That Day in May

April

It is April already. APRIL. It has been spring-like, weather-wise, for a couple weeks, and this weekend is absolutely spectacular.  Warm and sunny, and I didn’t even need a coat or sweater for my early morning dog walk today.

So things have changed a bit around here. I mean, around here, in my head. I have embarked on a mission to rid my life of all excess. I’m boxing stuff up and sending it to goodwill. I’m emptying boxes of papers and cleaning out files and tossing what isn’t relevant anymore. I’m freecycling clothes and electronics and kitchen stuff.  It’s a slow process, but I can see the benefit already.

I’m also working more on ‘self-care’.  I got frustrated with my own habits, my inability to take my daily meds, meds that MAKE ME FEEL better. It takes no effort, yet I hardly ever remember to take them. Or make the TIME to take them. Yet, I can take care of a whole bunch of our pets and foster pets and even other peoples pets, remembering medications, foods, diets, whatever. And all at once!

I’m trying to remember to take my meds every day, and I’m eating better, too. Not perfectly, not by a long shot, but better.

I have started to walk every day, with both dogs. I do 1 km minimum in the morning, and anywhere from 1 to 3 km at night, and then we try for a hike on the weekends.  Getting up at 5:15 the first few mornings were HELL, but now I actually really look forward to it. The air is still, it’s quiet, there is no one else out, except the birds and squirrels.

I also bought a bike. Yesterday we bought a bike rack for the truck, and now we can head out to Guelph Lake, or Sudden Tract, or WHEREVER and have an awesome bike ride.

I’m also taking a few weeks off of fostering. I need to move some furniture around, and get the foster room set up better, and I can’t do that when there is a litter of kittens in there.

So all in all, things have changed, but for the better. I have a different outlook these days. Much more positive, and while I wasn’t wallowing in the pit of despair or anything, I was just ‘down’ about so many things the past few months.

And with that, I’m off. I hope all is well with each and every one of you.

detail

Kit-Cat

relic

drug of choice

Mr. Jones

We got home from work today and noticed Jones was limping. He wasn’t putting any weight on his back right leg at all. Since he’s still young, and we don’t know what kind of issues his dwarfism is going to present, we booked him in at the vet right away. And we learned some interesting things about our little Jones.

As we all know, he’s a dwarf. (but a cute one, look):

After a good long exam from the vet and some xrays, she thinks his leg is possibly fractured, but more than likely just a ligament issue. He’s on codeine for the pain, and the swelling should be gone in a few days, and hopefully he’ll be walking on it fully in a couple weeks. Until then, though, it’s cage rest, and no rough-housing with the other monsters.

I asked her about his teeth, because he’s got four fangs. His adult teeth came in and never pushed his baby teeth out. While checking them out, she said it looks like his jaw has been broken in the past. Poor dude! Now we know why his jaw is crooked and possibly why his tongue always sticks out. We’ll probably never know how it happened, since he was trapped and pulled out of a feral colony when he was a few months old. That’s all the history we know of him.

Turn out Mr. Jones also has an abdominal hernia – which means on the left side of his body, he’s got no abdominal wall! I always wondered why he felt a little ‘squishy’ on that side. It’s because the muscles that hold all his organs in is not there, so they flop around and kind of drag!

The GOOD news, however, is that his FILV/FEV tests came back NEGATIVE.

Ah, Jones. You certainly make life interesting.