Friday, July 16, 2010

Hiding places, and a red eye



Today I discovered where Olive's favorite hiding place is... behind the microwave.
Smart! I wouldn't have ever known, had I not saw her jump back there!


For the past couple weeks, I have had a chronic red eye accompanied by a sinus headache (only on the left side of my head, the right side knows whats up).
My Mom has been urging me to go see a doctor, but I am resisting... I can take my pets to the vet, but I HATE going to the doctor myself.
Finally Hubs went to the drug store to get me 'the goods'. I sent him with a list of sudafed (the good stuff), Vitamin C, and eye drops.
What a good husband, we'll see if this works before I go off to the human kind of doctor.

Check out my glamor photo. Don't I look good?
I actually look so pathetic, that Hubs won't look at this photo, he says
"You look much prettier in real life, when you have at least one good eye"

Who is afraid of the doctor? Not Kona!

"Visit with a sadistic Vet"


Kona has been an extremely well behaved puppy. I have not had to reprimand him hardly at all (especially not like the cartoon vet suggests above!) He has lived with us for a week and one day, and he is almost puppy trained! Kona had his first visit to the vet yesterday and here's how it went.

We arrived at the vet, and Kona was like "What is this strange place, I am not going in those doors!" Where in he proceeded to gently sit down, and stare at me in defiance. I urged him to follow with a few "come on boy"s and he eventually followed, he is a sucker for that 'come' command.

We get inside the vet and do the paper work and turn in the special stool sample. The lady at the desk asks me a few questions, "how old is he" she asks and I tell him 3 months. She looks at Kona and says "he is so big, I bet he is 4 or 5 months." She tells us to wait for the vet assistant, so we wait. There are no other people or pets in the waiting room, so Kona gets to roam all around and sniff the dog food stacked up for you to buy. He is having a grand old time, despite not wanting to enter the building.

The vet asst. comes to get us and we follow her, she is a cute little Asian lady. She says "Oh, Kona, what a cute little puppy you are! Today is a cute little puppy and kitty day" "Thats a good type of day," I say "Do you ever have mean mangy mutt days?"
"Yes, those are the horrible days when everyone gets bit, and muzzles are everywhere."
I can only imagine, I never thought about what a bad day at work would be like at a vet office. She takes Kona's temperature. He spends this time following the thermometer around trying to sniff it like "Oh boy, what is that?!" She leaves, we wait, Kona falls asleep on the floor.

The vet comes, and Kona wakes up with a jump and slams his head against the leg of my chair. He wags his tail and approaches the vet, and she says the same thing everyone else says "Kona, what a cute puppy you are!!" She examines him and is confused, "You say he is 3 months? Judging by his teeth, he is probably closer to 2 months. You are not sure how when he was born? We'll say he is right around 10 weeks old" So first he is older than thought, now he is actually younger than thought.
He got out of a lot of shots just then, only one shot for this visit. The vet tries to check his hears, but he won't let her, then she says "Alright, lets shoot him!" She prepares his vaccine, and sticks it in his back. Kona jumps a bit, then looks at the shot like "OH BOY, what was that!!?!"

Kona gets a clean bill of health and we return to the waiting room to pay. We wait. Then the door opens and two huge dirty German Shepherds come in pulling around their little Asian owners. (I have actually never seen this many Asians in Woodstock, ever) Kona hides between my legs, and after about 3 minutes of hiding, be attempts a little baby protective growl. It was really darn cute. Then Shepherds get taken away, then in walks a itty bitty chihuahua. Now Kona wants to be friends ("Finally something smaller than me!"), but the Chihuahua has other ideas, which involve gazing from a distance. We pay and go to leave. Once we're outside the doors, Kona (now realizing what sort of place this is) is sniffing EVERWHERE! Then we go to cross the parking lot, and in the middle of the parking lot Kona proceeds to sit down, again, in defiance. He had so much fun being poked and prodded, that he didn't want to leave!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

A new addition!

Dearest Blogger friends,
I am officially introducing you to....

KONA!


Hubs and I adopted him Thursday afternoon, and we are all in love!
Kona loves us, and we love him! (How could you not?!) He is a 3 month old Lab/Collie mix.
Kona was the sweetest pup at the Shenandoah Animal Shelter (where only one of his brothers are left).
There he was referred to as "Bubba Gump." Needless to say, Kona is a much cooler name.

How did we come up with that name, you ask?
Well a good friend, Greg, suggested it; and we loved it because:

1. One of our favorite hobbies is riding bikes, and the brand name of Jason's mountain bike is "Kona"


2. We looooooove coffee, and since our new pup is the color of coffee we thought... perfect!



3. We wanted a name with a good strong first consonant and "K" is strong, wouldn't you say?


Kona has adjusted very well to living at the PT House.
He already knows "Come" "Sit" "Stay" and his new name!
Today Hubs and I took him to the park and we ran around a lot.
He doesn't play fetch... yet... but he really likes to play hide and seek (as the seeker of course).


Did I mention how hard it is to get a good picture of a black dog?

Kona and I on our first full day together!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

For the birds

What do you do when you are in your office at school during the summer and being stood up by students who you are generously offering to give lessons to for Free?

I am currently pondering leaving... or I could do some online shopping on the school's electrical bill :-)

The past week or so I have been a bit addicted to the ebay. This is not a new addition, but an old one rearing it's ugly head. My latest conquests have been a vintage copper kettle, and a Hazel Atlas pink depression glass measuring cup and reamer set. Very cute.

What I am currently drooling over is this:

Painted iron candelabra. Isn't it adorable with it's leaves and bird?! And currently no one has bidded on it... which means I watch it every day and then bid at the last minute and don't tell Hubs... so it's mine right? And I would give you the link, but I want it to be mine, you see. Can I trust you to not out bid me?!

Speaking of birds, on Martha Stewart today they made this adorable bird cage, and I just wanted to run out and make one myself and fill it with little canaries.


Why shouldn't a bird cage be huge and beautiful? Maybe I'll just start with a sock feeder :-)

Thursday, July 1, 2010

In which I ponder my garden, and discover my fear of bats.

In my mornings I love to roll out of bed, make the necessary coffee, and wander out to the patio and contemplate what I am going to do that day while sipping the necessary coffee.

Many days, it seems there are way to many things that need done, and I'm not sure exactly where to start. Today I was gazing over at my garden that Hubs and I started way back in April. This is what the garden looks like today:


I would like to draw your attention to the trellis which was meant for pole beans that I never started, the Lavender and Sage that are completely over grown with crab grass, and the pots of dead cherry tomato plants which never made it into the ground.

In my defense, this 'garden' was a hodge-podge of plants and weeds when we moved in last summer and the entire place was sooooooooo over grown that it was really over whelming. Words cannot describe how uncared for this yard was... well maybe neglected?

Now take a look at the far right at those beautiful eggplant babies! Hubs and I just moved them over there yesterday. They were getting squashed under the squash that is on the far left. Word around the area is that eggplant is really hard to grow. There are these bugs that just chew away at the leaves. I haven't seen them on my eggplant yet, but I did see them on my neighbor's and it does not look fun. Hopefully they stay away, because eggplant is soooooo yummy.

And now for my pride and joy: the squash, again to the far left. When Hubs and I were planting this garden we literally got into an argument on where to plant everything. I will spare you the details but we planted them 'his way' and they are all bunched up on top of each other, and despite their positioning they are doing quite well. I have already harvested two beautiful yellow squash(es?) and as my neighbor said it was the "Perfect Squash".

So this morning I decided I would pull a few weeds and make my garden look like I love it. So I went to get my gardening gloves out of the garage, notice how the door was left open:


And as I approached the door I found this:


It looks like a fuzzy blob, but it is a bat. A bat which I didn't get close enough to decide whether it was dead or alive. A bat which will be a welcome home from work present for Hubs. I guess I will not be weeding for now.