19 posts tagged “bunnies”
I'm so not a multitasker. I know being able to multi-task is a badge of pride these days, but you know what? Fuck that! I can give one thing my full attention, thoroughly accomplish a task with integrity and confidence, and then move on to the next. Multitaskers are always doing just enough to get by. I wasn't designed to work that way. (Another in a long list of reasons why I've never wanted children.)
But, I digress...
Feeling the pressure today. There are too many important issues/concerns on my plate right now, and it's grinding on my nerves hard and fast.
I made the reservations for boarding Mia while we're in Ireland. I can almost check that off my list, except they want to examine her first. I don't think that'll be a problem, but I'd really rather just know that finding a plan for her can be checked off my list of worries already. I feel tons guilty enough about leaving her for a week as it is. So, Friday she has an appointment, and I have all fingers and toes crossed that my sweet (*old*) girl is deemed healthy enough to take on as a boarder, and that she likes it there.
I really need to make a packing plan for Ireland already, while I still have time to acquire any wardrobe essentials that might be needed. We're staying casual and packing carry-on only, so packing light is the name of the game. It's going to be colder and rainier this time around though, so quick-drying layers are ideal. I think I'll sit down with a cup of tea in a bit here and start working on that list, just to get it settled in my mind a little.
Oh yeah! I need to call the bank too and see how much time they need to order some Euros for me. Must have the monies before we leave!
Then there's the party planning. It's nigh impossible to say no when it's for someone you love dearly, but I have to start doing that. "No party planning ever" needs to be one of my hard and fast rules. I do not like parties. Attending them is hell enough, planning them is excrutiating! I've already committed to this one though, so I have no choice but to plow through. I'll have to get back to that today too. I put it on the back burner last week when I had other priority issues eating my time and sanity. I can't put it off forever though. It's been haunting me and I just want to be done with it!
Today's election day. We'll be going out to vote when Craig gets home. Not a big deal there. It's a simple ballot this time and I know exactly how I plan to vote. I still get performance anxiety about it though. My brain and all of it's stupid anxiety! Oh well. That'll be a non-issue by 6pm, ...sooner if I can't manage to push it out of my head, because I'll just go out on my own and get it over with for sanity's sake.
Then there's the plumbing. We're now looking at replacing both the sewer line and the water line. Both need doing, disaster is imminent in both cases otherwise. We're talking about $5k in forseeable expense. Oof. The money's not even the biggest stressor, though it certainly registers! We're also talking two, maybe three days without functional plumbing. Argh. It really needs to be done before permafrost, which means before Ireland and preferably before the party I'm hosting, ...which means work needs to start this week ideally. argh. Not much I can do about that right at this minute other than worry, and worrying gets nothing done, so for today at least, I'm going to try to just not think about it.
There'll be a funeral for one of my great aunts this week too. I can keep that bit of stress out of my head for now because details haven't been arranged yet. Hopefully it won't coincide with Mia's vet appointment or the start/progress of plumbing work, because we're down to the wire on those things which need to happen ASAFP and I don't have rescheduling options.
Ok. So if I can get at least three of those things taken care of so they're not weighing on me any more, *then* I can start thinking about the holidays. I really need to jump on that as soon as possible, because holiday stress builds exponentially for me with every passing day.
I do feel better just for having listed it all out though, honestly. All that vague pressure and sense of impending doom never looks as bad when it's organized and prioritized. It'll look even better if I can deal with some of it and just get it crossed off the list though, so I'd better get to it now.
I'm getting so very excited about our upcoming vacation. When our travel agent started looking at airfare, the best route to Ireland was through Amsterdam, so Craig asked him to give us a one day layover on our way home so we could have a little time to get a quick peek at the city. It's not a lot of time at all, not for some place we've never been, but it's a nice way to audition the city for future vacation plans. I figure we'll probably have enough time to check out a museum or two, walk around a bit to get a taste of the city, and find a good restaurant for dinner. The Steltman Gallery that features Michael Parkes' lithographs is in Amsterdam, so I'm going to have to look up the location and hours for that. :) WOOT! I love exploring new places!
I'm totally stoked about the driving tour through Ireland though! I'm looking forward to going back to a few of our favorite spots like Cashel, Ennis and Slea Head, but I'm also looking forward to seeing new places like Dublin, Connemara and Galway! I'm looking into a visit to the Hill of Tara too, hoping to see it before the M-3 highway project trashes too much of it. It looks like our suggested driving route takes us pretty damn close to the area on the way back to Dublin, so it shouldn't be too difficult to work it in.
It'll be good to experience the weather in Ireland in November too, given how much I currently want to move there. I did some quick research, and it looks like November can be rainy with a chance of snow. I don't know why, the thoughts of warmer sea air probably, but I wasn't expecting that Ireland ever saw much snow. I still want to move there, my thinking being that we'd be close enough to the mountain ranges of Europe for some awesomely snowy winter vacations if I really needed a snow fix. I told Craig though, if it snows in Ireland while we're there, I'm taking it as a serious sign that we're supposed to stay.
I went and looked up all of our hotels yesterday, and they are swank! They all have fitness centers and pubs and complimetary breakfasts. The hotel in Killarney has a *gorgeous* pool, and the Galway hotel has a spa with all sorts of crazy offerings including an ice cave(!) ...whatever the hell that is. *L* Of course, I don't expect to be spending enough time in our hotel to take advantage of most amenities, but it's still nice to know we'll be staying in clean, beautiful, comfortable places, and the fitness centers and pool could come in handy if I can stay disciplined enough to get through a daily workout when there's so much sight-seeing to do. ...Honestly, I'm not going to feel *at all* guilty if there's too much to see to make time for working out, but it's nice to know I have the option.
I was thinking I'd board Mia at the vets' for the week we're gone, but I'm starting to have second thoughts about that. I have to get out there to see their boarding facilities. She's used to having the run of a quiet house. If they're going to have her in a small cage listening to squaking parrots and exotic birds all day every day, well I don't know if I can do that to her. That's kind of like sending your kid to San Quintin while you jaunt off to Europe for a week. I'm thinking about getting a house-sitter if the boarding thing doesn't look as swank as our hotels are. It's always so tricky making sure our bunnies are going to be well looked after when we travel. I have a few options, I suppose.
We spent an hour outside last night looking for meteors. The neighbor's porch light came on almost as soon as we stepped outside, and it was on for quite a while, but we still managed to see a few meteors despite the light pollution. We counted 13 meteors (numbers 10 and 13 being amazingly huge with long, bright trails), 4 bats, 2 satellite(or ISS?) sightings and countless planes. And I only got a couple mosquito bites. :)
Well, my coffee cup is empty and I'm starting to feel my brain kick in, so I guess I'd better get busy and get some stuff done today. I have big plans for today. Big plans for tomorrow too. ...And Saturday. Pretty much, big plans from here on out for the forseeable future, ...'til the end of the year at least. :) Life is *really* good!
We had a long holiday weekend. Craig took Thursday and Monday off, in addition to having Friday off. Stuff happened.
My mental "week" started off last Tuesday when I had a pretty big anxiety attack. I was beyond the "exercise or meditate" remedies and couldn't think of any other way to calm myself down, so I added a little pomegranate liqueur to some soda and had that with my lunch. I had goggled "anxiety and alcohol", just to make sure it wasn't going to make me feel worse, and came up with page after page of warnings about needing 12-step programs and such. In the moment, I felt really low for resorting to alcohol as a remedy, but a) it worked, b) it worked fast, and c) once I was past the panic, I realized that I only have these attacks once or twice a year, and if a little bit of very weak alcohol helps me calm down once or twice a year, I really don't think I have a problem. Plus, d) less side-effects to worry about than pharmaceutical remedies. The next day we were talking with a coworker who brews beer, discussing the stigma of alcohol in the US. He had taken some European visitors out for breakfast, and was amused when they blew the waitresses mind by trying to order beer in the morning. So I've decided not to feel bad about having a sip with my lunch to bring my brain back to reality, stop the tears, and calm my racing heart and trembling hands. It wasn't a fifth of anything or even a whole glass of wine. It was a shot of very low alcohol content liqueur in some soda, and it calmed me down perfectly.
Wednesday I went to the office with Craig. I had a big meeting I preferred to actually attend rather than call in to, and my car was in the shop for a leaky master cylinder. It was to be a longer-than usual meeting discussing things that completely mix up my to-do list, but in a good way I think. Craig was more than willing to use my "needing a ride home" at lunch time as an excuse to take some well-deserved comp time and start the weekend early. We had Thai for lunch, ran some errands and went home to chill.
I don't honestly remember everything we did this weekend, but we did set up our new tent. It's pretty awesome. It was super easy to set up (and take down). We did sleep in it one night, a little backyard camping, which was my first time sleeping in a tent. Very relaxing to be outside, even if it was only in our backyard. Amazingly cold too, for July! I can't wait to actually go camping some time soon, after Mia settles into a new routine and I can board her for the weekend without worrying about her.
We also had our traditional 4th of July picnic and enjoyed the fireworks at BG, even with the rude people there. If you're going to play catch in the middle of a crowd of picnickers, you'd better be able to actually ...you know, CATCH!!! We had a ton of near misses with a baseball, and the same group tossed a football that would've turned over a chair and hit Craig right in the head if we hadn't been paying attention to their dumb game of almost-catch. I was fantasizing about stabbing the football with my pocket knife each time it landed next to us, and handing it back that way.
The fireworks themselves were most enjoyable, and highly entertaining. They seemed a little sparser than in previous years, and I figured it was a budget thing, times being what they are. After the finale, there was a huge encoure though, and then a second one. And then as everyone was walking back to their cars, large fireworks continued to go off in the sky for another 15 minutes or so. Methinks they had some wiring/fuse issues. :) They were gorgeous, as always though, and the crowd watch in near silent awe, except when the perfect smiley face burst over all our heads and cracked everyone up. :)
Sunday morning we went out for breakfast, and after being playfully harassed by the waitress and enjoying a good meal, we were told that some other couple had paid our bill with the message, "Have a nice day." Craig and I were momentarily stunned by the act of kindness. It's silly how stupid difficult it was to process a random kind deed like that without suspicion and intense curiousity. Our waitress winked and said, "I think you have an admirer, and I think it was HIM, not her." Then Craig tripped a circuit in her brain when he replied, "I'm ok with that. I'll take any admirers I can get these days!" *L* :) We picked an older couple in the restaurant and anonymously paid for their breakfast before we left, passing on the good deed.
We also had a too-brief visit from some good friends this weekend, we did a little antiquing, Craig worked on a project in the garage, ....um, I don't know what else. Sunday and Monday my thoughts were pretty much all on Jasmine.
Yesterday, on our way home from the vet, we stopped and picked up a harness and leash for Mia. We're going to have to provide her with a lot more entertainment and enrichment now that she's without bunny companionship. I'm going to *TRY* to leash train her so I can take her out in the yard once in a while. I may build a rabbit run too, but with the feral cats and eagles and some toxic plants and the large deck to hide under and her natural ability to dig and run fast... well I'm not going to be letting her have the run of the yard. I figured we'd try the harness thing first. We picked out an obnoxiously pink harness and leash, with a blinged out heart on it. I don't know why. It made me laugh when I was feeling down, so Mia must suffer it ...at least until she chews it to shreds. :)
So the "week" started with an anxiety attack and ended with the sad loss of a furry friend, but there was a lot of good stuff in between last Tuesday and yesterday.
And now, Mia seems to have fallen asleep with her eyes open, like she does, so I'm going to get up off this hard floor, go hang up some laundry, and actually try to get some work done.
I feel pretty... oh so pretty... I got my hair cut today. I went in and told my stylist to do whatever she wanted. She must like my hair the way it is now because she left the length (which is unusual for her) and just cut lots of layers into it. She curled it for me too, and it looks pretty darn cute right now. I'm much more low maintenance though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like tomorrow, without any product in it and air-dried. :) I have enough natural wave in it that I think it'll still look super-cute though. It's very nice to have it cut enough that I don't have to pull it back to keep it from hanging in my face once again.
Last night we went out for dinner with friends to celebrate a dear friend's birthday. Good times. We went to Sakura for Japanese yummies, and then to DQ for dessert. :) Lots of great conversation and laughter was had, as always. Love my peeps!
I'm working on day two of a pretty bad headache. Yesterday it was trying to push over the line toward migraine status, but I managed to keep it from getting there. Today it's just been thumping against my skull all day. ...*ALL DAY* Like from the moment I sat up in bed on. I don't know if it's weather related, if I haven't been hydrating enough, maybe eye strain, allergies are likely, possibly even the tiniest bit of a cold that I thought might be coming on at the beginning of the week. This is really annoying though, especially given how bright and wonderful the weather is, and how very much that brightness is paining me as I hide in the darkest room in the house. :/
I picked some dandelions for the bunnies this afternoon! I'm so grateful for the growing season and all the readily available bunny food. I have some parsley coming up in my garden already too, so we have dandelion, parsley and plantain lilies for the buns to supplement store-bought produce. Once I get my garden planted and growing, we'll have carrot tops, lettuce and spinach too. YAY for free food!
argh. I need to take off my glasses and close my eyes for a bit. Stupid headache. ...But YAY weekend!!!
Let's see... Last I wrote, my allergy meds were having nasty side effects. I quit them and felt better. Still sick though. :/ This is *REALLY* getting old.
Took Jasmine back to the vet. The good news is her ulcerated cornea is healed. The bad news is that her sinuses are blocked and we have to continue with this rigorous three treatments per day schedule FOR A MONTH! This is wearing both me and Jasmine out. She does seem to be a happier bunny in general on the meds though. It's only when I'm trying to give them to her that she scratches and bites. *sigh*
The vet appointment itself was kind of traumatic. They put numbing drops in her eyes, then took a blunt syringe full of warm saline, inserted it *way* down in the front corner of her eye, and tried to flush out her nasal cavity by pushing water through. ...Except the poor girl is so stuffed up, the needle broke off the plastic syringe and water went everywhere. And the needle was just sticking out of her eye! I squealed and got a little queasy. They pulled the needle out, reattached everything, tried the other eye, AND THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED! I contained myself a little better with just a *meep*. It was horrible. They told me Jasmine was numbed up and it shouldn't have bothered her. Numb or not, I think a large piece of metal sticking into your sinuses THROUGH YOUR EYE is kind of unnatural and upsetting. Poor girl. I'd taken Mia in the carrier also that day, because the roads were bad, the temps were worse and it took us an hour to get there and another hour home. Mia provided Jasmine with warm snuggles and stress relief. ...She also made the carrier MUCH heavier!
In other bunny news, they'd liked the little handfuls of snow we'd brought in for them before, so we brought in a whole box this time, and they LOVED it. Mostly they ate it, but Mia thought it was nice to sit in. She's such a goof!
And then in other winter news, the week has seen my car doors frozen shut nearly every day, Craig's car so frozen that it wouldn't turn over, and pipes in the house frozen and, in one small instance, broken. Craig thinks our roof is leaking again too. And, have I mentioned that I'm still sick? I honestly still love winter though. The snow is making me happy. We haven't had so much of it stick around so long in quite a while. I hope we get more this week.
So that's mostly what's been going on for us this week. (Oh yeah, and BSG finally, which was AWESOME!!!!) Mostly it's been cold and I've been sick. I'm feeling completely anti-social these days, and I'm okay with that. Winter is the time for hibernating, and I'm pretty much doing that the best I can and enjoying the hell out of the solitude.
We did go out today though, for my nephew's 2nd birthday celebration. He's absolutely adorable, and it was a fun two hours. Back home now though, back to hibernating.
Once up a time, I took my bunny, Loopy, and set him out on our front porch full of snow, just to see if he was interested in playing in it. He sat there with his jibblies freezing, and just glared up at me, so I picked him up and took him back inside where he proceeded to exact revenge by chewing up the things I love.
This morning I went out to shovel, and decided to bring in a handful of snow for Jasmine. She examined it and decided it was an edible treat. She was quite taken with it.
Jasmine has been acting really tired lately and her eye has started looking irritated again, so we took her back to the vet where they determined that the poor girl has an ulcerated cornea. They numbed her eye and dyed it and shone a black light into it and you could see the ulcer plain as day. My poor sweetie bunny!
We brought her back home with two eye drops and an oinment she gets in her eye three times a day, and then two oral meds to be given twice a day. On top of that, I'm supposed to apply a heat-cold pack cycle before each round of eye meds and, since you're not going to get her to wear an eye patch, we have to keep her in the dark mostly to keep her pupils as dilated as possible. That last bit meant some rearranging and moving all the bunny rugs and boxes out to the livingroom this morning (the livingroom is easier to keep dark than the bunny room is).
Bunnies don't like meds or change, so Jasmine is a bit peeved and confused today. :( I'm confident the meds will have her feeling a ton better right away though, especially the anti-inflammatories, so it's all good. She has a follow up appointment in a week and a half, and a whole lot of meds and being fussed over between now and then.
The good news is that aside from the ulcerated cornea, she is in excellent health. The vet said her heart and lungs sound great, her teeth are excellent and she seems well hydrated. She's doing pretty darn good for being over ten years old.
After years of keeping the bunnies contained with a puppy gate, Mia has finally figured out how to fold it out of the way and let herself out. While amusing, this is not a good development. I'm sure I can secure it somehow (my brain is much bigger and I have opposable thumbs), but I'm lazy and it was nice just being able to easily slide it around myself whenever I needed to all this time.
Kroger had mini-muffin pans on sale, buy one, get one free. YAY! I've been wanting mini-muffin pans for a while, but have been too frugal to buy the good ones and too picky to buy the cheap crap. I made zucchini mini-muffins today. Delicious and so cute.
I've remembered that I can view text files on my mp3 player while listening to music. This feature never really interested me before, but today when I was debating whether I should print out my recipe or haul my laptop out to the kitchen, I remembered about the text files and instead loaded the recipe onto my mp3 player. It was quite a nice way to work, listening to music and always having my recipe at hand for reference. Now I'm thinking about making an arm-band, or maybe figuring out how to hang it upside down from my neck so it's readable and mostly hands-free.
It's candle season again! I have my first two burning right now. My MIL gave me a couple more bags of church candles, so I'm quite candle-rich! I love these church candles because they burn so very evenly and clean. I really need to clean my house up and get my autumn decorations out, then deck the place out with candles. I love this time of year!
...That's all I have right now, I guess. I spent the weekend doing very minor home improvement type things, but it feels like time well-spent because the home projects list is soooooo long that any time I can cross something off it makes me feel accomplished. I did get the mudroom cleaned up though, and that's most exciting because I have room to work with my torch in there again now. I'm hoping the work I have planned for tomorrow goes smoothly and I can squeeze in some torch time!
Ok. Time to feed the bunnies and call it a night. I'm looking forward to this week. I intend to get so very much done.
My bunny girls are officially friends. There was mutual grooming and a wee bit of snuggling today. It melts my heart. I think those old girls are going to be so much happier keeping each other company!
I made a handful of ugly beads yesterday. That's ok though, I didn't really have a plan and wasn't really trying. Mostly I just needed to clean up some rods that were left messy and get reacquainted with my small torch after using that fabulous $900 torch on Saturday (WANT!). I pulled out the dirty and pointy rods and practiced mixing, swirling and striping. Most beads came out either kind of boring or out-right ugly and misshapen, but I wound up with one "perfect" bead, and by "perfect" I mean it came out looking exactly like I had intended, which for a newbie like me doesn't happen often. I made one with zebra stripes. It's slightly lop-sided, but the stripes came out *perfectly*!
I'm going to be doing a lot more of that this week. It was stupid of me to let so many weeks go by without making torch time. I get my priorities screwed up a lot.
Yesterday Craig asked me, "So, this is your Big Birthday *Month*, right? Can I give you one of your presents?" then tells me he installed new speakers in my car for me! *SQUEE!* He'd been outside "fixing my loose door handle" (or so he said) and already installed them,. :) YAY!!! I can listen to Muse again without having to turn the base almost completely down!
My bunny girls are finally getting along. I'm not sure I'd say they're bonded, but this weekend I've started leaving them out together without having to constantly watch over them for fear that fur will start flying. There's a wee bit of mutual grooming going on, but mostly they seem to ignore each other, which is a HUGE improvement over the months of aggression. Not quite bonded yet, but I do get the impression they're starting to enjoy each other's company, for the most part.
Ok. Time to get the day started. This week needs to be very different from last week.
