Author Archives: Elisabeth

About Elisabeth

The joyous and sometimes odd adventures of a former English teacher and her trusty sidekicks, Jared the Hottie Husband and her two Italian Greyhounds, Stinky Stevie and Bonnie Boo. Recently the adorable baby, Princess Evelyn, has joined the clan to shake things up!

The trouble with mandogs…

The trouble with mandogs…

(Warning: Some images in this post may appear too graphic for some audiences. If blood makes you queasy, read on at your own risk!)

Remember those cute, peaceful pictures of adorable doglings that I posted yesterday?

Well, clearly, I spoke too soon.

To begin this story, you have to get a little history. One of our neighbors has a dog, cute little thing that looks like a mix between a min schnauzer and a shih tzu. The biggest problem with this dog, and said neighbors, is that the dog loves our yard and makes frequent jailbreak attempts to get over to our side of the fence. (They do say the grass is always greener…)

If it were just her getting into our yard and trying to play with our dogs, we wouldn’t care. Size-wise, they are pretty evenly matched, and she’s generally a sweet, fun little thing, but the problem with the holes is that it makes our yard less secure. These neighbors don’t have the greatest fence on the other side of their yard, and our little Iggies could easily get out onto the street and get into some major trouble if they made their own jailbreak. We’ve actually run out of rocks, stones, and other miscellaneous objects to stop up all the holes that dog is digging. We’ve started pulling bags of dirt.

But last night, Neighbor Dog broke through again. And while she and Stevie were frantically running through the yard, something happened. I was inside at the time, but according to Jared, he saw Stevie take a bit of a tumble, but get back up and running again. From a distance, everything seemed fine.

All I know is that when I came back out, I took one look at Stevie and knew something was wrong when I saw this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you don’t know much about greyhounds, especially their smaller counterparts, they have very thin skin with relatively no body fat and very little fur, so it’s common (especially with racing greyhounds) to shred up the whole section, all layers of skin, in falls or tumbles.

Something this big needed to go to the vet. Even Jared agreed after taking a closer look that it would probably be a good idea. The only problem was that it was 8:00 PM, which meant we had to go to an emergency vet to get it taken care of.

Just in case you didn’t think about it, the emergency vet is a really sad place. I wouldn’t want to work there. Just in the hour or two we were in the front “waiting” room, we saw several crying people and sad, sad animals. It seemed like a night for some serious lacerations on dogs, too, from what we saw and heard.

We came at a pretty good time, so we didn’t spend too long before somebody came and took a look at Stevie. At first they thought it would be relatively easy to sedate him, clean out the wound, and patch him back up, but quickly after they started they realized that the injury was actually a lot worse than it looked like. In order to do the extent of cleaning and stitching up that they would need to do, they had to put him under anesthesia (also very dangerous for sight hound breeds). They told us to go home to try and rest, and they’d call us in a hour or two once he woke back up.

Try and rest. Ha. You’re telling that to a woman who has anxiety to begin with, whose special dog has to go under for what seemed like fairly easy to care for wound, and to top it off, is now in her 9th month of pregnancy and is riddled with those fun pregnancy hormones and symptoms.

Go home and rest. Good one, right?

Nearly 6 hours and $600 later, we were able to bring Stevie back home:

(We’ve been trying to think of some good nicknames for him while he’s got those awful stitches in. Our favorites have been Frankenpup, Dog of Frankenstein, and Stevie Stitcheroonie.)

So far, he’s been okay, but he’s seriously grounded. For the next several days, most doggy privileges have been revoked. Potty outside on a leash only so he doesn’t get excited by anything and run off; inside he can’t jump, climb stairs, run, or play; most of the time he should be in a small confined space (like his kennel) to make him recuperate better.

It’s looking like it will be a fun two weeks.

Activity Swap Report

Activity Swap Report

After mentioning the texture cards a few posts ago, I had a few people ask me about how the activity swap went.

Last Thursday I met up with some other ladies, mostly ones that I go to church with, though there were a few other lovely people there that I hadn’t met before, and did the activity swap. It took a little bit of time to get things sorted out, but before long, we all had a good handful of various activities.

As you can probably see, there’s various levels of difficulty and effort that was put into the different projects. Some of them I won’t be able to use for quite some time too, since they have little itty-bitty pieces. The blocks could be fun though; they have clear tubes that you can use to stick the pieces together. I’m thinking about painting them some bright, fun colors to add to their interest level.

All these felt games were really cute. I can imagine it was a pain to make several of those fish for the fishing game!

The last few activities, including a set of my texture cards (somebody dropped out at the last minute, but I had already made the majority of each set, so I figured I’d finish them all anyways). The top left activity is a puzzle (barnyard animals on Popsicle sticks–pretty clever). The blue bag is kind of a putty that kids can put on a flat surface (it stays in the bag) and write/”draw” with their fingers or cu tips.

So overall, I am really happy I participated. I stressed myself out a little too much over the cards, but I think it was fun to get involved with this sort of activity and some of these activities will be great to have once Baby Boothe goes mobile. 🙂

Perspective

Perspective

It’s funny how many people are surprised that I’m due in a month. Generally, the comments are that I look too small and that maybe we got the due dates wrong.

First, as I have started to swell up like a ginormous pufferfish, telling me those things are not really comforting. I promise, I know that I’ve been pregnant this whole time, so the date better not be that wrong.

It’s almost been as bad as BEFORE I was pregnant and people would ask me, “Oh, are you expecting?” and I would have to respond, “Nope, just fat.” (Yes, that happened on more than one occasion.)

Second, it’s time to put it all in perspective.

This is the Baby Boothe bump on St. Patrick’s day.

This was the Baby Boothe bump as of yesterday. I can’t even twist as well anymore so it doesn’t look as big as it really is!

But as you can see, definitely some major growth. The poor baby still has a month in these cramped quarters and she’s still likely to grow another pound or two.

So, before you tell the pregnant lady she looks like a whale or looks too small, remember: the pregnant lady has feelings too, and is probably already stressed enough about all things baby.

And along the same lines, if you have to ask if somebody might be pregnant, then you shouldn’t ask. Just don’t do it. It’s better that way, especially when somebody isn’t pregnant.

Farewell to Teaching

Farewell to Teaching

I have several things that I need to get around posting on here, and I will soon, I promise. But today was a pretty significant moment in my life.

Today, I officially left the public education profession.

I spent most of last week and the weekend organizing and cleaning my classroom to get it ready for whoever will be moving in after me, and getting my stuff organized and packed in a way that I could potentially find it again if I decide to ever go back to teaching. Plus, the person checking us out of the rooms is extremely strict about the condition of the room, so it had to be completely empty of any of my personalized touches before she’d approve it.

(It doesn’t even look like the room I’ve worked in for the past two years at all… In the end, it was only a loan, right?)

(This used to have my name under my room number, but between leaving work Friday and coming in this morning, it was already wiped clean of my existence.)

Packing up four years of my life was more emotional than I thought it would be.

Leaving the school behind? Not as emotional. A few sweet goodbyes from people, a few hugs, a few who asked me to come back and visit with Baby Boothe when she arrives. But really, the official death of my profession was quiet and without fanfare. I think it made it easier for me to not shed many tears.

I turned in my keys to the classroom.

I handed my badge to the Admin Secretary.

And then I walked out the door, and I didn’t look back.