If you have an overly-sensitive tummy, you might not want to look at these photos. They're really not that bad, but you've been warned!
* * * * * * * * *
Kaylee, right side, after her vet visit the night of Indy's bitey assault:
The worst wound is that one on the bottom. It's about .75" by .5". Not too deep, but she'll have a nasty scar!
Left side, this evening, about thirty hours after:
That redness around the wounds isn't infection, but bruising. Unsurprisingly, her neck is very sore. Luckily (?) she's got some codeine for her post-surgery pain, so even though her tummy wound is much better (she's galloping down stairs, even though she shouldn't, and she's already managed to half-pop one staple), we're still doping her up a bit. She likes it, our little stoner. :)
On the plus side, though, she's starting to play and getting a little better about eating. So even with the additional trauma, she seems to be doing OK at the moment!
And Cordy was accident-free today, and Indy has been pretty calm, except right before dinner (which is not unexpected for him). All in all, an infinitely better than yesterday!
Tomorrow, I go get the first two-thirds of my re-scheduled nuclear scan. Hope for really good super powers for me - I'm aiming for pyrokinesis or flying.
But sometimes ... I want to throttle one or more of them.
On Monday we brought Kaylee home. Yay! But also discovered that Cordy probably had a urinary tract infection. So we scheduled a vet appointment for last night. Yes, I would be going back to the vet's just over twenty-four hours after we brought Kaylee home from there.
So, last night, I get home, and fun-fun-fun! Indy attacks Kaylee*. She's fine, but I couldn't tell how deep some of the punctures were, so in to the vet's she went with Cordy. She was less than pleased. I was also less than pleased with Indy. We had been weaning him off his prozac, but up he went again to his full dose.
At the vet's, Cordy refused to pee. Nope. Not interested. And hid under the chair in the room so the vet couldn't touch her. And as much as I hate the over-use of antibiotics, I know Cordy has a UTI (she peed in the house - she only does that when she has a UTI, plus some other things I recognize), so the vet gave me antibiotics anyway.
So, in short, Indy is spending the next few days on a leash, Cordy gets two more pills shoved down her throat twice a day, and Kaylee looks like she's been chewed up and spit out ... which, I suppose, she has.
Sigh. And we were supposed to have a nice quiet evening in.
*He had been unsure of her since we brought her home - I'm sure she smells funny - and she was sniffing at his crate after I let him out of it and he just attacked her. But really. She's fine. It looks way worse than it is. Worse than last time, but she does heal fast. I don't know what we're going to do about Indy, except keep him and Kaylee separated and reinforce NILIF. Sigh. Crazy boy.
We picked her and her many bottles of pills up at the vet's today. She's still not completely up to snuff, but she had major surgery, so I'm not surprised. She is, of course, trying to do more than she really can yet (like jump up over the arm of the couch), so we're going to have to crate her tomorrow. That'll be fun.
She lost five pounds, and due to a few factors, her muzzle is all deflated. It may, or may not, puff back up. If she stays healthy with a deflated muzzle, I'm fine with that. She looks like a different dog, but she's still Kaylee inside!
The vet thinks it's inflammatory bowel disease, but we won't know for positive until the biopsies come back - and that should be by the end of this week or the beginning of the next. He liver looks fine, and the vet thinks that a flare-up of the IBD is triggering the liver problems.
Hats! Hats! HATS! (And a scarf.) It was a hat-a-licious crochet-a-thon this past long weekend.
My auntie requested some and even specified the colors. Here's what I ended up with:
The blue is made with a pattern from 100 Hats to Knit & Crochet in Reynold's Utopia. The red is made from this pattern in Plymouth Encore D.K. The green and pink are both in Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece, and the green is from a(n extremely modified pattern from the 2003 Quick & Easy Knitting & Crocheting). The pink is my ever-favorite pattern.
Then I made a holiday present for my mother-in-law.
Made with Jo-Ann's Sensation's Bellezza Collection Canditi in cream. The hat took just under a skein and the scarf took a skein and what was left over from the hat. I used my favorite hat pattern. The scarf is just alternating rows of single and double crochet with fringe. I'm not normally a fringe person, but it seemed unfinished without it.
Two more to go. Then an optional present for the neice Eve. Depends on time. Then I'm done with the holiday stuff. Fab.
A few days ago, my friend lovelysalome was talking about favorite books (favorite romance novels, really) and I have been thinking about my top five books since. No romance novels, I'm afraid, since I haven't been able to stomach them since middle school, when I thought them highly risque.
So, my top five books*, in no particular order are:
One of those books that sounds silly when described, but truly fantastic. A young man from the future is sent back to Victorian England to find the bishops bird stump, the last item needed for a rebuilt version of Canterbury Cathedral. Hilarity ensues.
OK, technically this is a play, but it's my favorite, so I'm counting it (though it's only barely in front of "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard). A Victorian love story of hilarious proportions, a read doesn't really do it justice, but if you can't see it on stage (which I have. In London.), then reading it will have to do.
Kaylee's healing slower than anticipated after her surgery, so she won't be able to come home from the vet's any sooner than Monday. Her bloodwork looks great, though, so her liver isn't causing the problems.
Basically, she has a 8-inch slice down her tummy held together with upwards of thirty staples, so it's no huge surprise that she's in a lot of pain. But she's feeling much better today than she was feeling yesterday, so she's improving.
On the huge plus side, she's not shown any interest in messing with her jugular catheter, so her fluids are going in perfectly. And she's eating and drinking like a little piggie.
We'll have her home soon. Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone!
Kaylee is doing well, but she did have surgery today. In addition to taking five or six samples for biopsy, they inserted a jugular catheter (don't look if you have a sensitive nature). The poor girl's leg veins were starting to collapse since she's had so many needles in there in the last couple months. And she doesn't have to wear the space dog helmet with this, so hopefully she'll be happier.
She was still pretty doped up when we went to see her, but she stood right up and was all waggy, then put her head on our hands and basically conked out standing up. Poor little thing. They're going to keep her on a decent amount of pain meds for the next couple of days since they took so many slices out of her.
We may get her back on Saturday, but I'm not holding my breath. But I sure hope so!
Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone. I gave her a big smacky kiss from y'all today!
Started out on Friday with Kaylee getting a fever at 1:00 a.m. Her muzzle started to swell and get tender, so I called the vet's office as soon as I could and got her some Metacam. It worked wonders, and though her fever was long, it wasn't very high. Except briefly on Sunday, when it spiked up past 105°. And this morning, we noticed she's turning yellow. Great. More jaundice. Probably another week at the vet's office. Don't know whether it it was the Metacam or the fever that triggered it. Or nothing at all. I'm taking her in this afternoon and we'll see what the bloodwork says.
In other news, we got our fireplace installed, and except for a few hitches (the front "log" was broken and we set off the smoke alarm when we first ran it), it's great. It'll easily heat the entire downstairs even on the low setting, which was the plan. And, we have a big orange furry rug in front of it can't beat that! Photos when I can get one.
My brother and his wife came into town from Washington with their two kids and we attended the baby's christening. No lightning, so that was a bonus. Katrina's cute, and Alex seems to be a very nice little boy (he's three). I'll be seeing them on Thanksgiving, too.
And then on Sunday, spent some time trying to set up an old computer of ours for Jeff's mother. Everything went just fine until it decided that it didn't like email (even though all the settings are exactly the same as her old computer). So I'm just hoping that it's that the server was down. I'm going back on Wendesday to work on it some more.
So. Yeah. Tired. When Kaylee's sick, we just don't sleep well (when the bed is shaking because she's shivering so hard, it's kind of difficult). On the plus side, we now have our fireplace and I'm working less than two days this week. So, not all bad!
Much like the episode about Mormonism, this episode featured the crazyshit followers of this religion actually believe. And yes, at one point they had to put "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" on the screen, because if they didn't, no one would believe South Park wasn't making it up (in case you don't know, the Scientology belief system involves aliens - I shit you not - and the South Park boys have actually met aliens before).
Of course, I'm not picking on Mormons or Scientologists exclusively. Transubstantiation. That's all I have to say to any Christian who's feeling superior. I mean, really: it's ritual cannibalism.
I know that a great many people find comfort in religion, but please. Religions are pretty much all wacky shit, but try to pick one that isn't quite so weird, OK?
(And as the husband-person says, "L. Ron Hubbard was pretty much a crap science fiction writer anyway." And I have to agree.)
I would like to take this opportunity to suggest that critical thinking is a good thing. I've written about this before. Don't be taken in by stupid shit. Think for yourself.
OK, so they were just flurries, but it actually snowed today - and yesterday it was 70°. For central Ohio, mid-November for the first flakes at all is actually pretty late.
Work is crazy busy now, so please forgive me if my posts get fewer. Not only am I doing my job, but I'm doing production on our directory this year (last year we sent it out) and we're developing two (yes, two) new websites that I need to design. On the other hand, I have to take two days of vacation before the end of the year or lose them, so I'm taking off the day before Thanksgiving and a day around Christmas. Won't help me get my work done, but will probably help with the sanity thing!
In addition to work, I'm trying to get as much holiday stuff out of the way now as I can. I got a lot of the "little stuff" shopping done this past weekend with a fun trip to Big Lots and the clearance section of Target. :) I still have some stuff I need to make, and I don't have any idea of what to do for my mom. I'll come up with something, even if I have to cheat and ask her husband what she'd like.
I'm working on a mystery project for my swapee for the Holiday Swap at Crochetville, but since I'm not sure if she stops by this blog, I won't mention what it is. But I hope it turns out like I want it to - it's felted! I've actually got almost everything ready to go for her - I should easily make the Dec. 10 deadline to send everything out.
I did end up ripping out the beginnings of the Living On the Edge poncho. I just couldn't face looking at it any longer, let alone actually working on it. So it will become other things and I won't have a project that makes me angry.
We're getting our gas fireplace from installed this Friday - very exciting! We live in an old neighborhood and tend to lose power a lot, so we wanted something that could still heat a portion of the house without any electricity. Plus, it's 99.9% efficient, much better than our furnace. It's Spike's early holiday present.
So ... yeah. This was kind of a dull post, but, hey, it was kind of a dull weekend! :)
Since Kaylee has a horsecoat, she gets a bit cold when it gets below freezing. So she has to wear a sweater in the winter when she goes on walks, whether she likes it or not. :) Last year she got a granny square sweater; this year she gets a girly-girl sweater with a big pink ruffly collar.
It's made in Paton's Melody, two skeins for the body, and about two-thirds of another for the trim. No pattern was neded or used - it's pretty much double crochet the whole way, with single crochet all around for the trim on the body. The collar is two double crochet in each single, topped by a row of single.
It's held on with velcro, which was a royal pain in the ass to sew on.
Sorry, this post won't be as exciting as you may be thinking from the title. :)
I have to admit that one thing I like about reading blogs is seeing photos of peoples homes, usually in the background of photos of other things. Untidy houses. Unstaged houses. Homey houses. It's voyerism, of a fairly harmless sort.
But I also like the outdoors. So here's what my backyard looks like today:
So, I'm working on a crochet pattern that I really wanted to make - for myself, even! However, it turns out that the pattern is written terribly and is, in some cases, just wrong. It's extrememly frustrating and I'm thinking of giving up on it, though I hate to lose all the work I've done so far.
This is the project and the yarn:
It's the "Living on the Edge" poncho from the Fall-Winter 2005 Family Circle Easy Crochet magazine. It's crazy busy, but for some reason I like it. Here's what I've got done so far:
I have 47 more rows/rounds to go. (And trust me, the colors work better together than it might appear in the photo. :) (And yes, it needs desperately to be blocked. That ruffly row of brown should be perfectly straight and fringe-like.)
I love this yarn, the Peruvian Collection Highland Wool from Elann, but it won't go to waste if I decide to quit the project. In fact, I'd planned to have extra yarn to play with, and I'd love to have even more now that I know how much I like this yarn. So wasting the yarn isn't a worry.
It's just so frustrating! It's not that the pattern is hard - it's not, particularly, just fiddly in parts. I thought it would be fun to do something that had a lot of different stitches and such, but turns out that an awful lot of it is very simple. Which wouldn't be so bad except the pattern is written so poorly that even doing a simple round of double crochet with increases becomes a challenge (because the counts never end up right, even following the directions because they're just wrong - it's mathematically impossible to end up at the correct stitch counts. And at one point so far, it was physically impossible, too).
So should I just bite the bullet and rip it all out and move onto something else that won't put me in a black mood the moment I even look at it? Or should I persevere?
Last week, my brother Chris and his wife Stephanie added Katrina to their family, along with Alex (and the birds Phoebe & Pete). Katrina clocked in at nearly eight pounds - a big 'un, like her big brother.
In any case, I had bought some plain white baby socks a while ago, hoping to have them trimmed to send out before Katrina made her appearance. Of course, I procrastinated and never got around to it. But this weekend, I was procrastinating on another project and finally got to it.
So, Katrina's socks:
Boy, were those a pain to sew on! Especially on the toes, but I figured that would be the best place to put them (but I got hand cramps by the purple ones). They're crocheted with #5 thread.
I was going to wait until Chris and the family come to town for Thanksgiving to give them to them, but I think I'll mail them out this weekend. I just can't wait.
Kaylee had her 30-day check up today and it went pretty well. Her bloodwork is perfectly normal, but she's got microscopic blood in her feces still, so she's still going to be on some meds for a while. We go back in three weeks to see if this combo of drugs is working. If not, we'll try a different combination. But her bloodwork is good, so I'm happy!
