My little old man

I have a little dog named Bruiser.  He's mostly shi-tzu but there's a little maltese mixed in.  I wrote a blog entry about my discount puppy back in June of 2012.  That's him! 

He's now pushing 15.  Hard.

Currently we are fighting some dry eye issues with him.  Since August his system isn't taking over from the medicine very well, like it used to.  He used to need occasional help.  Now heaven help you if you miss a dose because his eyes will be mattered up, swollen and red!  He's had so much eye medicine lately that he cries now when I treat him.  He used to sort of look forward to it because he'd get a treat after.  He doesn't care about that anymore.  He just doesn't want me digging in his poor sore eyes. 

He gets cold even when it's 70 in the house.  It's hard for me to get a good night's sleep anymore because he gets up, turns around and ends up out of his covers (yes I tuck him in at night now days) and I have to go cover him up again so he's warm enough.  On cool days he wears his sweater all day to help him feel more comfortable. 

He doesn't get excited about much anymore.  He used to run and bounce.  Now he walks slowly.  He's pretty quiet except when he wants in.  We carry him up and down the stairs to go potty because he can't handle them anymore.  He sleeps 95% of the time.  He gets up to eat, go potty and occasionally change where he's sleeping.  He likes a little sleep variety I guess! 

Yesterday morning when I got out of the bathroom I discovered that he'd apparently fallen while having his breakfast and had spilled his food and water all over.  I got it cleaned up and set it up so he could have another go at it if he wanted.  In recent months his right front leg has decided to not support him at random times.  It doesn't appear to hurt him or be sore but it just won't support him.  He tries to walk and falls.  Then he gets scared and won't do anything for a while.  Luckily it passes.

Yesterday evening, when I got home from work I was discussing my worries about him with my daughter Lacey.  I feel bad because it seems like life has become a struggle for him and I don't sense that he's really enjoying much of it anymore.  He's sore.  He cries or groans when we pick him up to take him to go potty.  He is deaf and startles all the time when we reach to pet him.  He's more inclined to run away than to seek human contact.

Last night I tried to pick him up and cuddle him.  He looked at me and cried a little while I petted him.  I finally put him down and he wandered off to sleep.

I'm running out of eye medicine fast so called the vet to get more.  They said he had to come in for an appointment before they'd refill his prescription so I set an appointment for this PM.  The scheduler asked me if this would be for his annual immunizations.  I sat a moment and said no.  I said I would probably be putting him down before the snow flew because I didn't want to put him through another winter.  Then I hung up and cried for a while on my front step while he wandered around sniffing things.

Last winter was very hard on him.  He isn't tolerating the cold.  He's worse now than he was as the start of last winter.  I've been dreading it and feeling so sorry for him.  Last night I finally got the message that the time has come.  I finally saw his life, as it is now and as it will be this winter and realized I can save him from some suffering by making the call sooner rather than later.  It's not like he's going to get over this.  He's simply getting old.  You don't get over that.

I guess I've been waiting for him to do something dramatic, like lay down and refuse to get up or get super sick or get a tumor or something, so I'd know it was time.  Suddenly I realized I knew it is time.  I hate it.  But I know it.  My Mom was right.  She said I'd know when it was time.  Didn't come about like I expected but it's happened. 

When we had to put our kitty Snickers to sleep years ago it was a surprise...I figured I'd be paying huge vet bills to make him better but the vet called and said his systems were shutting down and it was time to let him go.  We were devastated.  He was a young cat so it was very unexpected and painful.  And there was no choice.  This time has been harder.  It's been on me to try to figure out when he needs to go.  And I've been waiting for him to give me a neon sign.  I didn't get a neon sign but I finally get it.  This isn't about me.  It's about him and his quality of life.  I don't get an easy out like a neon sign.  I have to make the call and at this point it's cruel to wait for him to give me some dramatic neon sign.  He's telling me every day.

I'm going to get his medicine tonight and talk to the vet about things.  We'll do a cursory check and I'm hoping they can do something for his sore eyes because the medicine isn't doing the greatest job anymore. 

I will keep him a bit longer for my own sake.  This is really hard!!

So many things have been gradual and we've just adjusted and cared for him.  But last night, when I looked at him and thought about how he's living his life it makes me sad.  He seems to be interested in less and less as the days pass.  At his age, it's not going to get better.  So it's time.  Well almost.  Soon.

I won't be letting him go tonight.  I need to talk to the rest of my kids and my family to let them know and have a chance to adjust to what's coming and say their good-byes.  That's partly why I wrote this because it's easier than explaining it over and over.  I have some time before it gets so cold that it'll be hard for him.   I can put up with some disturbed nights recovering him for a while longer.  I raised 3 kids and survived that!  We have some time.

This morning I flushed his eye out...one is ok and the other is angry.  I took him out and fed him and then medicated both eyes.  He tried to get away.  He cried.  I made it quick and then he sat near me, looked at me and whimpered for a little bit.  I told him I was sorry.  I really am. 

Dead in the water, WoW, old knees and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup S'mores

OK!  Do over!  I just deleted what I started with because it was too depressing! 

It was about my diet that I've started again but am not doing well with this week. BLAH! 

My accounting software is inaccessible right now so I'm dead in the water at work.  Huh.  Yesterday was miserably slow here so I decided to leave early since I was going to be so busy today.  I'm not busy yet.  Is it Monday?



It's my blog so I can do what I want.

TO THOSE WHO DON'T GAME, YOU CAN IGNORE THIS SECTION BECAUSE IT REALLY WON'T MAKE SENSE TO YOU.

World of Warcraft came out with a new patch this week that has me re-addicted to the game.  I haven't even been leveling my little shadow priest!  Been too busy doing pet battling. 

The reason I started pet battling is because I apparently am even crowd phobic in virtual reality.  They opened up a new area called Timeless Isle.  Everyone and their Onyxian Whelplings seem to have arrived at the isle simultaneously! 

If you want to find a quest giver, just look for a pile of toons mobbing in one area instead of running and leaping around like fools in a more random pattern.  Somewhere in the toon pile you'll find your quest giver.  Have fun clicking on him/her to get your quest! 

I explored the isle, picked up some sweet epics (some of which I need to mail to my other toons as my druid can't use them) and fulfilled several quests.  Then, as the mobs were getting on my last nerve, I decided I needed to figure out this pet battling thing.  It's perversely addicting.  I use my battle pets to fight wild pets and then trap them and use them to fight more, etc.  And there is a quest series associated with it.  Best part?  No mobs for me to deal with! 

I should probably go back to the isle while everyone is running amok since the drops are higher at the moment and I have a chance at getting some good gear and loot.  Already ramped up 5 equipment levels the first night I was there! 

My druid is raid ready!  Now I just need to study some raids so I don't totally blow it for the group by acting like a complete noob.  I'm sure there will be plenty of others to blow it who won't study the raids but are now geared to that level. 

I haven't raided since I started playing after over a more than 2 year hiatus from the game.  I used to raid a lot and have fond memories of it.  My brother, sister and I ran Karazhan not too long ago and we were 1-2 shotting bosses that used to take a huge amount of coordination, patience and skill to bring down.  It was bittersweet.  I remember all the strategy and the hours we spent working through those bosses!  I also remember goofing off with my friends, whispering to each other about nonsense that had nothing to do with the game, dancing, leaping, jumping and generally goofing off and then, I'd realize I had no idea what the raid leader had been talking about for strategy and had to hope I wouldn't nerf it for everyone.  Being a mediocre boomkin I wasn't exactly a power player so most of the time my role wasn't too tricky.  DPS and off-heals and an occasional off-tank job.  By the way, the new patch gave my armor a bump in boomkin form again - WOO HOO!!!  For a while it seemed pointless for me to be in that form except for the crit bump I gave my teammates.  I'm looking forward to learning some new fights in the new expansions! 

this is my druid in moonkin aka boomkin aka critchicken form - adorable huh?

THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT SECTION OF THIS BLOG ENTRY IS NOW COMPLETE (MOSTLY)

Still waiting for my accounting software to come on line.  (eye roll)  I'm here to keep my chair warm.  I move occasionally so the lights stay on in here.  Sigh.  I should quit bitching.  I have a job at least.  I earn enough to pay the bills.  Life could be worse!  But when you look at your life and each minute that you can't get back and how you spend those minutes, sometimes...

I bitch about pointless hours at work, not working much when how much of my life do I waste playing WoW?  But then again, I like WoW!  It's fun!  Work...not so much.  (Note to self - take a bike ride tonight or something)

I have moments where I feel good about work.  Like earlier this week when I finally sat back after a race to catch up after vacation (not totally caught up yet but getting there) and was feeling like I totally rocked because I am stinking FANTASTIC at this job!!  For real!  I was enjoying a moment of serenity.  Savoring it really.  I had plans for the next day (yesterday) to be all productive but they basically fell through.  I was going to work in archiving.  Got started but when I hauled the first load of files to the shredding box I discovered it was packed full to the gills.  So I ended up tidying up the work area where I'd previously thrown contract binders all over the floor, because I wasn't going to be able to finish the job that day.  So I went back to my office to wait for time to be posted so I could get rolling with billing.  While I waited I chased some past due receivables.  Did some filing.  Twiddled my thumbs.  Pondered my existence.  Finally gave up and went home thinking today would be busy.  And I can't work yet today.  Sigh. 

This AM it was really, really hard to get out of bed!  Last night I was feeling old.  Earlier this week I did lunges while watching TV.  Figured it'd be good exercise.  It probably was but with my crappy knees I'm still paying for it.  The reason I bring this up is that my knees now ache bad enough when I'm sleeping to wake me up.  Repeatedly.  The right knee in particular.  It's getting old.  I'm getting old!  For crying out loud I only did a few lunges!  Should I have to go through days of pain over this?  (sound of tiny violin playing)

Just got another email that Vision is down.  I knew that 2.5 hours of non-productive time at work ago.  I'm so ahead of the game!

I shouldn't have eaten breakfast early.  It's only 10 AM and I want lunch now.  Should I keep writing until Vision is available?  What if it takes all day?  I would be writing a book almost!  I'd have to start thinking of plot lines and character development! 

We're going camping this weekend.  By going camping I mean driving a few miles to a campground and setting up tents to sleep in.  No big trips or touristy things.  This is meant to give Penelope (my 3 year old granddaughter) a life experience.  It could be a rather interesting life experience since it's possibly going to rain that night and I'm bringing my crabby, somewhat senile, deaf old pup, Bruiser along since we can't leave him at home alone for that long.  It will be an adventure!  I need to get my camping stuff organized.  I should start on that tonight.  See what tents I want to bring.  Get equipment from storage.  It'll get cool (into the 50's) at night so will need to make sure everyone, including Bruiser, is warm enough.  And then there is the menu!  I heard of making smores with Reese's Peanut Butter cups instead of Hershey's chocolate and have to try it!  Maybe it won't be as good but you never know until you try!  (Diet huh?  Yeah right.)  I'm looking forward to it!  As long as I go into the adventure not expecting much in the way of sleep and with a plan to nap when we get home on Sunday, it should be just fine! 


slobber, drool

sugar rush face

gratuitous Bill Murray pic

 

Our trip to Nine Mile Canyon

I just spent a weekend in Nine Mile Canyon down by Price, UT, looking for petroglyphs.  Once we got the hang of it they weren't hard to find!  We drove and drove, craning our necks, scanning to find the ancient graffiti and suddenly came upon a balancing rock.  It looked pretty precarious and rather impressive.

So we took some photos of it.  And then Ken showed me a picture of a little petroglyph he spotted while shooting the rock and we were on our way!

Can you see the little dude?  He's pretty square.

Here's a zoomed in shot (they aren't super easy to see as you drive by...sometimes)

So we got out of the car, all excited, and went down the little ditch and up the other side and began a short ascent to see this little dude and off to our right, there was a mother lode, tucked back where it couldn't be seen from the road!

Here's Ken, who gets credit for the first find of the trip!

I was so excited to make contact with history!  Still makes me smile to think that in a way I made a connection with a Fremont person who also touched this stone and, unlike me, left a more permanent mark of the event.

After the first find we started to develop an instinct for where they might be found.  But the carvers played with our minds on a regular basis.  You'd see panels that looked ideal for art, stare and stare and nothing.  Nada!  Often we'd have to just stare a while to see them.  Sometimes it was luck.  You'd climb up to something you'd seen and find a bunch more tucked here and there in the area.  We learned to look around carefully before climbing back down.  There was often much more there than you could see doing a drive by.

We noticed a number of things while we were searching for art.  They usually liked broad, smooth panels with contrasting surfaces.  Not always tho.  Always exceptions to the rule.  You'd climb up to some panels and then find a little deer or something carved into some rough rock, a narrow edge, at an angle.

Ken said there was oil shale all over the place (which explains the mining that was going on carefully in certain areas of the region).  Sometimes when you'd look up you'd see a glob of black stuff that appeared to be oozing out from between rocks.  It wasn't moving or anything so anything it was doing was a slow process.  Some rock had black stuff creeping down across the surface.  Later on, some of the rocks looked almost burned.  I think the black tarry material might have finally fused to the lighter stone underneath.  Here is a good example of that...

These images were chiseled in, maybe a 1/4"...someone worked very hard to chip them into the rock

Most were on lighter surfaces than the one shown above, like the first hidden ones we saw, but many were on rocks that almost appeared stained or burned.

It rained off and on while we were there and I have to say that it is one of the best smelling places on earth that I've been so far.  Especially after a fresh rain!  There are wild sage and pine all over the place.  The air is a fresh, sweet, spicy combination of those scents with mustard and little flowers mixed in here and there.  I enjoyed just breathing there!  I wish they could bottle that scent so I could take it home with me!  One of the other places that has a remarkable scent, in my opinion, is a redwood forest.  You can tell when a redwood is near.  But that's another story.  Anyway, if you ever go there you'll know what I mean about how great it smells.

Snakes and spirals featured very often in the Fremont (or Ute?) art.  The art below shows a spiral turning into a snake.  We figured there could be a few reasons for this.  When taken in context by looking at the area around you, you see that the water source, stream, curls and wends around like a snake.  Maybe the river seemed snakelike to them?  Plus there are many snake types in the area, including a rattler which likes to coil up and sun.  It seemed important to them.  Many pieces seemed to have snakes in them and often spanning large portions of the carvings.

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We learned that the Fremont left the area around 1200 AD.  Not sure when the Ute came in but horses were introduced in the late 1600's.  So all the horse carvings came from the Ute.

We found hundreds of carvings once we got an eye for it!  When we were finally tired and heading home, I'd look out the window and see one here and there...just like they were saying bye!  On the way home we passed under a bridge with some rusted areas on it.  I caught myself squinting at it, half expecting to find a little carved figure looking back at me.  I admitted as much to Ken and he laughed because he noticed he'd done the same thing!

Some things I learned about Ken.  Some I knew but were reinforced.  First of all, and this was a bit humbling, in spite of Ken having really bad knees he usually would beat me during the climbs and be sitting at the top, watching and waiting for me to arrive.

One climb I was determined to beat him to the top so found a different route that required a little more climbing and beat him!  I was gasping and panting but dammit I beat him!  And then on the way down, I followed the same route and managed to have a short fall and scraped up my elbow and legs.  Stung for a little bit!  After that I stopped being competitive with him.  I learned.

my elbow...yup I bled for those petroglyphs

What was reinforced and highlighted was Ken's stubbornness.  On day 2, when his knees were already sore from the previous day's exertions, we came upon some glyphs that were a substantial climb over rocks and on loose shale/soil.  I was ready to take pictures and move on but he announced he was going to climb it.  I argued that we should take zoomed pictures and then see what we had when we got home later.  He said he was going to climb.  I said it was too dangerous.  He said, OK, I'm going to climb it.  So I pocketed my little camera and started after him.  He was surprised I was joining him but there was no way I was sitting at the bottom while he went up to see everything!  Once again, he was sitting there, waiting for my gasping panting self.  Bleah.  But the carvings were fantastic!

here are some of the carvings we saw...there were many more along a whole wall of panels

here is a view of the car from the top of that particular climb - there were a few like this before we were finished

One other thing I learned about Ken is that when he is interested in something, very little gets in his way.  I think Ken wanted to see every possible petroglyph that could be accessed from the road.  I'd say how we'd seen plenty, let's move on and find the ruins and he would still drive to each potential panel and do a quick study before moving on and if there was something remotely accessible, we were going.  We only hiked in once at Daddy Canyon and managed not to find anything except pretty scenery for our troubles.  Ken built some cairns as symbols of our having been there.  Did that in Canyonlands too.  I like that!

  

We saw some cool old ruined buildings.  There were free range cattle in some of them and they got very upset with us for stopping to take pictures.  Cow mooing carries loudly in canyons!  They kept it up until we were out of sight.  Sorry we offended you cows!

Ken is in the next room right now watching sports.  I want to get this down while it's fresh in my head.  In the span of 2 days we experienced a lot.  We came across a doe grazing near the road and stopped to take a photo.  She saw us watching her and then surprised us by coming a bit closer for a look at us!  She was pretty beautiful!  The carvings show a lot of deer, bison, elk, etc. but they weren't apparent to us while we were traveling thru.  We did see a lot of cattle but not a lot else.  Well, we did see some speedy little lizards zooming around on the rocks.

she came in for a closer look

little brown lizard climbing vertical

We saw gorgeous scenery!!

We climbed to an ancient Fremont village site.  Wasn't much village to see.  Some rocks in circles. Considering how old the site is it was still pretty remarkable. According to the literature we had on them, they would dig partially into the soil and use lumber for roofing.  The village was strategically placed on an outlook with the river running below and mountain to the back.  They had a fantastic view of the valley around them.

a rock wall along one side of the structure

Rocks in a circle - middle would have been dug out, with stone benches along outer walls and topped with lumber roof.  Looking out over the valley, the green in the background.

Visiting this place was a moving experience for me.  I LOVE looking for the ghosts of the past!  In this place I got to touch some of them and felt a connection to that long ago time.  Ken loves this too.  He thought he would have enjoyed being an archaeologist.  I can see him loving that!  The office space is gorgeous!  I was calling him my "pocket geologist".  When he didn't know something he just made up some outrageous crap and made me laugh.  

We spent hours "off the grid" as there was no phone signals in there.  Since Ken works all the time it was nice to have him all to myself!

We work well as a team.  We watch out for each other and have flexible attitudes when things don't go our way.  Like when we couldn't find the granaries or some of the artwork touted in the info we had on the area. We only got a little grumpy for a little while.  Then we'd find something else to get excited about.  I trust him to save me if I got hurt.  I told him we should bring a dolly in with us next time so I can save him if he gets hurt!  

For my earlier comments/complaints, I'll admit we take turns being stubborn and the other is a good sport about going along with it until we hit mutual agreement that enough is enough.  Like our futile trek into Daddy canyon that still served up some beautiful scenery when we weren't feeling oppressed by the heat and lack of breezes and artwork.  (We picked a bad route I guess)  We got as far in as we did because we kept taking turns saying, let's just go around that curve and see what's up there, then we'll head back.  And then grumbling because we hadn't brought water in.  We'd been hiking about 10 minutes already for cripes sake!

We came out of the canyon tired, a bit scraped/scuffed, dirty/gritty, sunburned, thirsty and I had caveman hair from driving with the windows open and no ponytail.  Oh well!  It now rates as yet another of my favorite trips and a place I'll be happy to return to again!