Update Riddled With Gratuitous Dog Photos

Farm dog, sans farm...must make do with rawhide till there are more interesting things to chew.

Update: We were just made aware that rawhide chews can contain carcinogens and other toxins. Nylabones and other safer alternatives have been recommended to us. Bye-bye, rawhides...

First it must pass the sniff test. From the looks of this rawhide, it made the grade in prior sniff tests.

Speaking of tests, I've been catching up on my health stuff that was neglected while we didn't have insurance, and of course "they" have been running tests. Some tests came back good but my sugars didn't...ugh. Must. Keep. Daily. Journal. Yeahyeahyeah... Roger.

Mmmm...Kaleb goes for the prolonged back teeth gnaw.

And I went for my first mammogram, ever. Which meant girlish things were subjected to what I suspect the above-pictured rawhide experienced, for the sake of Health. Ow.

I've been making homemade dog food to supplement Kaleb's kibble. I can already notice a bit of a difference in Kaleb's coat, but I'll give it time.

Meanwhile, I continue to subject the very Aussie-and-all-other-farmrelatedsubjects-savvy (and patient) blog friend at Trapper Creek to questions, and have been given great feedback as we navigate new dog ownership of this particular fellow...and breed. I can say I'll probably never go back to any other breed. Smitten, I am.


Had lunch with my daughter today, and I'm SO enjoying being the mom of an adult daughter. Plus I can count on uncensored candor, if I ask for it, on about any subject, so when I asked her if my silver/gray hairs that seem to be overtaking my formerly-brown hair need to be colored, she said "YES, mom, YES." When I reminded her it was SHE herself who initially dared me to allow it to go au naturale in the first place, she said "well, yes, it was pretty cool when a few silver ones were there, but I mean this is a little out of hand!" I love my daughter.

And to think I used to anticipate the days when she'd learn to talk...ha :) Anyway, silver/gray hairs notwithstanding, we had a great lunch together between my doc-visits-ugh.


We have some bleeps on the radar as go our efforts lumped under the general category termed Land Things, but we curb the enthusiasm till there's some finality. One thing we've learned is that "it's not over till it's over"...I really can't wait to write about some of the specific details we've gone through the past three years with all this, and some of the knocks that have come either just because life's that way sometimes, or sometimes from our own mistakes/lack of experience. But like I said, it's for another day.


I don't feel like I have my (rapidly-graying) head on straight right now in comparison with other years in which I had constant projects going and could post interesting (to me, at least) things here for fun. I'm feeling slowed down in general, though we are in a productive period if you look at things from a distance. For the past five years I've enjoyed good health overall, but this off again on again stuff since June of this year has kept me Sub-par. Today's news from the doc as to why my ears still hurt? They are still infected. I'm taking antibiotics again, which goes against my grain, and still haven't regained all of my energy back.

But having Kaleb means going for walks are fun (truly!) and even if that's all the exercise I get right now, it's incentive enough.


I'm trying to get a handle on my eating. During the summer flu/ear stuff/lung stuff, I had little appetite, which is uncommon for me, and so it trimmed some weight off. That's the good news. The bad news is that my practice of being involved in trimming the budget by cooking everything optimally (using the turkey for different dishes, freezing the leftovers, using the brother for soups , TYPO: I meant BROTH for soups...i have no brother but it's not due to anyone being made into broth... boiling the bones for stock, etc etc) had to be streamlined...I simply didn't feel good enough to spend as much time in the kitchen, and lacked inspiration (and appetite) the short times I was. I also haven't felt like experimenting or fixing many fun treats. We have been eating homemade, but I didn't stretch everything to the Nth degree like I usually do. That to me means much of what I could have stretched was not, which makes me feel wasteful. At least being able to incorporate some of these things into the dog's diet helps utilize them, but I'd rather be at peak creativity for the people of the house first.

Now I'm feeling better by comparison, but still have a ways to go to get back to being with it that way again. I haven't felt like doing craft or art projects, writing projects, or continuing to further research the alternate-use plants we have growing outside. I have a good many calabazas to bake and freeze, and some other foodie things pending. I have a backlog of things in the fridge that are cooked but need to be at least frozen for later. (true confession...I have been reading books and watching prodigious numbers of PBS mini-series and assorted collections of DVDs when my energy levels peak at the Potato level. I can quote you Jane Austen and Dickens lines. And Andy Griffith. And Chef. And Good Neighbors. And so on...)


I keep telling Jack the paid help never showed up ;-)

But on better news, I've started buying better quality meat, but less of it, each week. (Because Steak goes SO well with Couch Potato...) For some reason we both noticed the ground beef we were buying just wasn't sitting well with us the same way a bit of roast or steak would. I've got plenty of salad fixings and have taken one nice jar of bleu cheese dressing and extended it with active culture plain yogurt...and it tastes fantastic. Just a small drizzle of that over a salad chock full of finely-chopped veggies and herbs has been hitting the spot, alongside small portions of meat to go with it. It's my quickie cheat version of dinner while still feeling at 50%.


Also on the health front, we're trying Resveratrol. The claims seem inflated, but undeniably many people claim to have seen instant benefits. We need a good cleansing and boost to our immune systems, so went for the "free trial bottle" of one of the companies. Let's see how that plays out. I've only ordered one bottle, and had to get tenacious saying NO in a hundred different ways to the company's attempts to call me and upsell me other "youthful" products. The representative just didnt want to take No for an answer, and so when he asked me (in a somewhat astonished voice) WHY I didn't want the So-and-So Youth Formula that makes me LOOK YOUNGER...."You mean you don't WANT to look younger??"...I replied "NO. NO, I do not want to look younger"

He said "You must look very young, then. Nearly everyone wants to look younger." (THIS. On the day of The Conversation With My Daughter About How Ancient The Grays Make Me Look)

I replied "I DO look young. I don't want to look younger. (repetition, repetition, repetition??)" (Ok, so I'm not lying. I DO look young. When compared to someone ten years older than I am. I don't want to look younger, or Jack will look like he's perpetually accompanied by his grown daughter...ick) :)

He gave up and said "Well you do SOUND like you look young."

hahahahahahaha!

I'm going to remind my daughter from now on that I SOUND like I LOOK young...heeheehee

Then I called their customer service department to cancel further orders of the product. I got what sounded like somebody's teenage son. Confused, illiterate, and bored teenage son. I waited a total of three minutes while he sat there saying nothing and never was able to pull up my name on his computer. (I'm sure he was thrown off by how YOUNG I sounded, haha) But we finally got to the gist of the thing after a comedy of errors in which he kept re-entering eleven digits for my phone number instead of ten...asking me if the eleven were correct, I said no and repeated....and repeat. Then when he said "ok" I said "does ok mean you've canceled any further shipments?" and he said Yes and waited for about 30 seconds and then hung up. Weird. I'm chuckling!

All a nice diversion, in a slightly annoying way...


I don't know why, but I keep being afraid of one of us getting cancer, especially since the event of the skin cancer spot Jack had removed from his forehead earlier in the year. That's one reason I'm getting all my "yearlies" caught up. We REALLY need to be healthy.

I want this upcoming year to be the one in which we both lose most of our weight for good...the right way. I love this man so much and want us to have many years together. I remember the older women of my family on my grandma's side talking in a gaggle about their "old folk complaints," which totally repelled us younger ones back then...a laundry list of corns, bunions, the removal of this and that, repetition of the word "hemorrhoids," other terms like gout, hernia, high blood pressure, cataracts. Well, I'm on the Forties slide toward Laundry List Land, but am fighting it hard now. Jack's in the Fifties version of that and thankfully has been blessed with a strong constitution in most areas. It's funny but keeping all our components running well figures in largely to whatever definition we now have of Homesteading. It's funny how health is central to all other concerns.

Enough of creaks and squeaks..there'll be "funner" updates to come. I'm just feeling a little reflective after The First Mammogram. And sympathy for anything unmercifully flattened between two unyielding surfaces. And definately wincing at any sandwich referred to as a Hot Pressed Cuban.

It's time to end the post when you begin empathizing with fast food ;-)


Something hopefully more coherent to come, in future. I go now for my daily Aussie Walk Therapy...