Crit

My son just told me this morning that Crit died sometime during the night. He was around 2 and that is pretty good for a hamster. He also told me that the past week he has been acting crazy. Poor little thing.

I had planned to bring him to the store with me but with Zeus I was afraid to.

I enjoyed having him but don't plan on replacing him.

Coley was always fascinated by him.

No electricity, oh my...

We live out in the country and along with the joys of living out here goes the risk that the electric company comes out here last to fix it.

Wednesday morning around 3:20 a.m. our power went out. D was watching tv at the time and he said that when the power went it was like hundreds of blue flashes around the countryside. We just snuggled down under the covers and waited for morning to come and with it probably power. Well, morning came but the power did not.

Since it was exceedingly cold (down in the teens) we called our kids and D's mom to tell them to come up here. We have a fireplace that we had just put gas logs into so we had heat. By 10 a.m. they were all up here along with their dogs.

We had 2 miniature dachshunds, an English Bulldog, hubby's shepherd/Saint Bernard mix, my St. Bernard, and my 4 cats. Amazingly they all got along really well. For the most part my cats all stayed upstairs away from the strange dogs.

Friday G remembered Crit. I went out to the office to bring him in. He was fine but he had evidently been so cold he had not run on his wheel. He made up for lost time as soon as he got a little warmed up. I finally had to put him in the living room to give us all a break from his wheel. Poor fella.

The outdoors was really beautiful but a lot of damage was done to our trees. I have a Maple in my front yard that I planted when my son was a baby. I have babied that tree, splintted it back together, argued with D that he could not cut it down. Well, I think he has now won the argument. The top and a large limb off of the side came down from the ice.

The voice in the video is me, the background one is my SIL. The video was taken from my front porch. It was really snowing hard and trees were falling in the woods like crazy. It was really kind or surreal.

Luckily with all the extras here it is a good thing that we have a large house. But now that they are all gone the house seems so empty. I am feeling kind of let down. I will get over it but for the evening I am going to be down and dumpy.

Silly Little Crit

I forgot to tell about Crit going missing. Crit is my RoboHamster.
The week of Christmas while we were in VA my daughter called me and asked if Crit had died. I told her not that I was aware of. I had just cleaned his cage on Sat and he was fine then. She said that he was not in his cage now. Since he had not died and I had not disposed of him she and her brother started a systematic search of the offices. (I had to take Crit out to the office since D's dog had decided that Crit belonged to her and would snap at the cats when they would get near his cage.)
I talked to G later in the day and they had not found him yet. I told her to put his cage down on the floor and open the door and maybe he would just find his way back by himself. She did as I asked.
The next day when we talked she said that he had been to the cage as the food that they had put out for him was gone. I laughed and said well that isn't working. They left the cage that way for a few days and each morning the food was gone and so was Crit.
Finally, G decided to take the top off of the cage and make a ramp up to it. Sure enough the next morning Crit was back safe and sound in his cage.
We figure that what happened was when I cleaned the cage and put his wheel back on I got it crowded over to the side and the bars were spread apart enough for him to slip through. He is just a little squirt and he could, and probably did, get out that way. I am glad that he is back. I enjoy watching him when I am in my office. Also, now that it is cold he will let me stroke his belly. I still cannot pick him up, but we are making progress.

About two weeks ago when it was freezing cold outside I saw my cat Velcro at the slider and I thought immediately that "Oh, no, it has started to rain again." Then I looked closer and realized that he was not wet from the rain but he had apparently fallen into the pool ( we had closed the pool as far as taking the pump, etc off but we had not gotten around to putting the winter cover on). I got him inside, got a towel and rubbed him down vigorously. I went out to the office to tell Dale what had happened and that we had to get the pool covered. I came back over to the house and began to rub Belly (Velcro's nickname) down with another towel. He was shivering so I wrapped him in a fleece blanket and sat down to hold him. He was shaking so hard he was making me shake. I was about to call the vet when the shivering started to subside. I continued to hold him for a while longer. He is fine now and did not even get a cold of the sniffles from his escapade. The pool is now covered so I don't have to worry about any more of my babies falling in. Bell was so lucky because he fell in near the skimmer so he had something to get a hold of to pull himself out and also because I was at home and in the family room when he came to the slider. If either of those had not been so I am sure he would have frozen to death. I figure he used up 3 or 4 of his 9 lives on that one.

I have no pics to show. I have been really slow knitting here lately. I am working on a sweater that is really taking some time to do. It will be months before it is done, I am afraid. I will try to take some in progress pics this week and post them.
The pattern is called "Cardigan to Love" #LW1660-WM0312 designed by Lynda Cyr and can be found free at http://www.coatsandclark.com/.
I am knitting it in a sport weight alpaca so it is going to be a lot lacier and looser knit than the picture. So I am making it in a larger size to make it fit. I did a swatch this time (OH! MY!) and got the gauge I needed. I hope I did not mess up in my thinking. So far it looks as if it will be fine.
I made the sleeves wrist length as I just can't handle 3/4 length sleeves for winter and being made out of alpaca it is going to be a winter sweater. I have both sleeves knit and about 4 inches of the body. I am really loving it.

More later.

Belated Merry Christmas and Early Happy New Year.

I hope everyone had a very nice Christmas. I did. I was at home and had my kids and family around me.
I love Christmas, the reason for it, the family gathering, all the wonderful food, the decorating, the songs and movies, just all of it.
I used to start playing Christmas carols in Aug and start my holiday cookie baking in Sept. I would bake dozens of cookies of all kinds. Then the kids grew up, D developed hypoglycemia, and I just don't need the calories so I have all but stopped baking for Christmas. This year I baked a couple of "packages" of store cookies. I really cheated. Oh, well.

D and I are back here in VA. We will be here all week so the kids are on duty at home taking care of things.
My son called this morning to see if my cell phone was working because theirs were not working back in Ohio. Then my daughter called to see if Crit the RoboHamster had died. He is not in his cage. Nope, he had not died as of yesterday. Guess they are now tearing the office apart trying to find him. I hope they do. Crit is a little cutie and so soft to pet.

It is almost time to go on my daily "food forage" to get dinner tonight. I think I will fix pork chops for dinner tonight. I also think I will try Shake-N-Bake on them. Hope it turns out ok. D's Grandma always used to use Shake-N-Bake. Grandma also always would unthaw things for dinner. I'll fix a baked potato. a veggie, and a biscuit for us. I'll see what "package" cookies they have to bake. Hey, I don't have a mixer down here to make my own (that is my excuse and I am sticking to it LOL).

D and I will be here for New Years so I have to come up with something special for Wed evening. Some easy to prepare snacks. I told D to ask the project manager if he wanted to eat with us Wed evening since he will be away from his wife and he and Dale have become good friends. This is the 3rd job that they have worked together on.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and a great 2009. God Bless.

Is it September (almost) already?

I am a baaaadddd blogger. I have great intentions but I just don't seem to come in here and post like I intend to. It has been about a month and a half since I last updated. So here goes.

The Foot:

It is coming along nicely. I am off of the crutches, thank goodness and am back into my surgical shoe and limping around nicely.

I managed to fall off of my crutches 3 times, fall over in the laundry room once while balancing on one foot and turned the walked over once. I was really on a roll, or should I say a fall? Luckily I did not break anything else when I fell.

My animals:

I have a new critter. Two weeks ago I purchased a Booda Cat Litter Box at a pet store in Chillicothe. They had had to order it for me as they no longer carry them in the store on a regular basis. We had been in Columbus all day and it was late when we got home so we did not unpack the van. As a matter of fact, we did not do so until Sunday when we were getting ready to go to a family reunion.

When D got the litter box out of the van he dropped it and it fell apart. That is when he realized that there was a small critter in the box. (I found out about a week later that it is a Robo Hamster.) When I saw it I told D that we would take it back to the pet store when we went to Chillicothe the next time. Wellll, in the meantime we put him down in a cat litter bucket with a cup of water and a bit of cat food, I had nothing else to feed him. Since there was not critter litter in there, he soon became a really stinky mess and I decided that there was no way I could take him back so I decided to just keep him. D put some hay in the bucket along with a flat rock and wedged the water cup down into the hay. This really helped him out a lot and after a day or so he didn't look so bad. When I finally got back to Chillicothe to get a cage and other stuff for him he didn't look half bad. I told the clerk there what had happened and she said that probably some kid had put him in the litter box. I said that I was going to bring him back and she said no, never mind. I asked her what they cost and she told me $25.95!!! Can you believe that for a little hamster?!

Anyway, D's dog has taken a liking to Crit and will sit for long periods of time and just watch him. She also takes great exception to any of my cats trying to come and look at him. I may have to take him out to my office to keep the cats safe from Betsie. The cats cannot get to him but Betsie just does not care. She does not want them near.

A few pics of Crit, Betsie, and Cole.

Katie has an infection/fungus/? on her foot and I have to put a glove on it if she goes out to potty when the grass is wet. We went to Wal-M Friday evening trying to find some child's shoes that we could use for her foot. We found a pair of knock off Croc type shoes but her foot would not fit into them. D tried a rubber glove that he uses for washing the vehicles but it would not stay on. Finally I tried a latex cleaning glove and it worked. When I put it on her she pouts and acts all mistreated. She is so funny. She is 9 years old now and that is old for a St Bernard. I have talked with people who have had St's live for 12 to 14 years. I can only hope. When I took her to the vet because she was limping I ended up with a $253+ vet bill. She is worth every penny of it. Even D did not complain. I guess St's aren't that popular because they are a high maintenance dog. They don't eat alot but they do have health issues and when they need meds it is mega doses. I love her, what more do I need to say.

The owls:

The owls I told about in the last post seemed to have moved on. Then the other night D and I saw one of them. Again, it was dusky and we could not get a picture of it. I still have hopes of getting a picture. I am fascinated with them.

Guess that is it for now. I have pictures of some finished socks, maybe I will be back tomorrow to post pictures of those.

Happy Labor Day to everyone who celebrates it