Truman Update

Poor Truman continues to have seizures about every 7-10 days despite being on the highest therapeutic level of Phenobarbital he can be on without it being toxic to him. We'd delayed putting him on KBr because #1. twice we've screwed up and not given him his afternoon pills, and he's had a seizure the next day (we wanted to try for a month to see if he'd still have seizures if we didn't screw up) and #2. KBr is about $40/month and I'm sure potential adopters (the very few who are kind enough to overlook his age and the fact that he has seizures) will be turned off that they'll have to spend that much money to take care of him. Anyway, his seizures keep happening even though we've been giving him his pills consistently. So, yesterday, I asked the vet to go ahead and prescribe the KBr.

Anyway... Truman's teeth are truly rotten, and should have been taken care of when we first got him in May, but the vet didn't want to do the dental until we got his seizures more under control--which doesn't seem to be happening--but she decided his teeth were bad enough that he needed to go ahead and have them taken care of.

I took him yesterday. Turns out, he was missing eight teeth already, and she had to remove 9 more rotten ones. He does have a couple with stitches, but most of those teeth pretty much just fell out on their own; she doesn't know how they were hanging on.

While he was there, I asked her to check out his right eye. Twice, at the dog park, he's bumped into other dogs. We thought it was funny first, however, after I got to thinking about it, I started to wonder if he was having problems seeing. The vet his other foster mom took him to had noted "eye is clear and responsive, but right pupil is larger than left." Well, his right pupil no longer responds to light and after she got him to sleep so she could examine his eye better, she found out he doesn't even have a retina anymore.

Oh, Truman... you break my heart...

Oh Mema... I will always love you.

09/26/1913 to 07/31/2009

JacquieG's July SewConnected Block

I finally finished JacquieG's July SewConnected quilt block. This was BY FAR the most difficult block I've made for this group. And, it wasn't that it was THAT difficult, but it really, really made me stretch to figure out how to do it.

I wish I'd added more of the aqua color blocks.

IgPost.com

Hmmm...

You know what I ABSOLUTELY HATE!??? I HATE posting something on a message board and then feeling like I have to JUSTIFY what I've written or write "IMHO" to prevent being visciously ATTACKED by those who think they know better then I do about whatever it is I'm writing about.

I've always thought alot of the members on IgPost.com are entirely too opinionated and so I read the topics, but I usually don't post responses.

I had to laugh yesterday when I saw someone had written: "...before someone chews my butt off this is just my opinion..."

I think there needs to be a new acronym: DCMBO: Don't Chew My Butt Off!

July SewConnected Block

I'm totally freaking out about this month's SewConnected block.

#1. This is JacquieG's month, and she is the very JacquieG from Tallgrass Prairie Studio (BTW, I always have to look up how to spell "prairie") who does some of the MOST OUTSTANDING work I've ever seen and therefore am completely intimidated by her. Here's her blog: http://tallgrassprairiestudio.blogspot.com/

#2. She wants us to make a block that is inspired by a drawing her son made for her which is very Frank Lloyd Wright-esque. I'm trying to get my head around this, but I guess THINKING about it just isn't cutting it (ha! ha!)... I need to go start cutting some test fabric and see if I can figure out what I'm doing...?

Here's the SewConnected Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/sewconnected/

My New Car (YAY!)

Okay... the LLBean Subaru Outback that we bought in 2001 with 189,000 miles on it finally bit the dust. I've been nervously holding my breath every time I drove it for the last month. I wouldn't start in the Walmart parking lot three weeks ago. And two weeks ago--at a busy stoplight--it started to chug and buck and shake before totally sputtering to death. Not good.

BUT... Brian wanted to do all this research before we bought another one, and he spent three weekends buying different New Car Price Reports and assessing how much we could get for the trade-in and blah, blah, blah. Finally, he decided he had it all figured out, and we went to the car dealership armed with his folder of information and a calculator.

We test drove a really, really nice Outback that was the prettiest color: seacrest green. However it was a 6 cylinder (like I even know what that means). Consumer Reports says that the 4 cylinder, turbo engine has the same power as the 6 cylinder, is cheaper and gets better gas mileage. But they didn't have any of those on the lot.

So, the dealership had to order it for us. Unfortunately, the 6 cylinder that we looked at is a top-of-the-line car, and those come in exclusive colors, seacrest green being one of them. We couldn't get that color in the 4 cylinder. I had to pick out another color, and I wasn't real thrilled with any of my choices. I half-heartedly picked out blue and silver. However, when we picked it up, I decided it looks really nice.

Here's the car. It now has 32 miles on it!

Fate of the baby ducks...

The Fish and Wildlife guy called me back yesterday morning. He told me to take the baby ducks to the nearest water source and pitch 'em in! Well... he didn't actually say "pitch" but "release" them--which translates to "pitch" in my book since I think that is a TOTALLY uncaring/unconcerned/thoughtless way to handle the situation. Probably most people would say not to interfere with Mother Nature of survival of the fittest or what ever, but I'm too sympathetic (or maybe the naysayers would say "pathetic" instead?). The closest water source is the canal that runs beside the exercise path in front of our subdivsion (which, by the way, is right beside a four-lane, 50 MPH road so besides starving to death or drowning, they could have gotten run over).

I didn't know how to get down the the water because there's a steep bank down to it. I e-mailed Brian to see if he would help me when he got home last night.

Meanwhile, I was going to a movie with Judy yesterday afternoon and since I'm still driving the clunker around, I asked for her cell phone number (because if I broke down, I was going to call her to come pick me up). Anyway, she had a friend who once found a seagull with a broken wing (I'll bet Fish and Wildlife would have told her to wring it's little neck and pitch it in the trash!). The friend found a bird rescue group to take care of it. So Judy called her friend and got numbers for me to call!

I got in touch with a woman named Laurel, and she told me to drop the ducks off at her office and she would take care of them. YAY!!! Whew! I didn't want them to die, but I didn't want to take care of them either!