Buddy

Meet Buddy, my mom's new dog!

He is the bigger (weighing in at 85 pounds - 20 pounds more than Indy), calmer Indy. He's 3.5 years old and came from a great home where the family was sad to see him go, but they just discovered that one of the kids is allergic to dogs. So my mom, Indy and I drove up to Forest Lake to meet him, and we took him home with us. I think Indy's energy kinda freaked him out a bit, but they got along pretty well. He is going to make a great companion for my mom. And hopefully he and Indy develop a good friendship. :)

Welcome to the family, Buddy!

Before & After: Desk

Remember that desk I got on Freecycle? Well, I am proud to say that it is has a whole new look. After some sanding, wood filler, one coat of oil primer, two coats of Antique White latex paint and some new brushed bronze hardware, the desk looks great! And I paid way less than I would have on a brand new desk - about $35 total! Love it.

Without further ado...

BEFORE

AFTER

 

I still have a few touch-ups to do, and I'm thinking of getting some glass or plexi-glass to go on top, but overall I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. What do you think?

Up next: paint a little shelf I got at Valu Thrift (for about $1) to match and hang it on the wall. Sadly, I must do some school work first. This project might have to wait a bit...

*Thanks to the bloggers at Young House Love for the great tutorials and examples about painting furniture!

Give your pets a squeeze

Here's Indy supervising us as we hung the Christmas lights last weekend. This was last Saturday.

A week ago today, last Sunday, Indy had a seizure. It was so sad to see her so vulnerable and scared as she lost control of her body for about 5 minutes. Fortunately, I recognized the signs of the seizure pretty quickly (since Taffy, my childhood dog, had seizures when she was alive). So we just tried to make sure she was safe as she was going through it and we tried to calm her down by petting her and talking to her.

She made it through it and then slept for pretty much the rest of the night. The next day, I took her in to the vet, where she had blood drawn to check to see if she had any liver, kidney or other infections. Thankfully, she doesn't have any crazy infections. But the vet did say that Indy probably has Epilepsy. She may or may not have more seizures during her lifetime - we will just wait and see (and keep our fingers crossed that she will not have anymore!). They don't recommend meds right now. They say that the side effects of the meds are really not worth it unless she is really having a lot of seizures (like multiple seizures per month). So we will just wait and see what happens and hope for the best.

We love this dog. She is pretty much the greatest ever. We let her sleep in our bed for a couple nights in a row after this incident. And just about every day Eric or I tell her to not have anymore seizures.

Right now, she is curled up between us on the futon while the Vikings game is on. Life is good. And Indy is back to normal - earlier she stole half of my Twizzler, chewed off the end of a spool of thread, happily played with an empty 20-oz bottle of coke, intimidated a squirrel in the backyard and pranced around with a bone in her mouth.

So tonight give your pets a hug and an extra treat! What would we do without them?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Where have I been? Well, we had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving here at our house with my mom and brother. We brined a turkey and made stuffing and pumpkin cheesecake. Mmmm..... It all turned out pretty great, especially the cheesecake.

Then last weekend, we started decorating our house for Christmas a bit. We had a ton of icicle lights left over from our wedding reception, so we decided to get out the ladder and put them up on our house. Neither of us had ever hung lights before, but we were eager to make our house look good. Look at this guy - he's ready:

Action shot:

And the final product:

What do you think? 

Victorville

Tomorrow, Eric and I are signing a bunch of papers to finish the process of refinancing and adding me to our mortgage. Part of that process involves having a list of all the addresses that we've lived at over the past 10 years. Seriously? That is a big feat. I could find some address by sorting through old emails. But one address in particular was difficult to find - my address during my short stint in Americorps. I really had no idea what my address was - it was forever ago and not a super pleasant memory.

So I decided to hop on Google maps and search for a high school in Victorville, CA. Luckily, I recognized the name Silverado High School and the street view definitely helped me recognize that corner in the high desert with the Hostess Wonderbread store on the corner - that was where we turned into our "neighborhood"!

So, I clicked along the route and turned onto Aster Rd. (definitely remembered it once I saw that name, but would not have remembered it all on my own). So this picture shows my little home in Victorville. We were in a duplex that butted up to another duplex, so it was a quasi-four-plex. Ours is the far one that can't really see, but there is a nice, big red truck sitting outside of it.


View Larger Map

Funny thing is: I still don't know the exact address, but I can at least say it was on Aster Rd and it started with 133 and was 5 digits long. :)

It's crazy to me that I lived there for about 8 months. The rent was so cheap - 4 of us in a 2-bedroom for only about $160 each/month. No wonder I was okay living off $700/month stipend! Yikes...what a crazy time in my life.

The thing I remembered most as I was clicking along that google street view: all the runs I used to go on with some friends along those dirt roads. Those were some good times. We would try to talk while running, which was hard because it's the high desert, so the air is thinner. And some of our neighbors had dogs, horses, chickens, etc. So I would greet the animals as I ran by.

Oh Victorville, I wonder how you're doing today...

Freecycle

Have you heard of Freecycle? If not, you must check it out. I have been part of this group for a few months now, but I've never gotten anything or given anything away just yet. I've mostly been a silent observer who sees things and then other people would always snatch them up before I could even write an inquiry email.

Until today!

This morning, I changed my membership info so that I receive emails for every post instead of one email per day. With the one-a-day thing, I was missing out. After changing my info, I received an email about a desk, wrote an email back to the poster about the size of it. Within about an hour, I received all the info and a picture:

So, tonight, I will be the proud owner of this beautiful desk (cat not included).

I'm excited to turn this thing into a beauty and use it for sewing, crafts, etc.

Now, I'm getting excited about posting some things that we need to give away soon. At the top of the list are 2 tvs and 1 tv stand. Any takers?

Kid yoga

Is this not the cutest thing you've ever seen?

I had to find an image to go with a new blog post by the director of the Center for Spirituality & Healing today. It's about yoga's growing popularity with kiddos.

This is perhaps the best photo I've ever found for work-related stuff. My babies will do yoga with me just so I can try to snap pictures like this. Maybe I should start doing yoga again...NOT because I am currently expecting! Just to prepare for the future, people!

(Picture source: istock.com)

Where in the world?

Happy belated Halloween from the Stones (Carmen, Waldo and Indy the Italian soccer playing dog)!

Here is Waldo getting ready to go out. He quickly discovered that bar patrons were not yelling F%$# you! at him. No no. They were yelling "Found him!" as in they found Waldo. It was a little confusing for poor Waldo at first.

Here is Carmen before heading out and accidentally leaving her sunglasses in a bar bathroom. Oops... You may recognize the hat from my high tea shower last summer. I removed the flowers that were glued on and stapled on this old black nylon lovely black band.

While we were out, we ran into Cookie Monster. Are you not impressed with my cousin John and his homemade costume! All made with some Walmart blankets, staples and some styrofoam balls. Amazing.

We also ran into Carrie. Cousin Jess takes her Halloween costumes very seriously. She has been the Chiquita Banana Lady and Mrs. Butterworth, among other amazing characters.

Maracas!!!!

Here is Finley practicing for her new band. This was pre-puking episodes.

Highs and lows

This has been a busy week! Here are my highs and lows:

Highs:

• Giving my presentation in class on Thursday - felt so good to get that over with, and the prof said I did a great job!
• Baby-sitting Finley last night and watching her play the maracas (video to be posted later)
• Turning in my two patient reports, which brings my practicum to a close
• Meeting an old co-worker (Deborah) for lunch on Monday and catching up with her
• Going out for Halloween last weekend as Carmen Sandiego with Eric as Waldo - we were a hit (pictures to be posted later).
  

Lows:

• Working all day Wednesday and half day Thursday on school and practicum assignments - being holed up in the basement and staring at a computer screen and lots of papers was no fun
• Driving to campus Thursday to give my presentation and realizing as I got to my exit for campus that I forgot my jump drive with my presentation on it at home. Had to drive back for it and get to class 20 mins late. Luckily, my professor is super nice - no big deal, just stressful at the time!
• Getting puked on by Finley and then watching her puke on her mom about 30 minutes later. Poor gal! Turns out she has an ear infection. :(

What were your highs and lows of the week?

*Little-known fact: In my friend Emily's family, it is a tradition to share your highs and lows of the year every New Year's Eve. True story. I even got to participate with the whole fam when I visited them in college. Her brother would come up with one high/low for each month. :) I think it's a great thing to ponder year-round.