love

And they say people with autism have no empathy. Look at the love and empathy on Captain Comic’s face as he cradled Lucy this morning on the way home from the vet after yesterday’s bladder stone surgery.

He really loves her.

She tried to eat the vet when he attempted to give her her antibiotic this morning.

I gave it to her fine.

Lucy is a nervous little dog who was a stray possibly for the first year of her life. We’ve had her since. She loves us and we love her, even when she is too revved up and knocks Toots down, or jumps too much and barks at guests, or anyone who walks or drives down the street…She’s not to keen on men who aren’t part of our family.

She escapes underfoot through our front door, and always comes home within five minutes. It’ll be tough to keep her from running until the sutures come out in 10 days…and tough to keep that cone on.

I’m sure glad she’s home.

etsy addict

Hi, my name is Cathy. I am an addict.

An Etsy addict.

I usually peruse longingly over many handcrafted items I would like to buy, some by friends, some I just dangerously stumble upon. My friends’ goods are my Gateway drug.

One thing about having a part time job is I can give myself a little treat. And I do mean little, it is part time after all, and my dog needed to go to the vet again. She’s on the mend, though. Anyway, today’s little treats came from

Artsyville

A very affordable, colorful and inspirational place to find Artsy Doodles.  Aimee’s art is very lively, funky and sweet.  Perfect little mantras to get you through your day. A few doodles sing coffee’s praises.

The Happy Shack

A very colorful and happy place to find handmade jewelry and fun photography. Kelly’s jewelry has kick and her photos have spunk.

They blog, too, and can be found at Artsyville and Artful Happiness. When I’m having a cranky or down day, Aimee and Kelly always perk up my mood. And if I am happy when I read their blogs, I giggle and grin and usually find, it is just what I needed then, too.

Go check them out!

happy new year

We took a road trip and saw my family in Connecticut. And I now know I am not 20 years old and can just hop in a car and go whereever and not need a vacation to recuperate from the weekend away. Over a thousand miles in under three days. And the weekend before, we did five hundred.

I took pictures. I took pictures at the house where I grew up and I took pictures at the boat marina.

I haven’t uploaded them yet.

Mayhem rules the roost. School is back in session for the boys today, and for Toots tomorrow. I worked a full day at my part time job on the holiday day everyone else (not working in retail or emergency rooms) had off.

I came home late last night because I was so brain dead, I couldn’t count a small stack of twenties correctly.  When I came home, I couldn’t see straight or complete a thought. Then I went upstairs where  Lucy the terrorizing terrier has taken to peeing on the rug in the hall because we left her with Grandma instead of taking her with us.

Her pee spot didn’t look right, so I took her to the vet this morning. Tests came back fine, probably just a UTI. But of course she was overdue for her shots, etc….cha-ching!

Which reminds me, I need to take Babette, the ghetto queen cat in for her check-up, too.

And make Toots’s wellness appointment before the popular pediatrician fills up for the year…

I have to pick Captain Comic up early from school because he has an appointment this afternoon … and oh, Mr. Cynic’s bass lesson is today, and I am wondering if I can make it back in time from the other kiddo’s appointment.

I really do want to slow down and take a respite of some sort, but it will have to wait.  sigh.

But it was nice to see everyone in my family, however briefly, and celebrate being a family.

And now that I think of it, my family has always been full of mayhem. The more the merrier!

kidwrangling

Every year, it is basically the same. Here are a couple of examples from this year.

sandy bottom

On Thanksgiving, we had guests and we ate a lot. On Friday, we couldn’t move, and half of those guests returned and we ate some more. On Saturday after two days of sitting around eating and bloating, we said, enough!  Plus it was a gorgeous day and unlikely to be too many more of these for some time.

Sandy Bottom is a nice little nature park tucked into the middle of Hampton, VA’s urban sprawl.  We love to go hike the trails, especially around the lake. Although the sound of traffic is loud enough to drown out conversation on one side of the lake.

Toots had something very important to tell her daddy on the fishing pier.

Someone is about to outgrow someone else. He is carrying his trusty Batman compendium of the old 60s television series.

There is a harmony in autumn, and a lustre in its sky.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Two teens not quite growing like the trees.

My loves. Until moments before this shot, guess who had the bag of drinks  and stuff, camera and curious dog on a leash? Hint: I am not in the picture.

Toots wanted high piggie tails today. They are bouncing.

The rest and view deck on the opposite side of the lake from the fishing pier. There were ducks.

Someone started to get tired. She didn’t nap since Wednesday.

I love this guy. He is always seeking to learn. Just not always at school or while doing homework.

Love this girl. She is tracing her fingers in the sand.

I love this guy, too. He does not love having his picture taken.

Dog greeting committee: Their black one’s name was Lucy, too, just like ours!

A little artsy at the end of the day. I loved the long shadows.

spooks

This jack o’ lantern  started as this design by Captain Comic.  I love that he drew it in three quarter profile.

 

This fairy was very excited to go trick or treating. This scarer terrified one of his friends who ran screaming away as he removed the mask and called after her, “Don’t worry! It’s only me!”

Toots was Miss Independent on the trick or treat rounds, “Ok, yet’s go to anuver peepo’s house!”

“I can walk in the da stweet aw by mysef. You don’ need to hode my hand.”

One man opened the door before she could ring the doorbell. She made him go back in because she had to ring the doorbell. He complied, slightly frightened.

Another man declared, “Oh my god, she’s so beautiful! Here, you can take anything you want!” He proceeded to give her handful after handful of candy. I feel bad for any kids  that came after us. The neighborhood grandmas cooed over her, too.

The littlest fairy was very brave at the spookier gimmicky houses. We have some neighbors who really know how to do Halloween right.

Saturday night, I had some fun as a Mexican Day of the Dead sugar skull. A handful of us moms of asperger’s syndrome kids (and other special needs) had some good laughs.

I hope your Halloween was as fun as ours.

 I’d like to wish my little rescued dog Lucy a happy 6th birthday today! And happy November to you.

Time for me to get back in the editor’s chair and open my manuscript!

mayhem morning

This morning I intended to edit while Toots went out with Grandma.

I woke up still having trouble from an allergy attack I had a couple of weeks ago (newly painted bathroom cabinet, latex allergy, didn’t air it out enough before we hung it back up), and took yet another couple of spritzes of albuterol. Probably still troubling me due to sleep deprivation from the past four nights, because Lucy has been barking and escaping from her crate. She’s going through a lonely phase and wants to sleep with us. We need to break her of this. She goes through this periodically, and we have to re-crate train her.

The boys got off to school without a hitch. I had my coffee.

Then I heard Toots scream from downstairs as I got in the shower. I figured Honey and Grandma were down there with her and whatever it was, they could handle it.

She was still crying when I got out of the shower. And after I got dressed.

When I came downstairs I got the story of her palm meeting the hot toaster. I have been through this with Mr. Cynic and Captain Comic at around the same age involving stove burners and campfires, so I wasn’t too worried. My kids like to learn the hard way. Honey had already gotten her to laugh a couple of times by tickling her wounds with a piece of the aloe plant. But she was still hurting and upset.

I finally got a look at them, and it was a hard call until I mentioned calling the pediatrician, and then she was ready to go to the doctor wight now!

But it was another hour before her appointment during which, she finally calmed down.

And then she didn’t want to go. So I bribed her with a blueberry muffin at a cafe if she would go nicely.

We walked out the door to 20 degree colder weather than yesterday and a hardy breeze, and she didn’t want to wear her jacket, so I had it in my hand, as the locked door clicked into place, and I realized my keys were not hooked to my purse.

Eventually she did put her jacket on. In the meantime I tried calling Honey, and he didn’t answer his cell, so I called his office, and his manager got on the line to tell me he was up the road in Williamsburg on a business errand. He eventually got him on his cell. Honey was just moments from home when he called me back as I was on the phone with the pediatrician’s office to let them know what was going on.

But by that time, we had let our runner dog out of the fence in an attempt to break in through the garage doggie door that I could only squeeze my head and one shoulder through. I had Toots crawl through and climb up on a pile of firewood to unlock the deadbolt, thinking the whole time I would be bringing her to the pediatrician with more wounds from this, like a cracked noggin on the concrete floor. She managed to jiggle the lock, but couldn’t turn it all the way to click open.

Toots started to get tired of the wind in her face and hair after we gave up that failed solution. So we got in Bertha, the van. Lucy was still running all over the neighborhood and marking everyone’s yards. I think she tired of her escapades, and when I called her from the van, she came bolting into it and joined us.

Then Honey drove up, unlocked the front door, I dropped the dog in the house, grabbed my keys, and we made it to the appointment only a few minutes late, but we still had to wait for the doctor, because, and this is why we like him, he is very thorough with each patient and lots of fun, too, so all of his appointments run long.

She was good for him, and he joked about not giving Honey and Grandma too hard a time about the incident. I assured him I only brought them up becasue I wasn’t there to witness how it actually happened. Then Toots was ready to go out for a blueberry muffin.

We drove to the closest cafe, Aroma’s in City Center, Newport News, and they were out of blueberry, but they had cranberry nut, with walnuts, so we split one and sat at a table where we could see the fountains.

The wind was kicking the water spray to the side of the spouts and with the bright October sun, we saw rainbows in the mist.

Even though it was a rough start to the day, spending time in a cafe with peppermint tea and my Toots happily looking for rainbows was a great way to spend some of it, once we were assured she wasn’t hurt too badly and we had a prescription  for burn cream in hand.