Fall nesting is happening... I'm cleaning the garage. A classic case of one thing leads to another. Khione (age 2 1/2) just earned her novice draft dog title and demonstrated quite a lot of willingness to keep going in fine style, so I wanted to have her cart easily accessible and find the weights so we could train for Open (where she'll have to pull 80-90 lbs.)... This morning I took a load of recycling, a big bag of trash, a portable air conditioner and a dehumidifier to the dump. A tiny bit of rearranging and John should be able to drive his car smoothly into the garage with plenty of room left over to extricate carts as needed. I've located 44 lbs. of weights so far and there are more under the apartment fridge we can't seem to sell. However we now have leftover vinyl fence boards that could go under there instead. Which reminds me that I should really find a home for the vinyl fence boards.
There's something addictive about cleaning things, once you get started. The problem is that I only START every few years! I'm talking about basements and garages -- the main part of the house gets cleaned weekly -- no worries! But I can't wait to get home later and do a bit more. The bikes need sorting out. I washed some cover sheets and there are a couple more to do. Where is the lawn mower supposed to be? It's NOT going in my cart corner! But maybe it fits in next to the snow blower.
Chariclo weighed 110 lbs. during her weekly chemo appointment this week! Apparently she needs to be treated a little less like a sick, dying dog and more like a perfectly healthy and very energetic one! Of course, every time Khione does her "close the door!" trick and gets a cookie, the other two are right there to get their cookies for breathing. Chariclo turns six next Thursday, November 14, 2019. She is much too young to be battling stage FIVE lymphoma, but she's doing a damn good job of it. And I know we are lucky to have her reach age six because her sister has been gone two years already. "Luck" really feels like a big piece of this life-with-dogs thing -- some people lose their dogs ridiculously young and others live miraculously long. But when we get THOSE moments — like when all 110 lbs. of Chariclo climbs in my lap in the waiting room at the vet hospital and makes everyone smile — or when I bring her somewhere new to say hello and she bounces in, twirling and spinning and bouncing, clearly the happiest creature anyone will see that day — well, that's why we keep doing it.
And just so we cover all the dogs, Boreas, (age 2), is SO adorable and hasn't bitten anyone in ages. He loves to get on the couch with a bunch of couch pillows and with his super-cute face, we can't help but just take a cookie over and trade for whatever is in his mouth THIS time and kiss his head and tell him he's a good boy. Someone on a Bernese FB group asked for help with their boy who was waking up in the middle of the night to lift his leg on their BED. Amongst other reasons that Boreas is a failed foster is that he NEVER peed in the house! He may pee on himself (boys!), but he doesn't lift his leg, and he doesn't pee in the house.
After a bunch of really dark weeks with the 15-year-old, factors came together and he's now on a second medication that seems to make a difference. He still retreats to his room and still talks so no one can understand his point, but the DARK and the GLOOM seem to have lifted just enough to make it all bearable, for himself as well as us. And hey, how amazing that while going through all of that, he managed to get himself on the honor roll for the first quarter of the 2019-2020 school year?
The nearly 17-year-old has at least managed to PASS everything, first quarter, and even pulled a few GOOD grades. It's a bit of a holding pattern at the moment. I found Stoneyfield Farms peach yogurt at Market Basket, and buy all they have when they have it, and he's eating it, so let's call that a huge plus!!
Just a little while longer to work and then I can go home and deal with home stuff -- more cleaning in the garage before John comes home and puts the car in it.... And the fall cleanup happened in the yard so now I need to put all the fences back up to keep the dogs out of places they shouldn't dig holes...
After a bunch of really dark weeks with the 15-year-old, factors came together and he's now on a second medication that seems to make a difference. He still retreats to his room and still talks so no one can understand his point, but the DARK and the GLOOM seem to have lifted just enough to make it all bearable, for himself as well as us. And hey, how amazing that while going through all of that, he managed to get himself on the honor roll for the first quarter of the 2019-2020 school year?
The nearly 17-year-old has at least managed to PASS everything, first quarter, and even pulled a few GOOD grades. It's a bit of a holding pattern at the moment. I found Stoneyfield Farms peach yogurt at Market Basket, and buy all they have when they have it, and he's eating it, so let's call that a huge plus!!
Just a little while longer to work and then I can go home and deal with home stuff -- more cleaning in the garage before John comes home and puts the car in it.... And the fall cleanup happened in the yard so now I need to put all the fences back up to keep the dogs out of places they shouldn't dig holes...
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