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Momentary Thought
I wrote an ooey gooey love letter to Calvin yesterday. It originally started out as an entry, but got *so* syrupy that I figured I'd do you all (and Calvin) a favor and just give it to him alone. Who loves ya?
High/Low
High: Our refi came through!
Low: Calvin has to be in Flagstaff overnight tonight. Plus, my poor Gypsy dog has been one sick puppy.
Current Obsession
Christmas shopping. I actually have everything picked out and ready to buy. I'm doing so much of my shopping on-line this year that so far I only have to go to two "real" stores.
Grin Source
See today's "High".
Singing
And I say follow me follow me
Follow me down down down down
'Til you see all my dreams
Not everything in this magical
World is quite what it seems
Nelly Furtado - "Turn off the Light"
A Year Ago
More or less
I was in the midst of a warm and fuzzy upswing.
Storyteller
Bio
Dramatis Personnae
Who I Read
Recipes
Another gleeful part of getting that refi, is that there will be no payment due for December. So we can take the money we usually spend on our mortgage, and throw it at Christmas, or some other debt.
The pressure and stress has been building, then leveling off and getting stagnant, then building a bit more, then leveling... for a good amount of time now. It's like we were holding our breath and in a waiting game, knowing that we'd come to the crest of this business, but not knowing when or how.
Now it looks like it's crested. Of course, I won't be 100% comfortable until after we've closed on this refi, but the loan guy says that will happen before the end of the month. We've just got to go through the appraisal, which means a frenzy of cleaning. Oh, well, it had to happen sometime, right? ~grin~
This stuff by no means takes care of all the pressures, but it lets off a bit of the steam. I'm still hoping to get a part-time job to help take care of the rest of the debt. I've applied at five places so far, and have four more in mind that I'll apply at by the end of this weekend. *Somebody's* got to give me a call back. I suspect that what's happening is that folks are filling all of the holiday positions. They'll leave after the holidays are over, and something will open up. And because of the aforementioned pressure relief, we can afford to wait until after the holidays. And I won't have to work for as long in order to get us ahead. I was thinking of keeping a part-time job for a year, but maybe I can do it for six months, and be able to go back to school again next fall.
Crossing my fingers on that one. I just want to get this damned degree out of the way. I'd like to double up on classes and just get it *done*. Someday.
*******************************
My poor Gypsy dog has been sick for a few weeks now. She started having this hacking... well, cough is the only way I can describe it, although it sounds more like the sound you'd make if you had one of those papery popcorn kernel husks stuck in the back of your throat. She stands, legs splayed, head low, and rasps and hacks for a minute or more. At first she did it only once in a while, and we figured she'd been in the ferret's poo again and the bedding was irritating her throat. But then she started doing it more, and more, until she was waking herself up at night quite often.
I took her to the vet's, who x-rayed her (the vet thought it might be something blocked, or foreign, inside), found nothing out of place, and prescribed antibiotics and a cough suppressant. As is the way with animals, Gypsy steadfastly refused to demonstrate her cough while at the vet's.
When I got home, I moved the ferret's cage up out of her reach, and she was kept in on "doggy bed rest" for several days so the other dogs wouldn't exacerbate her condition. (They, by they way, have been their normal, stupid, healthy selves.) She seemed to improve a bit, but before she was out of her medications, she started getting worse again. She was bad enough last night that I insisted she sleep inside, and this morning it was so bad that her hacking was almost constant.
Suffice to say, I'm very concerned for my Gypsy girl. I've got another vet appointment for her tomorrow to get some blood work done (and I caught Gypsy's cough on video with my handy Mavica, in case she won't do it at the vet's again). The vet and I are stumped as to what could be causing this. Her appetite is fine, her eyes and ears are clear, her nose is cool and damp, she's not vomiting, nothing's coming up when she coughs, she's going to the bathroom normally, and her energy level is only slightly diminished from normal (which is understandable considering how wracked her little rotund body gets when these episodes take her). Her movement is fine, she doesn't seem to be in any discomfort when I touch her belly or chest, she still puts her paws up on my knee and wags her tail at me, and she still races to the kitchen when it's supper time.
Anybody out there have any ideas at all as to what could be going on with her?