Sweet Yet Sour

The Recycled Garden

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

I’m all about recycling as much as I can.  So when our trash company wouldn’t take our recycle bins back when we upgraded to the larger recycle bin I had an idea…

The Recycled Garden

After all, they’re large, plastic and come with drain holes.  I like green and blue pots anyway – I have lots of pretty blue pots for flowers already.  From the left I have a cherry tomato plant in one bin, a “Celebrity” tomato in another, and a bin that has strawberries, basil, tarragon and sage.  The last bin has parsley, chives, dill and rosemary.  I plan on using them all in the kitchen and hopefully enjoying the fruits of my recycling all summer long…

Stroller Pictures and Cash Update

Monday, May 25th, 2009 | Updates | 1 Comment

I’ve finally had time to offload the pictures that Mike took of the stroller after last Sunday’s “incident“.  As you can see, it was worth putting it into the trash.  Secretly, I thought the stroller, which was loaned to me by my sister, was really ugly, so I wasn’t too terribly sad to see it go.   But I still would rather not have had such a thing happen.

Stroller after the wreck

As for Cash, the vet says that he’s mostly fine.  His cuts on his hind legs seem to be healing, although they do bleed every once in a while.  The vet left them alone, saying that his body was taking care of them just fine.  As for his neck, it seems to have either been wrenched by dragging the stroller for a 1/4 of a mile at 40 mph or the abrupt stop after it hit the pole.   The vet stretched his neck this way and that and decided that he was a little resistant to her stretching it up.  We now have doggie Ibuprofin for him if he seems sore.  He takes this buried in cheese of course…

This will all be funny later

Monday, May 18th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 5 Comments

Later, much later, I will be able to laugh about what happened to us yesterday.  For right now, it was just a little scary…

Our poor beloved Cash has always been easily spooked.  Since he had a pretty sheltered life when he raced on the track, when we first got him he was spooked by things like our electric toothbrushes, leaves on trees, stop signs, glass doors, etc.  Anything new and especially something moving scared the crap out of him.  He’s gotten much better in the past two years but yesterday proved that he’s still capable of a major scare.

Mike was out of town most of this week and since I’ve been a single mom, I’ve been trying to combine the dog walk and a visit to the park.  I have been walking Cash with Anna in the stroller and then have been tying Cash to the stroller and leaving him in a shady spot while Anna and I play in the park.  This has worked really well all week; Cash sat calmly in the shade and ate a little grass while Anna and I played nearby.

Yesterday Mike and I did the same thing, we walked to a nearby park, left Cash tied up to the stroller in some shade and then we played with Anna in the grass.  Cash sat quietly for a while but then stood up, pulled a little too hard on his leash and pulled the stroller over.  And that’s when he freaked out.

Mike, who was walking with Anna with me behind him, watched as Cash took off trying to get away from the stroller.  Cash ran full bore (that’s almost 40 mph) with the stroller dragging behind him down the park path.  Mike let go of Anna (she fell gracefully into the grass) and took off after Cash.  I grabbed Anna, the things that had fallen out of the stroller and took off after them.

The park path that Cash was running down meanders in between the houses in our neighborhood.  It runs for a few miles and connects several parks.  It was a nice afternoon so plenty of people who have houses that face the greenbelt were out on their decks or in their backyards.  All of them got to see our Greyhound running down the path while dragging the stroller.

Apparently, although Mike and I were not there to see it, Cash ran down the path and turned and headed toward the park that is closest to our house. When he got close to the play equipment (where there were several children playing), the leash and the stroller got wrapped around a sign in the park.  I’m pretty sure this gave him whiplash and it definitely almost took the sign completely out of the ground.

This was where Mike found him, trying desperately to get away from the stroller and still attached to the leash wrapped around the sign.

Cash is relatively uninjured thankfully.  He has some minor cuts on his hind legs and is going to see the vet tomorrow – (of course I couldn’t get an appointment today!).  Otherwise, he seems a little slower and a little sore.  I gave him some cheese today and that did seem to make him happy.

The stroller, which I forgot to take pictures of before it was taken away with the trash this morning, is a total loss.  We’ll get a new stroller and I’m almost positive it will take a little while before Cash is willing to walk next to a stroller – but we’ll see.  He could totally prove me wrong since the new stroller will look and smell different.  I will never again tie him to anything other than a tree or really large post.  And don’t let me get started on what would have happened if Anna had been in the stroller…

My father put it all in perspective when I called to tell him the story.  After laughing and intermittently saying, “poor Cash”, he told me that as long as everyone was alright it was all good and that I would find the story funny later.  He’s right, I will – the thought of Cash dragging that stroller down the path scared me yesterday and even today, but in a few years when we’re all healed I know it will be funny.  In the meantime, after we put Anna to bed last night, Mike had a beer and I had a gin and tonic while we breathed a sigh of relief and said thanks that no one was badly injured.

Anna Update

Friday, May 15th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 3 Comments

I have been remiss about updates on Anna of late, so I hope to make up for that with this post.  As I type this Anna is in the next room refusing to nap.  I sort of expected this, since I’m trying for the first time to transition her out of fleece sleep wear with feet and into pjs.  Change always is difficult with babies, and I expect it will take a few days to get her used to the new sleep duds. In the meantime, she’s talking loudly to her teddy bears about something very important…

First, the updates on her health – both her weight and the thing on the bridge of her nose.  I say “the thing” because we’re still not sure what “it” is exactly.  When we got the results back from the MRI in December we were told it was a “probably” dermoid cyst and to see the plastic surgeon at Children’s to have it removed.  At the end of April we finally went to see the plastic surgeon and now we’re more confused…  After reviewing the MRI the plastic surgeon said that he thinks the bump is not a dermoid cyst, but a vascular malformation.  Further, he’s not willing to take it out unless we REALLY want it out. He thinks it will bleed a lot unless he does this really gory way of taking it out, the details of which I will save you from.  Suffice to say Anna would have a curvy scar on the top of her head. So we have been advised to simply watch the bump, see if it gets larger and we can review again later whether we want it removed.  At this point it’s apparently not necessary to do anything, and that’s fine.

Last week we had our monthly weight check with Anna’s doctor.  Anna had an ear infection the week before which required a late night trip to an after hours pediatric care place, so the doctor was more focused on her ear than her weight.  When I asked about Anna’s weight, the doctor, who was not the same doctor we saw at Anna’s 12 month check (there are two doctors in the office), said that she had not gained much.  But, she said that Anna is “on her own weight curve” and was much more relaxed about the whole thing.  She wants us to come back in a month and do another weight check and in the meantime continue on with the fatty diet.  More butter and cream please!  “If” Anna’s weight continues not to be okay there is the chance that they will want to do blood tests to see if her kidneys and electrolytes are okay, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…

Anna is not walking yet, but I expect that to come very soon.  Several times in the past few days she has been taking a few (two or three) steps on her own before plopping down to crawl.  She does love to walk holding onto our hands and with her walker toys.

Otherwise, Anna has been liking playing outside and especially playing in the dirt.  It’s hard to see here, but she has dirt all over herself, including around her mouth, since she tried eating some dirt:

Covered in dirt

Since it’s summer I’ve been trying to get Anna to wear sunglasses, but she’ll only wear them for a few seconds before taking them off.  I had to be quick to get this photo:

So Cool

Anna has been going through my cabinets and playing with pans and bowls and enjoying all the noise that entails:

Making Noise

And she’s been playing on the little playset we have in the backyard a lot, even getting into it all by herself:

Playset

For my birthday we went to Hudson Gardens and hung out in the grass where Anna played and looked cute:

Playing in the grass

And then Anna helped Mike set up his camera for those tulip shots he took at the gardens:

Photographer's Assistant

Wednesday we got Anna’s new car seat and as soon as I unpacked it she wanted to try it out.  Not necessarily the right way, but still, she’s in it:

Car Seat - first try

Later we went out on our maiden voyage with the new car seat and she seemed to like being up a little higher:

New car seat

Yesterday I was unloading the dishwasher and I had some “help”.  I say “help” because I turned away to put the silverware away and turned back to find the helper had gotten in the dishwasher:

Dishwasher

Mike is always disgusted by the fact that I lick my ice cream bowl.  I swear I haven’t done it in front of Anna, but yesterday I let her play with the mac and cheese bowl after lunch and this happened.  This means she’s definitely related to me:

Bowl licker!

It’s genetic, we can’t help it! My mom is a bowl licker too!

Moving Again!

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

I’ve decided to move the blog to a different url – so prepare to redo any bookmarks or rss feeds you have…

I do hate to move and mess everyone up but I will feel better once it’s done and I’m more anonymous again.  For most of my life I was a Jones and frankly, the anonymity that came with such a common name was lovely.  I only once had to spell my last name and if I gave someone my full name that I didn’t like it would have been difficult for them to find me in the phone book.

My new married name is so uncommon that it would be easy to find me in the phone book.  Since I blog mostly about Anna I’ve decided to stop being so easy to find.  She’s really cute and even if I hate Oprah for making me afraid, there are creepy people out there.

So, I’ve decided to move to www.sweetyetsour.com.  Mike has a few things he needs to do to make it fully functional, but it should be ready soon.  If you want to know the logic on the name, here it is: a) sweetandsour.com is already taken; b) I make sweet desserts and have a sweet tooth, but am sort of a sour person.   It seemed logical for me to have a url that took in both my penchant for sweets and yet my sour attitude.

The old url will still work until it expires, but I’ll see you at the new url…