Sing me a story, laugh me a lullaby

Allo, mes amies! Sneaking in under the time limit with my monthly post once more. I am now 38 years old, which seems somehow less old than 37 and also, like, a lot older? It's weird. But it's a nice colour, so I'll hope for a good year.

The last couple of weeks have not boded well for that; it's been something of a series of unfortunate events. On the bright side, Pax is now free from all gates! He is no longer confined to the kitchen at night time. He was starting to throw hissy fits and bang on the gate in the middle of the night, so we decided to see if he had just outgrown it and he's been much happier overall and very well-behaved. We've just had some interesting events arise as we're all adjusting to it, along with some adventures in cat-sitting.

CW: sick cats and anxiety attacks, but with happy endings.

( Adventures )

So, it's been a couple of weeks. But today we went up to my sister-in-law's family's cottage to have lunch and had a lovely, sunny day near the lake and a great time chatting with my brother's friends who had also come to visit. And Pax stayed by himself without any gates and was a good boy the whole time. Happy endings!

Hope everyone else is doing well! It's Canada Day tomorrow and I know July 4th is upon on us, so enjoy your celebrations if you are those who celebrate either holiday! I will be resting my tired self.

Paxie is 5 years old today!

Hello, there! I'm doing one of my 'I'm still alive' check-ins. Hope all y'all are doing well and making it through the first 1/12th of 2023 without too much drama.

We've been through the gamut of weather here. We were one of the worst hit zones for Winter Storm Elliot in Ontario over Christmas. I have literally never seen that much snow fall that consistently for that length of time. It was whiteout conditions for nearly 24 hours on Christmas Eve. We didn't lose power, luckily, but we lost WiFi, cable, and phone for about 36 hours which made entertaining ourselves very interesting. I was able to use the iPhone as a hotspot to power our iPads enough to get updates and check social media for info, and to log-in to play the Sims, but we had to buy two extra rounds of data to cover us. We never use the phone, it's a hand me down from my brother, and it's only equipped for emergencies, so we don't have unlimited data. Dad suggested we have some of the ice wine he bought for Mum as a present and it turns out we don't have a corkscrew, because we hardly ever drink. Literally just ice wine during the holidays. Ever stubborn and determined, Dad disappeared downstairs and after several minutes of banging and drilling, arrived back with this:



It worked though, and the ice wine was really good!

My brother and his wife obviously didn't attempt to get here on Christmas Eve, which is when we normally do our thing, and we postponed it to Christmas Day, when everything had calmed down and the roads were clear. It was very pleasant and we had a good time. They gave Pax a coat as a gift, which I managed to get on him once before he knew what it was:



He immediately caught on and has refused to come near me if I'm holding it since then, not even for the best of treats. I'm not surprised; he still hates putting a collar on.

He's been doing well lately. We started the NSAID for him and he has some supplements the vet recommended and he's definitely more active and happier than before. Scotties are so stoic and Pax is so happy, it's hard to know how much pain he was in before, but he's definitely busier and more spry. Which isn't necessarily a good thing; he's been a told brat over the last few days. He's decided he doesn't want to go to bed at night for some reason and now does a little showdown with us about it until he's made up his mind to do it. And last night, he cried for an hour in the kitchen around 2AM because he wanted to go hunt bunnies under the back deck and no one would let him. So, we're happy he's feeling better, but perhaps Pax at full strength is a mixed blessing...

In other news, my HB1AC is down! That means my blood sugar is lower overall, which is a good thing. And my PCOS shit is doing a lot better with the new medication. Just the stones giving me grief on and off, but you have to count your victories. I think another good sign is that I can read books again all of a sudden. I was having trouble getting my brain to focus for ages, but I've read three books since Christmas, so perhaps that's a sign I'm starting to get my focus back.

Otherwise, I'm just playing the Sims and crafting, and we have a jigsaw puzzle on the go. Early winter is always a good time on PBS for shows we like to watch and Brit Box has been throwing up panels shows left and right, so we have a lot to keep us entertained, even as we get rain and snow and all things in between.

Hello there, folks!

I haven't posted since Jan 1st, so I thought I should at least let people know I'm still here. Which I am.

Things that have occurred since we last spoke:

Mr Pax is a man no longer bound by the cruel mistress that is the dog gate. We let him have free rein of the house (barring a few rooms) and he's proved to be a very good boy. We still put him in the kitchen if there's no one up to watch him/listen for him, but otherwise he's free from morn until bedtime, and is enjoying himself. He's a sock thief, but that is the extent of his crimes. He just can't seem to help himself. He knows he can't have socks, yet he always tries to sneak over to the lost sock bag and steal one out. He also stole a napkin from a laundry basket, but we let him have that one. He loves to grab something with his mouth and wave it around, especially if it's unwieldy and/or makes a lot of noise.

I think I mentioned my dad hurt his back in the autumn, and he finally got an MRI a few weeks ago, which showed Degenerative Disc Disease. Not a great diagnosis in that it can't get better, but from our reading, it suggests you may have good periods and bad ones and there are things to do to help. The doctor put him on a long-lasting narcotic for the pain, because she wants him to be able to get up and walk and move around due to other health issues he has that really need him to be more active. It seems to be helping somewhat.

A little note about that: narcotics are hardcore and obviously you don't want to be on them if you don't have to be, but I find it really interesting that my mom ruptured three discs in her back eight years go and had bone-on-bone degeneration in both hips waiting for her replacement surgeries, and I have been chronically passing kidney stones, generally recognized as one of the worst, if not the worst pains in the world, for four years or so now, and at no point were either of us offered anything stronger than NSAIDs for the pain. I don't begrudge my dad the help he needs, and I don't really want to fuck around with narcotics if I don't have to, but there does seem to be some kind of sexism at work there.

Anyway, it's been kind of stressful around here due to that, especially Mum and I taking over some of the stuff he was doing when we aren't at our best ourselves, but we're doing okay. Plus, considering other events going on the world, we are doing more than okay.

Last year, I got two pairs of glasses--one for distance, one for close--to see if that helped things, but I haven't found it particularly useful, so we're trying progressive lenses now. I just found I never really used my distance glasses except for leaving the house (which I don't do often) and my close glasses were okay if things were a foot from my nose but for anything in a middle distance, which was most activities, neither were cutting it. The progressives should help with that, though I've been warned they are hell to get used to. My aunt, who has the same eye condition as me, but much worse, said she's been in progressives for twenty years and found them really helpful and didn't have trouble at all getting used to them, so that's hopeful. I get them in a couple of weeks and we'll see if I feel more motivated when I'm not bumping into things all the time.

I've got my annual month of Ancestry subscription to keep me occupied at the moment, and it's been fun to see what mysteries I can solve, but they only get weirder the more records I find. My mom's great-grandfather and his siblings were so bizarre, and I don't think I'll ever know the full story. They had multiple spouses, lied on census records, went by each others names, lied on marriage records, and one of them disappeared from all records and I literally cannot figure out what happened to her. I want to try to figure out that generation, since my mom's grandfather was an illegitimate child adopted by her great-grandfather, but her Ancestry DNA matches shows he was definitely a blood member of the family in some way or another, and a lot of the stories we were told don't match up with records. I may not ever know, but it's fun trying.

Anyway, I hope you all are coping in these troubling and stressful times. If LJ goes down at some point, my journal is backed up at Dreamwidth and you can find me there as 'awanderingbard', same as LJ, and, of course, if you are reading this on DW, you already know I'm here!

You might recall me talking a lot on here about how Pax is so difficult about putting his leash on and we were never really sure why, and we'd tried all sorts of things to convince him and sometimes he just decides he's not going today.

Well, we've noticed he's had a funny gait and sometimes limps if he's been walking for a while, so we asked the vet to check it out yesterday when he went for his annual check-ups and shots. And it turns out he has elbow dysplasia (or something similar, my dad has both hearing loss and a terrible memory, so he couldn't remember the name of the term, only that it was common in Basset Hounds, and that's the best match we've found for the symptoms). It's not serious or life-threatening, we just need to watch his weight so there's not so much pressure on the joint and he may need some NSAIDS later in life because he'll likely get arthritis in the affected joint. So, we think some days his leg might be hurting and he doesn't want to go for a walk, so he won't put his leash on for us. I feel bad we didn't check it out sooner but a) pandemic, b) Scotties are super stoic and he's never shown signs of pain, just sometimes walking funny, and c) he's so active and cheerful, we just assumed it was another weird quirk of his. Anyway, now we know about it we can do better about it.

It's funny, because we've always had what we lovingly call 'reject Scotties', dogs that for one reason or another needed a special home or weren't the most desirable or needed extra care. Fergus, our first one, was the last in the litter because his ears were too big and no one wanted him. Randy was so sick as a puppy they didn't know if he'd survive and our dog groomer recommended us to the breeder because we'd taken such good care of Fergus when he was dying of kidney failure that she thought we could handle him. He was a nervous wreck and had horrible skin and scratched all the time and we loved him. Puzzle had pyometra after her last litter of puppies and the breeder adored her so much she wanted her to have a good home in her 'retired years'. Ascii was similar; no infection but only had one puppy in her last litter and so the breeder decided it was a sign she was done and wanted her to have a nice retirement home. Shilling was too big for a Scottie and was fence fighting with the other dogs. Pax is the first 'normal' dog we've had here and it turns out he needs special care, too. I guess that it's fitting he was chosen for us, even if we didn't know it at the time.

Anyway, I feel bad for the little guy but genuinely seems to be super happy despite any achy joints he has and we'll be a little more understanding on days when decides he's not going out.

It's Pax's birthday today! He's three years old! Here he is post-birthday cookie:


He's decided to be difficult about his leash again, but other than that, he's being a very good boy and getting more mature and less busy. Though still very busy.

I haven't posted in a while, sorry about that. We're still having a Series of Unfortunate Events around here, but mostly benign, annoying ones than actual problems. I hurt my back on Sunday, which was NOT fun, but it's feeling much better now, and Mom is having an autoimmune flare-up because of the seasonal change, but the rest of our problems are ephemeral and not serious. I'm working on my autumn ornaments for my 'tree of all seasons', and doing some colouring on my tablet, and such. And writing, which is nice. It's been a while since I wanted to do that.

Anyway, hope y'all are doing well in these still very crazy times! You are doing your best, even if it's not as best as you'd like it to be. Take care of yourself.

Hello all! I hope you are doing well. It's been kidney stone central here again, unfortunately. I passed a huge 5mm stone and then a bunch of littler stones have followed. Thankfully, the pain wasn't too awful, there was only one period of about three hours where I was in that 'I don't know what to do with myself' state. Otherwise it's been more 'this is very unpleasant, but I can distract myself from it' and 'man, I am FULL of adrenaline today! Whooo! Listen to that heart pound!'. Not sure what changed, if anything, but hopefully it's just a little flair. I suspect it may be due to missing massages for about a month because of a series of unfortunate events. It hasn't been pleasant and am I very tired and not sure it's over yet, but fingers crossed.

Pax is also having a rough go of it. We're not sure what happened, but we think something must have spooked him outside, because he's been really reluctant to go out and having accidents in the house, which is not like him. Once we got him trained, he never had a problem. But we've had to give him a day in the kitchen to settle down and go back to the basics of going out with him and encouraging him, since he's so nervous. He seems better now, though. Poor boy. He hates the rain and it's been raining almost every day for two weeks now, so that may be playing a part. When he goes out in the rain, he has to stop halfway to hide under the barbecue where it's dry to steel himself up. Which is both adorable and heart breaking.

In better news, I have been playing Lord of The Rings Online again and really enjoying it. I used to play it several years ago, but it wouldn't work on Issie, so I've installed it now that I have Flynn. It's likw World of Warcraft set in the world of LOTR and is a lot of fun. The community is, on the whole, pretty chill and kind, though you do see some nastiness here and there. For the most part, though, chat is always trying to help each other out and making jokes and discussing lore. So, that's been a lot of fun. I'm also getting my singing voice back in shape again. I had an awful chest virus a few years ago and couldn't sing without coughing for several months and the time lost there really messed with my breath support and head voice. But it's starting to finally come back, so that's nice.

Hope you all are doing well and if you are celebrating Mother's Day you have a nice one, in a manner safe for your current state of vaccination.

Hello, world! Another check-in post.

Things are fine here. My area has tanked our COVID numbers again, and we've had several days with no new cases reported, so that's really great. Ontario is still in lockdown, though, and we don't know for how much longer we will remain in it. It's not too big a deal for us, who don't do a lot, but Pax is starting to look shaggy and his nails are too long and we'd like to get him groomed. Not that it matters to him. He's perpetually happy.

I've finally trained him to put on a slip-lead! He HATES putting a collar or leash on, and we've sort of got him going on his collar now, though some days he just nopes out and won't come near us. But we want to get him used to putting on a slip-lead to help brush him, and he was so stressed, it was awful to try to get it on him. So, I invested in a clicker to try clicker training and now he does it without a treat! He's very smart and overthinks everything, and I think he thought that what I wanted him to do was try to steal the treat from my hand. But with the clicker, he figured out he was supposed to put his head through and wait for the treat. I also got him to shake hands with his other paw, which is something we couldn't sort out, either. I love him, but he is a handful to live with. He ate part of a tennis ball last week or at least chewed it to bits, and we have no idea where he got the tennis ball. I thought he had a chew toy, so didn't see what he was up to until he'd torn it open and chewed half of it up. He was fine, not sick at all, luckily, but it was a stressful night. And today he pulled all my computer cables out of the wall. I also don't know how he did that. But, baby steps! Celebrate the victories!

Other than working on crocheting myself a cardigan, I haven't been up to much. I'm sort of frustrated with myself and my health at the moment. I feel a little like I'm stuck in my body and I can't get out. The stones are doing a lot better, so I'm trying to celebrate the victories, there, but I'm just so tired and sore and can't lose weight no matter what I try. I'm not depressed or anything, but I think I'm in the 'anger' phase of recovery, where I'm just a little frustrated about it all. On the bright side, despite the fact that I had to stop the birth control pills due to side effects, my period cramps have been totally manageable with the TENS machine. Hopefully, with both the cramps and the stones on the down low, I can start to properly rest and get myself together again.

Anyway, hope you are all surviving and doing well!

It's Canadian Thanksgiving today, which is a good time to stop in and update my blog here. Things have been going pretty well, though today hasn't been a great day kidney stone-wise. In general, things are holding steady at 'okay' on that front, though. Definitely a better year than last year by a long shot! I'm still passing large stones, but I'm not getting the flurry of dozens of little ones, which makes me think at the very least they're not forming at such a rate as they were.

Paxie was a year old on Sept 24! He's a big boy now, he went and had his first big boy haircut and apparently was well-behaved for a Scottie. They are known to nip, but the groomer said he wasn't too bad and he got along with the other dogs there. He's also fully potty-trained now--finally! And also sleeping through the night--finally! At least, most nights. We've got him into a good routine here and he's super cute in how rigidly he follows it. He cries to tell me it's time to put him in his crate at night. We've also finally found some toys he can't immediately chew through, which is nice. You still have to watch him with them, but he likes to 'kill' them, pick them up and shake them around to 'break their necks'. They're made of fire hose and seem to be holding up to his big Scottie jaw. He also remains perpetually the happiest thing on the planet. He is the Arthur Shappey of Scotties. Everything is brilliant! Including the leaves falling from the trees, that is extremely exciting and he's chasing them around his pen and 'killing' them.

Mom is doing awesome still! She's doing so well. It's great to see. She can do a lot more than she could before and she has a lot more stamina. Her bloodwork is showing the anaemia is better as well.

Overall, things are pretty good here. I hope y'all are doing well!

One last thing. My brother's girlfriend was telling us about the 'Teal Pumpkin Project', which I didn't know about. It's a thing for Halloween for kids with medical issues or allergies that makes them unable to eat candy. You can mark your house as a teal pumpkin house and give out little toys for them instead. As a girl with a ton of allergies who never went out for Halloween as a result, I think it's a great idea. If you're interested, there's more information here: Teal Pumpkin Project'.

I keep meaning to post here more often and then a month and a half go by and I don't, but here I am! Still alive and kicking.

A bit of news on the kidney stone front: I went to the urologist a couple of weeks ago and he's put me on a medication to lower the calcium in my urine. Apparently, three years ago when I originally did my testing, the calcium was the only result that was higher than normal. Since I've had my parathyroid and blood calcium levels checked and they're normal, it's probably just an idiopathic thing and not the result of a systemic problem, so I'm kind of screwed there, but this medication might help reduce the number of stones overall. I'm going back in October to be rechecked and see if it's helped. I've promptly had a series of semi-bad attacks since I started the medication but that's likely coincidental. As he said, which I knew, the medication won't get rid of the stones already formed, just help prevent new ones from forming. At the very least, he's going to monitor me and do regular CAT scans, so I hopefully won't be caught off-guard by another big one like I had in the Fall.

In puppy news, Pax is finally--finally-settling down a little. He's less teenagery than he was and we've had a couple of days where we can see the sort of boy he'll be when he 'grows up', which will be a very sweet and happy one. He's sleeping through the night again, mostly, and has stopped biting feet, but we're still working on not nibbling on our hands during snuggles. We're also taking him outside to play in the evenings after supper, which helps prevents the zoomies, and he is having lots of Scottie Adventures on the front lawn. He's still very feisty and entertaining, and I think once the puppy energy wears off over the next year or so, he'll be a delightful little fellow. I would take pictures, but he just never stands still enough to snap him!

Mum is also doing super good! She started an exercise class a few months ago and she's really enjoying it and her pain and movement and energy have all improved. She looks so much better and it's wonderful to see.