It was a Successful Failure, (or something like that).

The year is coming to a close, and the best I can do is admit that I did not succeed at accomplishing all that I set out to do with the 365 days I was given.

My Project 2012 — fell flat. I may attempt it for 2013, provided anyone wants to make it a competition and give me some “want-to” in order to actually do it. I am near completing my “back to school” challenge (February, as long as things to as planned). The dog has done remarkably well with all that he learned last year, but has yet to further his knowledge (for this, I take full responsibility). I have made progress with my sleep habits, have improved my health, and have managed to keep all of the pets, my child, and myself alive and healthy (yay). I successfully reduced my spending habits, and gained at least one new friend.

Overall, it was a successful year. My next post will cover where I failed, but at this time I am really here to promote the NYE header (click the balloon)… and to announce that I have to return at a later time (next few days) to state my resolution for the year twenty-thirteen.
That’s it for now…
pero, out

Causatum, defined.

Saturday morning, I completed my work shift, and headed home. Once there, I showered, got dressed, and gathered up the dog and his leash and some treats, and headed off to his (should that be OUR) obedience class. This was the first of the six classes, and we practiced a few basic things (which dog already knows). These would be SIT. (and) DOWN.

I know, I know. This dog is almost 2 years old, and compared to my previous dog — this one does not know much… (YET).

The new-to-him thing this past week was “LOOK” — (make eye contact with me, dog, and hold that eye contact until I say we’re done). They actually had used the word “WATCH” in training but my dog — perhaps having been taught this by previous owners or by someone at the shelter — responded to “LOOK” much more proficiently than “WATCH”. I am not sure how I figured that one out– other than possibly when I was demonstrating this task to someone and noticed that the dog responded very well to “LOOK” when compared to “WATCH”.

ANYWAY… (I lost my train of thought for a minute) Saturday, after obedience training, I returned home and pretty much spent the day as a blob on the sofa, aside from practicing these three tricks with dog.

When it came time for dinner, I decided to order chinese take-out. It sounded good, and I didn’t feel like cooking. I ate, and spent some time watching season 1 of Shameless (tv show on Shotime with William H. Macy). Sometime around 11-ish, I suddenly felt (let’s call it “intestinal distress”). It was a rather sudden onset of ICK with one bout of BLAH. I spent the entire night suffering. I spent most of Sunday with continued suffering… and today, I am still not back to my original luster.

Tomorrow, perhaps I can post about my “something I had not tried before” project… for now, I am still in recovery.

Molly: Status Update

Molly had her (hopefully) last vet appointment for a LONG time today.

She is doing well, though she is still healing. The vet stated that a good thing to do now would be to alternate the Silver sulfadiazine cream with Neosporin (without pain relief) every other day, and watch it to make sure it continues to heal.

(Snakes often die from burns like the one she obtained, and he was very pleased with her healing progress.)

She was fed today, so she is very happy. If anything changes I’ll post another update.

Good Morning (This My Sh!t!)

Behold! the loveliness I had waiting for me this morning. I have to say that I had made plans to do other things, so this was frustrating.

I had a dream last night — and remembered parts of it (not in great detail) but it was also a very short dream.

HOWEVER — this surprise from this morning … takes precedence over the dream, which has been documented and will be published tomorrow.

Anyway, I woke up this morning, around 7 o’clock– after actually SLEEPING for more than two hours. I got up, stretched, and walked towards the kitchen. As I passed the front room of my house, there it was. A puddle of dog sh!t. (Mind you, I use the word puddle intentionally, as this was not a pile of any kind.) This was NOT how I planned to spend my morning.

Now, before any of you think anything along the lines of “beating the animal”, please be reminded that my dog is fourteen years old. (His birthday was February 12th, so, that makes him equivalent to around 100 once you add in the months that have passed since his fourteenth birthday arrived. I hope that I am moving around as well as he is when I reach EIGHTY, let alone 96-100 years of age. My morning… was sh!tty. I cleaned up the semi-solids, and then I mixed soapy cleaning solution and brought out the Bissell. I did finally get the spot to near-invisible version of the stain, but it is still there. I will have to do more cleaning on this.

Well, Then…

As it turns out, Molly does not have a fungus (see previous post). She has a burn. Yes, a burn.

There has always been a heating pad beneath her “carpet” in her cage. While many books about snake care advise against this (because of the risk of burns), the heating pad is set to very low, and has never posed a problem in the fifteen years Molly has been around.

Tim arrived at my house fairly early. (Molly is his snake, his apartment manager will not permit her to live with him, so he brought her here.)

The vet gave me additional information for other methods of heating her enclosure, and after being shown how to administer antibiotic INJECTIONS (every 3rd day) and apply a burn cream (every day) to the areas affected, and Tim paid the $98.00 bill, we left.

Today, I have a nice list of TO-DOs to conquer, after which I can return home and be fairly lazy. The items on this list include, but are not limited to: picking up dog poo, showering, venturing out to buy toilet paper, exercising, cleaning out Molly’s terrarium, and applying cream to her burned abdomen.

While that may not seem like it will fill up much of the day, (nor is it exciting), it is currently approaching 10:30, I have not yet finished my coffee. I have yet to shower, and I am still in sweatpants and a T-shirt.

Have you seen where I left my motivation? I think I am going to need it today.

It’s coming!

I received an email today stating that my power adapter replacement is being shipped today. This means that I’ll once again have my computer back in order to start posting some stuff that I have written, and stuff I will write at a later date.

Today, I am taking Molly the boa constrictor to the vet — I think she has a fungal infection on her underside (search snake, fungal infection in google image search to get an idea of what I saw).

I’ll be around…

Partial Recall

It has been almost a year since I have been able to recall my dreams upon waking. I was discussing this with a friend on-line last night, and we were heading towards trying to figure out the reasons behind my inability to remember them lately.

In past months, I would awaken with no awareness of even having had dreams. While I know that I did dream, I believe that my sub-conscious mind is merely blocking me from remembering what they were about. I just don’t know the purpose of the sub-conscious doing this.

I have been doing some research on this subject, and found some information (although with “on-line” information, you can never really know the validity of the information you find).

I found some information that may be useful in my quest to find out:

Learning to recall your dreams may help you become a more assertive person. By remembering your dreams, you are expressing and confronting your feelings.¹)

The same site goes on to say:

Before going to bed, keep a clear mind. Having too many thoughts on your mind can distract you from remembering your dream in the morning. Tell yourself that “I will remember my dream when I wake up”. This is  a proven and effective technique to help dream recall. Simply by suggesting to yourself or motivating yourself to remember your dreams will actually help you to better remember your dreams.

This site has many more tips on how to remember dreams, but since I used to be able to recall them in detail without problem, I just need to get back in touch with — well, whatever it was that let me remember them before. I plan to figure it out and get back to a place where I can recall dreams in detail after waking.

– * — * –
_{unrelated but on my mind}
– * — * –
I am spending my morning catching up on TiVod recordings of FRINGE and working on the website. I have to go to the grocery store today, but I don’t want to go.

Wednesday night, a friend is bringing her dog by in order for it to stay with me for 4 days so that they can go on vacation. I am looking forward to this, and anticipate having fun with the visiting dog.

I have plans on dredging up some childhood memories, checking to be sure I have not already told the story, and posting them here in the near future.
—
_{source: (1) http://www.dreammoods.com}

Crapcircles. They do exist.

I feel unwell, and the dog is SICK. It is my day off; the first one I’ve had in a while, since I have been picking up any available shift lately, and I am beyond tired.

Normally, I have trouble sleeping. Normally. I was sleeping SOUNDLY this morning, and around FOUR O’CLOCK, the dog comes into my room, moaning and whining. I know what this has meant in the past, so I get up to let him out. Then I look into the livingroom and find crapnel, circling around in a spiral pattern. The only term I can think of that can give you an accurate image would be “crapcircles”. It mocked me. “Ha ha ha! Good morning to you, sir!”

“SH!T,” I think, quite literally. I spent the next twenty minutes picking up droplets of crap, spraying carpet cleaner on the darkened spots of carpet, and scrubbing the carpet in smaller circles with a brush, and disposing of paper towel waste in a plastic bag. Once that task was completed, evil whispered in my ear, “Check the room that serves as the office.” I wandered into the “office” and turned on the light. More crapcircles.

Sometime around 5:30am, I finished cleaning up the crapnel from the floor. My very light beige / near white / carpet seems unstained… but I am not entirely sure yet. I have the Bissel Carpet Steamer out and ready–I just wasn’t wanting to use such a noise-inducing machine when there were people sleeping. I have an appointment and an errand to run today, afterwhich I will steam-clean the areas affected by the dog.

This is not how one should start his or her day.

Where is my Mind?

I woke up this morning, showered, then fed the animals, poured my coffee, and read the news. I then did some channel surfing. Not finding much on television (even with over 150 channels–not counting pay-per-view), I grew bored, and began to contemplate cleaning the house.

The cat knocked his food dish of food, which sits on one of those tall scratching-post “cat trees”, standing approximately 5 feet off of the ground. He did not do this out of anger or to prove a point, but as he was jumping up to the top level… Instead of climbing through the bottom-hole in the level, he jumps from the floor up to the 5-foot tall ledge, grabs the edge and pulls himself up.

So, I had the pleasure of pulling the stand out away from the wall, and vacuuming up half of a cup of dry cat food.

Good Morning to me!

Dog delimma

I have been spending more time with hobbies again… cooking included. I have found / and fine tuned many new recipes, and I hope to find a few more before the year is up.

Currently, the house smells faintly of wet dog. This is because he had a bath today. Oddly enough, until tomorrow, he will smell worse than he did before I bathed him. I have never figured out why this occurs. Dog smells like dirty dog. Owner bathes dog. Dog now smells of shampoo and a hint of musty wet dog. Not just the dog, but the entire house. This lingers until the next day (at least).

The second problem resulting in now clean but still stinks dog is – the hair. Of all things – this dog sheds more than any dog I have ever owned. Post bath, there was a huge ball of hair (gathered from the tub bottom) that was about the size of a volley ball. Dog now has more hair evacuating his body; he looks frayed and fluffier. When I pet him – the hair leaps off in clumps. He seems to feel better (happier) but he is shivering.

No worries, dog. Tomorrow will be a better day.