The Original Musings

Sorry for the silence!

Got a lot going on, not much time for blogging.  I’m hoping things will somewhat settle back down to a more normal pace after the end of the month.

A few quick highlights … I twittered (& facebooked!) but didn’t blog yet about Missy’s Lansing results:  11th in reel, 9th in slip jig, 6th in treble jig, 7th in hornpipe and 4th (with a medal and trophy) in treble reel.  She’s a bit irritated that she didn’t do better, but geez, this is just her second feis after 10 months of not dancing!  I think she’s doing fantastic and her TCRG is pleased as well.  I swear, she’s her own worst critic.

Missy and I have sketched out some solo dress ideas, the plan is to start the new season with a new dress.  This time we’re going to try something a little different, see if we can’t start a new trend!  I think we’ll be going with a traditional three panel skirt, though.  She wants a one-piece, I’m leaning toward a two-piece.  We’ll see what happens.  We’re both thinking blues this time around, something deep and rich.  We’re broke as hell though, so whatever it is will be from something I already have on hand unless I can get one of the three we have on hand sold.

I had a doctor’s appointment last week Monday with all the usual lab work.  Everything must be okay because I haven’t gotten a phone call saying come back in.  The bruise on my inner arm has *finally* started fading.  Take my advice and don’t get diabetes.  Next appointment isn’t till October and that’ll be the flu shot appointment.  Missy’s already grousing about it.

I’d say that next week we start back up the homeschooling and she’s starting 9th grade, but if the truth be told, she’s never really taken much of a break this summer.  She kept right on working and has gotten about 1/4 of the 9th grade work done already; she’s trying to get herself ahead enough to test out and graduate early.  She wants to take off a few years to work and save up some money and then go to college later on.  She has goals in both dancing and To-Shin Do that she wants to attain before she moves on to college work; she’s got plans!

On the To-Shin Do front, she’s graduating next Friday (a week from today) and getting her yellow belt.  (She’s planning on going for the black belt, and she has no intention of stopping there.  She’s decided that she wants to make this lifelong, she says that there’s more than just the belts to mastering it and her intention at this point in time is to just keep going.)  She’s done so well so far and I’m of course bursting with pride!  As promised, she’s gotten her tabi.  She tried to tell me she hadn’t officially earned them yet, since she doesn’t get the belt till the end of the month, but I told her to go ahead and start wearing them — and Mr. Norris concurred so she gave in.

She’s got a party tonight with some friends, the annual 4-H party.  And another one coming up – September 9 is An-Shu’s 60th birthday and there’s a potluck and party at the dojo that night.  She’s got a wall hanging planned for him, I told her I’d help her digitize it and then stitch it out for her.

The gerbils (Danny and Chouko) have another litter of babies — four of ‘em.  That brings our total gerbil count to 11.  The big hamsters (Houdini and Bess) have just had a litter of babies as well, our first set of babies from them!  We’re not sure how many there are, about 7 or 8 it looks like, but it could be more.  Bess is being very protective.  So our large hamster count is 2 plus however many babies there are.  Maggie’s already requested a set (boy and girl) as soon as they’re big enough to give away.  All of our small hamsters are past their fertile stage (for the most part, the females are only fertile the first year of their life) so we won’t have any from any of them.   Our dwarf hamster count is thus holding at 8 (well, 7 dwarves and 1 roborovski to be precise).

The doggies are *not* going forth and multiplying, because all three of them are fixed, and thank God for that.  I do not need puppies too!

I have a stack of articles bookmarked that I plan on blogging about — including one about the various Czars that have been appointed by The One, and of course there’s plenty going on in the world, I’ve just been too damn busy to write about it!

Bear with me and things will hopefully be back to normal soon!

Whaddya mean, it’s only Monday?!

This is going to be one of Those Weeks, I can tell already.  My oldest daughter would say that it’s one of Those Months, and who knows, she may be right.

On the bright  side, though, Missy’s ban from competition is finally up (it was officially up on July 10), and thank God for that.  If I had to listen to her grousing about not being able to compete much longer, I think I would have gone bonkers!

Now, I just need to get her into the few remaining Feisianna in our region.  ::sigh:: That’s not so easy right now, but we’ll do what we can.   Here’s her schedule.  As you can see, near-by pickings are slim and unfortunately I can’t swing any long trips right now.  We had wanted to go to the St. Louis An Samhra Feis at the end of the month, but that’s out because I just flat out don’t have the money.

Unfortunately, at the rate we’re going she’s going to have two before the end of the season, and there’s no way in hell she’ll get to Oireachtas this year.  I wish she’d switched schools sooner, she missed all of the local and day-trip ones which pretty much ruined her chances of making it this year.  That’s life, I guess.  As Mom always said, “wish in one hand …”

The good Irish Dance news is that Katie’s happy with her progress and her solo dress not only still fits, it’s actually a little loose.  She only wore it once (Gem City Feis last October) before she switched schools so it’s not associated with the old academy at all.   That buys me some time before I need to make her a new one and that’s a good thing.  It’s cash-flow issues that are making Feisianna tricky, I sure don’t need the expense of fabric and whatnot to make her a new dress right now.

The Dayton Celtic Festival is this month, Missy and I are signed up to work all three days.  As usual, I picked the closing shift each day, so we won’t have to be working during the hottest part of the day till Sunday when it closes early.  It runs July 24-25-26.  It’s a great festival, if you’re near enough to make it, you won’t be disappointed!  Best of all, admission’s free!  This year’s entertainment roster includes Gaelic Storm and Dulahan, so you can’t go wrong.

Let’s see … what else is going on …

To-Shin Do is going well, she’s managed to earn a training stripe on her belt and is hoping to move up to the next full belt fairly soon.  The Quest Center is having their annual dojo picnic this Saturday, and we’ll be attending that.

The baby gerbils are all five healthy and happy and active as hell.  We wound up with one white, one (mostly) black, one tan and white combo, and two that are mostly beige.  They’ve learned how to get up onto the hut, it’s only a matter of time before one of them discovers how to navigate the ramps and they invade the upper level of the cage. They’re so cute!

No baby hamsters right now, I believe all of the girls are past their fertile stage, because no one’s wound up pregnant.  We’ll be getting a girl for Houdini sometime though, so that we can get another litter of babies down the road.  I like pets that you don’t have to buy replacements for!

The doggies — Vixen, Donna and Bonnie — are the same as always, cute as hell and sweet as can be.  I confess though, I still miss ol’ Willy.  Hell, I miss grumpy ol’ Jake and he’s been gone for three years now.

Missy and I still have our memberships to The Beach and we go as often as possible.  For the first summer in ages I actually have a bit of a tan!  Missy’s got one too, though she’s even paler-skinned than I am.  This August when it comes up for early renewal (during the buy one-get one promotion they have every year) one way or another I’ll be scraping together the money and renewing our platinum passes.  You can’t beat the price for a summer’s worth of swimming, it’s way cheaper than a health club or pool membership.  Add in the free parking and free drinks (perks of platinum) along with the discounts on food and it’s a helluva deal.  And even better than the tan: swimming is working wonders on my blood sugar levels.   Take *that* diabetes! Plus, we’re both losing  inches (don’t know about weight, because our scale doesn’t work and I’m too cheap to waste the money on a new one.  I’ll find out in August when I go to the doctor for my next routine visit).  What I do know is I’ve lost two dress sizes so far, and Missy’s right behind me with a full dress size gone as well.

Oh, Missy and I corrupted Derwood!  He’s now joined Twitter too.   And during SimuCon I got corrupted and joined Facebook.   I kept asking what the hell I needed a Facebook page for when I have a blog, but it’s actually not at all the same and I finally understand why so many people have all three — Facebook, Twitter and a blog, I mean.  So, here’s where to find each of us, and if you’ve got a Facebook or Twitter be sure to add us and we’ll return the favor:

Missy:  Blog • Facebook • Twitter
Kate:  Blog • Facebook • Twitter
Derwood: Blog • Facebook • Twitter

Be forewarned, though, he’s had his Facebook page longer than Missy and I put together and I don’t think he ever uses it. Sorta like his blog. But hey, at least he’s Twittering. Tweeting? Whatever. He’s using Twitter a little bit!

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Now playing: Weird Al Yankovic – This Is The Life
via FoxyTunes

Vixie loves the hamsters

But she’s kind of afraid of them.  If you put one of them on her, she’ll lay there really still and give you this look that just begs you to “come on, get it off me!”

So anyhow, to set the scene for you, here’s way more info than you ever wanted on our hamster/gerbil accommodations.   We have multiple hamster / gerbil homes down here in the basement, seven of them, to be precise.  Six for hamsters, one for gerbils.  (Well, we actually only have six individual units, but one of the six is divided into two dwellings.)  Four/five of the homes are fashioned from aquariums (two 10-gallon ones with cage tank-toppers and two [a 10-gallon and a 55-gallon] without), and the other two are cages (one single level and one double level).  One of the cages (the single level one) is at the side of the sofa where the dogs like to stand and watch the hamsters.  We’re pretty sure Donna wants to eat them.  Bonnie probably just wants to thrash them.  Vixen wants to play with them, but she doesn’t want them to get too close.

So, here is Vixen, communing with one of the hamsters (either Max or Gordon).  If you look just under the water bottle nozzle you can see the little hamster sitting there squeaking at Vixie — literally, it was sitting there squeaking and chattering at her.  She is periodically making noises back at the hamster too, kind of whines and whimpers.  Picture one:

Now here is the one that needs a caption.  The shot isn’t as clear, but I really love the look on Vixen’s face.  You can still see the hamster in this one, too.  Maybe the hamster has just told her a joke? 

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Now playing: Weird Al Yankovic – Harvey The Wonder Hamster
via FoxyTunes

I love ICanHasCheezburger

This reminds me of how Caleb treated the dogs when he was this age!

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Now playing: Danielle Peck – Isn’t That Everything
via FoxyTunes

::sigh::

At 11:15 on Wednesday, 15 October, 2008, our poor old basenji Willy breathed his last.  He was four months shy of his 12th birthday.

He had diabetes, he’d gone totally blind and was losing weight at an alarming rate.  He spent the last day of his life unsteady on his feet, moping and distressed.  He drank probably three gallons of water but never peed even once.  He wouldn’t eat and the vet told us the best we could hope for was to keep him around a little longer but the outcome was inevitable either way.  We stayed with him till it was over.

This is Willy from just a few months ago, before he went blind and started going downhill.

Willy, 2008

This is Willy this morning, right before we left for the vet’s office with him at 9:30.  We had been up all night, knowing what was coming, but desperately hoping for a miracle instead.  There wasn’t one, of course.  We made the decision at 11:00.  After all the formalities and whatnot, the vet gave him the injection at 11:14 and at 11:15 he was gone.

Willy, 10-15-2008, age 11 years, 8 months

As you can see in the photo, he’d lost a lot of weight.  He weighed barely 22 pounds when they weighed him in.  A year ago, he weighed 47 pounds and was overweight.  Eight months ago, when the diabetes set in, he started losing it slowly but surely.

When he was diagnosed with diabetes, we took him to the “basenji expert” in the area instead of our usual vet, because we wanted the best for him.  This morning, we took him to our usual vet instead.  I really wish we had never gone to the “expert.”   Our vet said there had to have been more than just diabetes going on, that he’d bet Willy had a tumor or some form of cancer as well, and if we’d known sooner we could have possibly taken steps to prolong his life.  He was kind of flabbergasted that the “expert” gave us the diabetes diagnosis and left it at that, without doing any additional testing or anything to make sure there wasn’t anything else, especially when Willy’s weight started dropping.

Yay.

We rescued Willy back when he was five.  He was Missy’s first pet ever.  Because he was such a wonderful boy, we wound up getting Jake a year later (Jake was 10 when we got him.  He died in January of 2006 at the age of 13.)  

Before we left with him this morning, Vixie came over to him and sat there beside him just licking his face.  She was nine weeks old when we got her shortly after Jake’s death.  Willy was her buddy.  He was the doggie who taught her the ropes around here, and the only one she’d let boss her around at all.

The other three — Vixen, Bonnie and Donna — have been a comfort.  Bonnie keeps looking for him, but Vixie seems to understand at least to a point.  I’m not sure if she knows he has died, but she’s seen fosters go out the door with the old blue leash on and when we come home, we have the blue leash and no dog.

I think I’ve cried a river today.  I know Missy has.  Caleb hasn’t asked where he is yet.  That’s a question we’re all dreading.

Rodents, multiplied

So, Missy convinced me a couple months ago to let her get hamsters. We got three of them, and I have to admit, I’ve become fond of them, despite the fact that they’re rodents and I hate rodents. We *thought* all three of them were boys.

My favorite is Mo, a Syrian Teddy Bear Hamster, which she named Mo (short for Mohammed). He’s definitely a boy.

Then there’s the Siberian Dwarf, named Ivan. He looks like a miniature chipmunk, complete with the thin black stripe up his back.

And finally, there’s Max, the Winter White Dwarf. Except as it turns out, Max is really Maxine. We could tell Max was knocked up because her tummy was getting hard and she suddenly had teats, where none had been before. Swell. So today I took her to SuperPetz to get an isolation cage, and then drug her with me to the grocery store to get stuff for the family cookout here tomorrow.

We got home and I sent her upstairs to relocate Max before she could give birth. Oops. Should’ve come straight home from SuperPetz, I guess. Maxine now has four tiny little baby hamsters. They were born sometime between 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. today. Missy was freaking out, because they’re not supposed to be touched by humans or the mama will eat them. So Amy got me a piece of thin cardboard and I slid it under the entire batch of babies, bedding and all and then slowly slid it into the isolation cage. Then we moved Max into the cage and she promptly ran to check on her babies. When we left her, she had buried herself with them and was nursing them.

They’re so small — only a touch over an inch long (maybe an inch and a half), and bald pink-skinned things. They’ve got some spots on them where their skin is dark, I’m guessing those will be where their fur is darker. We’re not sure which boy got her — Ivan or Mo — so there’s no telling what these little babies are going to look like. It’ll be interesting either way. Mo’s long haired and a lot bigger. Ivan’s her size but he’s got that stripe and his fur is light brown and grey where Max’s is white with grey splotches.

We think there may have been a fifth one, but either Max or one of the boys ate it, because we found what looked like a little piece of one in the aquarium. Ick.

We’re going to have Tim make her a divider for the aquarium and put Max on one side with Mo and Ivan on the other. If she keeps any of the babies as soon as we can tell what they are, they get put on the appropriate side of the aquarium to prevent any further surprises.

SuperPetz said they’ll take whatever babies we don’t want once they’re weaned, thank God. I haven’t read it yet, but she’s putting up an entry on her blog as I write this. I’m sure she’d welcome comments!

Keepin’ Warm

Happiness is a warm puppy. Or two.

Vixen and Bonnie, snuggled up on the basement couch together. Normally, Bonnie is on top of Vixie, but this time, Vixie put her head on top of The Pudge. Aren’t they cute?

Courtesy of the basenjis

When we first got Bonnie and Donna, we were told that they were very bonded to one another, and totally devoted to one another. Nothing we’ve seen since then has changed that impression.

When Bonnie went in for her surgery, Donna was very sad. When Bonnie came home from her surgery, Donna spent a half hour sniffing her and then proceeded to groom her. Bonnie’s almost as sweet as Vixen is, and, like Vixie, she’s got a mischievous streak. She’s the littlest dog in the house and she uses that to her advantage. I never get tired of seeing the cute things they do — all of them, not just Bonnie and Donna.

But this … this was just too sweet. This was as sweet as the night Bonnie shared a stolen tortilla chip with Donna. All the dogs had tired themselves out and had crashed on the sofa. That’s Bonnie on her back, and Donna holding her. (Go on, say it … “awww!”) Willy is the lump up behind them. Vixie’s the sleek black mountain lion at the other end of the sofa.

(Click on the photo to enlarge it)

Click here for a closeup of just Bonnie & Donna

Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you have someone just as cuddly as Bonnie to keep you warm.

And The Mega-Rawhide™

As always, click on the photos to see them at full size!

Never let it be said that basenjis aren’t optimists.

Following a busy night tormenting Willy, Vixen and Donna, Bonnie settled down on the sofa in the basement (aka the basenji sofa) to play with the Pikachu and the Chubble skin. After a while, though, that got kind of boring.

She looked around for something else to play with … and that’s when she got ambitious: she decided to tackle The Mega-Rawhide™.

First, she had to drag it up on the sofa. Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard to get the camera for that part of the show. She finally got it up there and held it down so she could get busy with it.

She overlooked the inconvenient fact that The Mega-Rawhide™ is as big as she is. That’s what God gave her hind legs for, after all!

Apparently no one ever told her she couldn’t do it, so she gave it her best shot.

Check out that mighty jawspan!

Eventually, someone’s going to wear the daggone thing down enough to get an end loose so they can really get going on it. I can’t wait to see the tussling when that happens!

Amanda and Tim bought it for Vixie and Willy for Christmas. They figured they’d go nuts with it — not that it would be too big for them to tackle.

After Bonnie gave up on it (for now, anyhow!) she went and stole a pig’s ear from Willy. And the tormenting is back in full swing, with all four of them running after each other trying to get the pig’s ear from whoever has it at each moment (usually Vixie). Never mind that there are four other pig’s ears laying around — they all want the same one, because that’s more fun! I swear, these dogs are more entertaining than just about any television show.