Month: May 2009

I stayed up late last night to finish People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks.  I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to reading it!  What was I thinking?  I loved it.  I loved it more than March, despite that book’s Pulitzer Prize.  It’s been so long since I read Year of Wonders that I can’t compare the two.  And I can’t find my copy of Year of Wonders, so I can’t re-read it immediately to find out which I loved more.  At the moment, though, I’m leaning towards People of the Book.  🙂

I started The Eyre Affair this morning during breakfast.  I’m only a few pages in, but I think I’m going to really like this one, too.

I said I was going to be positive about today, right?  Okay.

1. Band rehearsal was scheduled to go until 10pm, but we finished at 9:45!
2. My head doesn’t hurt as much as it usually does when I’ve been up for 17 hours.
3. John didn’t wake me up when he came home tonight from class; I only beat him home by 5 minutes.

Hmm.  That last one leans a little negative.  Well, that’s the best I can do.  Ignore the faint whiff of sarcasm from #1.

There’s a used bookstore in Falls Church that John swore we had been to before, but I didn’t remember ever going.  We went yesterday afternoon.  It’s a good one.  For me, anyway.  They have a HUGE (for used bookstores, anyway) science fiction/fantasy section, and I remembered my list.  🙂  So I got a lot of books.  Then I walked around a corner into a little nook lined floor to ceiling with hardcover books (I think it may have originally been a closet – oh yeah, the store is a little one-story house) and suddenly remembered standing in that exact spot with John years ago.  So John was right.  I’ve been there before.

The rest of the day was lovely.  I don’t think we did anything we didn’t want to do.  Well, I went to the grocery store, but it was while John was working on his car.  And going to Bloom never takes long.

Roxy was good all weekend (no seizures – yay!), but I’m expecting some misbehavior from both dogs tonight.  It’s going to be a very long day, for all of us.  I’m at work early so I can leave early to get home and take care of the dogs.  I’ll be home maybe an hour (maybe a little more), but then I have to come back to the office because we have band rehearsal tonight.  John will be missing rehearsal because he has to go to class.  I won’t get home until 9:30 at the earliest, and he’ll be another hour after that.  Roxy and Riley tend to misbehave when we go back out.  Nothing major, usually.  They steal things off the countertops.  Bread, bags of coffee beans, plastic containers, whatever.  They don’t even eat them.  Just steal them.

Anyway, I’m trying to be positive about today.  It’s a little hard.

I love Derby Day.  The day itself has not gone like I planned, but that’s okay.  I planned to run this morning, but it started to rain just as I went outside, so we decided to just go ahead and have breakfast.  Which is, of course, when the sun came back out.  Too late.

Today had lots of good things, though, and more to come, I’m sure.  John’s anniversary present to me this year was/is the dance lessons I’ve wanted us to take since before our wedding.  There’s an Arthur Murray studio in Ashburn, so he scheduled our free lesson for today at 12:30.  It was fun!  I like dancing, and I think I’ll really like knowing, you know, how.  John is not as comfortable, but that’s the point of lessons.  He’s doing this for me, and I love him for it.  So we signed up for one of the plans, and we’ll learn everything we can.

After that, John went to the music store with Will (John needed mandolin strings (he snapped one yesterday), and Will was looking for a bass), and since I missed my morning run, I strong-armed Christina into walking with me (and Colin in the stroller, of course) so I could do a long, slow jog.  I like exercising with a buddy.  If Christina is interested, maybe we can meet up regularly.

Oh, Roxy news.  The results of the bloodwork show that her dosage does not need to be changed, and the condition of her liver has actually improved since last year.  (The medicine that does the best job of controlling her seizures also causes long-term liver damage.  She started taking a supplement a year ago to combat that, and it appears to be working.)  Unless she really starts having seizures more often or that are more violent, we’re treating Thursday’s cluster seizures as an isolated event.  Assuming she doesn’t have any more in the next few days, she’ll have her fractured tooth removed this Wednesday.  In the meantime, she’s getting treated to delicious wet food twice a day and begging for more.

The Derby was all good news this year, no tragedies, and a great race.  Very fun to watch.  Tonight is for staying in and relaxing.  Tomorrow, we might do some of the things we originally scheduled for today (like weeding my flower bed and buying the plants that will go in it, studying for John’s AI final, and checking out a used bookstore in Falls Church).  Maybe.

Roxy’s doing fine.  She didn’t have any seizures at the vet today, and she seems fine now that she’s home.  We’ll get results from the blood tests tomorrow (hopefully), so we’ll see what we need to do about her medication.   She’ll be going back to the vet soon, though, because she managed to crack one of her molars during all those convulsions yesterday.  The vet found it during the exam today.  There’s apparently a whole chunk missing, but I haven’t looked yet ’cause I’m afraid I’ll hurt her.  John and I tried, kind of.  He held her and I grabbed her head and started to lift her lip, but she hates being confined like that and she was wriggling too much.  I don’t want to inadvertently hit her where she’s sensitive, so I’m just not going to look.  John bought a bunch of wet, canned dog food.  Dry food would not be a good idea.  She inhaled it.  Riley did, too.  (We added some to his food.  We don’t like to leave him out.)  Of course, she was probably starving; she hadn’t eaten since last night.  She had to fast for the bloodwork.  And here’s a recent picture of her (taken the day we got back from Jess’s wedding).

Roxy, age 6 (almost), 4/5/09

Tonight is for relaxing.  We’ll baby Roxy a bit, order a pizza, and watch TV or movies.  Tomorrow is Derby Day, and oh!  Well, if you even noticed it was coming, you probably noticed we’re not having a Derby party this year.  I didn’t even think of it until midweek, so we decided not to this year.  I’m a little bummed that I didn’t plan ahead for this, but we’ll just have to make it up later.  I’m certainly still planning on watching the Derby, and I hope you all are, too.  🙂

One of my favorite people just got a promotion!  Our good buddy Chuck (Jess’s wonderful husband Chuck) is now Master Chief Clark!  Way to go, Chuck!

What can I get away with now that I know a Master Chief?  Nothing, you say?  Oh.  🙂

Congratulations, Chuck!