What to do With the Problem Child.....?

Last night Teddy bit me. Quite hard, and I sustained a deep puncture wound, and some bruising on the inside of my left wrist.

You wont know this because my other long lamented blog went the way of the dodo bird some time ago, but Tashy's story was on there. My much beloved and ancient 19 1/2 year old cat who was dying of renal failure, 2 years ago now, and not having any fun anymore, had soiled herself, as old people sometimes do. Well I cleaned up my grandmother too, when she needed it at the end, and I cleaned up Tashy-cat, but lordy she hated water. And she was frail, so she must have been uncomfortable as I held her and slowly poured warm water over her, trying to be as gentle as I could. Well she bit me. More to the point, she bit my thumb clear to the bone, and by the morning I knew something was very wrong, so I went to the hospital and was told to go straight onto an antibiotic IV. Inconvenient timing, I told the locum on call, which he responded to by telling me I could go and make a big family dinner, or stay here and keep my arm. The blood poisoning tell-tale red line was well past my elbow at that point. My mother always said that once the line reaches the shoulder, you're dead. So I did the sensible thing and followed Dr.'s orders, and went in every 8 hours for 2 and a 1/2 days for my IV drip. And I'm still here. But you understand that animal bits are something I no longer take in stride with a cavalier attitude, yes? Especially when the outcome was that a few weeks later, I had to make the terrible decision to release Tashy from this mortal coil, which wasnt doing her any good anymore, but which cost me a piece of my heart.

Teddy and I were having a snuggle, and suddenly he growled. Well I'm of the opinion that their teeth are bigger than mine, so they need to know who the leader is at all times, so I got up, took his collar, and said, "Come on T-T, you're going outside for a while". He struggled. This is again uncharacterisic of him, and I pulled harder, very firmly, and then he rounded on me and bit my wrist. HARD.

It bled some. That deep scary black red blood that takes a moment to well up. The kind that tells you: This is deep. I'm still finding blood on the floor, and the location of the bite worried me and set me to thinking that he might have nicked a vein. We went forthwith to the Hospital, me voicing murderous epitaths and striking the fear of God into B, who literally thought he'd have to take Teddy to his father's farm in the morning and shoot him. It was a touch and go thing for a while there.

It was my fault. I know he gets the creeps at night. I was aware of it, and aware that he needs to be handled softly, no matter how rude he is (and he was VERY rude), or I am just teaching him to be afraid of me. The thing is, I'd never tolerate that behaviour with one of my own dogs, and I never get that behaviour either, and I got angry. I was so angry in the car I had decided we had to put that stupid dog down. Our tenant has a child, for goodness sakes. Yet as far as I know he's only ever bitten me. What does that tell you? I must be a horrible person. After all I've done for him, does he hate me, the little shit!?

I've been crying about it off and on all day. I dont trust this animal anymore. I feel abused - as he probably did in that moment. We dont know what gives him the creeps at night, only that maybe B's mother hurt him...when she was drunk. She was drunk a lot. Most of the time, actually.

T has taken a lot of love, patience, and gentle work to get over many of his issues. He's had more of my attention that my own dogs, Xena and Zeus, or B's other dog Willy. We spoil him, coddle him (enable Him?) and it has to stop now. He's been demoted to the bottom of the pack now, and I dont know what to do with this problem child.

Nor do I know what to do with me. When T-T arrived, we thought he was autistic. Seriously. And he'd been traumatised by being in a kennel. He couldnt be left alone so I'd have to take him to work with me. I painted houses at that time. Once he saw me leave around the corner of the house and he literally crawled out of the window where I'd left a 5 inch gap. He was still skin and bones then but know this, he's a very powerful and big dog. The next time, with windows less open and car in the shade, I left his sight, he literally shredded each door panel of my car to bits and pieces.

I've been so proud of our progress, of the happiness I see shining out of his eyes at last, of his willingness and responsiveness. He's happy to stay at home with his siblings now and doesnt worry that we wont be back, because he know we will and he'll get to go run outside with his housemates when we do. He is part of the pack and they all adore him. Finally he is showing His huge intelligence, his acute sensitivity, and his shy affection. It beautiful to watch him open up finally and let us in. To see how happy he is to see us, and the way I feel honoured when he shows his desire to be close, which is rare and usually on his terms. To see him join in the pack and run with them like the wind....its been a long haul, but has been a gorgeous thing to see his healing. This is his home now. And it is a good one. And one sees that he accepts that and knows it, and loves it back.....

Akitas bond with one person, and when that person is gone, they have trouble bonding and may never bond to another human again. Luckily he knew Willy and B since he was a pup, so they were/are the bridge for him to be able to bond again. We took him. When Muriel died. We took him because B's last promise to his dying mother mother was: "I'll take care of Teddy, Mum. Dont worry." Who can argue with that?

On the one hand I feel that the responsible thing to do would be to book some time with a dog trainer (I'll go with a new one. One I know of who has a very soft approach to her technique, and who has even worked with animal communicators, which is somthing I've considered with this wayward son). On the other hand, I feel like I've paid my damned dues with this dog, thank you Muriel, I've spoiled him rotten, even COOK for him and I am disinclined, now, to give him anything more. Not if he's going to bite the hand that feeds him. Yet he's the foster child with a sad childhood, and big issues. You dont give up on that. And Yet still, I feel I've done my best and he's still blocking me out....Maybe I'm the problem child....

I show him my bandaged arm and he looks away, lies down. He knows. He comes to sit by me and I tell him 'Off!" I dont want him near me right now. My arm throbs when I look at him. It isnt business as usual. How does a human tell an animal they're sorry? How does a human, who goes by the book when it comes to dog training (I'm considered very good) not find it in herself to actually LISTEN to the individual needs of that animal, allow intuition to provide information, and run instead rough shod over his old emotional hurts. How is it that my inborn skills with animal behaviour and psychology, with dogs, have made me blind to approaching him as HE needs to be approached. Is it my arrogance?

How does an animal say sorry? Business as usual? I dont know. I only hope that in that moment he must have been frightened for his safety, or he wouldnt have done it. I wasnt THAT hard with him. I saw him panic, I actually did, and I didnt listen to him. I should have released him, but I wanted the dog to obey me. He needed me to listen to his fear (Of me, of something triggering the past, of his night time creeps?) and change tactics to jolly him into doing what I wanted in a soft way. I needed him to smarten up and listen to ME.

Maybe I failed this one.I got it wrong.

What the hell did B's mother Do to him?!!!

In related news, they put me on yet another course of anti-biotics at the hospital. I went to my GP (Dr. Wonderful) today to confirm meds with him and he said all the right things, and said I'd done all the right things, but if my sinuses dont clear up in a week or so, he wants me to have them x-rayed.

Is that like having my head examined? Would probably be a good thing. Who in their right mind even has four dogs? Maybe they'll see, written in impacted and multihued snot, "crazy woman, too many dogs, off with her head!" Huh.

I'm feeling very wobbly now. Sad, embarassed. Remorseful, angry, vulnerable. Feel weepy still. I cried in the car today. I havent cried since last fall when we got robbed, and I told my mother about it. I am Tired. Very, Very tired.

If anyone has any to spare, I could use some good thoughts sent my way right about now.....Please and thank you....

Off to See the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.....

Greetings fellow blogsters! Long time no write. I've been remiss, and have little time right now but am going to give you a quick update. Aren't you thrilled?

Its been a month of dragging my heels fighting a not-flu flu which migrated from body region to body region. Not sick enough to be sick and not well enough to be well. Exhaustion. One week I was intestinally challenged, the next week I was coughing all night with a weird dry cough that had nothing to do with congestion in my lungs. Post nasal drip sucks.( Oh, I'm just so hilarious.) Then I felt okay for a day or two and then I'd relapse. I wont bore you with all the gory details. Suffice it to say, after being ill for so long I might have expected my body to have shed a few pounds, as a slender silver lining, but no such luck. My appetite didn't get sick. It was voracious, my body demanding fuel to fight the lurgy.

A side effect was that I've been depressed. I don't think I've felt actual sadness, as such, but I've been a slob and a sloth, lethargic and unmotivated. Bursts of misdirected anger. Feelings of huge resistance to everything. The inner judge has been loud. All symptoms of depression (or adolescence, and we can have a dialogue about that if you like, so long as its funny...it might make a good conversation.)

Tomorrow we have an exciting plan. (I hear the song in my head, dippy and silly, "We're OFF to see the WIZARD..." I'm SO excited!) We are going off island to buy a vacuum cleaner. Now this might sound slightly mundane, if not in fact inane, but you have to put things in context. For one thing, we hardly ever leave the Island (why would we?!) And for another,my ancient (20 + years) vacuum has bit the proverbial dust, pun intended. The sound effects were amazing: Rhuuuur! Rhuuur! Rhuuur...ppppthththtthpt! Huuuuhghghghg. Ugh. Pthththtt. Nothing.....The smell was frightening. Charred plastic and slow roasted dust, marinated in worn out parts, or vice versa. Poor thing died a slow and choking death, over a matter of years to be sure, but the last few weeks it went downhill fast. A familiar story.... not unlike Vaudeville. With 2 cats and 4 dogs, all of whom shed like they invented it, the sheer amount of animal hair in my house could be woven and knitted quite literally into dog hair blankets that might warm the population of a middling sized community in the Himalayas, or Siberia, even. Cobwebs hang from the ceilings in waving swathes, quite rude, if you ask me... Dust bunnies the size of hyenas, with a similar malevolent presence gather like their proverbial pack in the corners of the hallways, the rooms, under the bed, behind the couches (dont for Godsakes look back there!) and they move softly too and fro in the breeze when a door opens, quite like a stalking predator. I worry that one (or the lot of them) will take it into their hairy heads to choke me in my sleep. Visions of being suffocated by a van sized dust bunny.. it sits on the end of the bed, watching me sleep, biding its time until it senses the right moment to strike.

Yegads! Move over Stephen King! :)

Tomorrow we'll go to Canadian Tire and get "The Shark" vacuum, which seems to be a Dyson knock-off. (I'm a big believer in knock off's these days. I got myself some pretty purple knock off Crock clogs the other day for 7 dollars. I call them my 'Crock offs'). This hoover is highly recommended for animal hair. I am sure I could write a testimonial and get myself my own very personal (and probaby embarassing) tv commercial. I just cant wait. Have you ever been excited about getting a cleaning implement? Its weird. Gross almost. Kind of surreal. And utterly uncharacteristic of me, but that only underscores the point of how desperate I am.

I cant even remember what a clean house looks or feels like. But I will know soon. Woo-hoo!

Meanwhile, the faux finishing goes well. The owner lost one of her little dogs to a car the other week and when I arrived on Tuesday, after having been away sick for so long, I brought her a dwarf red rose bush in Ruby's memory, and a card. As soon as she saw it her face crumpled and I just threw my arms around her. She cried. We both did. That was a fine little dog. She was. You cant understand what it feels like unless you have a dog. They live in your heart, you see, almost as deeply as a child, and when they go, a piece of your heart goes with them. Having your heart torn out hurts....You cant understand how people dont get it that when you experience a loss like that it is very real. I have a feeling that she hadnt gotten a lot of understanding lately for her sadness, and I just cried with her, knowing what I will one day feel when I lose my own dogs.

Meanwhile, the garden is waking up, but late. Things are filling out with green, but its still quite unseasonably cold and I worry about the crops and the bees. The fruit trees are all bursting into bloom and hardly anyone has seen a single solitary bee. Its been too cold and wet. I worry that the crops wont be pollinated before the blooms are blown to bits by the mercurial weather (WHY is Winter hanging on so hard this year?) and that our produce will be damned to an infertile season.

In other news, back to the off-island obsession, I have been scouring the SPCA's online photo galleries and have set my sights on a young boy cat. He is named Tommy and is 6 months old, orange and white with a look that says, "I am here!" and which makes you take notice. I'd like a very wee baby, frankly...oh, wait a minnit...What's that? You have something to say? You think I have too many animals and that I am certifiably, completely and unquestionably crazy?! Nuts to that. Huh, took you long enough to figure that out. And might I just ask, what is your point? All of the beasties are getting on, you know. The youngest, Dolly, is 5 and I'm hankering for a baby. Zeus was my last baby and he's seven. Its time, okay? Pushkin is 13 now and when he goes, Dolly will need to have a friend by her side. So we need to think about that.

I havent decided if Tommy is our cat or not, but my hidden agenda is to convince B to take a swing by the SPCA so we can have a looksee. Dont know yet if they are open on a Sunday. Or if B will be convinced. He says he'll come with me to the local SPCA on Tuesday, but I dont know that thewy have any kittens....

Meanwhile, B is taking the dogs to the ravine as I write and I have to get ready because we are going to Dad and Kathleen's for dinner. He's been ill and has walking pneumonia, which is rather a serious concern at his age ( he's 82 and kickes the ass out of any statistic you might care to throw out), so why he thinks hosting us is a good idea right now, I dont know. But he says he's much better since I brought him a basket of food and home-made chicken soup early in the week. Kathleen was away in Oregon and he wasnt eating. Gods, my heart nearly dropped out when I heard. And there's nothing worse than cooking for yourself when you feel like shit, is there? Anyway, Dad says he's on the mend and we'll have his famous pot-roast and chat and play crib, no doubt. A nice evening.

Thanks for listening. Its been a while since I vented and having your ears does me good. Hope all of you are well out there in blogland.

Love, Bird.

Sunny day...

For a change. :)

People get giddy this time of year when the sun comes out. Understandable when we've had nearly non-stop rain since November. Everyone was cheerful at work and I tried valiantly to meet cheerful with happy, and although I'm not unhappy, as such, I am trying to hold The Lurgy at bay. So far moderately successfully, downing massive amounts of vitamins, but I can feel it creeping in. Ugh. I DONT want to get sick!

I should be taking advantage of the longer days and today's sunshine to take the dogs to the ravine this evening, but after a long day at work, and feeling kind of crappy and dizzy, I hardly have the energy. I spent the last three days on the couch, except for running the dogs yesterday ( when they had a great run and had squillions of fun, snarfing around, bareling full till up hill and down dale, jumping over logs and swimming in the creek, digging great wholloping holes in the path for which I had to reprimand them, and generally carrying on like happy wolves in dogs clothing, which of course they are, at heart), so I expect they will forgive me. They are playing outside in the yard now. Enjoying the late afternoon sun.

I dont know if it is the bug I am fighting or the change in climate/daylight but I've been lethargic lately. Physically and emotionally. And I cannot say either that I've been depressed, but the 'internal dialogue' which we all have in our heads has been particularly loud of late, and that wears me down. Sometimes the noise is such a cacophany that I become overwhelmed. Hearing voices? Maybe I'm crazy.....

I rationalise this by telling myself that I have many aspects to my Self, and right now they are all trying to be heard all at once, so I cant hear a damned thing, let alone hear myself think. Sometimes I shout at them, "Who are you?! What do you want from me?! What do you want me to do?!" Sometimes I talk to them softly, and say, "Just give me some space, please, so I can get this and that done, and then you can have the last word".

I've often wondered what it would be like to have multiple personalities. I think we all have a touch of this. Some of us are more border-line than others. It would make my life so much easier if I could identify the conversations, the running commentary and be able to label them, put them in a safe box and hear them out, one by one. Name them. Understand the bits of myself that need to be heard, that need to be understood or that need to come out of the shadows into the light. It would help to be able to confidently say: This opinion comes from the 'observer', this one comes from the 'judgmental bitch' that one comes from the one who worries all the time; this one is a frightened person, young, and she's lonely, while that one over there, very quiet today, says that things always work out, there IS a Plan at work, and we are moving forward in our evolution as a species, and there is beauty and HOPE everywhere, if we look for it. Probably HER name is Pollyanna...

Mental health is so fragile. We can be on top of the world one minute and slip off the edge in another, hardly knowing how it happened. I'm not falling off the edge, but feel rather like I'm sitting right on it, at the moment, with the sharp edge staring me in the face. And I dont know why. Is it because things are okay? Too okay? Is that it? Am I so used to drama, trauma, and struggle that coasting for a while, and the euphoria I feel, the well-being I experience with a daily rhythm which makes sense and works well doesnt give my brain the "I'm terrified' chemicals it is used to, so I somehow manufacture anxiety to feed that addiction?

Comfort, constancy and normalcy, the sense that all is unfolding gently as it should is a foreign experience to me. I fear complacency. Because usually, in my experience, just when you get settled, all hell breaks loose and the excrement hits the rotating blades. I mistrust happiness. How warped is that?! And yet I am reminded of what my step father used to say, bless him, he said, "Let the shit hit the fan... it makes good fertilizer". yeah, thanks dad! :)

I have been having heart palpitations and shortness of breath. It isnt my heart, I'm pretty sure of that. Could be I've been smoking less (a lot less as I am not 100% well), and my body is going, "Hey, where's my fix?" and offering symptoms to indicate its temper tantrum. It feels like the onset of an anxiety attack, but never goes there. Which might help, even, since after the horrible and frightening experience of freaking out (and inevitably there is the point where one feels for absolute certain that one is going to die - you will know this is true if you've ever experinced it, and if you havent, let me tell you, it ain't fun) . Usually I crash afterward, and dont worry about anything anymore. I'm too tired to. The calm after the storm. I havent had a full blown anxiety attack in years, but this feeling, this sense of anxiousness, these days this can last hours at a time.

I'm still taking my happy pills, but havent taken any anti-anxiety pills in over a month, and nor have I taken sleeping pills in 6 months (which I only ever took as a last ditch desperate resort anyway, prefering Nyquill,or gravol, limiting myself to two or at most three, of any of the above, nights a month). Time for a chat with Dr. wonderful, perhaps?

I'm not sleeping well. I've mentioned that already, I know. I'm repeating myself, sorry. Sleep deprivation is something I dont deal with in a good way. It just makes me totally crazy. Quite literally. Emotional, wobbly and irritable. Paranoid even. So maybe I'm just run down and sleep deprived. Maybe the noise in my head is about some stuff, inner garbage, old baggage that is rearing its ugly head so it can be released. It has to come out somehowm, Goddammit. I know that right now I'm relatively stable ( reality being relative) so its an opportunity for the crap to come out. Maybe its an old anniversary I've forgotten.... I was sent to an Aunt in Newfoundland for temporary fostering probably close to this time of year when I was about 4 and 1/2 or 5, or maybe its a miscarriage. One of the three. I cant remember when they happened... Blocked them out... but last night I dreamt I had a miscarriage. I just know something's going on and I cant connect to it, give it a NAME, reason through it, or rationalise it away. It is happening and I just have to trust the process and ride the wave. There is something percolating, bubbles rising, and when they burst at the surface, I expect a word, or a picture/memory or a REASON to be born into the air, to be expressed into consciousness... something, tangible, on the lips of the mouth that whispers in my ear, "Something is going on...". But no....

Meanwhile. Spring is making herself known day by day and warming the earth. Softly softly. The baby little plants are beginning to stick their fragile tiny fronds gently out of the ground, so tentatively, and buds are forming on trees, unfurling just ever so slightly to make that inimitable Springtime green peach-fuzz haze... almost there, but not quite yet. My forsythia is blooming and the crocuses are up; daffodils are putting up their long, spiky leaves, but not ready to bloom. Like me maybe? The clematis didnt die after all but is putting out a huge cluster of shoots, as is the honeysuckle, prolific and mad with winding up the wire fence surrounding the veggie garden; although it seems the trumpet vine went the way of Vaudeville..... sadly. The deer didnt help with their brutal 'pruning' last summer.

The idea though, the dream of green, is at hand, and we all know by now that ideas make our reality. Our thoughts can and do shape our reality. We know this. That which we hold in our thoughts and dreams, is that which we manifest....

Are the trees thinking of Spring? Are my poppies thinking, "Right, days are longer so its time to send up those leaves"...? Are the wild roses, still asleep, dreaming of sunny days as the nutrients slowly are drawn through their roots, into their sap, bringing the message that its time to wake up and make flower buds? Do we all grow instinctively, like this? Maybe that is what sets us apart from plants and animals, ultimately.... the need to understand the process and to know why. The need to measure it, to mark it. To know, be aware of HOW to do it. To choose how to do it.

Frankly, I dont know how.

In shaping my own reality I know my attention to things, and my perspective is everything. I can chose what colour my lenses are. I can chose rose coloured glasses, or not. I can choose green or grey or black. I am noticing more and more that when I do that, when I look at things a certain way and set/choose my 'intent' my life opens up. 'Coincidental' events seem to bring opportunities to make me happy. 'Coincidence' seems to conspire with sweet Serendipity and I make connections, with people, with events, with my conversation with Life. 'When I change the way I look at things, the things I look at change....' I know all these things in my head and am working with them consciously, and with a lot of attention and effort. Why then do I feel like a bag is over my head and I am walking blind?

I went into the studio the other day, and left soon after, noticing the mess, and feeling resentful about it. Not all of it is my mess. Some of it belongs to the renovation and its materials being stored there. Not using the space for that reason is a pitiful excuse. Maybe that is what this flatline feeling is about. Guilt. Every day I don't do something in the studio, I feel guilty. (AHA! THAT'S the internal judge, jury and executioner, right there! That's good. I named that one.)

At the end of the day, I suppose, the best thing to do is accept that there is a process at work here, an internal process that has no words to offer me, and one that I cannot name. No explanation. I have to trust that the Process itself knows, like a tree waking up, what it is doing, and it is going about its business as it is meant to.

I feel strongly that I need to have a conversation with Life. A dialogue. A living, breathing give-and-take. I need to know why. And likewise, I need to have words so I can box up an experience and tell myself, "This is what this thing is" and make it safe for myself. Or at least understood. Contain it.

I am not getting the feedback I need here, and I'm feeling lost and afraid. I have no words to rationalise this. Maybe that's why my head is so full of them, clamouring, tumbling over each other, like a river of words, tumbling over stones, rushing over me. Its not that I am not listening, is it? Are all of the scattered bits of me, floating out on the ethers, buffeted by the winds, lost in some vortex of Gods know what, crying to be called back to me, to come back Home? I miss them, need them as I know they need me, to be whole. I'm trying, I am, but I dont know how to contain them, how to hold them, protect them, hear them all.

But just maybe, perhaps, the words jangling around inside my head ARE the conversation this process is trying to have with me, to tell me that the lost pieces of my Self are finding their way back to me, back Home, bit by bit, little by little; and they all have something to say about it, but I cant decipher their feelings and thoughts. I cant understand what they are saying...... not....

Yet.

Soon. Maybe.

I hope.....

Shit, shit shit....

Today I heard that one of the people who lives on a boat in the marina, died last night of asphyxiation. Carbon monoxide, from his Kerosene heater. Insufficient ventilation. He passed out, and that was it.....

Later in the day, a customer came in, someone I know as an acquaintance. Someone I like very well. She lives on a boat, with her child. She's had a hard life, is a struggling and very talented artist. She looked like hell warmed over, and I stepped away from my till, purely instinctively, and simply threw my arms around her, the glance we shared as she came in conveying at once that I knew the news, and that she was utterly shattered by it. I hugged her tight, trying to absorb her pain, and tell her with my arms that I felt for her and wanted to take some of her sorrow away, if I could, into myself.

She fairly collapsed into my arms, and shook like a leaf as she told me that last night her neighbour, on his boat, had died, and that she and her son had likewise nearly died of the same problem. If it hadn't been for their carbon monoxide detector they would be as dead as he. Then she said that their dog had been hit by a car 4 days ago, and been killed. I knew they had raised him, and bottle fed him from birth. That often they had eaten oatmeal for days on end, being broke, she and her son, so that they could afford to buy real dog food for their pup. I knew how much they had sacrificed to keep him and make sure he would be healthy and well. He was a great dog. I met him and I tell you this because I know it personally to be true. Some dogs are dogs, and some dogs are people. He was a Mensch.

She lost her neighbour and friend, her dog, and nearly her son and her own life in the last few days.

Jesus Christ. Please say a Prayer for M...She deserves a fucking break.....

I look around me and see my healthy dogs, see myself in a healthy relationship, with a job, and a roof overhead, my cats happy and my STUFF, and am ashamed for every single time I have every complained.

Please say a prayer for M.

Lets Try This Again.......

My blog on iblogs is lost. One year of postings, one year of my journal, gone. I'm not devastated, only really disappointed. And pissed off. I wonder if there is a way to retrieve it?

Anyway, Life goes on..... And I'm starting over, here, hoping this will be a new home.

Chicken soup is on the stove, Simmering away with lively gusto and scenting the house with fragrances even my clogged sinuses and runny nose cant compete with. The smells of comfort, whilst a storm rages outside. Winter wonderland. Rare for our little island on the temperate west coast, and a treat. Except for the lack of snow tires.

All hell breaks loose when it snows here. No one on the island knows how to cope with it. Even though my Ontario sensibilities scoff at the panic which people here exhibit when the white stuff starts coming down, I resisted their notion that THIS snow is different somehow than THAT snow. But now that I am into my fourth Winter here, I have become convinced. It is wetter. More dangerous, as a result, and flash freezing makes our pitiful roads an exercise in taking one's life into one's hands every time one settles in behind the steering wheel. NOt to mention the chronic power outages. Which so far, mercifully, we've been spared except for one time when we lost power for only a few hours. B's folks we without power for 5 days last year. Kathleen says it pays to bribe the hydro guys with cases of beer.

I miss the big snows of back east. For about a week or two, and then I no longer have any use for it, but that's okay because snow rarely stays that long, here.

I took the dogs out into it this afternoon. They went crazy with glee in a way that only happy dogs who have been cooped up too long can show. Three of them in fleece coats, although Teddy, being 1/2 Akita, never needs one. Usually I drive them to the ravine for their run, but not today.

This past fall B and I made a dog enclosure, but Willy, escape artist that he is, seems to have found a chink in that armour and kept getting out to visit the neighbour's dog. (She's sexy). So despite my cold, I bundled up and threw the ball for them, and made big rolled up snow balls with what we used to call 'packing snow' which Xena delighted in eviscerating. When she was a puppy, no snow-man was safe from her. She would "kill" them dead every time, and stomp them into the ground, erasing all traces of them. I placed stones and sticks from our little woods all along the area of fencing which was suspect, and I think I've got the problem solved. Threw the ball for Zeus again and again. They Loved it.

I am dreading going back to work on Wednesday. I took on this job thinking that it would be good for me to be around people, having has such an isolated experience overseeing the renovations for so long. HOW long, you ask? Coming up on 3 years now. You wonder why I'm losing my mind........?!

I haven't done any art since the studio was built, and I did my first stained glass window in it last year.

This is me. Artist. Blocked. Crap job. And whining about it.

Suck it up girl, life is what you make of it!

My mother will arrive from overseas for Christmas, bringing her special brand of kraut-factor "THIS is how we do things!" which always makes me feel inadequate. Twice a year she comes, and it takes me months to recover, each time. We dont always get along.

Lets put the fun back into dysfunctional! :)