Update...

Mom was moved into ICU for two days but is moving back out tomorrow to PCU. Her blood pressure is up which is good, but her heartbeat is really irregular. So, they'll be planning surgery for when her doc comes back from vacation in a week or two. That'll give her some time to build up some strength for surgery. Apparently the defibrillator acts as a pacemaker too.

In the meantime, she's joking around and trying to stay in good spirits.

What's weird is that from the connections of one friend I'm getting emails from other friends that I haven't heard from in years wishing her well. Old high school friends and such. I guess it's a little surprising to me for people I haven't seen since my reunion in 2001 to be sending emails saying they're praying for my mom, but it's nice of them.

Mom-in-law is doing okay too. She's getting better at walking around the house and fixing snacks in the kitchen. She still has good days and bad days though as far as conversations go.

Ugh. It seems that growing old sucks, but I guess it beats the alternative.

Not good...

Now MY mother is in the hospital, in the Cardio unit at Grapevine Baylor. She had a minor heart attack about 7 years ago, and apparently now has had another "congestive heart failure." Her heart is running at 15% capacity, and the cardiologist said he's never seen a person look so good for having such a bad heart. Anyway, they're keeping her for a few days, starting a new medication, and then scheduling her for surgery to have a defibrillator put in.

Female doggie woes...

So our 12 month old Dane goes into heat the first time. I only mention this on here to say that I don't know which was more awkward-

• My discussion with a 20 year old guy at Petsmart about maxi pads for a dog
  or


• Wrestling to put Puppy Panties on an animal that weighs more than me

Needless to say, Athena is not thrilled with wearing the doggie diaper. I had a helluva time getting it on her, she had her butt plastered to the ground with her tail tucked, and there I was trying to pull her tail out to poke it through the hole in the fabric. Now she has the most pathetic hang-dog look on her face. And, she's afraid to move her butt. Seriously, it's like her seat is glued to the sofa. She'd better get used to the panties, as she's going to have to wear them for about 3 weeks.

Unfortunately the store only had sizes up to XL which is supposed to be for 90lb dogs. In the future she's going to need XXL or maybe even XXXL. I'm sure somebody somewhere must make that size??

Anyway, in case y'all were wondering, we're not getting her fixed and are planning to breed her maybe next year.

Another project car...

As if we don't have enough on our plates with school, Hubby's work, elderly home care, a 110 lb puppy, and a hippocatamus (see next post below), now we have another project automobile. Or I should say HUBBY has another project automobile, as it's generally him who does most of the work and I just hand tools to him and occasionally reach my skinny arms into the tight parts of the engine that he can't get to.

Anyway, our new car is a 1971 Triumph Spitfire. As you can see it's pretty rough, but I know Hubby can make a nice finished gem out of it. He once had a 1972 Porsche 914 that he renovated back to cherry condition.

Most of the interior stuff that's missing in the photo is in good condition, they were just taken out for the process of building it up from the frame.

Is this one more cat or 3 more?...

By the way, I mentioned Mom-in-law Merle has a dog and a cat that we brought home with us... and I've just gotta show you the cat. These photos just don't do justice to show you her gargantuan size. Her name is Peaches, but Hubby calls her HIPPOCATAMUS:

Above is her impression of Jabba the Hut.

The bathroom scale says she weighs 21 lbs. My sister came over to visit and upon seeing the cat she exclaimed "OH MY GAWD!" with a horrified look on her face. To try to show her relative size we put this coffee mug next to her for the photo. But it still doesn't compare to seeing her in person. I'm telling you, she's huge.

Life goes on...

Things keep busily rolling in our neck of the woods. It's been a week since we moved Mom-in-law into the house. She's doing better at navigating how the house is laid-out, although she still occasionally forgets there's a step down into the sunken living room. She's also doing better at little, but important, things like remembering to turn the stove off. (To clarify that- she doesn't cook, but we put a carafe of her decaf coffee on the stove each morning to keep it warm while we have our regular coffee on the coffeemaker.) Unfortunately though since she can't see well she still has to ask how to turn the stove off, and I verbally direct her where to place her hand to find it. Each day she does a little better at finding it. Yes, I could get up and do it for her, (and Hubby and I both do a lot of things for her) but I figure it's good for her to be able to do some things on her own. She raised a family of 8 kids and was used to doing everything herself, and I think she's struggling with the concept of letting other people do things FOR her. I think she's feeling pretty helpless.

In the meantime, Hubby is trying to figure out exactly what areas she's having trouble with, and whether she has Alzheimer's or dementia (they are separate disorders), and which type , as dementia is further broken down into different types. Until we can get a CAT Scan performed we won't know for sure what it is exactly. Hubby's also giving her little projects to try to increase her cognitive thinking again, since the mind can improve with exercise. He's starting her off with 1st grade math and is planning to slowly work her back up. I printed some simple addition and subtraction problems like 2 + 4 = __. Her biggest problem was seeing the problems on the paper with her bad eyesight. Then, I printed some multiplication and division problems, again simple ones like 6 / 2 = ___ and they took her a little longer to work out but she did it. So he's trying to slowly increase the exercises. The important thing is to get her mind running again. The interesting thing is, when Hubby asks her to answer an abstract thinking question, she doesn't seem to have any difficulties with that, which is unusual with memory disorders. Although, on the abstract side she does have problems with the concept of TIME. For example, she keeps asking when we're taking her back up to Oklahoma to go to the doctor and Hubby keeps explaining to her that it'll be "next month" but then she'll ask the question again later in the day. Each day she asks about it a couple times.

Other than that, she has good days and bad days. On "good" days she seems a little more clear in her thinking, and on "bad" she has more trouble remembering things, even past details. But what I find interesting is how AWARE she is of the problems she's having. She doesn't realize the mistakes she's making while she does it, but then she does realize afterward and I think it embarrasses her. For example, the other day she kept calling her dog, for like 3 minutes she called him because she thought he was in the other room, and then she realized he was sitting on her lap the whole time. She's fully aware of the mistakes she makes, but only after she makes them.

Something that I feel bad for her about is how bored she is right now. Until we can get her to an ophthalmologist she can't see very well, so there's not much she can do but sit around and talk to us and watch TV. She wants things to do, but I'm at a loss for what she CAN do while she can't see close-up. She wants to help in the kitchen but then gets frustrated that she can't see what she's doing. She brushes her pets, and takes them outside, things like that. Any ideas from any of you about what else she can do?

Just a nothing post...

Our town of Keller is continuously growing commercially, mostly with new shopping strips. But, a construction site on a corner just down the street piqued my interest as it's about the size of a restaurant. We were curious about it because Hubby and I are constantly complaining about not having a nice little home-cooking diner around here. Oh sure, there's one down Hwy 377 in the next town (Joe's Coffee Shop), but it only serves dinner hours on Fridays. Other than that, we mostly have a population of Mexican, pizza, and burger places in the close vicinity of our house. We'd love to have some type of old-fashioned diner around here with good ole American food. Heck, we'd even be happy with a Denny's. Is that too much to ask?

After some research, it turns out the new location on the corner is going to a Zaxby's restaurant. Never heard of it, but apparently it's a national chain of chicken "fast-casual" food joints. Ah well, I guess we're still waiting for that dream diner to get past the city council's red tape.

Changes in the household...

Well we now have a few new additions in the home. This last weekend, with the help of friends with a couple of pickup trucks, we drove up to Oklahoma City and packed up Hubby's mother and her furniture and moved her down to live with us. She's 78 and having problems with her rememberer, so it would be best at this point for her to not be living by herself anymore. We have an extra bedroom for right now, but we're going to be converting our garage into an apartment for her for the long term.

Mom-in-law also has a cat and dog, so our menagerie has now increased to 3 dogs and 7 cats.

It'll take a little while for things to get settled around here. Change isn't easy, and I think we're all feeling pretty restless. Mom is getting lost walking around the house, and it isn't helping that she can't hardly see (we gotta get her to a new eye doctor.) It's really worrying me when we have to leave her alone while we go to school. Luckily we only have one evening class at the moment, unlike the fall term when we'll be gone all day sometimes. Hopefully she'll be okay by then.

The only thing constant is change.

How I spent my summer vacation...



Hope all y'all had a nice 4th of July.



Here's what I did for the holiday:

Turned one very LARGE bush...

... into two "tree-like" bushes.

Man, it was some hard work, but as Hubby said we gained about another 100 sq ft of ground in our backyard!

I also climbed up on the roof of the house and cut away branches of the tree in the front yard that were hitting the roof during storms.

We need to cut down that dead maple tree you see in the pics above, but I'm afraid the little Saws-All that I was using just wasn't quite big enough. Maybe if the Great Dane keeps gnawing at it she'll have it down by winter.

Paintings...

Since I've been so busy with schoolwork I haven't had a chance to update y'all on artwork. MUCHO MUCHO THANKS to friends Al & Kat in Virginia who were kind enough to ship a digital camera to me so that I can take decent photos from now on, no more crappy cellphone pics, YAY! So below is the same thing that I posted on our racing forum:

Here's a couple of paintings that I did in class during the spring term. First, a painting of Curlin. It's oil on canvas, 40"x32". I used a technique that I'd never tried before, by using a palette knife to apply the paint instead of using a brush. It was like trying to paint with a butter knife!

If you want to see a really close-up view to see the texture from the knife go to this link: http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/9444/curlinfinelargecc7.jpg

Then, we had a project where we had to duplicate a "Master work" but then make a change to it. I chose to reproduce a painting by Edgar Degas, called "Race Horses at Longchamp." But, I made them cowboys on horses instead. A little kitsch maybe, but hey I'm from Texas! I'm calling it "Cowboys at Longchamp." It's oil on canvas, and rather large at 60"x48". And yes I used regular paintbrushes for this one.

I'll be talking to the local gallery that has my work on display to see if they have room for this one. Maybe someone around here would want to hang it above their sofa, lol.

Another one over...

Well the Summer I term is ending today. THANK GOD!

"No more classes, no more books"
No more teacher's dirty...... looks..... um, well they were online classes so I didn't get to see the dirty looks, but did see a few email spats between students, lol. People can be so rude through email that probably wouldn't act like that in person. Too many people read words the wrong way and get defensive. Oh well.

Anyway, as much as I like college I really hate the online classes. If only they weren't so damn convenient!

More than anything, I'm sick of writing essays. Just ask about the Modernist and Contemporary literary periods and I'll probably bite your head off. That essay was my "final exam" for my World Lit class.

But at least it's over... until Monday. Then Summer II starts with an algebra class and World Civilization. At least the Algebra class is a real lecture class to sit in on. Civie is online again. At least I know the Algebra won't have any essays!!!