything we needed to do. Of course, I might have done more exciting things than hang out around the house had I not injured myself, but whatever. And then, Friday I went to the orthopedist. I was fitted with a cast. No weight-bearing on my right leg. For six weeks. It finally hit me. This was not going to be fun. Not that I thought I'd be having fun, but still.

And yesterday the impact of not being able to use my right leg for six weeks really hit home when Harrison mentioned his soccer class on Wednesday. Hubby and I were discussing what we were going to do about Harrison's preschool, since I can't drive. (I don't know if driving with my left leg instead of my right is: a. doable b. legal c. a good idea or d. none of the above. I decided to err and the side of caution.) Hubby said he's just work from home on the mornings of preschool days so he could drive Harrison and pick him up. Then Harrison piped in with, "And soccer on Wednesday morning!" I told Harrison soccer class was going to have to wait for a month, since Daddy couldn't take that much time off of work to take him to soccer. I think he took it better than I did. No soccer for Hutton on Monday afternoons, either. No chiropractor for me. I am already feeling completely out of alignment from walking on crutches and lying on my left side so much. Wah.

What snaps me out of the pity and back to reality is when I get annoyed by others not doing things up to my high expectations. OK, I'm not really that much of a perfectionist, but the house is slowly falling apart into chaotic mess, and I am not able to stop it. I had Hubby bring down a wheeled office chair from upstairs so I could do things in the kitchen -- most importantly, making my coffee. Coffee is so, so important. Imperative. Of course, getting the coffee into the living room so I can enjoy it while lounging on the couch still involves someone's help.

The thing that does not get done at all: pooper scooping. Hubby has been great, helping with the laundry, cooking most of the food, doing the dishes...but he doesn't do pooper scooping. And when the boys are outside playing, they don't notice the mine field of dog poops. Thus, they step in it, and I have to clean their shoes. My philosophy has always been to clean the poop up before you step in it. Better to have an unsoiled shoe from the beginning than to have to scrub poop off of it later because you couldn't take the five minutes to clean up before. I'd much rather deal with poop outside, at the end of a two foot long scoop, than inches from my fingers in the laundry room. But, apparently, Hubby doesn't see this. And did I mention we have a new doggy soiling our yard?

Yes, with my perfect timing, we adopted our new dog, Ruffy, on Monday, and a day later, I was unable to walk this giant, energetic dog. We have an invisible fence, which works fine with Sally our older dog who knows the boundaries, but the fence is broken, so Ruffy can't learn the boundaries until it's fixed. Hubby attempted to fix it Saturday, but gave up; the fence people come out on Wednesday to fix it, I hope. Fortunately, Tuesday, before the dreaded soccer game, I took the dogs to the dog park and they ran around for an hour, and Hutton has been running around with Ruffy in the yard (though I imagine him running into dog poop every time he goes outside).

We got Ruffy from one of Hutton's classmates. His family was worried they weren't giving Ruffy enough time, attention, and most importantly, exercise. He's a tall, leggy, goldendoodle (the lame name for Golden Retriever/Poodle mixes - someone out there come up with a better name for these kick-ass dogs!) who is not quite two years old, so very energetic. "Oh, no problem!" thinks Laura, "I can walk Ruffy daily! I'll start jogging again and take him on long runs on the trail at the end of our street." Or, I'll break my leg the very next night and not be able to walk him for six weeks. So, I feel a bit guilty about that, too.

Ruffy is a sweetheart of a dog, and I hope when our invisible fence is repaired, he'll learn the boundaries quickly (his first owners had an invisible fence, too) and I can at least throw a ball around for him in the yard, if not walk him daily. The few times I've been out on my crutches with him, with Hutton holding his leash, I've been deathly afraid of being clotheslined - having the leash wrap around my crutches and pull me down. I fell inside the other day, landing on my butt and smacking my cast on the floor, which was painful, and not something I want to repeat.

Blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. Time to go reheat my coffee and use the bathroom. Easy things to do without crutches.

I'll leave you with some pictures.

Another Day, Another Dollar...

...Or thousands, to be spent.

This fall, the money issues are coming up. Fortunately, my husband's job seems to be secure, and he makes enough for us to live on and have a little set aside for emergencies. However, we have been spending too much lately. And not just on unnecessary luxuries like new TVs (though Hubby did buy one of those, and now it's annoying me because the thing is too big for the stand it's on, and isn't centered on the wall, so from my regular seat -- the one I always sit in on the couch -- the end of the TV overlaps the doorway according to my angle of view, plus the cables and plugs to the TV are all visible on the wall. It's very upsetting to my sense of decor. Hubby doesn't see the point in that, but feng shui, or my Americanized version of it, is important to me!).

Where was I? Oh yes, we're spending too much money. In October, we had the hyperbaric chamber rental. That has been going well so far, in that Hutton enjoys going in the chamber twice a day, and his sentences are getting longer and sound more "typical". We'll see how he does in the weeks to come if he continues to improve. The chamber goes back next week, and if he shows improvement during the "down time" we'll probably want to rent it again, or look into buying one. Did you say that will cost still more money? Oh yeah. Money. So, if the hyperbaric protocol works for Hutton, that's great, but means more money spent. If it doesn't work for Hutton, that just means we wasted thousands of dollars. Hmm. And time. Time is money, right? Well, not if you're a seven-year-old boy or a housewife, I suppose.

I bought tickets to fly home to Nashville for the week between Christmas and New Year's. Originally, we were all going to go for two weeks, and drive down to Pensacola to visit Hubby's family, too, but when that got into the $2500 range (AKA the price of renting a hyperbaric chamber for a month) Hubby balked. So, now the boys and I are going to Nashville for a week, not driving to Pensacola (we'll see the inlaws in North Carolina for Thanksgiving, when we visit my sister-in-law and her family) and we'll save on Hubby's ticket, plus car rental costs, plus Hubby can stay and take care of the pets, so no petsitter costs for that. Phew. But, still, another $1700 to visit family for Christmas.

Then there's the Christmas gifts to be bought for friends and family. I've bought things for a few people already, but still have more to buy, and I'm sure that will quickly add up.

And then, today, I took our sweet Sally to the vet for her annual checkup. She has two fatty tumors that are growing -- one on her leg, the other on the side of her abdomen, and the vet wrote up an estimate for having them removed. She's had these tumors for years, and when they biopsied them, they were benign, but the one on her leg started getting bigger this fall. So, it's possible there's something underneath all the fat. But, do we want to subject our 13-year-old dog to surgery and the two weeks of downtime to follow? Not to mention the $1100 or so for surgery? Sally's a great dog, but as Hubby and I discussed two years ago when she needed surgery for a herniated disk in her neck, it's a lot of money. So, we're going to wait on the tumors for a while, since they aren't bothering her.

I won't type anything else, or I'm sure to jinx us into having more money issues come up.

It's a New Year...And a Whole New Laura!

OK, the first part is true, but the last is not. Same old Laura. I've been bitten by the New Year Organizational bug, though, which is why I haven't posted since last year. Har har. I always loved that "last year" joke. Said to best friend across the street on New Year's Eve every year: "See you next year!"

The wonderful Kim was kind enough to check in with me and see if I was OK. I didn't fall off the earth (it is flat, isn't it? I'm still not sure, like Sherri Shepherd)> No, I'm still here. We went to Nashville, TN and Pensacola, FL for Christmas and New Year's, and came back home last week, over-loaded with twice as much stuff as when we left. Oh, the joys of gifts. (I had typed "jobs of gifts" accidentally, which seems pretty accurate, when you think about it!)

Since our return, Hutton has been making sure that every toy he owns has "fresh batteries," and walks around with the phillips head screwdriver to try to change the batteries if they're not-so-fresh. Fortunately, we own lots of rechargeable batteries.

I have, as I mentioned earlier, been busy trying to make my home less of a cluttered cesspool. I've de-Christmased our home, cleaned out the fridge and refilled it with food, exchanged Christmas gifts, washed about a dozen loads of laundry, moved furniture around...you get the idea of my excitement filled new year! On the other hand, my evil old dog, Fergus, has been doing his best to make sure the carpets are still freshly peed on. I swear this dog must have decided a good new year's resolution is: Do my best to be euthanized very quickly in 2008. No, I'm not there yet, but the dog has peed in our house every day since our return, and it's usually just a few minutes after I gave him the chance to go outside to pee. Currently, he's in a crate in the garage, but he's been sleeping in the laundry room (the better to be close to the urine soaked towels in the wash, I suppose!). At night, he's been acting like a crazy old man, shaking and panting. Well, I guess that panting is more of a crazy old dog thing. I don't know how much longer we'll have with old Ferg, but every time he pees in my house (or even in the garage, which happened today when I came home and let the dogs out) I seem to be a bit more hardened to his death. Don't get me wrong, I love this dog, and will be sad when he dies, but as I soak up pee, I don't ever think, "Gosh, I love this dog!"

So that is what I've been doing. Nothing exactly blog-worthy. I did want to blog when we were at the in-laws for five very long days, to vent a bit, but I just did some "mental blogging", which made me feel a bit better. Better that than having to try to explain to my extremely nice mother-in-law why I was bitching about everything when she accidentally stumbles upon my blog someday!

I Have a Cold. Whine, Whine, Whine.

Waaa! Poor me! I am stuffed up of sinus and tired from not sleeping well. I kept an ear out to listen for our old dog, Fergus, needing to go out during the night, and when I was able to sleep, I'd wake up to have to go wipe my nose and go between being sweaty and freezing.

Fergus is 14 and a half. He's been having lots of accidents the past few days, and I'm wondering if I should humiliate him in his old age by making him wear diapers. I mean, it's not as if our carpeting isn't beyond help anyway. What's a few hundred more pee stains to clean? Yesterday I washed two throw rugs, then when those were all fresh and clean, Harrison called out about his socks being wet, and I found another wet spot in the carpet upstairs. Then another a couple of hours later. This morning, at least, Fergus managed to pee in the middle of the wood floor, and didn't get any on the newly washed rug. Amazing! It's not as if I don't let Fergus out several times a day. It's possible he's just lazy and doesn't want to go out in the cold. Sigh. Between that and the "potty trained" Harrison ("No, I don't need to use the bathroom!" Ten minutes later: "No, I didn't pee in my pants. Oh, wait, I did.") I've been doing lots of laundry.

Yawn. Time to go get some more coffee. Or maybe I should be good and drink something hydrating. Hmm. If I can park the boys in front of the TV after lunch, I may be able to take a nap. Still, I have to actually make it to lunch. Decisions, decisions.

Oh, So That's What We're Doing This Weekend

This morning, Hubby and I both woke up late. Well, I got up at 2 a.m. to change a poopy diaper (Harrison has some issues with daytime pooping, and apparently can only really relax when he's asleep! Guess we'll have some therapy for him in the future. Kidding, kidding!) then again at 8:00 a.m. when Harrison was "locked in his bedroom" by Hutton, meaning Hutton had closed the door after himself when he got up this morning. It wasn't locked, but for some reason, Harrison forgot the door opens in. Sigh.

So, I had no trouble going back to sleep for another hour. But Hubby was taking his time. At 10:00, he was still at home, getting himself a bowl of cereal and some orange juice. I reminded myself that it was in fact, Friday, not Saturday.

I started cleaning up the kitchen, when I noticed something brown on the floor. Hmm. What is that? Cereal? Nooo. Of course not. It was DOG POOP. Again! Can I get a break? Where did it come from? Closest source - Fergus. He looked up at me, and I grabbed a paw and saw lots of stuff clumped on his pad. Grrr!

Meanwhile, Harrison has appeared back in the room, diaperless and demanding a new diaper, as I'm surveying the floor for more poop spots. I grabbed a paper towel and started picking up and wiping down anything that could have possibly been poop, while asking Harrison to go get a diaper, please, and trying to pin Fergus on the floor so he won't run through the house spreading poop. I was also trying to avoid being bitten by old Ferg. Fergus has lots of paw anxiety from past events, including a bad nail trim episode, as well as cutting the pad on his paw, requiring a trip to the vet for stitches. He really doesn't like having his paws handled, and when they're covered in dog poop....ARRGGGH!

I managed to get Harrison's new diaper on while pinning Fergus, then tried to drag Fergus to the bathroom, but he wasn't going for it and started baring his teeth at me again, knowing I was going for his paws again. I pushed him into the garage, then started cleaning the floor. After that was done, I readied the bathtub for a dog bath, and somehow convinced Fergus to come out of his crate in the garage and carried him to the bathroom. After bathing him, I got a muzzle on him and started trimming his nails and cutting the fur between his pads, so he won't drag in more poop. Fun times. Not something I wanted to do this morning, but I can't say that Fergus didn't need a bath and nail trim. I would have preferred not to deal with the poop, though.

Then, I finally got upstairs to the golden mecca that is my computer, to check email and drink my coffee, and saw Hubby at his desk, wearing headphones. He used to work from home, so that wasn't too unusual, but I noticed he wasn't looking at a "work" looking screen. No, he was playing a game. He looked up and said, "I'm working from home today! Halo 3 is out!"

"Oh, so you're working, huh?"

As I wrote for my title, I know what we'll be doing this weekend. The boys and I will be entertaining ourselves while Hubby devotes himself to a video game. Sigh.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did I mention that Hubby is rebuilding our deck? I mentioned to him last night I wasn't sure what to do for Hutton's birthday in two weeks. I didn't want him to feel pressured, so I didn't add what was on my mind: I can't just have a simple party at home if our back deck is missing. Well, I can, but having people stuck in the kitchen and family rooms, rather than having the kids able to play outside and serve food that we grilled out, takes away from the summer birthday party at home thing. And now that Halo 3 is out, something tells me Hubby is NOT going to be working on the deck a lot this weekend. Sigh. Better start looking for places to have a birthday party.

Thanks, Tully!

So, about a week ago, I noticed the little mouse hole by the downstairs toilet intake valve was open again. I had stuffed it with Bounce sheets, as I read somewhere that mice can't stand the smell. Well, some mouse with no sense of smell apparently pushed through. I found one of our "no-kill" traps and put it out, and restuffed the hole with Bounce.

It was pushed out again the next day, and the trap was flipped. I picked up the trap, but no mouse was inside. Hmmm. Reset the trap, restuffed the Bounce, wondered what exactly Tully, our cat, was doing around the house if not killing little mice.

Friday morning, I noticed a dead mouse outside on the front walkway. I was going to head out to clean it up after I finished my coffee, but Harrison beat me outside. I heard him crying and rushed out to see what was wrong.

"Mouse!" he cried.

"It's OK, sweetie. Did you see a mouse? Yeah, I think that mouse is only hurt. Mommy will move him so he's more comfortable!" Yep, lying through my teeth.

Or so I thought. When I went to pick up the "dead" mouse, it was actually moving. My skin began crawling in full-on Heebie Jeebies as I carefully picked up the dying mouse with the dog poop rake and moved him to a "more comfortable" death bed, under a tree in an area neither dogs nor boys frequent.

Just typing that makes my skin crawl further.

So, not only does Tully leave partially dead mice on our front walkway, but she also neglects to kill the mice who saunter into our house at will. Yeah, thanks, Tully!

Our Newest Family Member

Presenting...

FINN MCCOOL!


He's a beautiful Betta speldens fish, otherwise known as the Siamese fighting fish. Harrison and I, on our weekly trip to the pet store during Hutton's speech therapy appointment, picked Finn out to be a birthday gift for Harrison and Hubby. (Their birthdays are a week apart.)



I remembered the name from my Irish literature class way back in college, and figured the "finn" part fit a fish very well, and as you can see, he's very McCool. (Bad. I know!) Of course, I've already come up with a nickname for him: Glub-Glub.

The pictures didn't turn out very well - blurry and dark, but you get a good idea of his beautiful coloring and how pretty his fins are. Hence the name!

My Saturday Morning in Pictures

This morning, I walked into the office/playroom and was greeted by this:

That's right. It's my younger son, Harrison, holding an ear. Fortunately, it's not a real ear, but a fake one, which had been attached to the scary electronic chimpanzee seen here:


We headed downstairs to eat breakfast, and I carried "Vincent" as I'm now calling the chimp, and his ear.

I got out some glue to attempt to glue the ear back on. I thought Crazy Glue would work fine, but Vincent went for the Gorilla Glue, of course.

After gluing, I wrapped some tape around Vincent's head to hold the ear in place. I don't have a great feeling about the "surgery" outcome. Guess we'll see tomorrow when I take the tape off.
Tully checking to make sure everything is OK.
Good Old Boy, Fergus
Sally, with shorter hair on her neck from her own surgery in January
Tully as Window Dressing

Where Was I?

Oh yeah, I was talking about electricity. Well it went out Thursday the 14th, and stayed out for over a week. Fortunately, we got the hell out of dodge on Saturday, on our flight to visit family in Tennessee. We survived five days with my family, followed by a seven-hour drive to Florida to see Hubby's family. We survived still another five days there, and traveled another seven-hour drive back to Tennessee. Then we had our glorious five-hour flight home to Seatac yesterday. The angels sang as we drove up and the garage door opened with the simple push of a button. I happily went around turning on every light in the house.

The highlights and lowlights of our trip:

We saw lots of family. This is usually a highlight AND a lowlight at the same time. For instance, visiting Gran, my mom's mother, involves listening to lots of "woe is me" talk in a house that could double for a smokey bar. After hearing about Gran's miserable cold, then moving on to the thrilling travel photos, Hubby and I felt the need to change clothes and shower. We don't spend much time in smokey bars, either. Gran is 82, so her 60+ years of smoking seem to have done nothing to her health. Good genes, I guess. Hope I got those genes, too! We also visited my great-uncle in the rehab center where he's recovering from a fractured hip. I don't want to get old.

One night in Florida we visited some family friends/distant cousins of Hubby's in their as un-kid-friendly-as-possible home. Think fragile knicknacks on every surface. I ate my dinner in as few bites as possible, then circled through the house after the boys keeping them from touching anything. They did get some travel-size Etch-a-sketches, so that helped for about 30 seconds.

Hutton highlights: Every ceiling fan in every room that had one was turned on. The boy loves ceiling fans, and since we don't have any at home, he has to get his fill visiting relatives. He also found Nana's (Hubby's mom) microwave irresistible, as it was on a low countertop within easy reach. First he made do with just pressing the buttons as often as possible, followed by my hollow threats to "not touch the microwave...or else!" The best part was one day when I smelled something funny in the kitchen, hurried in, and found Hutton laughing maniacally about the "girl smiling!" I found the weird odor was coming from the microwave, which was cooking a box of Wheat Thins bearing Rachel Ray's image. Well, she was smiling, even after being microwaved. What a trooper!

Another highlight (in the sarcastic sense): one day I left my cell phone on the kitchen table at my mom's house, along with a glass of water. Figured this was OK since Hubby was sitting at the kitchen table. I was wrong. After I got out of the shower, Hutton was crying, Hubby was yelling, and my cellphone wasn't working. Fortunately, after dyring out, my cellphone works again.

This morning, after an oh-so-exciting New Year's Eve night spent going to bed around 10 pm (hey, we're still on Central Time!), we got a phone call from the kennel where the dogs and cat were staying. Something was wrong with our dog, Sally, and they wanted us to come pick her up. Pro: we got to spring the animals a day early, since the kennel wasn't technically open today. Con: Sally is unable to stand, and we took her to the emergency vet, who thinks she may have a slipped disk, but needs to do lots of tests and X-rays to be sure. They haven't called with the results yet, so please keep our sweet doggie in your thoughts.

Off to clean more, do more laundry, and put away more Christmas gifts. Oh yeah, I guess I need to write thank you notes, too. I really hate the day after coming home from a trip!