From the Bed

Monday and Tues­day were two of the best days I have had in MONTHS. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I over­did it and am in bed all day as a result. Thanks to the lap­top and wire­less ‘net con­nec­tion, I can post anyway.

I’m also doing some fil­ing. The portable file con­tain­ers are great.

We did go vote, got some blinds re-trimmed at Lowes, and hung out at Bor­ders for a bit. I want to get a book I was brows­ing, Cru­cial Con­ver­sa­tions. We had intend­ed to go to Pet­co, Sta­ples, and Kroger, but I had to safe­word on those.

curiousmay9, who has­n’t ever lived with a dog before, bathed Iris last night.

While I’d men­tioned a few things, she did­n’t real­ly GET the fact that even if a dog loves play­ing in the water, she might hate baths. Iris is like that.

Now, curiousmay9 is still recov­er­ing from mono, and she’s got an extreme­ly ten­der abdomen and low ener­gy. So try­ing to haul a very unwill­ing 100+ lb. crit­ter across the bath­room into the show­er did­n’t result in feel­ing good. In fact, while she did go to work this morn­ing, she had to come home ear­ly and go back to bed 🙁

Iris did get bathed and brushed. She was­n’t hap­py about either.

I man­aged to resist going in to check on the omi­nous thumps and thuds com­ing from the bath­room. I could­n’t help but envi­sion a large, wet, unhap­py dog ric­o­chet­ing about our suite. I knew, how­ev­er, that 1) there was­n’t room in the bath­room for me; 2) I would­n’t be much help phys­i­cal­ly any­way. So I queued up music with lots of drums and tried to think about oth­er things.

She saw me tak­ing the pack­ag­ing off a new leash, one of those that you can play out and reel in. She rec­og­nized that and got very excit­ed. So excit­ed, in fact, that despite it being 10:30 pm I could­n’t deny her the walk she wanted.

We walked down our street and the next, going down to the dead-end there. She want­ed to explore the woods, but I don’t have the night vision she has (or the strength or sta­mi­na). I told her the kids would take her out today.

One dog got riled up about our pres­ence near his yard. I was proud of our princess. She growled low in her throat, and put her­self between me and the oth­er dog—but she did NOT try to go con­front him. He was con­fined in a fence, happily. 

There are some very large dogs that were roam­ing the neigh­bor­hood freely, but I haven’t seen them in a while.

It’s easy to for­get how dif­fer­ent it is to live way out here. See­ing the night sky with almost no light pol­lu­tion is incred­i­ble, though. We don’t have street lights around here, which can be annoy­ing but is worth the view.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Shel­ley is shed­ding incred­i­bly and chew­ing on her­self again. I think it’s anx­i­ety, due to the new mem­ber of our house­hold. She likes the fact that I’m in bed today because she feels safe enough to lay here instead of hid­ing in the clos­et again. She’s the only cat with past dog expe­ri­ence, and the dog is far more intim­i­dat­ed by her than she is by the dog. She’s old, though, and does­n’t always han­dle changes well.

We did get the new col­lars and updat­ed ID tags on all the crit­ters. Iris has tak­en two unau­tho­rized explorato­ry jaunts late­ly, so we want­ed to be sure she was wear­ing our phone num­ber. We’ve had to start putting her on a leash before open­ing the front door because she’s ter­ri­bly good at mak­ing a break for free­dom. She comes home, but she is used to liv­ing in a place with many acres of land and a pond. We have a very large yard, but it must seem very con­fin­ing to her.

Oh—we’ve also got three “bor­rowed” teens here this week. We’re miss­ing two of the usu­al sus­pects, but the kids and Sam are hav­ing fun.