Magic Mouse

The twins have always had a passion for their little red mousie toys. When they were kittens, Dej used to get the mousie toys in big packages with several colors, and each package contained two red mice. The red ones were always the hands-down favorite of the boys, though we were always a little puzzled as to why. The toys were identical in every single way except color. The red mice were usually mangled, destroyed and thrown away, as the boys were so rough with them.


The other mice often mysteriously disappeared before they were destroyed. We've never been totally clear on where they mice and other small cat toys went. Sometimes Daisy gets them and shreds them. Sometimes Jezi gets them and hides them in her bed. I'm sure there is a collection under our refrigerator and hidden in various strange places. Or perhaps they ended up in the other dimension in our house, where a series of both large and small items have completely vanished to never be seen again.


Last week, we found a red mouse. It just appeared one day--we have no idea where it's been for years. The boys were so happy to see it, especially Charlie. He loved that mouse with the special passion reserved only for the red ones. He played with it for hours on end.  He really loved to hide it under the yoga mat and then sneak up and pounce on it.  He carried it around in his mouth, prancing and trilling like the king of the jungle. He thumped it with his back feet until the seam ripped a bit and the poor mouse begged for mercy. He spent four or five rapturous days with his mousie love and then it disappeared as mysteriously as it came. Maybe Charlie has a special hiding place that he tucked it away for safe keeping. We may never know!


Last Sunday was my mom's birthday. We went out for dinner and came back to their house for pie and gifts. We all had a very nice time celebrating my mom's uh...45th. Here are some nice pics from that day. (Yes, I'm still very behind on everything!)

Nothing left but weeds and memories

I'm still working very hard at both jobs.  It will be rough for another couple of weeks, but things should start to normalize eventually!  We've squeezed some activities into our work-packed schedules though.  Last weekend M & L were out of town at M's cousin's wedding.  I stayed for a nice, long productive weekend.  H was with me for the first portion of it and was very chatty.  I did get a couple of days to myself though and managed to get a fair amount of work done.

Dej and I loved the dress L picked out for the wedding and wished we could find it in our sizes, though Dej is pretty sure she could squeeze into her sister's if given the opportunity.  L does not intend to give her that opportunity.  We had just gotten her a nice summer dress at the beginning of the summer.  She's not terribly into wearing dresses right now, but always needs to have one on hand so she has appropriate clothing for dressy events.  She has already outgrown that very cute dress, so we had to run out and get an emergency dress for this wedding. 

Yesterday we had to attend a family reunion immediately followed by the Heartland Farm Sanctuary Dinner & Auction.  We were all very tired from an action-packed weekend when we arrived last night, but we had a great time!  My friend, Kristin, coordinated this event.  We've been to so, so many fundraising dinner/auctions, but I've never seen one run quite so well.  I mean, I knew Kristin was a smart, fun, ball of energy, but now I'm a little intimidated by her kick-ass skills.  The girl is the flipping rock star of event planners!  Seriously, we were just blown away by what a fantastic job she did one absolutely everything. 

Dej & Russ attended with us.  We all had fun bidding on the TONS of awesome auction items, and I won the one item I most wanted and was sure I couldn't afford.  I adore these pigs and am eager to find the perfect spot to display them.

We (L, H, and I) also squeaked in a last-minute trip to Six Flags with my friend Orinda and her boys. We had great weather and it was a wonderful day. All four of the kids like the big rides and are up for riding anything they are big enough for. We got pictures of the kids and I on the Logger's Run and on Superman. Funny how Orinda managed to avoid being in any of the pictures.

Dance Camp for L and Big Changes for me!

Today was L's last day of dance camp, so the children showed us this afternoon what they've been doing all week. She showed two of the new steps she learned. They sang two songs, showed some yoga poses, told us some Hindu mythology stories, and showed the arts and crafts projects they made. She had a lot of fun and will go next year, but I'm glad the daily trips are over now for a while. That is just way too much time in the car every day!

M & I had date night a couple of weeks ago and went to the new (only) Indian restaurant that just opened in town here--Taj Mahal. It was good! Really good! We will be going back. We had perhaps the best pakoras ever, and I could live on those things! I'm so happy I can finally have delicious Indian food without driving to Madison or spending the whole day in the kitchen.

Another random item I almost forgot to mention... We went to our friends' annual garden party on the aforementioned date night. We were chatting with a woman at the party, when she started talking about her duck car. Our host heard and offered to walk us the five blocks or so to the woman's house, so we could see the duck car. It was quite a site and worth the five block walk. The rubber ducks are all glued to the car. She is planning to add ducks to the sides, too.

Finally, in addition to being slowed by my wrist's recovery (I think we've finally got the abscess/infection clearing out of my incision scar), I've been extraordinarily busy due to my changing job situation. I will be returning to teaching at a full load this semester at the college where I've been teaching one course per semester. The original intent was that when I started the semester, I would be done with my M-W job in Madison. I've been scrambling to get my four new classes designed and prepared and loaded to the student site. I'm spending every fee minute working on that, as Sep 6 is coming all too soon.

Instead of leaving my other job however, I will be working from home (not going in M-W anymore and not working 20 hrs/wk anymore) as much as I can. I will continue to do both jobs that way, in addition to homeschooling Luciana. It will be rough for the first few months, but once I get all my classes prepped and in my groove it will be fine. I will be happy to have a month off for winter break and summers off again. That will leave me lots of free time as well as time to spend on my other job.

I keep reminding myself when I panic over all that needs to be done in the next few weeks that I really am beyond lucky. I have two jobs that I enjoyed that I was trying to choose between. I know in this economic climate, that right there makes me quite lucky! The main thing I hated about my previous primary job was the commute. Now, I don't even have to choose between the jobs--I get to keep both, and just change the proportion of my time spent on each.

A little more catch up

Sketch of a dog, followed by the 'scratching' (don't know the technical name) of it.
L & H attended College for Kids two weeks ago. As always they had a blast. Dej attended CfK every year that she was in the age group (as has L) and always loved it too. They do a great job with it there, and I only wished it were two weeks long instead of one.

L & H both took digital art (Photoshop) class in the morning, so they were in that together. H made this magazine cover. They chose different afternoon classes though. L took an art class and H took a rocket building class, and we got to go see his rocket launch on the last day.
L brought home all of her art creations. I photographed the whole pile, or so I thought. Now that I look at the photos, I notice that some of her pieces are mysteriously missing from the pile. Those must be works that she didn't like as well. Her tesselation is missing, and I liked it. She complained when she showed it to me that it was crappy because she made a mistake.

This week she's at dance (Bharatanatyam) camp, which makes a very, very long day for me. I have to drop her off in Verona, which is farther west than my work in Madison, go back to work for the day, then drive back to Verona to pick her up, then finally back home. Since I hit beltline traffic on all four trips, it makes for a much too much car time--3.5 hrs today.

Going vertical

My quest to examine my home from a cat's perspective has helped immensely. It's all about the vertical space, and as we add more of that, we get fewer arguments which means happier, less stressed cats and humans. We finally got our wall climbers hung (with the help of my brother-in-law), and they have been in heavy usage since. They LOVE these shelves!

They scamper up to the top and nap, watch the world, and feel like the ruler of the second floor territory. They also spend a lot of time up on the shelves playing--jumping back and forth, skittering across, around, over, and under the shelves.

The climbers are fairly expensive (though not overpriced), but they are handmade by animal lovers (yay! no corporate fat cats to collect my money) and they are remarkably sturdy and solid. I will definitely be ordering more as we can afford it--the peace and happiness they are bringing to our household are priceless! We ordered them from Crazy Cat Condos, and we started with 'package C'. It's fun to look at them and dream up fun and exciting configurations that will allow our little furballs to be jungle cats, peering down at the world from high in the tree tops.

Catch up

L & H got to spend a day with the animals at Heartland Farm Sanctuary for farm camp a couple of weeks ago. M & I were both off work that day, so we dropped the kids in Verone at the farm and got to meet all the animals. The kids had a great time and can't wait to go back. I want to go back too, soon, to visit my new animal friends. They were all just fantastic, and I've been thinking about them since we left!

We did attend the wedding I blogged about--the much-too-young bride. It was a very, very hot day and an outdoor wedding; my arm was really hurting. The heat tends to make it swell more, which increases the pain. I'm glad we went, though, because as it turns out, we were the only people there who were not closely related to the bride/groom. It was a very small wedding, and our absence would have been very noticed and very hurtful, and I would be absolutely sick about hurting any of them. They are so young and inexperienced! I really wish them the best, and hope the young bride beats the odds and finds happiness. She's a beautiful girl and was a gorgeous bride.

Dej came over a few days before the wedding with a new dress she had gotten to wear for it. She fell in love with the dress, but it was strapless. Busty girls and strapless tops are never a good mix, so she planned on having me fix it for her. With the condition of my right arm, however, that was impossible. I measured, we went out to JoAnn's and found some crochet lace that worked perfectly, as the dress already had crochet lace at the hem. I measured again, cut and pinned the straps and talked her through the sewing process. It was a success and the dress looked great on her! I briefly entertained the notion that she would be able to do her own mending after this (and the child rips clothes like nothing I've ever seen--I'm always repairing things for her). I was wrong. She brought two dresses over this week for repair. Her cats chewed the strap off on one side of each dress. They will be sitting here for a while before I am able to sew again!

A tale of two hospitals

A little over three weeks ago, I started out the door to take the three kids skating as I had a couple of weeks earlier, when my mom asked if she could come along. Her coming along was a last minute fluke that turned out to be a life saver! I can’t even imagine how much more horrible this would have been if I had been alone with the three kids, an hour away from home!

We were having lots of fun and Luciana was MUCH more confident on skates than she had been before. There was a church youth group there that had been driving everyone crazy the whole night. They had never been skating (or it appeared that way) and were constantly falling, causing others to either have to avoid them quickly or fall themselves. They were easy to spot because they were all wearing red t-shirts with big crosses saying, “We stand for life”. Too bad they couldn’t stand for skating! We managed to successfully avoid them most of the night, until a little girl fell in front of us, knocking Luciana down. I was holding Luce’s hand and almost made it upright, but the little girl’s wheel caught my wheel, and I went down, tried to catch myself out of instinct and shattered my right wrist. The little girl felt very bad about tripping us up and was very apologetic.

It was my first broken bone (other than a finger), and I did it well. It shattered the end of my radial bone. I had to have surgery to repair it and now my arm is full of hardware (plates, screws, and pins). It looks absolutely disgusting. It’s been three and a half weeks since it happened and it’s slowly improving. I’m still in a lot of pain and very limited with what I can do. My ability to clean and care for all the animals is extremely limited which leaves extra work for Mark and Luce. It’s been a huge pain in the ass and has left me feeling really vulnerable and ‘breakable’. I don’t like being dependent or feeling weak, so I’ve been extra crabby lately.

In May, we gave my M’s motorcycle to my dad, as Mark just didn’t use it. He had big ideas years ago when he got it, but it’s just sat in the garage since then. My dad passed his written test and started riding all over town right away—he was so happy on the bike, and I was happy to see it finally getting some use! This past Sunday was the final class for him to get his permanent license, and about midway through that I got a phone call from him (my mom was out of state with her sisters). I could tell by his shaky voice that something was wrong. He still doesn’t know what happened to cause it but the bike ended up tipping on him and he landed on his right side. His right leg was badly broken, with the ligaments badly crushed. He also has lots of nasty road rash and bruises. He also had emergency surgery and is now in the painful recovery stage. He said he will never ride a motorcycle again.

What’s interesting, besides the fact that we each had a ridiculous bone-breaking accident within a month of one another is that we had a similar experience but in very different hospitals. I ended up in Watertown hospital, which is part of the UW system. I wasn’t quite nervous about having surgery in a small-town hospital, but quickly realized it was a beautiful, well-run hospital.

From the time I arrived in the ER and was put in a bed, I stayed on the same bed until I went home. No painful transfers. They put me on ice and gave me pain meds immediately. The brought the xray machine into the room to take xrays. I never had to move, and if you’ve ever broken a bone, you know that moving it around while broken is excruciatingly awful! He was moved SEVERAL times, each time was incredibly painful for him. One time they used a board to facilitate moving him, which was much better than the other times where they had him scoot very painfully to a new bed while supporting his own unset, painful leg

My dad called from the parking lot where the accident happened and was waiting for the ambulance to arrive (while sitting out on blacktop on a 95+ degree day). The toes on his right leg were pointing backward instead of forward, so there was significant pain involved. We beat the ambulance to the hospital by about 45 minutes--not sure what they were doing, but he was NOT given any pain meds, nor did they put ice on him. I was put on ice immediately and given fresh ice throughout my stay.

My hospital room was very nice--clean, attractive, and most importantly PRIVATE. I didn't eat much there, but what they brought me was very good. I have stayed at Mercy for other surgeries, and even the fresh fruit was completely inedible, with the other options being even worse. My dad's room was crowded cluttered and shared with another person. There wasn't even adequate space for visitors. It is beyond disgusting that with what the hospitals charge per night, they force you into such cramped quarters and unsanitary conditions. Sharing a bathroom with a complete stranger, with unknown bodily fluids and blood in the mix is just repulsive. Given the per night rate of Mercy, I calculated that for the same amount, you could stay in a five-star hotel, live on room service, and pay a private nurse to adminster round-the-clock care.

As always, Mercy was understaffed, and the care he received was woefully inadequate. I would like to send them a bill for the nurse/CNA duties that we had to perform while he was there, because nobody could be found. The care and attention I received was wonderfully. I rarely even had to call for a nurse, and if I did there was an immediate response. They kept my pain meds coming (though I didn't partake in much), kept my fluids/IV bags changed as needed, and made it as pleasant as such a stay can be. Conversely, Mercy was a comedy of errors--forgotten, long-empty IV bags, they forgot to put any ice on for swelling, didn't bring a vomit receptacle until I tracked someone down for one (which barely made it in time), never checked on the rapidly swelling leg which was getting squeezed painfully and dangerously in the splint that we had to loosen (again...staff?), forgot to put the compression cuffs on his legs... I could go on and on as there where several other instances of poor care. Like every other experience I've had at Mercy it was just disgusting, unprofessional, and NOTHING they should be able to collect money for. I wonder if anyone has ever disputed the charges based on lack of quality care, sanitation, and overall subpar experience.

I find it quite hard to stomach the Mercy joke of a hospital, knowing that they are literally rolling in profits. Because they are a "non-profit" hospital, their number one concern is trying to spend the massive quantities of money that they made in profit, so they can retain their status. I really hesitate using the term non-profit on an organization whose CEO makes as much money as he does. It's appalling the money that they are pissing away on damn near anything, yet somehow it never crossed their mind to improve the quality of care, get adequate staffing, or consider the patients' comfort.

With as much time as I've spent in the hospital over the last few years, I feel like a connoisseur of medical facilities. I will be thrilled when the Dean hospital is opened up! In the meantime, I would travel to Watertown or Madison before I would spend a dime at the shit hole called Mercy!

I'm just now able to take pictures again for the first time. It's still a little awkward, so I'm not getting great shots. I was so bummed during my recovery that I didn't get any shots of the hundreds of asiatic lilies that were in bloom. It was stunning, and they were gorgeous. They are at the tail end now, with most of the asiatics being done. I took a few shots tonight of the garden, but it was definitely at its best about two weeks ago. I'm hoping M got some shots of it at that time.

I took this photo during dinner tonight. Charlie always hangs off things in the strangest ways. He seems to always have at least one set of legs hanging off the surface and sticking straight out.