Matty, gone but not forgotten

 

 I know I haven't been posting but I found it hard to find the inspiration to write after losing Matty in September. He started having seizures back in May and no matter the drugs the vet tried they were getting worse. It got to a point were one of us had to be with him all the time just in case he had one. When he was having multiples the vet did xrays and  found a tumor on his brain. That's when the DH decided it was time to let him go. I HATED it and was ready to keep taking care of him but the DH said I was making myself sick by not sleeping and he was afraid I'd go back to being agoraphobic. Soooooooooooo, we were both there for it and it was beyond awful. This wasn't the first time but I just wasn't ready to say goodbye to him.

You know I never knew dogs had seizures until we had another lab who had them. They started out so mild when he was a puppy we didn't realize what was going on till my Mom said he was staring off just like the foster girl my bro and sis-in-law were taking care of.  Then came my sweet Penny who we lost last year when she had a seizure and wouldn't come out of it so she had to be put to sleep. Now Matty baby, at least he was 8 not like Penny who was only 4. Of course all his idiot friends are , Hey I know where you can get a puppy, not realizing we need time to morn plus he's still training the little guy. I guess the DH will want to get one next year if he sees a litter he likes. I'm just hoping it will be healthy and that we've broke our string of bad luck with pets.

What path do you walk on?

Do you think there’s more than one we can choose to walk on in our lives? I was explaining to the DH that I think there’s the path with the nice cement sidewalk with pretty flowers growing along it, a few shady trees, with birds singing and squirrels barking. That’s what squirrels do, they bark. I love to go out when I see one in the yard and chatter at it while the squirrel barks back at me, like hey any chance you got any nuts I can have? So I go inside to get some peanuts in the shell I keep for them and toss a handful near it. A few more barks and it’s a happy little squirrel so I leave it to yum down. I used to have a tree right outside the window where I worked (I’m so sad it had to be cut down :( after being hit with lightening) and a squirrel would come on a branch near the window whenever it could hear me clacking away on the keyboard and bark away for food. Not good for when you’re writing and now have to stop and go feed that insistent little fur ball. It really kills the thought flow.

Back to the paths I was telling the DH about. There are these 2 paths, first the really pleasant one and somewhat easy one. Yours maybe a lot different than the one I described but say it’s whatever you think is really nice like a sandy beach; or a pretty flower filled meadow; or a calm stream where you’d need a boat or a large tube like water parks have; or a path thru the woods, just don’t make it a dark one or you’ll be on the other path.

Then there’s the overgrown, jungle like one he tends to take and always drags me along. It doesn’t matter that I’m bitching and trying to pull him onto my nice calm path, he just keeps on with hacking away at all the crap that comes along.

What I’m really trying to say is that I’ve learned to go with the flow and try not to stress out over stuff like I used to. Wow, if you want to see a really crazy path it would have been the one I was on in my early teens when I was not only housebound with agoraphobia but fighting to be home schooled. Did I ever tell you about the dr the school insisted I see that decided the best way to cure a scared panicky child was to scare her more by saying my parents would go to jail if I didn’t go to school? I spent days hiding under my bed only coming out to run into the bathroom, then run back to the bed. I can feel the emotions coming back as I write this. Now tell me who was more crazy, me a 12 year old or this so called dr?

Back to how I learned how to go with the flow. It all started with finding a book at a library book sale called ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff ... and it’s all small stuff’ by Richard Carlson. I’ve owned it for over 5 years and still haven’t read it all but what I have read helped me realize that all I was doing was making myself sicker and if I really wanted to change I had to let go of worrying over every tiny thing. You know it’s bad when you find yourself stressing over what you’re wearing and there’s no one around to see it. Or here’s a good one, when I was a child I didn’t think I deserved Barbie or her friends because I didn’t live in as nice of a house as in the commercials. Is it no wonder since I was always nervous and ended up agoraphobic.

It doesn’t always work, there are some pretty big weeds that show up on my path, and a rock or 2 (or a boulder) to trip me up. I’m especially bad at getting over stuff that happens or something I’ve said that I wish I hadn’t. I’ll run it over and over in my mind causing me to loose sleep. We’ve all done that ...right...? I hope I’m not the only one.

So if you find a copy of the book I recommend chapter 10 ‘Learn to Live in the Present Moment’. It’s only 2 small pages and it will speak to all those who worry about what happened and what may happen.

Love to all, I'm off to watch more of RuPaul's Drag Race Allstars on Paramont+. I never thought I'd get addicted to any reality show but this one got me. I'm rooting for Ginger Minj!

I love my dogs but they all had one bad habit

 

I’ll bet your dogs have the same habit as all the ones I’ve had, they always barf on the carpet! This makes me so crazy. When the DH and I were first married the place we lived in only had carpet in the kitchen (yeah, I know, what a STUPID place to have carpet, only second to bathrooms.) and no matter if Smokey was upstairs or down he went to the kitchen to heave ho yuk.

Matty has always had a delicate tum, in fact all 3 of the labs we’ve had would throw up over anything different in their diets. Matty some times gets upset if he drinks pond or lake water. The interesting thing is the 4 spaniels we’ve had are garbage cans. The DH says they’re like goats and try to eat everything including stuff that shouldn’t taste good enough to eat. Two of them had to have surgery to remove rocks from their colon. I mean really, how can a rock taste good?

We’ll probably go thru all that with the new pup since he grabs everything outside to chew on. We stopped him early from chewing on things around the house except his kennel carpet. He loves to pulls it out and race from one end of the house to the other dragging it along. He taught us to close the kennel door during the day if I don’t want to have to clean up bits of the carpet. We also had to pick up all the soft toys. Matty was always bad about chewing them too, but Penny would take them off him if she caught him destroying ‘her’ toys.

The pup has a fascination with back walnuts right now. I know they’re not safe for him to play with so we have to check his mouth every time we go for a walk. I really don’t want to clean up yuk made from them.

Oh crap, I gotta go, I didn’t notice the pup had to go out, and since he couldn’t hold it anymore there’s a pee lake at the back door. Well, at least it’s not on the carpet.

I'm sooooo tired, how about you?

I'm dealing with lack of sleep right now. I'm doing some dog walking for extra cash and not sleeping good at all. You'd think with all the exercise and fresh air I'd be tired enough to sleep but a few days I wandered around the house till after 6 am. Since I knew I was too tired to do anything constructive I finally took 3 Tylenol and they knocked me out for 4 hours. I drug myself out of bed at 10 because I had to go walk the dogs by 11 and I knew I needed a quick cold shower and a lot of caffeine to get me going. One interesting thing is that I'm too tired to fell anxious.

The dogs seemed to find it funny watching me walking around and tripping over rocks and branches I was too tired to notice. I finally fully woke up after one of the dogs, who had gone for a swim in the pond while I was pretty much sleep walking, decided to shake off the water in front of me. Cold and slightly muddy water in the face really wakes you up. I'm beginning to think he may have done it on purpose to get me awake and moving faster. 

Time to get ready to feed them dinner and go for another walk. I think I may bring my umbrella........

 

This is a pic of what I did with the embroidery I mentioned in my last post. I still need to remove the bits of twine from the front. It stupidly had the hanging twine on the front instead of the sides at the back. The box kept tipping forward at the bottom so I fixed it but need to find my needle nose pliers to get the staples holding the tiny bits of twine. Not sure what to do about the hole in the center. That held a plastic tag for hanging it at the store. I wonder if I could squeeze some toothpaste in it like I seen people do with hole in the wall?

I Love Johanna Basford! and Angela Kennedy! and drawing! and embroidery! Really!

 I really do love Johanna. She's so kind to share talent by doing free videos and giving away drawing to color. I found her last year in the spring and spent time getting back to easy drawing. It's kind of doodling and I find it soooo relaxing.  The Inky Wonderlands book is great but I can't make myself draw in it so instead I've been drawing my own versions of the pages. I'm not much for coloring but I will get to her videos on that skill too.

The 2 drawings of the girls are from Angela Kennedy. I LOVE her work, too. She has Facebook groups for drawing along with her and these are from the 100 days of hair group.

I'm also working on drawing flowers so I got that book, too. I just want to do simple ones not realistic so I skip the last 1 or 2 steps shown for each flower. 

Oh, and I did return the big drawing set and didn't bother to get anything else. After looking thru all my various pencils and erasers I found I just didn't need more right now. It's so easy to want to buy tons of supplies when I start a new hobby.

I'm still doing a bit of embroidery, just quick projects. Creative stitchery has free monthly ones I'm doing. I glue each month to pretty scrapbook paper, and frame it in a shadow box that I add small treasures I've collected that go with the embroidery. I change it each month. I'm finishing July right now with the sailboat. I should get a pic up here, sorry. Got behind with the drawing instead of stitching. Here's the link to her blog: Creative Stitchery

 Jennifer has free flowers in pots at her site. Again I'm not religious but her quick embroideries are fun to do. https://www.elefantz.com/

I recently found these sites, too for embroidery and more:

flamingotoes       Great name, huh?

https://stitchfloral.blogspot.com    beautiful flowers!!

If you're not the pretty flower type there are lot's of other free embroideries, too. Or why not write out words, trace on fabric, and embroider those?  How about "I could be social or I could embroider"? or "If you can't be kind, be quiet"? or "Don't believe everything you think"? or maybe more Jenny Lawson type quotes might be your thing.

There are tons more but I'm off to gather up my supplies and do some stitching :) 

BTW, if you want something to keep your mind busy so you don't stress and cause yourself anxiety, try embroidery, just stay with the simple stuff like I do. I tried cross stitch but kept losing track of where I was on the pattern so I keep away from that. The ones where it's all embroidering on the lines with back stitch and outline stitch are fun for me. Oh, and French knots, and lazy daisy stitches. I love to do those.  And yeah, I went overboard and bought lot's of floss from different companies. It's hard to rein in my hobby shopping :)

The new Jenny Lawson Book

 I’m a HUGE fan of Jenny. Not one who would stalk her or anything but I do lurk over at her blog. I don’t post, I just read.

So back to her new book, when my birthday came around last month the DH bought it for me! He also got me a new pair of the cutest Silver Forest ladybug earring, too. He knows what I like, well at least after I talked about both for 2 months. I’m just glad he took the hint since he hates to shop.

Isn’t the cover great? That’s the kind of monster I’d have, too, one that keeps killing all my plants and flowers. I am a member of the brown-green thumb club. Give me a plant and in 6 months to a year I’ll either kill it or that monster will.

Inside the book you’ll find 36 (yes, 36!!) chapters. Some are so funny you’ll spit whatever you’re drinking. The book should come with a notice stating it’s dangerous to drink or eat while reading this book. Other chapters will make you so sad you’ll want to head over to Jenny’s blog to let her know you care. Go ahead, she needs to know how much we appreciate her sharing her life with us.

She often writes about her doctors and all the meds she takes. It makes me stressed for her just reading about how hard everything is for her. I avoid doctors and it drives the DH crazy. He goes on and on about it but my reasoning is if I go he’ll find something wrong that will require tests or worse a hospital stay and that’s just not something my anxiety riddled brain (who hates the rest of me) will let me do.

It’s all worth reading even if you don’t have any mental illnesses which I don’t think after the year of covid many can say they don’t have some problem. Remember FOGO (fear of going out)? How many of you will be experiencing agoraphobia having to go back to work?

 

My anger at mirrors

Today has been a rough day. It happens every summer now. When ever I pass a mirror and look into it I silently (ok, not always so silent) say “I hate you”, sometimes it’s more like “I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!!). Do you have this same problem?

It comes from being over weight and other physical things I dislike sooooooo much about myself. You say go on a diet, and I answer thanks I already know that but since I self medicate my anxiety with food that doesn’t really work. I am trying. I’m back on the elliptical 25 - 30 minutes a day but controlling my eating has become really hard. There was a time I NEVER ate when I knew I was going out. I was so worried I’d barf or just feel sick since my anxiety tends to revolve around how my gut feels. But thanks to therapy I now can sometimes eat, not a lot when I’m going out and more on the way home. Then there’s the stress eating that comes with knowing I’ll be going out. It’s not good and I’m not sure how to get control of it. If I don't depression will set in and all I'll do is eat.

I guess I’ll get out all the diet books and have a look at some web sites (maybe 3 fat chicks again).

Another thing that will set off the hates is being short. Being only 5 foot sucks in a world of high shelves in stores. That’s on my mind ‘cause I’ll be heading out later to grocery shop.

Maybe I’ll start wearing dresses instead of long shorts and capris. Loose ones will hide some of the chunkiness but will they only make me look shorter.....hmmmmm

I just needed to vent so thanks for reading :)

Matty, FBI Most Wanted, my Dad, and Sean Penn

 You're probably wondering what all of this has in common. To you it must look a bit (ok more than a bit) crazy but here's what it's all about.

If you read my last post you already know about my lab, Matty, having a seizure. He had 2 more since then. One a week later and another 2 days after that. Actually it was the morning we finally got an appointment with the vet. Memorial weekend had them out of the office till Tue.

This is all so scary to us since we lost 2 other dogs to seizures. How and why is making us over stressed. The first was a lab who we noticed having very mild ones when he was a puppy. He would just suddenly stare off for a few minutes then come back like nothing had happened. Meds helped at first but they never were able to control them. I explained about my sweet girl, Penny, in the last post. Still makes be tearful.

Back to the vet. They took blood and found everything ok there but she did say his prostate was dropped and tender. She then said that can happen with age (he's 8). He's on meds now and so far (fingers and toes crossed) no more seizures.

Now for some weird info the DH found when he took the cocker pup to a weekend training session. BTW, leaving me with the zoo from Fri- Sun. That's 1 cat,  5 dogs, 8 chickens, 7 ducks, 11 rabbits and a flock of pigeons. Oh yes, after 3 days of morning to night walking dogs, feeding everybody, and cleaning up after them all I was ready to sell all the birds and rabbits on Craig's List.

But back to DH telling other people at the training sessions about Matty. Turned out 3 others have had this happen in the last 2 years!!!!!!!!  A vet did an autopsy on 1 dog and found a weed seed that had obviously gone up the nose and into the brain, There it caused the dog to have seizures. Wow! I mean WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is this crazy or what. I need to find out the name of the weed. The DH says it grows all around. He always trains in various fields and woods here in PA and over in Ohio so if the seed thing is possible it may explain Penny's last days.

Now why FBI:Most Wanted? It's what I was watching when Matty had his first seizure and I was alone with him. Now I'm finding it hard to watch the show since it's causing me anxiety and yes we do pretty much anything to avoid anxiety, don't we? So ignoring the show while the DH watches will now be the norm for a while and no more repeats of Six Feet Under.

I have the same problem with Sean Penn because of my Dad. It's been years since he died of a massive heart attack so you'd think I could just move on but I haven't watched Saturday Night Live since that night. Sean Penn was hosting and I was still sorting my Dad's birthday card and gift (it was his birthday but we were visiting on Sunday since the DH worked and I wasn't driving at that time). Five minutes into the the opening monologue I got a call from my Mom that my Dad had (literally) dropped dead pulling down a window shade. I admire Mr. Penn but avoid watching anything with him in it. I'm sure he doesn't really mind since he seems to be a really nice caring guy.

See, this all brings back the years I was housebound with agoraphobia, too. I NEVER want that to happen again. Like most agoraphobics I don't deal well with change and losing someone is just too big of a change. It's so easy to slip back into not leaving the house isn't it?

My dog scared me and it was deja vu all over again

First I was going to put a picture at the top of the page but blogger is all , sorry we don't want your pictures right now try later. So I try later and it's still saying too bad. Ok, I'm paraphrasing but you get it don't you? I have a real hate relationship with blogger and if I hadn't done so much work with all the graphics and stuff I'd leave.

Back to my sweet Matty and why he scared me. Matty is an 8 year old black lab who other than having a delicate tummy has been healthy. On Tuesday he a had a seizure while we were at the house. I was watching FBI:Most Wanted when it happened. Now that show is like Saturday Night Live for me, brings bad memories. My Dad died while I was watching it and I haven't watched it since. Did finish watching the show on Paramount+ through Roku but kept my eyes on Matty most of the time. Talk about having too many panic attacks.

The DH was at the "play house" and wasn't answering his cell. That's normal since he often leaves it outside, in the car, in another room, even in a coat pocket but after calling 10 times with no answer I called the family he works for and Mrs. Dr. said she'd go down and check on him. Turns out he was asleep with the phone in the kitchen.

I wanted him to go to the vet asap but the DH wanted to wait a few days to see if he'd have another. He didn't but is definitely not acting like his sweet happy lab self. We did get an appointment on Tuesday but it will be a sucky weekend. All the rain and cold weather doesn't help either.

Why the deja vue? That's still hard for me to write about.....................................Yeah even harder than the 's' word.

I'll start with our first experience with seizures. We had another black lab named Mac who had minis at first when he was a pup but they became bigger and longer as he got older. By the time he was 9 he was having them every few hours and meds weren't working. We had to say goodbye to the big guy.

At the same time my bro and sis-in-law had a foster then adopted kid going thru the same thing but the meds for people were a LOT better than the ones for pets. She lived into her 20's but pneumonia took her from us.

Ok, here's the worse for me............... it's my baby girl Penny. She had 1 to 2 seizures a year, always when she was in heat (her period for non animal owners). The DH never thought they were serious enough to take her to the vet for but they did know about it when she went in for her shots. They just said keep an eye on  her and if they start happening more often to bring her in.  This is why I wanted Matty to go to the vet right away and not wait until it happened again. I mean what if this wasn't the first time? What if he had them when we were gone or asleep?.....................................................

I needed to pause, it's still too hard and it makes my heart hurt so bad

..........................................

Penny had her 2 seizures in Nov. right as she was finishing her heat cycle but a few weeks later she had 2 more and by Christmas she was having them about every 3 days.

..............................

Then came Jan. You all thought covid being found was bad but at the end of the month Penny started having seizures one after another. Nothing the vets did would stop them. We had 3 days of watching her with the last the most horrid. She did nothing but pace from one end of the kitchen to the other, drop to have a seizure, get up, and pace again till the next one hit. She was in a trance like state barely seeming like she recognized us. We tried to hold her to comfort both of us but only twice did she look into my eyes and and snuggle into my arms.

............................................................I needed to pause again, she was only 4.

At least when everything that could be done was done we were able to be with her at the end. The people at the vets were soooooooooo good to her and us. We had her cremated and when the DH picked her up he was also given a chiffon bag with a lock of her hair, a paw print in clay, and a card with all the staff's signatures. Just hoping we don't have to go thru this again because the vet still isn't letting owners in, even with shots and a mask. The DH whined but they said sorry, not yet and here in PA you can still do that.

BTW, Chewy sent roses when we canceled her dog food. Nice company, too bad Fed-x always delivers smashed boxes.

So now you see why all I did was screaming "nononono not again" when Matty was having his seizure. 

It's just too weird. We never even knew dogs had seizurse until Mac and now we have 2 more. I really think it's the flea and tick meds but the DH is worried it's the well water at the "play house" since Penny never had one until he started working there. We put most of the water thru a Birky water filter but not the dogs water. Well, we are now.

Oh, blogger decided to me nice and after working on this post for 3 days is letting me upload some pics. Here's Matty and the new pup, Micah at Christmas.

Back to where I belong ....... writing

 

 

I haven’t posted since last year because of working on a new book. I was also thinking about the choices I made in my life and those that needed to be made now that we were in covid-land. Knowing it was best to stay home made me worry that my agoraphobic tendencies would start their tempting but oh so destructive thoughts in my brain that hates me. I mean it can’t like the rest of me if it’s willing to cause SOOOOO much destruction. It becomes addictive to just stay home, to not have to go out and very possibly deal with sucky panic attacks. Lucky for me I could drive from home to the DH’s work house Jeez that sounds so Dickensian. I’m gonna call it the “play house” since the DH and furry kids love being there to play on all the acres of woods. In fact the cat, Andy, stays there full time now. So does the new pup the DH brought home last fall all the way from upper Michigan. He had a crazy trip going there during a time when covid was really bad in Michigan. I may have to write about it sometime because you’d never believe how much poo was involved (and it wasn’t dog poo). Oh, and in case you’ve read my other posts and know we also have a lab named Matty, he comes back and forth with me from home to the “play house”.

Ok, back to the subject of trying to avoid becoming housebound. I was basically saying it’s nice to have two houses so I could get out without going shopping and be worried about covid. I have a niece who got it last May and still feels awful. Our family lost two people to covid and one to cancer. My nephew got cancer and passed 12 weeks after diagnosis. The DH was helping a friend clean out a garage and offered to move the atv. Big mistake as he had never driven one. Backing up he hit a pile of wood and flipped it over on himself. He ended up with concussion, cracked ribs, stitches in his mouth, and legs so bruised he got blood clots. As for me, just the usual sprained ankle and ending up using crutches for a week after being clumsy.

Life has changed again now that most of the family and our friends got the covid shots. We got the Pfizer with only minor side effects like a sore arm and being tired. In fact no one I know had any worse side effects from either double shots but when I talk to people who refuse to get vaccinated they always say they know or have heard of people who’ve gotten really sick. I don’t know but I bet its fear after reading all the lies spread online. The internet has become a place of even more craziness, lies, and danger. I don’t even go online everyday any more. I just can’t take the hostility that’s growing everywhere online.

So anyway, the choices that are now on my mind have to do with getting back to this blog and keep my other writing going, too. I finally feel inspired to start writing here again. It’s so easy to indulge in being lazy about writing and instead just read and embroider. It comes down to doing the necessary things and sorting out the stuff that isn’t. I found it really does help calm me and have less panic.

Like many, I truly enjoyed this year of a quiet life, well except for all the awful stuff I wrote about a few paragraphs ago, and I’m not going back to a stress filled one that only ends in panic attacks. I’ve learned how to spread out all the work that needs to be done, that ½ hour gardening can be enough because more will mean my allergies will make me extra sick. The same goes for the time spent in the office/crafting room. If I can’t get inspired after 1 hour it’s time to move on to something else.

The hardest part of making these changes may be making the people in my life understand how important living a quieter life is to me. How just because they feel the need to be busy to the point of stress, that I’m just not going to fall back into that way of living again. I refuse to thought of as a failure because I figured out what works for me.

BTW, have you ever heard the term FOGO? It’s short for fear of going out. Aren’t we lucky the press has come up with a new shorthand for agoraphobia?