May Day! May Day!

I wrote this on Sunday, but never managed to finish it and then yesterday was crazy busy.

I put mulch on both of the new flower beds and added more behind the boxwood hedges in front of the house. Yesterday and today. My shoulders are KILLING me now. Great exercise and I'm very happy with the result, but ouch. OUCH.

Before:

After:

Now we just need to figure out the edging - brick? more of the same stone thingies the previous owners used? A different kind of stone?

In other news, we walked down the hill (using one of the very steep paths that connects the hill to the downtown) and to the library for a fun singing, dancing, music event? lesson? thingie? There were two musicians/singers who sang fun nursery songs and others and had puppets and noisemakers and such. We were one of two couples with kids at first (another arrived with a baby later). Apparently the attendance during the weekly version is much bigger. The organizer musician lady thought that maybe everyone was at the town meeting. There is a big, contentious, override vote coming up. They want to raise property taxes to cover a budget shortfall. The lady was discussing it with the other dad - very obnoxious guy - and Aaron was trying to hold his tongue, but then had to jump into the discussion. They finally stopped arguing but it was getting a little heated.

The music and singing that followed was fun, though.

And then today we went to see the May Day parade in the nearby town. Small, but quite fun. A maypole and Morris dancers and people covered in flowers and dancing. There was a guy dressed as a horse and Sophie was obsessed with him. He was working the crowd and using his horse face/mask to steal people's hats and sniff them. She kept wanting to "get" him. And then on the walk back to the car, she splashed and jumped in every puddle she saw until she was absolutely soaked. We took off all her clothes and put Aaron's fleece on her to keep her warm for the ride home.

On a side note, I thought the parade was down the hill in our town but then realized once we got down there (Sophie in the stroller, holding her umbrella and wearing a crown - more on that later) that I had probably mis-read the listing and it was one town over. So, we headed back up the hill to get into the car. Whoops.

Oh, and this is for my mom. We were getting ready to go to the parade and she insisted (out of nowhere) that I make her a crown. And that I paint it and it will make her SO Happy, Mommy! She wore the crown for the first trek to the parade but had removed it by the time we got to the actual parade location.

Even though it was a gray, cold weekend, we had a lot of fun.

Boston

Yeah, so I'm a few days late. As mentioned earlier, I headed to Boston Friday afternoon to meet up with Mia and Emily. Mia has written some great recaps of the trip (complete with photos! I forgot my camera!), so I'm not going to get repetitive.

The trip was lovely. It took exactly two hours for me to get to the Alewife station, park and get on the Red Line T. I switched trains at the Park St station and then got on the Green Line to the Hynes/ICA station. There was a brief break at the Park St station while I tried to figure out how to text Mia back about my location. Good lord, that made me feel old. I actually had to sit down to type out a quick message. I'm sure the teenagers near me were snickering at my skillz.

I walked up to the street at Mass Ave and Newbury St and there they were! Yay! We did a bunch of shopping and eating and laughing and drinking and then I stayed with Mia at her hotel. The next day was sightseeing and acting like tourists (Freedom Trail! Cheers!) and helping a man strap himself into a straight jacket.

Very fun. I'm less intimidated by Boston now. Parking at Alewife was super easy and cheap ($5!) and it was really easy to get into the city from that station. If only the drive there wasn't 2 hours, I'd do it more often.

Girls' Night Out!

/shriek

Yay! I'm leaving work early and heading to Boston to meet up with Mia and Emily. I rarely, if ever, get into Boston even though I live in Massachusetts.

Plus, fun night out (sleep over!) with two gorgeous ladies? Count me in.

I'm wearing my clicky patent leather shoes and I hope I'm not going to regret it. I bought inserts for walking but we'll see.

Sophie's been sick all week. Running fevers in the afternoon and at night and we're wondering if it's the sun. She has a bit of a runny nose (allergies?) and a fever. That's it. Her daycare tends not to put sunscreen on the kids even though we all provide it. That pisses me off. I've tried to talk to her about it, but she doesn't seem to listen. I love that they play outside a lot, but there is no reason for them to have sunburns when you have sunscreen right there.

Anyhoo, Aaron and Sophie are staying home and I'm outta here. Soon!

I leave you with a cute video from this weekend. I drew a hopscotch ... (what is the word?) that had one square and then two squares and then one square, etc. (just so you don't think she can't count) and Sophie had fun hopping.

Ignore my shrieking voice.

I love Sophie's fun little kick at the end.

Weekend Work - dirt and more dirt

It was a gorgeous weekend - high 70's (85 in the sun) and we took full advantage by having a huge pile of loam/compost delivered on Friday.

This is about 1/2 the pile. End of day, Saturday:

All day Saturday and all day Sunday were spent filling the wheelbarrow and dumping the dirt into the two raised beds:

And creating a better flower/plant bed in the front of the house.

We are both very sore and exhausted. But it was definitely worth it. The front of the house looks so much better and now I have beds in which to plant the plants that I want.

Before we bought the house:

After we cut down the shrubbery:

Laying out the beds with the ugly paver-thingies left here by the previous owners:

Filling it in:

Hmm. I thought I uploaded a finished photo but I guess I didn't. I'll have to do that tonight.

We also put in a little walkway from the driveway to the front porch (ignore the lattice work on the steps - that's a project for another day). Also, Aaron hacked away at that stump all weekend. It's quite tenacious. We're going to dig out most of that dirt and fill with some paving sand to lay the stones in there better. Maybe. Or I might plant some low ground cover plants...

In other news, Otto is still not eating enough. We're hoping it was just because the weather was so wonderful and he wanted to be outside all day. We've been giving him fluids and it's less stressful than it was. We're also giving him Pedialyte 3-4 times a day. He's chasing Tabitha around and hunting house flies (the doors were open a lot this weekend) and leaves. He seems to be in good spirits. We just need to get him to eat a lot more. I'm going to get a few more cans of wet food to try. Fingers crossed.

Otto has CRF

(he's sleeping in that photo)

Our beautiful, awesome, wonderful cat, Otto, has kidney failure.

He's lost a lot of weight over the past several months (hard to know when it started as he's a big cat with lots of fur). But when we brought him into my dad this weekend, we found out he's lost 5 pounds since last year. That's a third of his body weight in a year. Not good.

He's still eating and he's drinking a ton of water and he's still a bit frisky.

We're going to try sub-Q fluids to see if we can keep him happy for as long as we can.

Luckily and thankfully my dad is a vet. Who knows how much we adore Otto.

UPDATE: My dad gave us fluids to inject once a day (Sub-Q) to help get his potassium levels up and his BUN and creatinine levels down. We need to help his kidneys flush all the toxins (I'm paraphrasing). We're going to need to set up a mini-hospital in the kitchen so that we can hang the bag of fluids while we give him the injections. He's been drinking a ton of water, but it's not enough. We're also going to be giving him Pedialyte three times a day and adding potassium supplements to his food twice a day.

In addition to changing his food to one that has lower protein and very low phosphorus. And no more dry food for the time being. He's not eating nearly enough wet food, so we need to work on that with him. That probably has a lot to do with his weight loss. We've restricted the dry food that sits in the bowl in the kitchen because Tabitha will just sit in front of it and eat all day. She probably weighs double what he does and she's a much smaller cat. She's girthy. Also, Otto keeps barfing up the dry food. My dad said it might be because most dry food is so small that a lot of cats eat it without really chewing. And then it causes stomach problems - gas, etc. - that can make an already sick cat barf.

So. He's eating the Hill's R/D my dad gave me to try but seeing as he needs to eat at least 2 cans a day of that (and we have 3 in the house), I'm going to look for other options today. The Wellness brand we've been giving him has lower phosphorus but it also has garlic and cranberries as ingredients and those are not good for CRF cats.

[for my reference later - sub-Q fluid administration]

Sophie Update

Yes, it's been awhile. I'm still around and kicking.

Just wanted to get some Sophie observations on the record so I don't forget.

Dragging Sophie outside on (a very chilly) Sunday so that Aaron and I could finish some of the yard work and container gardens. We made her some noodles, stationed her in a beach chair and got to work.

I said: "Sophie, do you like your noodles?"

Sophie: "I not Sophie! I a noodle-eating poodle! Ugh, so fwustwating!"

(Frustrating is a new favorite word. Along with "disgusting" - complete with wrinkled up nose and a "Blech!" for emphasis)

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Getting her ready for bed, talking to and about her "babies" (assorted dolls and stuffed animals on the bed).

Sophie: "When I was a baby. Last year. I was a boy! And I had green eyes! and I could crawl!"

Me: "Wow, you've changed so much!"

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Pretending her purple rainbow Care Bear was pooping on Aaron's head while he was laying in bed.

Aaron: "Yuck! It's a purple rainbow poop!"

Sophie: "No, Daddy, is a POOP-le rainbow poop."

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She likes to pretend she is Brava - an adorable Australian Shepherd that lives down the road. Lots of panting and licking and wiggling while she pretends she's Brava.

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Current favorite songs: "On top of spaghetti!", "This old man, he played one!", "Five little monkeys jumping on the bed!", "Jingle Bells" (she likes to sing it like she's a baby. If I can ever get this on camera, it will make your day), and "I'm the biggest monster that you've ever seen!" (by Laurie Berkner)

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One of her favorite games is to pretend to eat our noses or our bellies or our hands and then say "Burp! Oh, it's gone. I so sorry!" and then we tickle her to "give them back".

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In other news, Aaron and I had a meeting at a Montessori school. It would be a perfect place for her but we're not sure we can afford it. It's a lot more than we currently pay for daycare and a lot more than I have budgeted for potential. Maybe we can get financial aid.