Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

The kids are with their grandparents in Houston right now. The dog is really sick. He’s got a particularly virulent form of autoimmune anemia and dogs with this condition have about a 40% survival rate. He’s been in and out of the hospital a few times over the last couple of weeks, most recently to get a blood transfusion and immunoglobulin. The steroids he’s on have knocked his immune system down – on purpose, so that it would quit attacking his red blood cells – but he’s developed a couple of infections and is in a good deal of pain. Today he couldn’t keep anything down, so he’s in the ICU.

I figured it would be better for the kids to be prepared that their dog might not be here when they get home, so I told them over the phone that Cuervo was sick and might not get better. Jo took it okay, although I’m sure she’ll privately fret about it. Caroline started sobbing. 🙁

Gawd, this sucks.

The dog’s been sick lately and he’s on a bunch of meds that make him have to pee. A lot. All the time.

So tonight he went outside to do his business and he was rushed by an angry doe. She came up to him, about 4 feet away from where hub was standing, and snorted at him. Dog didn’t care; he had to pee. The doe got agitated and started kicking him. The dog came inside covered in muddy hoofprints. The big pussy didn’t even bark at her.

I went out just now to see if I could spot what she was protecting, and bedded down in the flowerbed in the front yard is a teeny tiny little doe, the size of a kitten. I bet there’s another one up there, too.

Freaked the dog out some – he’s a little jumpy now. Freaked the kids out, too – they kept telling daddy to shoot it for kicking the dog. My little bloodthirsty princesses.

One live recluse, one dead. The live one was on the underside of Jo’s mattress. The dead one was under Caroline’s bed.

Found by my cat, under the toe-kick of my husband’s sink in the master bathroom.

Click for larger image.

Every night our dog Cuervo sits in Jo’s room to keep her company while she goes to sleep. We let him out when we go up to bed. We’ll usually hear a little bit of thumping while he gets comfortable, but nothing serious.

The other night hub fell asleep on the couch and I ended up plugging in my headphones and listening to Queen for hours. Every once in a while I’d hear some serious thumping around from Jo’s room, along with the doorknob rattling and some occasional crashes. I still wasn’t too concerned; sometimes the dog will have his ear under the door as he lies there and one of the cats will see it from the hall and attack it. Eventually the noises quieted down.

I went upstairs to go to bed and opened the door to let the dog out. Normally he’s right out the door as soon as it opens, but that night it took him a while. Finally he slunk out, looking sheepish. He had managed somehow to wrap himself up in the handles of the tote bag which was hung on the doorknob. I’m guessing he was attached to the door knob for a while, hence the rattling, and had to jump up and down to get loose, hence the crashes.

What a blonde dog.

It was inevitable that the moment would come this spring. Nevertheless, I wasn’t looking forward to it. It heralds bad things.

I was heading to fill something from the kitchen faucet when a roach scampered up from the sink to the backsplash. I managed to last 2 whole seconds before the shriek of terror escaped. Hub told me to grow up. As if he were.

I got Caroline a butterfly kit for Christmas. Here are the results.

(clipped from a comment I left on another blog)

The other night something tickled my arm as I sat in my easy chair. I looked down. It was a roach crawling on me. It must have flown onto me! Gah! So I shriek incoherently and bat at it (waking poor hubby up from a sound sleep and he starts yelling too) and it LANDS ON MY LEG AND STARTS CRAWLING UP MY SHORTS.

At least I had the presence of mind to set the laptop down gently on the floor before I ran screaming out of the room.