Using up all nine lives....

My cat wookie is determined to use up those nine lives of hers. Last year around this time she went missing for a week and then finally came home with one of her eyes so badly damaged (hanging out of her head) that she had to have it removed. There have been several "locked in the neighbors shed for days till mom heard her howling" episodes; and of course the 45 minute trip out to Jamye and Adrianna's up underneath my truck. I still don't know how she survived that one. But the she seems determined to top even that one because this past Sunday night around 10:30pm she came home with a big fluid sack hanging from her stomach and several small abrasions one her face and one of her feet. So we rushed her to the emergency room thinking that she had been hit by a car or something. The vet thinking the same thing and fearing internal bleeding took x-rays right away only to find that she had been shot. Yes.... shot! There the pellet was lodged in her chest clear as day and the path it had taken through her side had sliced clean through her deep muscle creating an internal pocket that was filling with fluid, and air. There was however no internal bleeding and after two days at the emergency clinic and a trip to our regular vet this morning her diagnosis is looking good. She will have to be confined and on antibiotics for a few weeks but should heal without the surgery that we originally thought would be necessary to repair her damaged muscle. So we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Wookie of course thinks she is just fine and is none too happy about being locking our little tiny bathroom. Poor kitty :( We are now trying to decide what to do once she heals since we are afraid that letting her outside might mean a repeat of our current situation.. We may build her a little outdoor enclosure or something since she does like to get fresh air, but then again...she may not want out for a while after all of this!

Late night walk

We decided to take the dogs for a walk the other day around 9:30pm (its dark out at that time now) so we walked down the river walk since it has lights along the path. The walk is about 2 miles which is a nice distance for everyone. It was so much cooler out then when we go at 6 o'clock and we had the whole path to ourselves so it made for a very peaceful walk. There might not have been any other people out, but there was lots of critters. There is usually big fat night crawlers, beetles, frogs, and snakes moving across the path but we also had an opossum and an armadillo cross the path so that was fun to see; I think armadillos are so interesting. However, the highlight of the night was by far the beaver. On the way in we saw a shadow move across the wooden bridge that crosses over the path and Pekoe got really excited but we didn't know what it was. Well, on the way back over the bridge Jeramie says "hey look, there's what Pekoe saw!" so I looked down and low and behold there was a beaver paddling along the top of the river. I have never seen one in its natural habitat so I was pretty excited. Its amazing how such an awkward looking creature can be so graceful. :D We watched him swim along until he reached a brushy embankment and then ducked under the water to enter his little "lodge" underneath. Too cool!

We are now going to try and take an evening walk at least 3 times a week so we (dogs and people) can all get a little exercise. I hope we stick with it.... seems like we don't meet to many of our health goals these days.... sigh..... must do better!!

Animal updates

Mischa gets bigger and more enthusiastic every day. Here are a couple shots of her with her ear tape off about a month ago, we are currently still taping since her tips have starting curling back....argh! Sometimes I think we will still be taping 2 more months from now.... I sure hope not!

Sid the lizard is also growing and is about 10 inches long now, so about half of his adult size. He eats lots of salad these days, but crickets are still his favorite. He likes to wait until they run and then he chases them down and sticks his tongue out to catch them :)

Tuskeegee National Forest

Wow I am so far behind on this blog here and the pictures are building up in my camera! Here are some pics I took last month when Jer and I took the dogs and drove about 50 mins. out to Tuskegee National Forest. If I remember correctly we weren't that impressed with it since the roads weren't marked and they all intersected making it very hard to find your way around. We did see a couple of really neat lizards; a little lime green one inside the parks notice board, and strange looking gray one with a red throat. There were also a lot of pretty wild flowers, including some lovely pink roses and there was a 15 mile horse trail there (the only marked trail on the place) that I would like to take Ima on sometime.

We drove around aimlessly on the dirt roads for about 45 mins at which point the sky started tuning dark and a huge thunder shower hit us. It was a good thing that we got out of the maze of roads when we did because they were mostly make of red clay with lots of little ravines and deep ruts so it is very likely we would have gotten stuck in the car :-0

Puppy pictures

Okay here are a few new pics of the puppy, two from just before and two from just after she had her ears cropped, enjoy :)

Hiking at Flatrock Park

A couple of weeks ago Jer and I discovered a new park called "Flat Rock" so we decided to take the dogs out for a walk and check it out.

The park was huge with tons of trails It gets its name from these big flat rock formations that cover large areas on the ground; water trickles through them and they are really pretty, next time I will have to get some photos of them.

We ended up walking the beginner dirt bike trail through the woods which was about 2 miles long. The shade was nice but next time I think we will walk a different trail because we are trying to leash train Mischa and it was just to narrow and brushy for that. I did find myself thinking that they would make good horse trails.... if they were allowed.... sigh :)

We really enjoyed our walked there and have been back a couple times since, but we have been sticking to more open areas. The last time we went I slipped on the slimy rocks and landed in the water....I had to laugh at myself, especially since right before I walked acrossed the rocks I said "I am so clumsy that I am sure I will slip and fall in there" LOL. It hurt my back later that night but at the time it was pretty funny :D

New Puppy Mischa

Well I have been very delinquent on my blog here lately. School is wrapping up for the summer and we have been really busy at home. Jer works away at LTR and I have been looking for a part time job since school will be out soon.

The most recent news is that we got a new puppy. She is a boxer named Mischa and she is a real riot. She is 12 weeks old now (we got her when she was 9 wks) and at her last vet appointment she weighed 19.6 pounds; she has been gaining over a pound a week lately but she is still all joints and feet. She looks especially silly right now running around the house with a cone on her head (she had her ears cropped last week) and I cant help but laugh at her when she is being goofy. Last night she kept jumping up on the couch despite the fact that I kept telling her no.... but she was being stubborn about it, so Jer snapped his finger and said "OFF" in a loud voice and guess what she did? She ran over bouncing across the room and jumped on him instead, I couldn't help but laugh, and then I got in trouble too haha :D

Birthday Pie

Last Sunday we had a little birthday get together for Jeramie...who is now officially a quarter of a century old.... :D His brother Jayme, sister in law Adriana and their two kids cam over for a barbecue. Jer cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill (I got a boca burger), Adriana brought a cookie cake (and candles) and I made some pasta salad and apple pie for dessert. I was going to take a pic of the pie before we "broke into it" but I forgot so here it is....post nibbling :)

It was a really pretty day and the kids played outside for a while after dinner. It sure is nice to have a fenced yard so we didn't have to worry about anyone wandering off! Pekoe loves kids and had fun following them around and licking them in the face... :-0

Before they left Jayme gave Jer his little grill that we had borrowed for the occasion so now we are planning to grill again this coming Sunday :)

Mani - Pedis

Last week I talked Jer into getting a pedicure and manicure with me in Wal-mart while we waited for the tax lady to finish up. They are cheap at Wal-mart and Jer's callouses are so bad....so he said okay :) He actually discovered that the massaging chair that you sit in is pretty nice and who knows I might actually get him to go in with me again sometime....here are pics of our pretty fingers and toes .... hahaha!

Time for that rottweiler......

Jer and I have been discussing getting a larger dog; he wants jogging partner that can keep up (sadly Pekoe and I don't fit the bill), I would like to try out obedience and weight pull again and have a dog I can take roller blading, plus we have been thinking that it might be safer with the type of neighborhood that we live in. Well we were right on the latter to be sure!

Last night around 2am I was just drifting off to sleep on the living room floor (Jer was snoring away in the bed as usual) when the neighbors American Bulldog started barking incessantly. I have never really heard her bark like that before but I figured maybe it was a cat or opossum in alley so I ignored her for a few moments hoping she would settle down. Finally when it became apparent that she wasn't going to pipe down anytime soon I opened the back door and yelled for her to be quiet. Just then I looked over and noticed that both the front doors were open on our car. We had done laundry that day but surely Jeramie hadn't left the doors open when he brought the clothes in, he is very good about that kind of thing. So I went over to inspect the car and immediately noticed that the front window was busted out and the stereo was torn out of the console; we had been robbed! I went straight into the house and called the police.

Meanwhile, our neighboor (owner of the dog) came out to see what all the ruckus was about and saw the perps hiding behind the neighbors house (they must have hid when they saw my house lights come on but where unable to run until I went back into the house) he actually took his gun and a flashlight and when after them when they lit off across the traintracks but was unable to chatch them. He filled me in on what he saw and I apoligized profusly for yelling at his dog who was doing a very good job of watching out for us! I feel like I owe her a bone or something since thanks to her I was alterted and they were interupted. If they hadnt been I am sure that they would taken more items from the car such as my camera; which I am very grateful to still have in my possesion.

After talking with the neighbor for a few moments I went in and woke Jeramie to tell him what had happened. The officer arrived a few minutes later and I have to say that he was one of the worst officers I have ever met. He parked way out in front of our neighbors house no where near where the incident had occured, no flashing lights.... nothing. He wasnt even going to bother looking at the crime scene or writing a report unless we really wanted him too...those were his exact words too!! Ofcourse I insisted that he do his job. What ever happened to protect and serve? I mean seriously, he gets paid to take care of citizens in need and I got the distinct feeling that that he didn't give a flying you know what about protecting or serving us in any way.

So now we have no radio/cd player, a chewed up center console, a broken window to replace on our already tight budget right now and I don't know how I will sleep nights. I am worried that if they are willing to bust into our car then surely our home isn't off limits either! We are pretty fortunate to have nice neighbors directly on each side of us, but I guess we have been pretty naive about the crime in our neighborhood as a whole. So, we immediately talked to the landlord about dead-bolts on our doors and a flood light on the back of our house. We also have decided to definitely get a bigger dog as soon as we can afford one. Also until we can afford alarm systems on the vehicles we wont get another cd player in the car. We took everything value able out of both the rigs and are just going to park them with the doors unlocked; at least that way we don't have to pay for another window if someone else decides that they want to rummage through our vehicles.

Nap time

Just a few random pictures of my lazy family.... :)

Cooking Cuban

Jeremy and I have been talking about trying new foods and eating healthier so we went to the library and checked out a bunch of cookbooks, Cuban, Thai, Indian, Italian, Vegetarian, American etc.. We are going to try and cook a meal together once a week and so yesterday we cooked our first meal.

We decided to try a few recipes from the Cuban cookbook "Cooking the Cuban Way" for our first meal. As most of my friends know, I am a vegetarian (although I break the rules occasionally for certain types of fish), but Jer is a meat eater so I frequently include a meat dish in our meals. I am proud to announce that while he wont go completely vegi with me, Jer has given up pork and cut back on other red meats in an effort to eat healthier. So, for our recipes last night we choose: garbanzo bean salad (ensalada de garbanzos), Cuban white rice (arroz de Cubano), and garlicky shrimp (I don't know the Spanish for that one :D).

The rice was really just long grain white rice cooked w/olive oil and sauteed fresh garlic, the garbanzo bean salad was fairly simple as well: a mixture of peppers, red onions, home-made dressing and of course garbanzos. The shrimp was a little more complicated however since neither one of use had ever cooked shrimp before. We had no idea how to "peel and de-vein" shrimp, lol. At first we thought maybe they were already peeled but soon discovered that was not the case! Thankfully there was some written instructions in the cookbook and how to perform the "procedure". It is a gross process as shrimp are ugly little things and the vein that you cut out looks like a string of fish poop....I'm not making this meal sound very good am I? Haha! I was surprised that they didn't smell too bad, as I hate the smell of seafood, but we decided that the fact that they were fresh wild-caught had a lot to do with it.

After the shrimp were all prepared we sauteed them in a pan with 6 cloves of garlic, fresh lime juice and various seasonings to taste. Then we spooned them over the rice and served them with the chilled garbanzo salad on the side; and it was time to eat. I did nibble a little bite of the shrimp but found it to be just as awful as I remembered seafood being (the last time I hate seafood was over 10 years ago), but I thought the rice was pretty good and I loved the garbanzo bean salad. Being the opposites that we are, Jeramie of course liked the shrimp and rice but didn't care for the salad. All in all we thought the meal was okay, but I don't think we will be adding it to our recipe box.

Note to self: the whole house did end up stinking like rotten seafood for hours after we cooked.....no more cooking of seafood indoors!!

Leather head....

Apparently the guys at work made a deal with Jeramie -he shaves his head, and they will shave theirs. So last night we clipped off all his hair and then shaved it smooth with a razor. I actually thought it was pretty cute clipped really short but the naked head is, well, naked! LOL. Every time I turn around its like looking at a stranger! When Wookie (our cat) saw him for the first time all her hair stood up and she hunched up her back like he was an alien that was going to eat her. It was so funny I laughed till me eyes teared! Human heads fell weird when they are naked, kind of like pigskin....I must admit I am glad that his hair grows fast, and I am hoping he wont decide he likes this look :-0

PetSmart

On Sunday we (Jeramie, Pekoe and I) all went down to Petsmart to get some fish for the tank that Jeramie gave me for Valentines day. I already have a few fish in it but we are buying them a little at time. I already knew what type of fish I wanted so it was just a matter of locating them and waiting our turn in line so that someone could "fish" them out for us. I ended up getting 3 Gouramies, one red, one powder blue, and one non-hybrid coloration. They are only about 2 inches long at maturaty but so far will be the biggest fish in my tank.

In addition to having a fish tank set up in our house we have also had a terrarium (reptile cage) set up for a little while now (it was my gift to Jer) we just haven't put anything in it yet. So after getting fish we decided to go and take a look at the lizards. Jeramie has been wanting a Bearded Dragon for a while now (I must confess that I think they are pretty cool too) but we just haven't had the money to buy one so we do a lot of window shopping.

So, as we usually do we headed over to check out the baby "beardies" and we ended up seeing this one little guy at the top that was really neat. Long story short - he was a really good price and Jer fell in love with him so we now officially have a bearded dragon.

We brought our new little beardie home right away since they are dessert dwellers and cant be out of the heat for too long. He looked so tiny in his terrarium (its 75 gals.) but at an adult size of 18 - 22 in. he will grow into it quick! It was amusing to watch him check out his new habitat and especially cool to watch him chase down and eat the little baby crickets that we brought home for him. Boy can the little fella eat; he ate 6 crickets in one evening! Pekoe and Wookie were especially interested in the latest addition and sat peering into his cage for hours. I am sure that they both think he would be a great play thing and or tasty snack so we will have to keep him safe until he is a little bigger :)
We watched him for a while until he was all settled in basking under the lamp on his sandstone and then we left him to his self while we worried about which movie to watch with dinner.

P.S. we named him "Sid" after the sloth on Ice Age but we figure it could also be short for Sidney if 'he' turns out to be a 'she'... Sidney is the capital of Australia -which is where Bearded Dragons come from :)

Proud Little Me...

Last Thursday in English class the teacher announced that she had her first A this semester (she is really tough to even get a B out of) and she asked if anyone would mind having their paper read aloud because she wasn't going to identify the writer. No-one minded and so she started reading... I was shocked when I realized it was my paper! I have been so frustrated with that class being so much harder then I ever remember English being when I was in HS that it was just the boost I needed to re-interest me and keep me going. It was just a short descriptive paragraph that was supposed to describe a place without movement, really it was very simple and I only thought it was okay, but I am glad she liked it.

Math is going fine. I don't think I have gotten lower then an 85% on any test, quiz, or homework. Most of them are in the 90's, some even 100%. Its crazy....I thought I couldn't do math! Spanish is a repeat of 102 so it hasn't been too difficult either; and I got an 84% on my first Art Appreciation test. Man that was a hard test; so much memorization!

Well I guess that's a wrap on school stuff for now. :)

moving ahead

Well I just sold my trailer last night...boo hoo...but now I have some money to put some furniture into our new place and will buy a new trailer again next fall. I am still working hard to get everything done in the little cottage...then I will post pics for you all to see. :)

Classes this semester:

Math, English, Art Appreciation, and Spanish.

Updates

Okay so it has been forever since I have posted here! So here are my speed notes to get everyone up to date....

1. I met a new guy in September. His name is Jeramie Countryman. We have been dating ever since and now we live together.
2. I have been living in a little cabin in Phenix City, Al for the past two months.
3. I quit my job as a supervisor at K-mart (they thought breaks during work hours were a luxury at their convenience and I thought they were a legal requirement...humh!).
4. I still attend school full time at C.V.C.C. and plan to transfer to C.S.U. in 2010.
5. I have salvaged a relationship with my dad, but after learning yet another lesson the hard way just recently; have decided we will be much better friends if I no longer except his help when offered :-0
6. I still have one dog: Pekoe, one horse: Imaginn, and one cat: Wookie.

Well I guess that is all the big stuff....now I can try and keep this thing up to date again :-0