Pirate Dog

First of all, Happy Halloween! I'm really not into it this year and I still don't really have plans for the evening. I think we'll just play it by ear and see what comes up. I will admit, Halloween really snuck up on me this year. Suddenly, I realized last weekend that we had trick-or-treaters coming over and scrambled to get some candy. It was a huge letdown. Worse than last year, which I didn't really even think possible. But, seriously what is WRONG with kids these days? Jeans and a t-shirt is not a costume and you really should be awarded no candy for that laziness. Anyway.

A lot happened to our little family yesterday. It really was quite the day. I'm going to spread the news out over a few posts, just because I feel that's the best way to do it and it's my blog, so I get to do what I want. I'll focus on the Debbie Downer news in this post.

Indy has had some goop in her left eye and it's really been bothering her. She normally has runny eyes (if she truly is Boxer-something, this is fitting), but this was worse. It was green and just nasty. Yesterday, she couldn't even open her eye and she just looked miserable. We were able to get her in at our vet, which is another reason our vet rocks.

Once there, Indy was so squirmy and so uncooperative that it made it very difficult for the doctor to get a good look. Indy just wasn't having any of the poking and prodding and eye drops. We all tried holding her and we just couldn't really get a good look.

However, the doctor was able to look at her eyes with a light and noticed that Indy's right eye was not reacting to the light at all. The left pupil dilated as it should under the light. The right pupil didn't change at all. After a few more tests, it turns out that Indy cannot see out of her right eye. Now, we are unsure of whether or not she's always been blind in that eye. Though, there have been times when we've wondered and even joked that "maybe she's blind in one eye" because she has a tendency to run into things. We are officially the worst puppy parents ever. Our baby is blind and we had no idea.

We do know that she suffered some kind of trauma to her head before we got her. She has a large scar on her nose and the right side of her face is smaller than the left. Whether or not that is the reason behind her inability to see, we don't know.

We got some antibiotic ointment for her left eye and a referral to an ophthalmologist for dogs. While we are well aware that there is likely little that can be done to restore her sight, we feel that this could provide us with some answers as to why she can't see out of that eye. We also hope that they will be able to better look at her infected eye to give us a better idea of what is going on there. Now that we know she only has one eye, it's even more important to us that it gets better (not that it wasn't important before, but, well, you know).

I've been doing some reading online and I feel a little better knowing that animals do surprisingly well with things like this and, many times, it hardly phases them and you may never even know that they are impaired. Which, really does describe Indy. Aside from the occasionally running into things, we never would have had reason to guess that she couldn't see out of that eye.

Our appointment with the specialist is Tuesday afternoon. I certainly hope that it's more productive than our appointment yesterday. She was so stressed out yesterday that it seriously exhausted her. Poor baby! But, we're thinking of getting her a sweet eye patch and making her a pirate for Halloween. Thoughts?

Fantasy Football

Huh. Well, this is interesting.

For many years, Matt has participated in a Fantasy Football league. And, for many years, I have laughed at him for it. He gets so caught up in it that I just can't help it.

This year, he put his league together and was one guy short, so I jokingly said I wanted to join. Next thing I knew, I was signed up and receiving emails about the upcoming draft. So, I'm in this league with a bunch of guys. I know very little about who is on my team or if they're any good. Really, I act as Matt's second team. Every once in a while, I check in to make sure the guys are all healthy and up for the week's game. That's about it.

Except, I'm winning. Like, a lot. I am actually at the top of our league right now. None of the guys can beat me.

See? I said it was interesting! Booyah.

And...done!

I didn't really think that this needed it's own post, but after blubbering on about how awesome Twilight was, I felt like I needed to say something.

I have finished all four books in the Twilight Series. And then I went and read everything else I could that was related. I went to Stephenie Meyer's site and read all of the extended chapters and outtakes from the books. And, I went so far as to read the unofficial partial draft of Midnight Sun even after promising myself that I would wait until it was finished*.

I am still feeling a little conflicted on how the whole story ended. Of course, I liked it. I more than liked it. I just can't quite decide how much. Weird. I need some time to think it all through.

Luckily, I've stumbled across a "coven" of other women over on the Nest that took it upon themselves to take over an unused board and devote the entire discussion to Twilight. The pictures alone are worthwhile. Really, it's awesome. Or, maybe not?

Anyway, I can't wait until the movie comes out. I found a few new trailers online that I hadn't seen yet (seriously, whoa!) and watched each of those a few times. Good stuff. Really.

If you haven't read these books yet, I highly recommend them. Now, they're certainly not quality literature, by any means. But, they are highly entertaining and they are all quick and easy reads. I promise you will like them. And, if you don't, please don't tell me. I get strangely defensive over these kinds of things and I promise I will take it personally if you hate these books**.

If you have read them and you want to discuss...well, I would love to.

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*One: Who knows if she actually will finish it now that she feels so violated and hurt over its premature release? And, two: Yeah right, like I was going to stay away from that! I needed an Edward fix.

**Okay, no, not really.

Now that I know what I've been missing...

...I have a lot of catching up to do!

First of all, let me say that I had never even heard of these books until recently. I don't know, what can I say? I'm just not hip to what the cool kids are up to these days.

Well, anyway, my mother-in-law picked it up about a month ago and started reading it, promising to lend it to me when she finished. I didn't really think much of it because, again, I'd never heard of it and didn't think it sounded like it was all that and more. I mean, a book about vampires? Yawn. She finished with it and lent it to me and I put it on the shelf and kind of forgot about it. Again, it really didn't pique my interest.

Let's fast forward to this past week. Out of a moment of boredom, I picked it up and started reading. And I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN. I took it to bed with me, promising myself I'd read "just one more chapter" that turned into more like five or six. I finished it on Friday. I easily could have finished it in a single day, but I needed to get some sleep to function this week. So, how do I put this? Um, I FREAKING LOVE THIS BOOK! Serious.

And, since I knew that my mother-in-law would not be done with book #2 quite yet (maybe because she told me she was only halfway through it on Thursday and isn't a freak like I am?), I, um, kind of coughrereadthebookagainthisweekendcough. WHAT? I liked it! And then I scoured the internet for discussion forums and websites on the book, movie, you name it.

So, I am patiently waiting for book two (and three and four) and trying not to get sucked into a cult full of emo 13-year olds in the meantime.

Little Black Dress

My grandmother recently moved out of the condo that she lived in for some 30-odd years and into an apartment. With that move came a lot of purging of her stuff. Many trips to the dumpster. Many more to Goodwill. It is amazing how much stuff someone can accumulate.

My mom was here this past week to help her unpack and get organized in her new digs. At one point over the weekend, I was over at my grandma's new place and she mentioned she had something for me. My mom went back into the bedroom and came out with a little black dress.

This dress has only been worn once, many years ago. My grandmother bought it for her 10-year high school reunion (I don't even know how long ago that was), wore it, cleaned it and stuffed it into the back of her closet. I might have squealed when I saw it--I LOVE it! And, it's in my size. It's dressy and cute and totally "in" right now (confirming that "it always comes back" when it comes to fashion).

I have not gotten pictures of the dress yet, but it is sort of similar (only cuter, better and without the creepy mannequin) to this dress that I just found through a quick search on Bluefly for $276 (originally $460).

Ten Ten

Happy birthday Matt!

My husband, my friend, my everything. You always and forever put a smile on my face. Through thick and thin, we make it through and love life.

Happy twenty-seventh. Hope you like your awesome cake!

Pictures

Remember when I was in turmoil over my photo hosting? Of course. How could we forget, right? (Kidding.)

Anyway, I've decided to stick with Shutterfly. They've recently come out with a really cool new photo sharing site and I'm hooked. If you haven't already, I highly recommend looking into it. Sure, there are a few bugs and oddities that need to be worked out, but they're all things I can deal with.

Check out my new site here. It's still (probably always and forever) a work in progress, but I'm working on it.

Stuff

In the past, oh, two weeks or so, I've suddenly come to the realization that we have too much stuff and too small of a space to keep it in. I don't quite know where all of this stuff came from. Somehow, through the years, we've managed to accumulate this stuff. But, it really seems like it just got here overnight. Suddenly, there's just too much stuff. Add on top of that some stuff that got here last week from something that I'm not quite ready to discuss and we have even more stuff here. Taking up every last square inch of space in our tiny little place. We're literally falling all over our stuff. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but some days it feels like it.

And so, for the past two weeks or so, all that has been running through my mind is George Carlin's "Stuff" routine. I love George Carlin and I love this routine. It makes me laugh out loud and it absolutely describes us. And our stuff.



We're not really quite sure yet what to do with all of our stuff, but we're working on it. Neither one of us really likes to get rid of stuff, so that puts us in quite the pickle. What do you do with your stuff when you have too much of it?