The week in photos.  As you can see Heidi is making herself at home and doesn't appear to be at all stressed.  She is a lovely, sweet dog who also likes to chew the hell out of everything.

We've been going to the dog park everyday which is lovely as the weather is mild and the dogs are happy.  Fresh air is always good for me too.

We bought a kennel for Heidi to preserve some of our house while we're at work.  She's quite happy to go in it.  The bone is our attempt to find something that will last longer than half an hour with her.  Every toy what we've bought her is in shreds and then she moves onto pillows and my grandson's toys.  So far the bone has lasted more than one day.  We'll see.

My grandson spent the night last night and this morning was helping me with the laundry.  He loves the laundry room.  There's a toilet, two machines with windows that everything spins around in, a broom and a mop.  Heaven for him apparently.  He's finally sleeping now and I'm sitting for a bit.

Hope you all had a good week.

#1  Snow

The big guy and I had a discussion yesterday and he said he thought that sometimes it seems like I enjoy being unhappy.  There probably is some truth to that, unhappy is familiar.  I just finished reading a book by Neil Pasricha, the author of 1000 days of Awesome and other books and I thought that perhaps if I did something like he did, blogged about good things, that it would help my poor brain get out of it's rut of unhappy.  And this is the first one.

It snowed here today, a fair bit of snow.  What I love most about snow is how quiet everything becomes.  It muffles sounds and makes the world slow down.  Snow is a good reason to be a few minutes late for work and a good reason to leave a few minutes early.  After work we picked up the dogs and went to the off leash park.  Heidi loves the snow and I love watching Heidi jumping in the snow, sticking her face in the snow, eating the snow and just generally enjoying herself. The other great thing about snow is it covers all the dog turds in the back yard;  they'll still be there in the spring but the yard looks nicer for now.

Snow is what forms glaciers over time and those glaciers are what provide our drinking water. 

Our water comes from the Rocky Mountains and I've seen where it comes from, a beautiful, quiet rugged place.  Snow melt also provides a lot of moisture in the spring here, for my garden and the farmers who are much more resilient than I am...yet.

So snow, pretty awesome.

The cold continues here but it's warming up today.  This is the view looking to the west of the town I live in.  It's ugly and industrial but it's also part of life.  There's a lot of ugly stuff in life really when you think about it, stuff we'd rather not look at, stuff we'd rather hide from everyone else but it's also a part of who we are.

We officially adopted our new dog yesterday.  Her name is Heidi and she's a sweet dog, gentle, quiet and loving.  She was skin and bones when she was rescued with her pups.  She's gained some weight her foster parent said but still needs a few more pounds on her.  I am always amazed at how forgiving dogs are, even after abuse, even after neglect, they can still love.  They can certainly teach us all a thing or two.  As I write this, she's lying by my feet, quietly resting.

Lucy is getting used to having another dog in the house.  They've been roughhousing and chasing each other which is all fun and games until Lucy's back hurts and then she yelps and everything stops.  The cat stayed in her bedroom all day yesterday, only venturing out for supper and then going back upstairs to her room.  It's like living with a teenager.  She'll come around, it just takes time.

My grandson is doing well.  He's here now, sleeping as I write.  Gracie seems to have returned to the land of the living and is a good mama again.  

I was thinking about my daughter yesterday.  We haven't spoken since August which makes me sad.  She doesn't really like me I realized awhile ago.  I'm too much.  Too emotional.  Too loud.  I share too much.  Too impulsive.  Just too much I guess.  It's how I am.  It's not good or bad, it just is.  Her dad didn't like it either.  I was a disappointment to him and to her it seems as well.  But I am what I am.  I don't feel like apologizing over and over again for being myself.  She was offended because I shared with her about my depression, I'm guessing here, because she only texted that she was angry and hurt and that what I had written shouldn't be out there.  I told her about feeling suicidal and how much a counsellor had helped me.  I'm also tired about not talking about my depression.  It's been a part of my life as long as I can remember and it's something I struggle with everyday.  She didn't like it.  It's so hard having imperfect parents.  

I hope that she gets over it.  I miss her.

In the mean time, life continues on.  I'm reading a book right now, "You Are Awesome" by Neil Pasricha.  It's interesting and affirming; it talks about failing and then changing the stories we tell ourselves.  It's a quick read but it's always good to know that you're not the only person in the world who likes to catastrophize things.  He has some key ideas one of which is adding an ellipsis to your thoughts.  My daughter won't talk to me...  and then adding yet.  It's a good way for me to change how I think.  

In the mean time, I'm going to go and make a loaf of sourdough and spend the day with my grandson.

Take care.

This is for a certain New Yorker and you're welcome:)

And this one is for me, because age or menopause or anything else I suppose.



I went to see my doc this morning because I've been getting quite short of breath on exertion, like walking in the mall, working, going up a set of stairs.  Talk about making you feel old.  And then I had to get some estrogen cream for places that are supposed to be stretchy but are not as stretchy as they used to be.  Again with the old:)  A prescription and a req for lots of blood work.

It could be worse.  I could have died young.

The weather here is fucking cold as one older patient described it yesterday.  You know it's cold when old ladies say fucking.  It's supposed to warm up but to be honest I'm pretty lucky.  We have a garage.  The big guys does most of the driving and we have underground parking at work so I'm not really suffering.  I haven't been to the mailbox in awhile but that can wait.

There was a lot of ice fog this morning which I really didn't like because you couldn't see much when driving, hopefully that dissipates soon.  We have to watch poor Lucy when she goes outside to pee or poop because her feet can get too cold to get back to the door so I have a pair of shoes ready at the back door in case she needs to be rescued.

It was a weird week at work, lots of strange things but nothing awful.  There was a car fire on a busy road that patients and staff have to use to get to our hospital so that meant a quiet morning for awhile yesterday and then a lot of patients all at once.  Thankfully nobody was hurt in the fire.  It must have been scary as hell for the two drivers involved in the collision.

I'm thankful for a furnace that works and indoor toilets.

What are you thankful for today?

Damn.

Nothing much going on here.  We're in the middle of a deep freeze so we're hunkered down although I did go out to Walmart last night.  Our house is cold at night and I have given every single pair of fleece jammies to my daughter in law where they sit on the floor in the basement of her house, stinking of pee or poop or vomit.  I had no warm jammies for the little guy so I popped out and got him two pairs of jammies with Santa on them for $3 each which was a good thing because he had diarrhea last night and then vomited all over himself and his bed, which is why he and I were in the laundry room last night.  These jammies are not leaving this house.

The little guy is good, except for his tummy apparently.  We have tentative plans and will wait and see how things go.

It's been a sad week in Edmonton.  Thirty of the people on the Ukrainian airline that was shot down in Iran on Wednesday were from Edmonton, whole families wiped out.  I can't even imagine.

This afternoon we're going to go see a man about a dog.  I need something good this year.  Lucy is aging quickly.  Her cough is getting worse and she will not live for a long time.  Her early years of abuse have wrecked her heart and she has congestive heart failure.  I told the big guy I want another dog because I know he will be wrecked when Lucy dies, so we're going to meet a dog that I've had my eye on for the last month.  We'll see.  If she doesn't work out for us that's okay but I think she will.  I have a feeling.  Even though I swore I would never have two dogs again, I miss long walks and Lucy can't manage those anymore.

There is a loaf of sourdough bread proofing, more laundry in the dryer and my grandson is sleeping.  Life is good-ish.

I'm working on a new quilt right now.  A young friend of mine at work is getting married this year and I promised her a wedding quilt.  Her favorite color is teal.  I hope she likes the colors.  I've known this young woman since I started working at my hospital.  She's like a daughter to me and I'm so happy she's found a man who makes her happy and who loves her as she is.

I've only worked two days this week and I am thankful to have today off.  We were short staffed on Monday and it was awful.  We were so busy we had patients waiting over an hour for us to even take them back to our waiting room where they often need to wait for another hour while they drink the contrast before their CT scan.  There was a lot of apologising by us, not by management obviously, but by the nurses who actually care for patients.  It always seems to be the way in hospitals.

Yesterday was a better day but there was still a big hiccup for one patient.  It was his first visit with us.  Patients with lymphoma and leukemia have a problem because cancer cells like to hide in their brains.  The chemo used to treat their cancers can't cross the blood brain barrier so the chemo must be administered through the CSF, cerebral spinal fluid, if they do end up with cancer cells in their brains The patient comes in, 5 mls of CSF is taken out by lumbar puncture and 5 mls of chemo is administered.

Before we can do this we need blood work to check coagulation and platelets, to make sure the patient doesn't bleed.  Apparently the nurse that the patient and his wife saw on Monday didn't think she needed to do the blood work that the hematologist had specifically ordered so when the patient arrived yesterday we had to get STAT blood work done which you wouldn't think would be a big problem except in a cost cutting measure, all of our coags now go across the street to the University Hospital, so STAT usually takes 2-4 hours.  Yesterday I walked the patient and his wife down to the lab and told the manager herself what had happened and I was deeply surprised to have the results back in 1 1/2 hours.  However, we then need to order the chemo which takes another hour to make.  The patient and his wife were wonderful but I felt so bad for them.

I gave them another lab req for Thursday so that this doesn't happen again for them on Friday.  What's so frustrating is that the patient and his wife had both questioned the nurse on Monday about drawing blood because of the IT chemo but the nurse knew better.  Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The lesson here, listen to your patient.

My grandson is doing well.  My son is back in jail.  Life goes on.  It doesn't upset me anymore when my son goes to jail.  The first time he went to jail was fifteen years ago and since then he's been in and out too many times to count.  There was a period when he did well and went back to school and got his Business Degree but those days are over.  He seems to careen from one crisis to another and I am trying so hard not to take responsibility for his fucked up life.  He is an adult and has been for a long time but I still wonder what I did wrong.  I imagine I did lots of things wrong, like every parent that has ever lived, but I wasn't a bad mother.  I still hope that he becomes a good man and father.

It's snowing here and looks like it will snow for awhile.  It's supposed to get cold this week too, down to -30C which I don't like but which makes -15C seem warm in comparison.  The chickadees are busy at the feeder outside the window and there is sourdough baking in the oven, so a good day.

The woodpecker just showed up too:)