2011 Can Bite Me

There are a lot of reasons that bloggers close their computers and disappear for a while. A move. A big life change. Apathy. All of these things happened to me. Not that I was a barrel of sunshine and happiness in the first few months of 2011, but after my holding pattern came to an end and I was preparing to move and start a new job 2011 actually got worse. A couple weeks after moving I went through a major family tragedy. My beloved grandmother died after a long struggle with heart failure. I had taken care of her for the past ten years and with her passing my life shifted in a major way. During this time my entire family leaned on me for support and I found myself withdrawing from certain things, like this project and my husband and eating well and brushing my hair and wearing pants when I didn't need to.

Baby Girl and I  (her Godmother) at her baptism

I won't dwell, although I'm sure it will come up in the future. I started hating 2011. This year brought me unemployment, death, and near death of loved ones, funerals, and financial strain. I tried to focus on the one great thing from 2011, my niece (Baby Girl,) who I started to call our angel and our blessing. She was born two weeks before the roller coaster started going up and down and holding on to her during a lot of the darker times made life seem worth it all. (Yes, this is a pretty heavy post for a welcome back!)

I would sit with my computer open searching for way to update this community or to fake happiness and blog about cooking (which I had stopped doing) or activities (which I had also stopped doing.) But I couldn't quite bring myself to do it and I explained before, once you stop something it is harder each day to pick it back up again.

Now for the light at the end of the tunnel! 2011 ended. It was a very symbolic New Years Eve for me. I jumped into the shower at 11:50pm on the last day of 2011 and stepped out into 2012, clean and ready to turn it all around. My grief had attributed to an extra 30 pounds on my short frame and I was determined to take care of that. The Professor and I signed up for a half marathon. We trained hard each week. I started cooking again, and cooking healthy. I unpacked our apartment (something I had avoided due to having to clean out my Grandmother's home and constantly finding her letters among my things.) We started actually exploring our new city. I adopted a puppy, Lil' Bit. My marriage became stronger. I was ready to hit the ground running.

You Cut My Dog, I Cut You!

OK, that’s extreme. But we had a pretty extreme evening here at the cottage. Our pup was once again attacked by the roving neighbor dogs, which now number three (there is a new one) and still no owners in sight.

She held her own, and we’re pretty sure (or The Professor is, who ran into the whole mess) that she won. But she’s nursing some pretty deep cuts and I’m in complete mommy nurse mode.

Also I’m in angry-mommy-I’m-going-to-take-you-down mode as well. This is about the fourth time this has happened, but the worst case so far. The Evil Dogs, as I call them, used to stay in their own yard, even though I’ve rarely seen them attended. Recently they come into our land and harass our sweet pup.

The Professor, who has been a dog owner his whole life, while pup is my first and only canine, assures me that pup is OK. He says she can nurse herself better than we could (which didn’t stop me from cleaning her up,) and if the wounds still look bad in a couple days we’ll take her to the vet.

What could ever harm such a pup!

I’ll just brag about her a little more.

Pup loves mud. And digging holes. And getting muddy.

Pup hates her dog house and never used it.

She contemplates and thinks deep. About things like how to play with ducks. And why the ducks don’t want to play with her.

Pup likes to go hiking.

Pup really likes to go hiking. It makes her smile.

Pup likes to swim too. She even has fun doing it when I make her wear her adorable life jacket. Even though she doesn’t need to wear it anymore.

She is pretty much perfect.

For Love of the Weekend: Cottage Shelter

I love animals. I have three of my very own (well, I share them with The Professor.) Today has been a surreal experience with a stray dog and a possibly dying baby squirrel (let the choirs of awwwwwww’s began.)

Early this morning my dog went absolutely crazy for seemingly no reason. As I’ve said before, this has been going on at all hours of the day and night, specifically the night, and we’re determined that a homeless dog nests itself outside our bedroom window and whines. We’ve even found the nest of leaves. But we’ve never captured the dog. Our plan was always to find it, take its tag, and report its unfavorable activities to its owner. Of course, we never thought its owner would be an awesome example of a human being, since they didn’t let their dog indoors on the coldest winter night in Georgia (read: 22 degrees Fahrenheit.)

This morning, as The Professor enjoyed a lay in, I spotted the white dog from our porch window as our dog once again went completely ape shit. I ran outside, sans shoes, and discerned that the pooch was quite amenable to being friendly. While my dog hopped around excitedly, I ran back and forth between the house and the yard getting things like a collar (as, it turned out, the dog had none,) some shoes, and dog treats to trick it into trusting me. Eventually, with the help of a sleepy Professor, we collared and leashed the dog, and led it into the very large dog pen that is conveniently located on our grounds (for the sake of the 5 dogs owned by The Professor’s parents.)

This dog is ad-ooooooooooor-able. It is also very, very, very dirty. I can not even tell you how many times I’ve washed my hands due to the many, many ticks I’ve pulled from its fur. It has apparently fallen in love with me, and demands constant attention and is very snuggly. With The Professor it cowers and always acts afraid. We have thus determined that it has been abused by a man. It also limps slightly, has not been neutered, and there are no signs that it has ever been brought to a vet or properly cared for.

After printing up flyers and canvassing the lake, which was sort of a fun way to see our neighbors’ little cottages, we met a man who informed us that the county road close to our cottage is a common dumping ground for unwanted pets. He said not to get our hopes up that we will find an owner.

Thus we put the word out that unless someone contacts us from the flyers in the next few days, we have a dog up for adoption. I hate the idea of dropping him off at a shelter (although we’ll research and make sure it’s not one that puts animals down.) We’re just hoping that through our network of family and friends, someone will want to bring him into their home.

As I played fetch with him (who we call, new puppy,) I heard a horrible squealing noise and witnessed our adventure cat leaping from a tree top with something in its mouth. Low and behold, he had stolen a baby squirrel from its mother and nest. Freaking-A. Getting him to drop it was oh so fun, as was keeping all the animals away as I ran inside once again, this time to google what the hell to do with a baby squirrel. Apparently you are never to touch them as they have parasites and other nasty things. So we followed the instructions of the internet (thank you, oh internet,) and put it inside a box, under a tree in hopes the mother will come in the next 1-5 hours to reclaim it. Whoa is me, and our furry household, it’s been quite a day.

*This is not our photo of a baby squirrel. We would never touch a baby squirrel because we believe in the power of google.

For Love of the Weekend

This past weekend The Professor and I were determined to do something, anything, other than our rut of late (read: him, videogames; me, cross stitching.) So we created a best of both worlds weekend. Meaning, we had the best of the country, followed by the best of the city.

Saturday we planned to go hiking at the park closest to the cottage. We were late, however, given that our dog had a tick (gross, gross, gross) which she got from our awesome woods. Fantastic. After calling the in-laws, calling the vet, calling the in-laws again, and calling the vet again, we had successfully extracted half of the tick, been reassured twice that it should be OK and just to watch the dog. Then we went hiking. Which, by the way, was glorious. Oh, and at night we had a wheel barrel competition. That means we each took turns being the wheel barrel to see who could go the farthest. Yep, that’s romance in the boondocks.

Sunday we met up with the in-laws who had gotten us all tickets to The Blue Man Group in downtown Atlanta. Awesome day. I got to go into a city, walk around, smell that awesome city air, and see some percussion-based performance art. Afterwards we went to a funky neighborhood, found a fancy pub, and had delicious northern food (pierogis) and German beer. Life is good.

Sunday, however, was a long day, followed by the longest.night.ever.

Down the Lake (yes, you can use such expressions when living in the middle of nowhere where streets are irrelevant) there have been some new dogs which do not adhere to the traditional I’ll-stand-at-my-property-line-barking-while-you-stand-at-your-property-line-barking inter-dog communication. They routinely stride into our yard. This annoys our aggressive dog to no end. Last night was no different and every 45 minutes to an hour throughout the entire night our dog went ape-shit. This meant The Professor was outside, then inside, then outside, all night. We both woke up cranky, but unfortunately for him, he had to go to work.

This reminded me of one, very important thing. We are not ready to have babies. It also reminded me that I won a bet as to how many times the in-laws would make comments about the aforementioned babies during our day out on Sunday. Three times.