*ugh*

Just when I thought it was tough, the past two weeks have been sooooo stressful and it all culminated yesterday with my wee spaz rasta schnauzer being in some kind of terrible pain causing her to not want to move or eat and yelping loudly when disturbed. I took her to the vet and had to explain I was in a financial position to not be able to justify any crazy expenses.

He did his best to give her a good look over and try to determine the source of her troubles. It would seem she has managed to hurt her back, to what degree is unknown. I'm almost certain our big fat lab Beaux had something to do with this. He is oblivious to his surroundings and barrels into/bounces on top off anything in his path.

So the vet prescribed a cocktail of pain and anti-inflammatory meds along with something to soften up her stool as she was a little backed up too. We have to keep her from moving around as much as possible, no stairs, no big dawgs bouncing around her.

One good thing that came out of this is that while Chi was hopped up on her pain meds last night I got in some substantial fur-trimming and matt-removal!

Wow! Just got off the phone with Gordy Jr. In Baghdad! What a nice surprise to hear his voice this morning. He sounds so good and grounded in himself. He gets to come home for leave next month, hopefully will get to see him! He said that they are in a record stretch of not being bombed -since the beginning of January. Will be so glad when he is back state-side for good.

Well... have to go do my chores and go to work, lots to do yet for the big show in Austin next week. With any luck at all we will get a favorable response to the next version of our software.

One last thing before I go... Mom! I am sorry I missed your birthday yesterday. I wasn't until LATE last night I even realized what date we were on. It was much too late to call you when I did realize, so had to leave a sleepy message in your blog. I'll try to call you today.

can't get enough pie!

well maybe i can. Today was national pie day. I had planned to go down to M2 Gallery and celebrate the evening with Max and Michael and a truckload of pie. Dumb me, I didn't realize they were going to be done with their festivities @2pm... I thought it STARTED at 2. Gordy made two of his awesome key-lime pies last night and today I made an Albanian meat pie called "Lakror" and another veggie pie that is a traditional recipe from the isle of Crete... called "Boureki". Both were freakin' delicious, unfortunately they were finished about 3 hours too late for their debut.

I've had my fill and I'm busting at the seams, a little bummed that I didn't realize beforehand that i should have had this stuff ready much earlier. Gordy said we could bring 'em down tomorrow, but I don't want to bring the guys leftovers :-(

At my request Gordy took some of the bounty of our private pie-fest over to the neighbor. I don't know what the heck he will think of the pies... hope he likes them.

Im feeling sorry for myself tonight.

Gordy crossing the finish line

Dot

Pics from Christmas

Kate came by this past weekend and dropped off a CD with the pics she took at the house with her new camera. I've uploaded the pics to flickr to share with anyone who may want to have a look. However, I made it so the pics are only available to my flickr friends and family - It seemed like the polite thing to do, since I am not the one who took the pictures. If you don't have a flickr account AND we are not friends/family you will not be able to see the pics. Sorry! Just contact me via flickr and I'll "friend-ya."

Kate does some great photography, thank you bunches for taking pics hon! Kate's pics

I don't know how I managed to make it all the way through the holidaze without taking a single photo.

Hawk with Squirrel

Hawk with Squirrel
Originally uploaded by gordyt

a friend sent this pic to Gordy today... He took the pic in his yard in Conroe. Amazing!

So what did i miss?

28 degrees tonight? Here?! Ack!

Then Thursday and Friday AGAIN back down into the 20's. It is not supposed to do that here.

Another Evil Kitty plotting to take over the world...

...by seducing you with its cuteness.

Singing in the car...

I used to love, love, LOVE singing in the car with the girls when they were little... as much as I loved doing the same when I was a little girl. There are a handful of songs I remember singing in the car with my sister, mom, and dad back in the late 60's... I was really fond of these songs (still am!) and hearing them always makes me smile. The first video doesn't show anything, but it was the only link I could find of what seems to be the the original recording.

"Hair" from the Broadway musical


"Close to You" by the Carpenters


and "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night


And here's one of the songs my daughters and I loved to belt out, "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys

Snow?!!!

UPDATE
*eh hem* doesn't look good for today. It was 32° this morning when I was outside feeding critters and running dawgs around for poopy breaks. brrrrrrr!
--------------
Well a little peek at my favorite weather website, Wunderground tells me that we are about to have a freeze with a 50% chance of snow tomorrow. Austin has a 70% chance of snow tomorrow. crap. This means all the tropical plants are going to take a beating. I was really hoping we could squeak by this winter without a freeze just to see if the papaya fruit would ripen on the tree.

Our grapefruit and oranges are almost at perfection... they just need about another two weeks I think.

Oh! in the spirit of citrus et al. Today I got a membership to the Urban Harvest group in Houston and have registered for a couple of their classes on permaculture. I also want to take a couple of their classes on caring for citrus trees. Saturday I'm going to a citrus-tasting event they are having. Apparently, folks bring all sorts of citrus from around the area to sample and chat about species that grow well in the Houston-area. I wish I could remember what varieties of citrus we have. I'm looking forward to learning more about being a better gardener and finding out ways to make our little chunk of land a sort of micro-farm that can provide us with some a decent percentage of our fresh veggies and fruit.