Indignant Schnorkie

This Schnorkie is a piece of work.

I called the vet's office today because she's been limping.  She doesn't complain, she just limps.  And it gets better with exercise.  Turns out that's a symptom of luxating patella, which is common with yorkies.  Also, she's had allergy testing and she's allergic to common foods - beef, milk, chicken, eggs, lamb, potato, and soy.  AND.  She has "collapsing trachea" which is another common yorkie problem.  It explains the snoring and sleep apnea.

Yikes.  How did she ever make it to ten years old?  Will she become one of those partially mummified ancient little dogs, tottering around with no vision, no sense of smell, and only one good leg? Probably.

We had a good week wherein she had no accidents in the house, but now we are back to lots of accidents.  Sigh.  It's a process.  However, her aggression level with Beauty has gone WAY down.  Beauty keeps trying to get her to play.  Princess isn't interested.  She is, however, interested in fetching.  My Lab mix won't fetch, but the yorkie will?  Whatever, it's hilarious to watch.  Yesterday she started collecting all the stuffed squirrels (of which we have three) on the sofa next to me.  I picked one up, and when she came back with the next one she saw me holding the first squirrel.  Her whole body jerked in shock.  "HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?!" she practically screamed at me.  JD and I cracked up.  Ten pounds of yorkie = a whole lot of indignation.  I gave her the squirrel back.

When she brings the squirrels to be thrown, she isn't good about releasing them.  Unless you squeak the squeaker in them, and then it's like she's had an electric shock.   I am so amused by her and her squirrel obsession.

I think she was raised with many cats, as she has shown no aggression toward any of them.  And I caught her licking Olli.

Our petsitter of many years is going to come by to meet her.  I hope it goes well.  Princess is a pretty good guard dog.  She is far more alert and territorial than Beauty.  I don't think she could really hurt anybody, but she could gnaw your ankles pretty well with the teeth she has left.

My dream house has four kitchens

Oof.

I kept hitting the snooze button this morning until I finally just turned off the alarm.  Half an hour later I woke up from a nightmare and decided to get out of bed.  It started out as a good dream - JD and I found a house we really liked (with four kitchens!  That's almost enough!) and that we were going to buy.  But for some reason we spent the night in it, and of course JD left early for work, so I was there alone and underdressed (with a yorkie peeing on the carpet) when the owner showed up with people to view the place.  The owner was unimpressed with me and my "But we want to buy it! "  protestations.

First world dream problems.

Once I woke up, I realized that I felt worse than yesterday.  My stomach hurt less, but my lymph nodes hurt more.  I made a command decision and called in sick, for real this time.  Not "I feel awful but I'm going to soldier on from my home office."  This time, I said I was going to go lie down.  Which is what I did.  After the nightmare sleep wasn't coming easily, but I stared at the ceiling, and occasionally read a book, and petted various animals.  Petting animals is a very healing thing to do when you feel like crap.

Around 3 pm I started to feel better, and I must assume that being super lazy has allowed my immune system to triumph over whatever bug was plaguing it.  (See what I did there?  I amuse my own self.)  So with another early bedtime I hope to wake up all normal-like in the morning.  But I'm turning my alarm off to make sure I rest as long as I need to.  I hope I feel good, anyway, because I have organized a social event for lunch tomorrow and I'd really like to go.

Four cats, two dogs, one sysadmin, and a spaceship

I was feeling a little cruddy today so I stayed home and worked.

Somebody flew a spaceship right over my house.

Other than that, I spent much of my day in this chair with a tiny dog on me.

And a cat to my left.

And another dog down on the floor.

When I finally retired to the living room after putting in my eight hours, Olli was gazing at the street.

Dori and the Shnorkie wanted to cuddle

And even Nazca came down to hang out

My day continued in the same vein

Picture this:

An undivided two way road, two lanes of traffic each way.  There is traffic in only one lane - the far right, going away from you.  You get in the left lane on your side, which is empty.  As you accelerate, a car pulls out of the right hand lane and makes a U turn from a dead stop, cutting you off.

That was my commute to work.  A car making a U turn (on a bridge, at a stop light, across three lanes) as I turned onto the road and started to accelerate.  I slammed on my brakes and managed not to hit him.

The driver?  A uniformed policeman in a county police cruiser.  Nice.  Way to go, PG County cops!  Holding up your reputation!

It was a good day for pictures at the farm

The apple tree is in blossom out at the farm

The boys, post-prandially

Mystery posing for me

My goober

Wait! Come back!  Bring more cookies!

The way I see Pluto

How he really is

Hi Mom!

All is well at the House of Crazy Animals

At some point in the last two days, the horrible beast settled down.  I don't know why.  All I know is she isn't piddling everywhere and shrieking at us.  Though she is occasionally barking at JD, and I have no idea what she's trying to tell him.

Thank goodness.  I was dreading the thought of living with a tiny demanding pee fountain.

She got her stitches out yesterday from her spay surgery.  In the evening I took her for her first walk with us, and we worked on not pulling on the lead.  She's been adventuring around the house on her own and so far I don't think she's done anything I wouldn't want her to do.  Our stairs are a bit steep for her - I've seen her slip going both up and down.  But she doesn't appear to be particularly dismayed.  Given her size I'm sure it's something she's faced many times before.

I guess settling into domesticity in under two weeks is pretty good.  It just seemed bad because of her first few days.  I'm starting to think the name Princess isn't such a bad fit after all.

I wished I had a camera with me this morning when I went upstairs to check on Princess's progress.  Princess and Olli posed on the stairs together.  I think it's hilarious that the dog's best friend in the household appears to be a cat.

Notice I didn't say anything about not drinking alcohol

I have had occasion to ponder, in the last couple of days, how very healthy I've been feeling.  I mean, yes, I am suffering along with everybody else in the region as pollen explodes off the trees.  And, in tandem with everybody I know, I've fallen (briefly) to the standard winter illnesses.  But I haven't been SICK sick, you know?  Not "I have to visit specialists and even they aren't really sure what's wrong" kind of sick.  Which, sadly, I have been multiple times in the last decade or two.

I don't think it's any one thing.  I think several things have come together to help me be a healthier person.  At that point I think we can call it "lifestyle".

So, not in order:

Yoga.  Yoga both relaxes me (which decreases my stress, which decreases susceptibility to illness) and strengthens my core muscles. Thanks to the latter, I haven't had a truly severe backache since before I first started yoga.  I used to have the kind of shooting, gripping pain that made just standing up its own special kind of torture.  I saw a chiropractor frequently, I had to wear a back brace often, and I was miserable to be around.  Now?  Remarkably bendy, and I actually notice the low level pain now.  Because I can.  It used to be shouted down by the hella bad pain.

Luck.  No car accidents, nobody donating this year's flu to me, that sort of thing.  Perhaps I would consider it lucky that I've never been in the right place to have children, as they seem to make all the parents sick all the time for the first N years.

Nutrition.  I don't know if my diet has improved, or just changed.  I eat a lot more salad than I used to.  I still eat too many preserved foods (hello, delicious chicken sausage) but I eat a whole lot more fresh vegetables and fruits than ever before.  And though I've never been a huge fan of vitamins, I now take a few that I think help me a lot.  B-complex, for instance.  D-3 (as I seem to be always low, despite my superhuman ability to sunburn.)  I'm not convinced how efficacious C is, but I take some.  Plus, digestive enzymes.  Digestive enzymes = I almost never have a tummyache anymore.  I heart them so much.

Marriage.  There's nothing like another person caring for you, and you caring for them, to improve your quality of life.  Plus, JD cooks all the time so I eat a lot more fresh home cooking than I used to.

Sleep.  I'd have to ask Mom if this was true when I was little, but I find that I "get by" on 8 hours.  I'm happier with 9.  I'm truly rested with 10.  I think I just plain sleep more than I used to, now.  I made it a priority to get enough rest.  I think it wasn't until I wasn't on a schedule at all, while thruhiking, that I realized that 10 hours a night made me feel great.  I'm a bit envious of those of you who only need 4 to 6 hours a night, but it's quite clear that I'm not a member of your club.

So, to sum up:  I'm a sleepy, well fed, lucky, stretchy, married woman.  And that works for me.