My Good Karma

Tomorrow, I embark on what will be one of the hardest things I ever have to do in my life.  Tomorrow, I am taking Merit in to be euthanized.  I've been a mess for over a week now, knowing it's time.  Her arthritis is bad.  Three kinds of pain pills bad.  And she still has good and bad days.  Even with the pain pills.  This week the bad days have outnumbered the good.  And the good haven't been good enough.  I think, she's ready.  I know she's ready not to hurt anymore.  But, I'd be lying if I tried to claim I could ever be ready for this.  I knew, when I adopted her, or really, when she rescued me, that this day would come.  We've had 15 wonderful years together.  Next week, March 21, will be her 15th "Gotcha Day." But, I'm not going to allow her to hurt any longer than necessary, just to meet a day that is special in my mind.  I wish, I was eloquent enough to write a eulogy that was even half as worthy of her.  I know, that whatever I write, it will fall way short of describing the love and friendship she has bestowed on me.  We all have pets that are part of the family.  Our furbabies.  For me, Merit is the baby, by which all dogs shall be measured.  It's not really fair to our other pets, but it's the truth.
Merit has been with me for all the major experiences in my adult life; our engagement, our wedding, several home purchases, two babies... Things won't be the same without her.  When I adopted Merit, I was reading, "The Art of Happiness," by the Dali Lama.  In the book, he described the "good karma" that follows you from life to life.   He said the closest word we had for that in English, was "merit."  When I read that, I knew.  Merit is my good karma.  I believe that whatever happens to us after this life, that we are reunited with our furbabies.  Heaven wouldn't be heaven unless my pups are there.  But it is going to be a very long time until I get to see her again.  I am going to miss her so very, very much.

Motivation

Or maybe it should be titled “lack of…” cause man have I checked out over here. I have spent my entire morning reading emails, updating facebook and reading blogs, cause I’m cool like that. I just have very little motivation for work anymore, go figure.

Bad case of the senioritis. Oh well, what they gonna do? Fire me? Tank You, I’ll be here all zee week folks, be sure to tip your bartenders and waitresses.

OK, so the effort area of my brain is a bit on the mush side right now, and in that vein here’s something else that requires little effort my part (but maximum reward for you dear internets, cause truly it’s all about you.) A little photo story, bout a girl & her dawg.

Just Hanging Around	Uh Oh! Here Comes Trouble!
Trouble Has Arrived!	Maybe she won't notice me.
Girl & Her Dawg!	Here comes the love!
Too Much Love	There better be a treat in it for me!

OHMYGAWD! I know you don't really care, but dude I can not tell you how much time I just spent working on that damn table so those pix & captions would layout correctly! I do web stuff, so posting a table, not normally a big deal, but OH.MY.GAWD! Apparently there's a bug in blogger related to table and even though I found the info and correct fix for it in the blogger groups it still took me like two hours to really get it to post correctly. I'm not kidding.

See internet I do love you.
I have to also comment; when we first got Merit, she was not a "kid" dog. We worked hard w/her to get her over that. However, she prefers the adults or bigger kids even knowing that the little ones are really the key to the "food train." Of course, DD2 is in lurve with all animals, especially Merit. Merit has been a very good sport (DD2 is the food train after all) but she doesn't have to enjoy it; as you can see here. Merit's expressions crack me up. I know that she and DD2 will be best buds and at some point it will become clear that Merit has become DD2's dog more than mine.

FUN Monday (whee!!!)

Whee! Are you having fun yet? I’m a little delirious about now, this cold is getting to me.
Ok, well I’m actually NOT having fun right now. I was all excited to share my pet photos with you and guess what?! Remember that CPU that got fried from the power outage on Friday? Um yeah. We didn’t lose the photos, we have them backed up in like 4 hard drives, but we don’t have a working CPU to access them right now. Yes, I could hook them up to this laptop, but that would take a while and I’m really don’t have the energy to get that involved in it. So I have some photos they just aren’t as recent as I had hoped and they won’t include our neighbors dog either. You'll have to settle for some old pix for now. Sorry deal with it, you're getting two posts in one day, don' t push it ok? ;-)
So Lisa over at Lisa's Chaos is hosting Fun Monday this week, here's her topic:
Let’s meet your pets. I think most of us have at least one pet and I would like to see your fluffy or scaly pal. If you don’t have a camera you can tell us about him/her/them. If you don’t have a pet tell us about a pet you had or a pet you want. If for some weird reason you hate all animals we want to know why gosh-dang-it.
Ok Lisa, you asked for it:
My mom (and quite possibly my husband) would tell you I bring home every stray in the county, which is totally not true (only the cute ones). I do, however, love my babies. I’ve had a pet of some sort for most of my life, mostly dogs, but after my teen years I started with my kitties too. In college (the dorms) I suddenly didn’t have any pets and boy did I miss them. After college & the dorms, there was a kitty who lived in apartments with me. I had this kitty for 7 years and there was a lot of drama involved with this kitty, A LOT OF DRAMA. But any story involving that kitty is a series of posts and in the not all happy, (he had what they call "behavior issues") so we’re going to focus on happier times and the current babies.

Once I purchased my first home (by myself) I got Merit. Merit is 7 now. When I got her I worked at an ad agency which allowed you to bring your dog to work. Quite possibly one of the best places I'll ever work. We dubbed Merit, “Director of Dog Services” and she l became the department mascot. She learned tons of tricks while I worked there. I’d go to a meeting with her sleeping under my desk and come back to a monitor filled with post its notes of all the people who came & got her and took her places. In turn I had a “cookie jar” of dog treats on my desk and on Mondays I would put a post it on the top describing our trick of the week. She wasn’t to get treats unless she earned them. As a result of this Merit knows how to do the following: sit, down, come, shake, high-five, play dead (roll on her side), drop (whatever is in her mouth, including food), wait (when she's eating we make her stop and take food from her, so she won't get food aggression), heel (although she’s pretty rotten about that one if she thinks she can get away with it), bed (get on her bed), find “daddy” (or mommy, or either of our kids), crawl (we call it sneaky-sneaky), and hold, which involves holding a piece of food on her snout until given the command of ok, at which time she’ll flip the food into her mouth. (When we had Mowry we had them trained to do it in tandem). Yeah, I could go on and on about Merit she’s my baby. I choose this pix (taken in Oct) because it reminds me of how much of a part of our family she really is, as usually she's right in the middle of the action.
This is Mama. A few years back I was feeling a bit maternal. Daddyspeak and I had gotten married, purchased our first home together, etc…but I wanted a kitty to snuggle with again. I went to the Humane Society to adopt a kitten. While I was waiting they were asking people to come hold the older cats and someone handed me Mama. What a snugger! She chose me right there and then. When it got to be my turn I found out that the last girl kitten had just been adopted, but I couldn’t help myself I was already in love with Mama. She was 2 at that time, so that makes her about 9 (wow, I just realized how old she is, I haven’t really thought about it in a while!) Mama runs the show. She allows the kids to pet her and generally just moves when she is done with them. She’s still very much a lap kitty.
The last of my brood is Monkey. Yes, I know that’s an odd name for a cat. (My mom has a cat named Mouse, so Monkey suddenly isn’t so weird is it?) After getting Mama I was still feeling maternal & wanting a kitten so we went to the one of the local rescue groups and adopted Monkey. Her original name was Samba, as they named all the kitties in her litter after different dances. Monkey was a teeny, tiny kitty for a very long time. (Part of why Mama kept her name as Mama seeing as she was the bigger of the two.) One day when I got up from sitting on our bed and she launched herself onto my back in play. She was so little it didn’t hurt and it was funny as all get out (I imagine she looked a lot like small backpack) and I called her “Monkey-cat” and it just stuck. She’s much bigger now. I n fact, I just told her the other day I was going to change her name to “Fatty” for obvious reasons. She’s very much my cat & tends to follow me around the house. In fact, she won’t go to bed until I do, so she’s sitting next to me right now. Occasionally, she’ll meow at me cause she wants to go to bed & I’m taking too long. Monkey is surprisingly, also really good with the kids. Monkey’s always been a bit skittish and tends to go hide when new people are around or if someone is just moving too fast; like kids will do. But lately she’s decided she likes the attention and now that DD2 really understands how to scratch her she’ll go looking for her for some lovin’. Mama & Monkey mostly get along, but occasionally get into spats where we’ll have to separate them & reintroduce them to each other. They’re like to old ladies who get sassy with each other once in awhile, but most of the time (even when they supposedly aren’t getting along) we’ll find them sleeping all curled up with each other.
I guess my novel gives you an idea of how much I love my babies. This is inspiring to maybe have a weekly post about my babies or maybe more directly about my family. Hmmm…no promises, but I’m thinking about it.
Alright, I’ve typing for so long now that I’ve missed Fun Monday and this will be posting on Fun Tuesday! Monkey’s meowing at me again so I’m off to bed!

X-mas-y Type Things.

We decorated on Sunday, and at the beginning I had lots of helpers.

(Please note we have given the living room to the kids as a playroom, my whole house is not full of toys, you're pretty much seeing all of it. And yes, we do have way too much, a good portion of which is hand-me- downs.)

Why yes, that is a life size Barbie in the background, you mean you don't have one?

I made a huge deal about putting the star on the top of the tree the first year for DD1 and now I may have created a monster. We let DD1 put it on, but then had to stage a second round for DD2. The annual Staging of the Star!

DS decided the star needed straitening, but DD2 wasn't going to be left out of that either.

This incident should've clued us into the upcoming accident on Tuesday in which she pulled a chair onto her face, but that's another story. (Thankful no permanent damage, just to my ego and her trust I'm sure.) Right now my child and I are so bruised up I'm sure CPS is on their way over.

The kids had to go to bed before we were done, so near the end, not so much on the helpers Even Merit crashed out.
Monkey was providing help of her own kind. I’m sure she’ll do her best to scale the tree in the next week.

And finally the end product! (I kinda like blurry one, it's all artsy...work with me here people!)

Catch up Monday

Hola Internet. How are you? Me? I’m good I guess. I don’t even know how to answer that question any more. I’m still on the rollercoaster ride, that’s for sure. Sorry I haven’t updated sooner, it’s just been a really long week. So here’s your “Catch up Monday”; Wednesday will be “Medical Drama Wednesday”, Thursday will be “Love Thursday” and Monday will be henceforth be known as “Catch up Monday”. After today I’m sure I will totally blow off these things, but I like to set goals like that for myself so I can blow them off and feel good about myself. I’m a self-promoter like that.

Health
The pink-eye in my right eye is looking better, not gone, but better. I’ve been on antibiotics (eye goop) for 5 days now and one would think it should look “healed” by now. Of course, this morning I woke up with a goopy, red LEFT eye. I put medicine in it and called my doctor’s office to find out if this means I’m contagious again. I’m at work, so let’s hope not. Ironically, neither of the girls has the pink-eye.

On Wednesday the chest congestion mentioned at the doctor’s visit decided to make public appearance. Since then I have had a horrendous cough. It’s dry, it’s hacky, it sounds like I’m going to put my lung on the table. It’s a nasty cough. Lots or gross stuff is coming up with it, but it doesn’t really seem to be improving on any level. I have these coughing jags that literally last for 3-5 minutes. I can’t catch my breath & people will leave the place I’m in if its public (like starbuck’s this AM). My throat and my diaphragm muscle both feel like someone has beaten the crap out of them. I think my throat seriously might be bruised. I also have an unbelievably raspy voice. Talking on the phone is next to impossible. I think it has also given me a headache. I have a call into my doctor for follow up.

Work
I know I said wasn’t planning on talking about work (see docce). But (there’s always a “but” isn’t there?) I’m totally being F’ed with these days. I’m being reorganized again. Last time it was really a positive for me; I like my boss, I like my job, I love my co-workers. If I could well enough to be here on a regular basis, it might even be fun. The person I’m going to be reporting to has no management experience (in regard to personal) and she’s a be-yoch at best anyway. I can’t see how this can end well for me. I’ve spoken with DS and he has agreed that I can quit if I think I need to (he knows I wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t afford it financially). My current boss is acting in his position, and currently interviewing for the position he’s been filling for the last year and a half, so I imagine there’s a part of him that feels he needs to keep a low profile on this topic. Also, no one approached him or his boss on this subject. (True Silicon Valley fashion) I’m not alone, there’s one other person who is being moved out of our group as well. Her situation is better then mine. I don’t intend to sit back and allow this happen. I imagine I’ll have more to report on this subject later, but I’m working on our (home) budget as if I weren’t working.

Kids
BS is “on fire” these days. She’s crawling/scooting/cruising all over the place. We’ve done some baby proofing, but definitely still have much more to do. She’s so damn cute, she starts to go toward something she’s not supposed to (like under the desk to the computer wires) and you’ll say, “BS what are you doing?” She’ll sit up, grin this HUGE grin at you and shake her head “no”. Then she’ll continue crawling in the direction she was headed, knowing you’ll come get her. That one’s going to be our joker I think.

TS had a stellar play date on Saturday w/5 friends (all girls). We rode bikes around the block to the elementary school by our house and they played on the playground. Then we rode back to one family’s house and had beer and wine while the kids played on their swing set. (It was so down home, middle class America.) We topped it off by ordering pizza and having dinner together while we watched KU lose or UCLA win, depending on your perspective. One thing I noticed during this play date is that TS is at least 2 inches taller then everyone else. This could start to make things hard as people will think she’s older than she is and have unrealistic expectations of her.

Pets
Mowry is no longer with us. Last week he started jumping the fence. He’d jump over, he’d jump back, and he’d take off and jump back. Neighbors would return him, we’d tie him up, but he second he was untied he’d start in again. There was no obvious reason for his agitation. After several days of this I finally told DS to go ahead and take him to the pound. I was scared he was going to get hit by a car (neighbors reported seeing him walking down the sidewalk on the busy street by our house). We filled out paperwork on him and made it clear that he’s a great dog, but quite the escape artist. We also made sure they knew he had issues with containment, so hopefully that will help in their treatment of him. That’s all you’ll hear about it from me, it makes me really sad to think about.

On an up note, Merit is MUCH HAPPIER. She’s getting to hang out with us much more and I’m seeing a side to her personality that hasn’t been around for a while. I feel bad that she’s been so unhappy for so long. There is a level of tension that has been lifted, so ultimately it was the best decision for us as a family.


Extended Family
My FIL visited for the weekend. DS called & invited him to go to the KU games with him, so he flew out Thursday and is flying home as I write. It was actually a really great visit. He babysat for us on Friday while we went to a wine tasting fund raiser. He got much closer to both the girls and it was really good for all of them. My MIL is a bit overpowering when it comes to the grandkids and tends not to let him do much. After watching them Friday night which included dinner and bedtime, he was gung ho to take on anything. I told him I thought this was a really neat visit for both him and the girls. TS was demanding stories and walks from him on Friday (they took 3 walks). It was really good.

Ok, I guess I need to do some actual work today. More later.

And now a quick word….

I know, I know, I’ve been MIA. AGAIN! It’s been quite a week. And that’s most of what you’re going to get for now. I’m exhausted. Epidural went well, meaning I’m not in a wheelchair, but the heavens did not open up with Angels singing. It is very slowly starting to feel a bit better. I have some feeling again in my foot: PAIN. So that’s progress. I have to have another shot next week.

Work has been awful. It’s politics AGAIN. I still can’t talk about it, but if I actually cared about my job, I’d be really pissed off. Since I don’t care, I’m just really annoyed and tired.

BS is cutting her 4th tooth and the accompanying snot seems to have settled into a cold in her eye. She is a full-fledged imp now, crawling/scooting/cruising all over the damn house. Baby proofing MUST be completed this weekend. She informed me of an electrical socket we missed covering already tonight. Don’t worry, I caught her before she stuck her cute, tiny fingers in there. But there is NO leaving her unattended these days. She is also overdue for a reflux med increase (no she does not yet seem to be outgrowing this) and so has been somewhat cranky and spitty after eating this week.

Merit got out earlier today. I had a heart attack and died right there and then when I realized she wasn’t here. I was pissed at DS because he’d been home for a couple hours before I was and hadn’t even looked in the general direction of the yard. It’s March Madness you know. So by the time I got home and said, “Where’s Merit?” (Cause she wasn’t at the back door looking pathetic to be let in) it was dark. He could’ve been out looking while it was still light. He went looking for her and came back after 15 minutes, so then I went out & found her as Animal Control was picking her up. Thank You God. Yes, my dog has a collar. In fact a really cool collar, but it hasn’t been updated since we moved. And Merit’s a really cool dog. It’s more likely that someone will find her and keep her then anything else. I’d be devastated. Anyway, I found her and she’s getting lots of hugs and special treats after her adventure. (She can even sleep on our bed if she wants—ok, maybe not, she a dirty, dirty dog). I am ordering a new collar right now.

That’s it. Well, it’s not all, but it’s all you’re getting for now. Oh yeah, summer has arrived here; I’ll post pix of the girls playing in the wading pool this weekend. Cause now it’s all about the wadding pool while Mama throws back some Sangria!