Feels like Spring!

Song of the day: “In and out of love” by Armin van Buuren and Sharon den Adel. I know, who’d have thunk I’d ever like anything by a DJ, but there you go. Hah.

I just got back from a run with the Knight…right after I had to replace his bandage for the third time, darn it. It seems that every day he gets it in his head that he needs a clean one, and will rip the old one off. Luckily he lets me put a new one on his stump, because what with his tendency to walk into stuff, I am rather afraid to leave it all out in the open. On the most part it doesn’t look bad. All the stitches, except for one are holding, and though it bled a little last night after he licked at it (he sticks the stump into his cone to get to it) there doesn’t seem to be a lot of damage done. Other than that, he appears to be healing well and easily kept up while we ran today.
As a treat he’s been getting sausages, and tomorrow grandpa will buy a pound of liver for him so we can substitute the blood-loss a little.

Okay, let’s move along. Since yesterday was a virtual loss with another trip to town, I’m just giving a sum-up rather than a detailed description.
I started the day making fresh cream cheese and chilli for lunch.
There was some gardening, checking up on the veggies, planting cauliflowers, sprouts and leek, and walking tenant down into the yard.
She went all the way down to the terrace of the arches, which was at least twenty yards further than usual. Hah. She did excellent, and really enjoyed the sunshine while we ate Chilli, followed by continuing with the arbor for the brambles and raspberries. We had wanted to finish it, but considering I had to go to the store to pick up my fixed phone, visit our insurance agent (little sister still didn’t receive her replacement card) and then to the industrial area to pick up the woodstove we ordered for the big house the other day.

We were successful in all endeavors and my phone works again, so by the time we got home, big brother and I started on the edit and that was that.

The only good really good thing was that the weather was splendid...and still is, for that matter. Not cold at all anymore. Felt like spring, in fact.

Which brings us to today:
It’s been a tad busy, in particular since I started the morning making dough for a chard pizza, and a normal one, because let’s face it, the sibs are still picky eaters. *sigh*
Next, after a rather late breakfast and a long session of folding dry, and hanging wet laundry, and then getting the stuff I needed to continue with the tiling of the laundry corner. Oh, did I mention that in one of the previous blogs? Well, anyway, I am tiling the corner for the washing machine. Yep, the mess in that corner was driving me friggin’ bonkers for years and I finally decided to do something about it.

While big brother and I are putting up a days of sorts and tiling the lot, grandpa is doing the wood-work for the large folding table I’m getting there, along with two large baskets that will hang underneath to hold the dirty laundry. It is starting to look more and more like a bath house and this is somewhat entertaining.

Regretfully we ran out of glue before we were done, so we stopped and went down to have lunch with tenant (she insisted on going down again) before doing some mild gardening and continuing on with the framework for the arbor. Two more slats to go and it will be done. Yay.

After this came the running, of course, well after doing Knight II’s tail of course. Such a stubborn boy, our Knight. But anyway. I was off to a bad start, but finished with a good sprint that made up for it in spades.

Which means that I am now done with the blog, because I need to edit and catch up on my messages. Gotta go.

Poor Knight II

Song of the day: “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay. I never thought I’d say it, but there is a song from Coldplay that I like and this is it. Hah.

Okay, let me just tell you why I didn’t write yesterday, but after we got home from grocery shopping and big brother and I were about to head out into the yard for some serious relaxation, grandpa asked me to help him out in the old paddock for a moment. So I got Mosha, Sitabah and Dax through the little gate and was just about to pull the gate shut behind Knight II when, from the corner of my eye I saw his tail swing in-between the post and gate just when I pulled it shut.

He jumped, squealed, and right there, before my very eyes, I saw the slightly disfigured part of his tail pop right off. Iiiiiiih! Seriously. I made that indignant, girlish sound before I started swearing like a sailor. The tail immediately started dripping dark blood, and for a moment I was unsure what to friggin’ do. I let him through the outside gate, knowing full well that I’d have to get him to the vet, and tenant’s caretaker offered to stay with him while I ran down to get big brother from the greenhouse.

Then it was rushing back up to get my dogs locked up, only to be rushed up to the gate by grandpa who was telling me to get to Knight II who was starting to bleed more and more.
I tried, I really did, but Knight II wouldn’t let me grab hold of the bleeding stump until we had him in the car and he was starting to get a little faint. I had climbed into the back to sit with him and try to stem the bleeding, but while I did that, he’d blearily climbed to the front seat. So we ended up with Knight sitting beside big brother in the front, and me leaning over the back with a towel clamped firmly around the stump.

Blood was everywhere! A stream of it on the floor by my feet, a puddle on the seat beside me, and while we drove, the towel in my hands began to overflow. I was seriously nauseated and covered in the gooey stuff by the time we got to the vet, who took one look at the tail bleeding all over her floor before she left the folks she’d been talking to and wrapped her fingers around the severed piece. That is how we moved to the operating room, me holding Knight by the collar, big brother guiding his behind, and the vet trailing behind holding the tail as we weighed him and then injected him with a tranq.

It took a bit, but he did quiet down and slowly dropped off to sleep while a tourniquet was applied and I stroked his massive head. He made a few attempts to get up when the vet told me I could go and could come to get him in the morrow, but after only a bit of insistence it was agreed that I would come to get him around closing time and take him home with me.

We did agree to having the tail amputated at least halfway, since with Knight II’s tendency to wag his tail to bits in pure enthusiasm, having it heal from this would have been practically impossible.

So we went home, and while grandpa and caretaker offered to clean the car up a bit we headed inside to have a quick snack. What with grocery shopping just behind us, we hadn’t even had lunch yet, so ‘round seven in the evening, my stomach was balancing precariously between wanting to hurl or travel up in search of food itself. Hah.

Within no time at all we were back on the road to pick up. We arrived one minute short of closing time and headed on out to the back where Knight II was just coming to from the anesthetic. The vet’s assistant wasn’t sure he’d be able to walk, but when his gate was opened, he came tottering towards me like a lush…only to flop down on his butt again when he reached me.

Poor Knight II; so much leg and bone, and hardly any coordination to work them with. *sigh*
We ended up half carrying him back to the car, his tail only half the length and covered with a white bandage. I was advised to put a collar cone around his neck if I noticed him touching his tail, but knowing Knight the way I do, I decided not to take the risk and went for the collar the moment we got home…he wrecked it within six hours, by the way.

He spent the majority of the evening doped up on the couch, trying to keep track of me (doing edits) but finding himself incapable of keeping his eyes open for longer than five minute stretches. By the time we headed up to my cabin, he had regained some of his strength and dashed off with his usual enthusiasm…if with even less grace. *sigh*

I can honestly say that Knight II knows how to milk an ailment, for he was pitiful throughout the evening, and later when we were back in my cabin. He refused to lie down unless I was sitting beside him. He kept looking at me woefully, and when I didn’t give him the attention he craved he would try to go for the bandage and thus gain me full attention again. Smart big bastard. Hah.

The night was spent with him squeezed against me, of course, because he would not move an inch and I didn’t dare giving him the usual elbow in the ribs from fear of hitting the stump somehow.
Let’s just say that I was properly wrecked this morning and was more than happy to let the dogs out of the cabin. *sigh*

Of course he is once again on antibiotics…seriously, those things will be the death of him yet…and since he whined after knocking his tail into my leg, I decided to pop him a couple of pain pills as well.
He is still milking his affliction, but other than that things were back to normal today.

I spend the morning making cheesecake for mom’s birthday (which was yesterday, mind you), doing laundry, helping tenant (caretaker has a job again, since the day before yesterday), going into the yard to check up on everything we couldn’t check on yesterday, and then tiling my laundry corner. I know, that’s a lot of information to put in a single sentence, but what the heck.

Considering that the elevation we put in near the washing machine, was dry, big brother and I spent this afternoon putting in beautiful light blue mosaic tiles. It is not done completely yet, mind you, but I can see the somewhat “Turkish bath” idea coming along. Hah.

Well, that was it, I’ve got an edit to do, messages to check and…lots more. Gotta go.

Tenant's place

Song of the day: “Hey you,” by Shakira, preceded by “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor and some Corrs song that I can’t really remember the title of. Hah. Oh, I also had Iio at some point in the past couple of days. You know the song, right? “Rapture”? Very catchy.

Considering I went off the usual routine with the last blog, I am at a complete loss when what happened, so bear with me and…well, you’ll have to figure it out yourself…if you want to. Hah.

Editing: There have been good days and a couple of bad ones. First we missed our quota of one chapter a day (I know, Aaaaah) and then big brother and I got into a forty-five minute argument about a comma and a gerund. Seriously, it was ugly, and in the end we were forced to compromise and deleted the entire sentence (which was really a paragraph) rather than continue the argument. *sigh* Very annoying when you’re both incredibly stubborn. And it was such a nice sentence, darn it!

We went for another run and that was awesome. The weather had been atrocious for several days, so the moment things cleared up a bit we headed out with Knight II and ran a decent distance. So good to head out into the wild for a bit and breath in the clean country air until you no longer feel like screaming from the continuing downpour. So I wasn’t going all that well, but I did make the distance and that is all that matters to me at this point. My joints felt pleasantly lubricated afterwards, and though there were some sore muscles (and my foot hurt considerably this morning) it was worth every step. Besides, Knight II actually appeared to enjoy himself. Seriously, he ran!

Finally big brother’s cupboards are done, and they are absolutely gorgeous. Painted this thing a dark caoba that gleams in the light. It has eight doors, two shelves and it really does a beautiful job for storage. I am going to take pictures the moment I get my phone back from the store. Hah.

Yesterday was spent working at tenant’s place. We installed the new woodstove at her place, but to achieve this, we had to completely rearrange her rooms. We ended up taking everything out because the floor had sagged and we needed to level it temporarily at least, until we can put in her new tile floor. This took up some time, of course, but we did manage it prior to installing the stove. We decided to put it in the corner, the tube going straight up, and therefore in the safest spot, because the walls are stone there…which reminds me, grandpa painted it a quaint yellow this morning, because it was dirty as heck.

While big brother finished up with the woodstove, I put tenant’s furniture back inside and worked on her favorite closet, which is going to need some serious repairs in the near future. For now I’ve only put in new shelves, but I am going to have to use a lot of glass to make it dust free while still maintaining the cuteness of the furniture. The thing also needs a lick of paint.

Since the stove is going need a lot of room, the closet won’t fit in her room anymore, at which point we decided that it would also look rather nice in the new glass section of her kitchen.
Tenant was extremely cheerful these last couple of days, by the way, and she actually strolled down with her caretaker several times so she could get a breath of fresh air.

I finished reading M.M. Kaye’s “Trade Wind” and had an absolute blast. I missed reading stories like that, what with all the commercial fiction I’ve been dieting on for the past few years. Such eloquence and complicated sentence structures are like ambrosia for my soul. Finally I get where I get my tendency to go for old-fashioned prose in my writing. Books like that, which were par for the course way back when.

I have, instead started reading “Fire-heart” by C.S. Marks and am pleasantly surprised by how much more I am liking this one, compared to Elfhunter. Not that the latter was bad, but I think that in Fire-heart she found her groove, so to speak. I’m looking forward to finding out how the characters will further develop. Looks like I’ll be heading towards another review in the near future.

Okay, what else? Well, I made cream cheese again, of course, meaning that there are plenty of pancakes going around, since I have found that pancakes made from whey are absolutely delicious. Who needs cookies when you’ve got pancakes. Hah.

Touri. I might be paranoid when it concerns him. This is usually the case when I’m worried about my dogs. I will start maudlin and before you know it, the poor thing will be as good as dead in my head. He (Touri) appears to be suffering from some discomfort, but other than that there is not much change. He has a slight limp, but if it is worse or better, I cannot really say, much to my regret. I’ll just have to wait and see if the medications work and if his body is strong enough to defeat this pesky cell trouble.

There’s been wood sawing going on, what with the arches we made down by the basin needed wooden fencing to protect brambles and raspberries from the dogs. I would have liked to work on my field kitchen, but there really wasn’t time.

Of course there were the normal chores such as cleaning and laundry, but what with all the rain, my lines are filled to full capacity so there really is not any use of doing any more laundry until the stuff has dried. Since the sky cleared somewhat, I was hopeful that this would be the case tonight, but around four in the afternoon the rain came down again.

I still have an edit to do, and I only have a few more hours to go before I have to go out. Ah well, not much to tell about anymore, anyway.