Introducing Autumn One-eye Winterspring

A few months ago, Jeff and I got a new dog. Like Merit, Autumn is technically just a foster for now, but we are hoping our home is her forever home.

A police officer found her roaming the streets in north Philly and took her to the shelter. For the most part, she was in good health, but she had a pretty gruesome eye injury.

Nasty, isn't it? (Click the image for a larger view.)

The shelter gave us some pills to give her and some ointment to put on her eye. Let me tell you, it's REALLY hard to put ointment into the eye of a squirmy dog without damaging her eye even more.

After a few weeks, her eye was looking a little better, but not a lot. It wasn't as red and had become more pug eye than boil.




Over the next few weeks, we tried to figure out if she could see out of her injured eye. When we threw the ball for her, we noticed that if we threw it towards her good side, she could follow it, but if we threw it towards her bad side, she would lose it. She also bonked her head on things a few times. All signs pointed to her being blind in one eye.

We still wanted her to keep the eye, even if merely for aesthetic reasons. Two-eyed dogs don't look as freaky as one-eyed dogs, and Jeff and I are pretty big on our dogs being cute. (Have you seen Dylan? OMG, he's a freaking cutie!)

When we took Autumn in to get spayed, the doctor told us her eye wasn't looking as well as he would like and he wanted to just take the eye out. It was a little sad, but we knew that Autumn wouldn't be able to tell the difference since she was already blind in her "dead eye."

After the surgery, Autumn looked terrible. She acted just as happy and squirmy as ever, but she looked pretty disgusting.



For starters, half of her head was shaved, but also, she still had iodine on her fur, her wound itself looked like a hack job*, and her eye was oozing blood. Pretty freaking gross.

It has now been two weeks since the surgery and she's looking MUCH better, even if she still is a freaky one-eyed dog.



Autumn is still a puppy, and therefore is still troublesome, but she's a good girl who is learning quickly. Now if we can just get Dylan to stop being afraid of her, we can all live happily ever after.

*I imagine that shelter dogs serve as practice for vet students.

Why I like Facebook

I can manage to come up with something interesting to say that is approximately one sentence in length.

Beyond that, I somehow just end up complaining.

Troublemaker

One of the reasons that moving to Philly was hard for me was that the church that Jeff and I attend is pretty different from my church back home. And it's not just the style of the church that's different. The people are different. When I came here, it was hard for me to really believe that the people were going to accept me.

Honestly, I still don't know.

But that fear has actually made it hard for me to make friends, because I have been reserved and quiet. But you know what? That ain't me. And I want to be done with that.

So this is where I start. Here is where I will say who I am, without being coy or evasive.

-I recycle. But really, only because it is convenient.
-I use Round Up in the back yard on the weeds (including poison ivy, so I'm not even sorry.)
-I am a registered Republican. (I might be the only one you know!)
-I voted for George W. Bush in 2004.
-I voted for Barak Obama in 2008. (I wanted to vote Republican, really I did. But they just made it too freaking hard. First of all, who was that angry, desperate person who claimed to be John McCain? He ran a terrible campaign, at least here in PA. And Sarah Palin... she just ain't ready for the big league.)
-I don't use biodegradable tampons. I use the ones with the plastic applicator.
-I use 7th generation laundry detergent and dish washing detergent.
-I use method floor cleaner and an omop.
-I don't want to buy my clothes from a thrift shop. I want to buy them new from the mall or Target or something.
-I like to buy lattes from Starbucks.
-I don't think Wal-Mart is the devil.
-I would probably get more of my furniture from garage sales if only I didn't have to get up early to find the good deals.
-I am not a pacifist.
-I like to wear makeup and get manis/pedis.
-I like country music.
-I am not a vegetarian.
-My favorite color is purple. (I know that doesn't really have anything to do with this, but I really do like purple.)
-I want to live in the suburbs, with a garage and a yard bigger than my living room.
-I take public transportation.
-I believe that just because someone isn't black, poor, about to have a baby, about to lose a baby, or dying of cancer doesn't mean that they don't still hurt or that they don't need someone to love them. Why am I on no one's radar?
-I like games, but I am not a gamer. (My husband married "outside the tribe.")
-I like exegesis.
-I haven't yet decided what I think about women leading churches. There is a part of me that is offended by the notion that women shouldn't lead churches, but in the search for truth I must at least be willing to accept it as a possibility.
-I believe the man is the head of the household, and women do a disservice to their husbands, their children, and themselves when they usurp that authority.
-I live in a two-car family.

What do you say, folks? Where is this community I hear so much about? I know, I know, I'm being antagonistic, and that hardly encourages new friends to flock my direction. But what do I have to lose? Keeping my mouth shut hasn't done me a lot of good.

Hemispherectomy

I have two sides to my brain. Don't worry, it's normal. You have that too.

Lately, one side of my brain has been very busy. It has done a lot of sorting and analyzing. Not the math kind, the emotional kind. Figuring out and understanding the present, trying to create a vision of the future. Trying to freaking relax, and understand the source of all the tension and what to do about it. Man, that side of my brain is tired.

But the other side is bored. It has sat idly by, watching half of me freak out about things it doesn't understand and can't control.

So tonight, I'm going to activate the bored side and let the tired side rest. How? Solitaire. Lots and lots of solitaire. In varying forms.

Too bad I can't play Nertz by myself.

Just for a minute

more animals

Ways in which I am broken

Sometimes it’s hard to be married. Let me be clear. I love my husband. He’s pretty freaking great. He’s my favorite person to talk to. Or watch Scrubs with. Or wash dishes with. Of all the guys I’ve dated, I married the guy who made the best husband.

But that doesn’t mean that life is always peachy. It's just he doesn’t always let me have my way, see? And I don’t mean in a temper tantrum “I wanted the purple fork and not the orange fork” sort of way*. More like, “Yeah, I think I’d just rather not talk about money, thank you very much” sort of way.

I WANT to be grown up and mature. But I’m not. I’m sinful and broken and childish. And I have a thing with money. It’s not like I’m a crazy spender. I’m not. I spend more money on eating out for lunch than I should, but it’s not like I’m going to Chili’s everyday for lunch. (As if going to Chili’s were the ultimate extravagance.) Other than that, my spending is normal. When I need clothes, I buy them. I SOMETIMES get my nails done, or whatever. But it’s actually pretty normal. Nothing really worth avoiding. Except I do, as if my life depended on it.

Which is tough because married couples gotta talk about money. Which leaves poor Jeff always being the bad guy. He makes me talk about money, but then I have to tell him I didn’t move that money to savings like I said I was going to, and I feel like a terrible person because I didn’t do it, and now I can’t because I spent some of the money on eating out, and I’m a terrible person and a terrible wife and it’s time for me to cry now, thanks.

Husbands don't normally like to see their wives cry. Jeff is no exception. But, hey, it happens and everybody lives. And most of the time he's patient and loving (although he's sinful and broken, too. But that's another post.) And eventually the tears stop, and I mope around for a while, feeling the weight of all that's wrong with me, and then that gets a little better, too, and suddenly I'm ready to watch a little Earl on TV. And I laugh. And everybody lives.

Sometimes I think being single would be easier. But I never think it would be better.

*But only because all of our forks and utensils in general are black. Otherwise, that statement might not be true.

Why this winter will not suck as much as last

I hate the cold. Jeff and I are both really big babies about winter. We spent like five straight months complaining to each other last year.

Oh, this year will have its moments. Moments where we wonder why we live in this God-forsaken arctic tundra. Why ANYone lives here. I mean, don't you know it doesn't get this cold other places? Just move already!

Basically, no matter where you go, people adapt. People adapt to Texas by air conditioning everything. Here, you shrink wrap your windows and use space heaters, and only live in half your house half the year, because it costs too much money to heat the entire thing.

Here is how Jeff and I are adapting:

1. Electric blanket - Jeff and I were on a pretty strict budget last year and one thing we didn't splurge on was an electric blanket. This year we're doing a little better, so I got one a few weeks ago. Oh, sweet heavenly heated blankets. May God bless the person who invented them and also the person who made mine and also the person who brought it to me, etc. Looking back, I see this should have been a necessary purchase last year. And the dual controls are nice since Jeff and I don't go to bed at the same time very often.

2. A heater that works - Last year, we had problems with our heat. It would blow hot until it was almost the desired temperature and then it would blow ice cold. That sucked. When it started to blow cold, we'd just turn the thing off, which meant that overnight, it would get pretty cold in the house. It's hard to go take a shower in a bathroom that is 55 degrees. But last week we had a guy come look at our system. Turns out, we had a heat pump thermostat, which he said was wrong so he changed it and now it's fine. No more cold. Also, this thermostat is PROGRAMMABLE, which means that it starts to heat up the house about 30 minutes before I get up. Nice.

These are simple but effective ways to decrease my displeasure this winter and will likely result in the number of complaints uttered in this house being reduced by at least 20%. Which will make life better for my husband.

Blogaday?

So, my husband has a blog. He's a writer, so he sorta has to, right? He's a great writer. That's how I fell in love with him, all those years ago. Well, it's how I started to like him, at least.

So last November was his first ever Blogaday. He blogged everyday for a month. This year, he's at it again, but this time he challenged other bloggers to the same. So here I am.

I'm not sure I'll blog every day. But I will make a concerted effort to blog more often this month. And sometimes I'll include pictures!

I don't have too much to say today, but I'll let you know a little bit about how my day went.

This morning, Jeff and I had to go to the bank. But, I ate too much sugar for breakfast. I'm hypoglycemic and so sometimes a Kashi waffle with honey and a glass of Ovaltine is too much sugar and sometimes it isn't. But when it is, it's bad. So I threw up at Bank of America this morning. The bathroom is supposed to be just for employees, but I guess I looked bad enough that she let me in anyway.

Don't worry, no pictures with this blog post.