A Birthday and an "old" friend

We had an invitation to join Peach's family in helping her celebrate her 69th birthday at La Placita Dos, a Mexican restaurant in Citrus Heights (north of Sacramento) and, of course, we leaped at the chance (anything for an excuse not to cook!).

Everybody was there by the time we arrived, but I didn't see Kathy, so I asked Peach if Kathy and her husband were coming. Turns out Kathy has a lung infection (terrible for her COPD) and not only could they not come to the birthday party, but we also have to cancel Cousins Day, which was scheduled for Tuesday. I won't see them, now, until after we return from Europe, darn it.

It was a nice, small group for dinner...

...just family and the lady in black on the right (Lois), who is Peach's lifelong friend, and who is the lady who adopted our little "Princess" a month or so ago.

I almost never get the chance to see Peach's younger sister, and rarely even mention her here, so here's Mandy (with her husband at the left and Peach's daughter-in-law on the right). Peach and Mandy are quite different from one another.

Since Peach isn't a big dessert eater, when dinner was over, we each got little ice cream cupcakes in chocolate cups--really a novel idea (also delicious, and not overwhelmingly large).

After dinner, Lois invited us to come and visit with Princess (now renamed "Sugar") and we jumped at the chance. The puppy has grown, her fur is all grown out now and she is obviously with someone who just loves her to death.

Sugar really seemed to be happy to see us. In fact, she kept running back and forth from one to the other of us, begging to be picked up and then licking us all over before jumping down and running to the other one.

It was probably 10 minutes of this back and forth between Walt and me before she went out on the grass to walk around, and walked over to Lois to be petted. ("I'm glad you remembered I live here," Lois teased her!)

When we got home again, it was a good 20 minutes before Lizzie stopped sniffing my entire body.

It's always so nice to see these little guys again in their new homes and see how much they are loved ... and it's always nice when they are obviously happy to see us again as well!

Chaos

Today was the day Princess was going to be going home with her new Mom and the other two were going to have their first outing at Petco, looking for new homes.

The occasion called for baths for all, with Lester's very capable assistance. These are very easy puppies to bathe. When they had no hair, I think they liked being in a nice warm bath because it felt good on their skin.

Now they have fur so cold isn't really a factor, but they all just had surgery and I'm sure that a nice sitz bath felt good on their incisions.

They each stood quietly in the little tub while I scrubbed them, then took them into the bathroom to help get most of the "wet" off with a blow dryer.

When they were all clean, we had our last cuddle session. I do love cuddling those little guys. And they are always on me immediately the second I sit in the chair, so we sat there for 20 minutes or so, me and the one big puppy and the three little puppies.

Before we took off for Petco, I tried to get one last "family portrait" done, since I knew that at least Princess would not be returning. It took several shots, but I am thrilled with the result I got.

We got in the car and drove to Petco where we got the puppies ensconced in a cage. Bob and their friend Lois arrived and it was a lot more complicated than I expected...well, it was a lot more complicated than they expected.

I guess if you're not familiar with the Yolo SPCA, you expect to come to "a place," where you have an appointment, you sit down, you fill out paperwork, then you take your dog and go home. Well, not so here. For one thing, the SPCA has no facility. Every animal fostered by the SPCA is in somebody's home. They set up adoption events on Saturdays in front of Petco, which is so very supportive of the SPCA.

Cages are set up, foster families bring their dogs, the dogs go into the cage. Each cage has a volunteer who sits with the dog(s) and many of those volunteers are grammar school kids--or they might be college kids. Some of them are old timers, others are brand new and helping out for the first time.

Harry and William were a huge hit

There are people coming to view the dogs, forty bazillion little kids whining "I want a dog," as their parents try to drag them past the cages, and people (like Lois) who submitted paperwork during the week and are ready to be interviewed before taking the dog. Some of the dogs may be trying to fight with other dogs. There are usually three or four volunteers who are in charge of all this melee. Usually Ashley is there, but she was at an all-day workshop today. And in addition to everything else, today was "volunteer appreciation day" and they had ordered pizza. All volunteers, whether they were working at Petco today or not, were invited to stop by for pizza and a soft drink.

I don't know if I told Peach that things got started at noon, or if the person Lois talked to said that, but they showed up on the dot of noon--and actually adoptions aren't scheduled to begin until 1 (and the woman doing the interviewing is usually late, we were told--and didn't get there until after 1:30).

Peach had called me early in the day to say she had a hair appointment at 2 p.m. and did I think she would be home in time, or should she just not accompany Bob and Lois. I tried to tactfully explain that I didn't think there was a snowball's chance in Hell that she would be back at her house, 40 minutes away, by 2 p.m.

Bob is, by nature, an organizer and disorganization drives him crazy. I could just imagine what he was thinking watching all this chaos and waiting and waiting for someone to finally talk with Lois, and then someone else to microchip Princess, and someone else to talk with her about shots, and someone else to take her money and finalize the paperwork.

The longer it went on, the more exasperated he became, though he never said anything outright--but he sighed a lot (and I have a feeling I will hear about it later, perhaps for months to come, about how it could have been handled more efficiently!). But it DID give Princess and Lois a time to start getting to know each other. When the puppy started shivering, Lois wrapped her in the new green blanket she had bought for her.

(this is going to be one very spoiled puppy!)

There was also a volunteer photographer there, taking pictures of all the dogs who needed photos for the PetFinder web page. I went with William and Harry to watch their photo shoot.

"I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille..."

Finally...finally all of Lois' official stuff was finished and she was given her booklet of Petco coupons, did some shopping for puppy chow, and the three of them -- Bob, Lois and Princess -- got in the car and headed back to Sacramento, while Walt and I came home for an hour or so before returning to Petco to see if either William or Harry had been adopted. There had been so much interest in both puppies that I was really cringing, fearing that I wouldn't have a proper "goodbye" with those babies--especially Harry, with whom I had created a special bond.

We got to Petco and a woman who had been there since Bob and Lois got to Petco was holding Harry. She had just adopted him. But I was able to sit and hold him and say my goodbyes while she was in buying dog food. She's going to be perfect for him. She's a small woman, a teacher who is about to retire and what she's looking for is a small breed, calm lap dog. Harry certainly fits THAT bill.

But Willliam didn't get adopted, so we've brought him home for another week. I may try letting him and Lester sleep together tonight; I'm not sure about that.

I guess it's time to start thinking about new puppies.....

Gulliver and the Lilliputians

Walt came into my office to glow this afternoon. He had been watching the puppies -- all four of them -- playing out in the back yard.

"They're so cute," he said. "All three of them are out there...and so is Gulliver."

I had to laugh. That's what they look like. The canine version of Gulliver and the Lilliputians, especially when Lester is lying down and all three puppies are piled on top of her.

It's great weather today so they have all been out enjoying the sun.

Harry is a real sun bum and loves getting out on the grass and enjoying the warmth.

Peach's husband Bob was coming by to bring a neighbor, a woman they have known for 40 years, so recently lost the dog she'd had for 16 years. She was looking for a small female dog and Bob though she might be interested in Princess.

Usually whenever I walk around the house, the puppies are at my feet, following me everywhere, but about 5 minutes before I expected them to arrive, they weren't to be found. I went outside to look for them and it was so cute...they had been playing in our grape vines (no, we don't raise grapes. These vines refuse to die and actually forgive us our inattention by supplying us with grapes whenever it is that grapes ripen.) I looked around the yard and suddenly these little heads popped out from under the leaves and they all started running toward me when they saw me there.

I locked the big dogs outside and let the little ones in and Bob arrived with his friend. She loved Princess and I ended up running off adoption papers from the SPCA, which you can download from the internet. She went home to fill them out. Princess may have a home, if Ashley approves.

I sent Ashley pictures of Bob's friend playing with the puppies and gave her a great recommendation as a pet owner.

Ashley promised to try to get new skin scrapings off the puppies to make sure they are free of Demodex and to have them spayed, if possible, next week.

So our little Princess may be moving to a new home very soon. She's such a lovely little puppy. I think that her new owner (if she is going to be the new owner) will really like her. But the three pups are such a unit that I'm sure she's going to have some adjustments to make.

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Tomorrow is Cousins Day, so the next entry will be posted late.

Kick 'Em When They're Down

I crushed her and I'm not even sorry about it!

My mother is extremely competitive. She was never the one to hold back to let a little kid win a game. She raised us to be competitive too. She also gets frustrated when she's not winning. She has been known to throw a deck of cards at my cousin when she's losing (more than once). It's all good natured and we laugh about it a lot.

Yesterday, since there were only two of us, she challenged me to a game of canasta. Canasta is "her" game. It's almost impossible to beat her in canasta. She's both lucky and talented. She gets good cards and she knows how to use them.

When Peach and her husband were here a week or so ago, she not only took all of Bob's money playing "65" but she also crushed Peach in Canasta.

With fear and trepidation, I agreed to play Canasta. I sent a text message to Peach after the first hand. "We're playing Canasta. Bad idea." This after she had trounced me on the first hand and an easy win for her (again) seemed inevitable.

But something happened. I got good cards the second time around. And then I got even better cards. By the last hand she was still ahead, but not by that much. And I got great cards. I actually beat her.

Thrilled, I sent a text message to Peach (who is on a camping trip): "I BEAT HER!!!" She responded "Hooray."

My mother demanded a rematch. I don't remember if it was the first or second hand of the rematch that I was able to go out leaving her with her entire hand...not a single card laid down. She said there was no point in continuing the game, that I had won. I was not very gracious about it either!

I sent another text message "I BEAT HER AGAIN." Peach responded "On my god!" Only a few people could truly appreciate the enormity of "crushing" my mother at Canasta.

Otherwise we passed a quiet afternoon. My mother's stepson, Ed, stopped by for a visit and later, after he'd left, my second cousin Denise stopped by to chat.

In the evening we watched the repeat of the ER finale (which I'd missed the first time around) and I pretty much passed out around 10, since I'd been up since about 3 a.m.

On Sunday morning I woke up with a start a 4 a.m., worried about the interviews I'd done last week. I had tried to listen to them the day before and there was so much background noise I could barely make out anything. I was wondering how I was going to get the article written. I had done the interviews in an office with a rehearsal going on nearby but I thought that my recorder would be able to handle it and was very upset that it had apparently failed me this time, especially since I had interviewed about 10 different people!

I got up to listen again. Maybe I had missed something. I fast-forwarded the recording and realized that I was not listening to the interviews at all, but something my recorder had apparently recorded in my purse when I had accidentally turned it on.

I went looking again and sure enough--there were the interviews. Not only were they clear, but even the woman who whispered so as not to bother the rehearsal had come through clearly. Crisis averted.

My mother got up around 6 a.m. so she could watch Mass on TV, since she couldn't get to church. I sat here transcribing and she was "going to Mass." I was sorry they ended before they gave out communion because I had planned to bring her an Oreo cookie when the time came.

We're calling her vacuum pump "Dracula" because it attaches to her flesh and sucks the blood out. If you look down her right leg you can see the tubing which comes out of the boot and attaches to the pack that she takes with her everywhere. There is an almost constant gurgling sound which you hear when the vacuum is sucking and transporting blood from the wound to the canister in the top of the machine.

The problem with Dracula is that she takes the canister off of her shoulder when she sits down and hangs it over the back of a chair or rests it on the floor...and then forget it's attached to her when she gets up. One of these days it's going to pull her over backwards if she tries to move too quickly!

I determined she was safe to be left alone for a few hours and I came home Sunday afternoon because I had to review a production of Harvey at the Winters Community Theatre. The show actually opened Friday, but obviously I wasn't able to review it at that time. So I passed through the house briefly, long enough to note that the puppies are actually looking brown now, instead of pink, to pick up e-mail that I wasn't able to get on the weak internet signal, to take a shower and change clothes and then we went to Winters to see the show.

The puppies also needed a little bit of cuddle time (though I'm sure Walt has been doing a lot of that while I've been gone). Princess, in particular needed to snuggle under my chin and sigh a lot. Naturally, Lester didn't want to feel left out, so she joined in as well.

We have just returned from Winters, I'm finishing off this entry, feeding the puppies, and then will be back on the road once again headed for San Rafael. This time Walt is going with me so he can bring the car back with him for the week, while I drive my mother's.

Harry and Grandma

Before you do anything else, you must check out the video of the Dog in the Blue Sweater. It's hilarious.

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It feels like this is all I've done today. I don't know why Walt ever asks me which puppy is in my lap because it's always Harry. Harry will leave a perfectly comfortable warm pile of puppies and come looking for me. I'll be in here in my office and suddenly there is this soft little whine from this tiny little puppy sitting at my feet just looking at me with his head cocked.

"Whine" he will say

I'll try to ignore him, but it will go on longer. I finally pick him up and try to type while holding him, but he's uncomfortable.

"Whine, whine" he will say again.

And naturally, I'm a wimp, so I get up from my desk, go to the family room, get into my chair and let Harry culr up like this on my chest until he falls asleep, which may take a long time (especially if I get engrossed in something on TV!). Eventually I'll move him back to the comfy warm pile of puppies and he'll sleep a bit longer.

He's become this growth, always attached to part of my body.

When I'm sitting in the recliner, with the leg rest elevated, this little head will pop over the top.

"Whine" he will say.

We have now worked it out so that I can lower the footrest a bit, he tries to climb it and I catch him with my feet and then he crawls up into my lap. Tonight I likened it to a newborn kangaroo who has to climb up the distance from the mother's vagina to her pouch before s/he can settle down and rest until it's time to be "re-born" and allowed out of the pouch.

And then there is Diana, whom I started feeding separately from the rest of them because it just seemed that she wasn't doing as well and I thought she wasn't eating enough. So she gets her own bowl in the kitchen, with different (smaller) kibble mixed with human baby food (beef, chicken or lamb) mixed in with it. She seems to have caught up with the others, but when she's hungry, I find her standing in the kitchen, where her food bowl is at supper time, just waiting for me.

The other two are just ... cute. They are affectionate, but not demanding, and they pretty much amuse themselves. The nicest thing is that they are getting fur, finally. It's just little fuzz on their backs, but it has color and you can stroke them and they don't feel like rubbing a raw chicken any more, if you stroke the right part of their body.

No matter how comfortable their bed is, they always
prefer to make a bed on my chair.

---

Walt had a call from his sister today and sadly, their mother is back in the hospital, unable to breathe again. She had a difficult time breathing when we were down there for Brianna's birthday but had stabilized when we left and we knew it was from the exertion of getting in and out of her wheelchair. It's so difficult to watch her struggle for each breath. I can't even imagine what it must be to be her struggling for each breath.

So our plans are scrambled up again. Walt is probably going to go to Santa Barbara before I do, so he can be with his mother (and possibly drive down with his brother). I'll still go down there on Friday after taking my mother for her pre-op appointments for her surgery next week.

It's starting to look like we may have bookend mothers at hospitals at opposite ends of the state.

Has anybody invented that Star Trek transporter yet?

It's a "Mom Thing"

After seeing pictures of the puppies, someone wrote to suggest that I color code them so I can tell them apart, but actually after the first hour, I had no problem at all.

Two of the puppies have white noses. These are Harry and Princess (one boy, one girl). That means that the other two without the white noses are William and Diana, also a boy and a girl, so it's very easy to figure out who is who.

But over and above the obvious genitalia identification (white face with penis? Must be Harry. No white face, no penis? Must be Diana), their behavior and Princess's markings are a big help.

Princess is the only one with a white spot on her back and a white tip on her tail. She has almost no fur at all, but the white spot is very distinctive.

And Harry? Well, Harry is a determined lap dog. I'll be sitting in my office and I'll hear a puppy whining over and over again. I don't even have to get up to know that it's Harry and that he's sitting staring at my chair. He wants me to sit down and hold him. If I get tired of holding him, he'll be happy to stay in the chair, but none of that running around on the floor for him.

Diana is the shy one. She was the last to join the group, only surrendered about a week after the others were surrendered, so she was separated from her siblings for long enough to be kind of the "outsider." When you open the door to the dog cage, three wiggling bodies tumble over each other trying to get outside (fortunately, most of heir elimination products make it outside). But Diana stays in the cage, looking kind of dazed. She eventually comes out but she seems to have a problem with her hind legs and she favors the back left especially. She has a lesion there which may be hurting her, so I've started putting Neosporin on it and hope it helps.

As for William? Well, he's the largest and the least needy, so William just pretty much goes his own way while I'm catering to the others.

But, as you can see, if you're with these guys for any length of time, it's very easy to know instantly which is which. Or maybe it's just a Mom thing.

They are on a pretty good schedule. They go into the cage around 9-10 p.m. at night. I cover the cage and they usually bark around 11-12, when I take them outside and they do their business, then they go right back in the cage and I don't hear from them until morning (7, if I'm lucky). During the day they play outside of the cage, and sleep in the cage (their choice) but are no problem at all to care for.

Their willingness to go so uncomplainingly into the cage was a great boon today when our new water heater was finally installed.

The arrival time was anywhere from 2 to 4, and of course the guy didn't show up until 4. I locked the puppies in their cage and locked myself away in this office with Lizzie and Sheila so they didn't spend the entire installation time trying to get into the house.

It worked perfectly, and within an hour or so, we had the water heater hooked up and heating water. Within another hour, we had hot water again. Yippee! You never know how much you want something until it's not there, of course.

All of the dogs were very happy to have it done. Lizzie and Sheila immediately ran in the house and the puppies immediately ran out of the house.

Walt and I just sat there watching the passing parade.

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Today is my 9th Journalversary...I am starting my 10th year of writing this journal!

Magic Puppies

I've never had it happen before.

I locked four puppies in the cage last night at the end of the night. This morning when I got up, there were only three. I swear I locked four in there and I swear there were only three when I uncovered the cage. I also swear that the doors to the cage were not only closed, but locked.

One of the puppies is a magician.

I was in a total panic. I picked up all the bedding and shook it, hoping a sleepy puppy would fall out. I started looking everywhere for the missing puppy. I went to check the bedding again and to take it out to the washing machine. I sent a frantic message to Ashley. "One of the puppies is missing--and I don't know how!"

When I got back into the family room, there were four puppies playing happily.

WTF???? Where had that puppy been? For that matter, which was the puppy that had been "missing"

(That's, left to right: Princess, Harry, William and Diana)

I haven't lost any more puppies today, though I have found myself counting an awful lot. They love playing outside and it seems that I can always find three of them...and always a different grouping of three. Then sooner or later the fourth comes sauntering in.

Diana seems to be the shy one of the group. She was the last to join her siblings. I guess the owner decided to keep her and then decided to give her up to the SPCA. But in the time she was gone, she seems to have lost the bond she had. They all sleep together in a heap, but when they wake up and I let them out, she always stays back by herself, unless I encourage her to come out. Once she gets out, they play well together, but she does seem to be the outsider of the group.

They all, however, love chewing on my shoes (they would rather chew on my socks, but those sharp little teeth dig into my toes!)

---

After we got home last night, Walt discovered that we had no hot water. When he checked the water heater, he announced that it was time to buy a new one.

(I'll tell you, they don't make appliances like they used to. This one wears out after only 36 years!)

Walt went off to Home Depot and bought a new water heater, which will be installed this afternoon. We thought about one of those "instant on" heaters that don't have to store water, but it would involve doing significant reworking of our gas pipes, so we went with the old water filled kind.

The laundry room needed to be straightened up and he spent the afternoon doing that, since there is only room for one person in there at a time.

Since we have no hot water, I went out to Panda Express to get dinner for us...individual serving bowls that didn't need to be washed!

The Royal Welcome

18 March 2009

We arrived home from Santa Barbara around 7 p.m. tonight and received a royal welcome. That would be a welcome from Princess, William, Harry, and Diana, our new puppies (I didn't name them).

That's Harry in front with Princess behind him and I'm not sure about the other two. I haven't had a chance to get to recognize them yet. But you can see that these 7 week old puppies have a severe skin problem! They are bald! It's a condition called Demodex and as I said in an earlier entry, Gizmo had it when she arrived.

But Gizmo's wasn't as severe as these guys seem to be. I mean they have NO hair on their bodies! Look at Harry's head:

("Hey, Fella, you're bald as a billiard ball. Bald...bald....bald..." - from Free to Be You and Me)

But I have medication and shampoos, and love to give them...and in time they will start looking more like real dogs again.

We had a nice day, all things considered. I was a little concerned when I got up, thinking I had nothing green to wear for St. Patrick's Day, but then remembered that one of my t-shirts has a green dinosaur on it, so nobody could pinch me after all. Walt says his shirt was a very faded dark green, but you can't fool me--it's really grey.

We stopped first at Maravilla, on our way out, to say goodby to Walt's mother. We found her still in the dining room, wearing her green sweater that she bought in Ireland many years ago.

We sat and talked with her for about half an hour and then told her we'd see her again in about 10 days when we return for Bri's first birthday. (I'm thrilled -- I get to make the birthday cake!)

On the drive home (when I wasn't driving), I alternated between reading my "real" book and reading the James Patterson book I downloaded to my iTouch Kiva application. I have to say that the Kiva ain't bad. I really got to liking it. But it depended on whether I wanted to read about grumpy Yorkshire men or psychopathic killers which I chose at any particular moment.

We stopped for our usual hamburger at the Burger Queen (no...not the Burger King!) in Gonzales.

I'll tell ya, Carls Junior has nothing on the Burger Queen (not a chain, and they make your food fresh when you order it) as far as burgers that fall apart when you eat them because they are so full of stuff.

And my onion rings were great.

We managed to miss 99% of rush hour traffic, fortunately and enjoyed listening first to a tape that Jeri and Phil had made for Walt's mother for Christmas -- they send her such great stuff. She can't do much other than listen to tapes, so they just record conversations while they're driving around Boston. (We'll return the tape to her when we go back to Santa Barbara.) And then we switched to Walt's new "Oldies But Goodies" CD set and reminisced to songs like "Rock Around the Clock," "Blueberry Hill," and all the songs that we grew up with.

We were (almost) home in time for Jeopardy and now we're getting caught up on mail, newspapers and the bazillion programs that were recorded on the DVR while we were away!

It really was a wonderful weekend and it's nice to know that we'll be back again so soon to help Bri celebrate her first birthday.