Running FAIL

Last week after I posted my "Report on Running" I hurt my right knee.  I'm not actually sure when I did it or if I had been running on a bad knee, but it hurts and swells whenever I even walk on it now.  I've been limping around for the last week and icing it and it's just now barely getting to the point where I don't get shooting pains from walking.  It's been extremely frustrating because I just barely got to the point where I was enjoying running and looking forward to it each morning.

For those of you that are starting an exercise regiment, you probably should do some sort of warm up and get yourself a good pair of shoes if your going to get serious about it. Both pieces of advice I was going to take, but didn't get the chance to until I was injured and swollen.

I was going to dedicate a post to my running partner in the picture to the right.  This white kitty would run alongside me for a good portion of my running back when I was running.  Whenever I would stop, he would rub up against my legs and want to be pet.  I do not know who he belongs to or if he even has an owner that cares about him.  I want to adopt him.  I'm thinking about putting a sign around his neck that says something to the extent of, "Does anyone own me?"  I've been able to go on one walk since and he was there waiting for me in exactly the same place.  I was bad and brought some food to feed him later.  He ate it, but seemed more interested in being pet than eating the food.  Unfortunately, that's probably a pretty sure sign that he has an owner.

I'm dealing with some other health concerns that I'll probably blog about later.  My doctor told me that I shouldn't be running, so I think I'm going to have to put the running talent on hold for a while until I am healed which hopefully is in the next month or so.

Darwin's Surgery

Darwin was declawed Wednesday this week.  I scheduled it on purpose for during my spring break so I could be home to take care of him.  I REALLY didn't want to do it, but it became necessary after a few situations where things were destroyed.  We really did try every sort of behavioral thing that we could think of.  We bought floor scratching pads, scratching posts, wrapped rope around support beams in the basement, used spray water bottles when we caught him in the act, gave him treats when he didn't scratch, but things never got any better. 

At nighttime the cats participate in what Doug and I call a "Whirling Dervish," which basically means they run around the house like a bunch of crazies.  When Darwin comes to a doorway, he leaps and holds onto it with his claws and then slides down resulting in this...  This is how most of the doorways look in my newly built home.

 

Okay, so the doorway can be fixed.  It should only take hours of sanding and repainting all of the doorways in the house and then he'd probably do it all over again, but I REALLY didn't want to do the surgery.

THEN, a couple of months ago we bought a nice new desk for Doug's front office.  It was a beautiful cherry wood with a leather inlaid top.  We had spent months researching to find the right desk... and it wasn't exactly cheap.  When it came, we spent hours putting it together.  The next morning, we came downstairs and the leather top had been SHREDDED.  Doug let me know that morning that if Darwin didn't have an appointment to be declawed by __ date, then my precious Darwin would running along the side of the road somewhere or at a kitty shelter.  I begrudgingly made the appointment.

I dropped him off at the office for surgery on Wednesday and picked him up after work on Friday.  Here are some pictures from my phone of Darwin right after we got back from the vet's office.  Apparently, he didn't do very well in the little kennel after surgery and they had to put three different caution stickers on his cage.  In these pictures, he only has one paw bandaged because he already took the other one off.  When the bandages are ready to come off, the staff just cuts a slit at the top of it and let the animals take it off when they're ready.  The vets didn't get to put a slit in the other one, I'm guessing because of Darwin's friendly office manner, so I took care of it later and he had slipped the bandage off by the next morning.

Darwin needs to stay in strict seclusion for the next two weeks with shredded paper litter to help him heal.  They suggested a dog crate, but then I realized that we had an extra walk-in closet in one of the front bedrooms that has a window and everything.  I pulled the cushion off of a seat that we had and he is set for the next two weeks.  He actually seems happy with his little space and likes that he can look out the window and see all of the different happenings in the neighborhood.  I also have some pain killers that the vet gave me to give him every other day.

  

Here are some of the latest photos that I took today with my nice camera.  He's actually doing VERY well. He obviously isn't running around and playing like he used to, but he's been very affectionate and purring a lot whenever I pet him (which is a lot).  He doesn't look like he is in any pain that I can tell.

Cleaning his paws.

 Poor kitty!  You can see the stitches and other yuck from one of his paws in this picture.

See, he's okay!

Before I get any warnings on, "He can't go outside anymore."  Don't worry!  Darwin has always been an indoor cat out of necessity with his medium long fur.  At first he was pretty interested in the outside, but after a few supervised walks with big scary dogs barking at him, he decided that the outdoors was not something that interested him.  So he is perfectly content most days with being indoors.

Catch Up Pictures

I was looking through my camera to find if there were any pictures I missed during my four month stint of non-blogging.  Here are a few...

Doug carving the humongo pumpkin we grew ourselves for Halloween 2010.

 

Our finished Halloween 2010 pumpkins.

 

Picture of Doug and I after hiking Maryland Heights. - Thanksgiving 2010

 

Recent picture of Darwin

Recent picture of Lucky

I heart SNOW!

So in case you haven't heard, we've gotten some snow here in Northern Virginia.



Doug shoveled the driveway this morning.



I helped... by modeling this huge hat!


Next, I decided that Darwin might want to try out the snow.


He thought about it...


...but decided against it.


Then I came inside and made some of these...


They're really quite easy when you have a just add water mix...


I'm already off school Monday and Tuesday this next week... now I just need to find something to keep myself busy.

Snowed in...

DOUG IS OFFICIALLY HOME! Yay!!!!

This last weekend, the east coast got quite the storm. Doug and I came home late Friday night from a Christmas party at my parents' ward and went to bed early. The next morning, we woke up with several inches of snow on the ground. That in itself would have been exciting because it was the first snow to really stick this season... But it CONTINUED to snow for the rest of the day, pretty heavily at times. I heard somewhere that we accumulated 30 inches of snow, but I personally did not measure it.

Winter Wonderland! The view when we opened the garage for the first time.

 
Saturday afternoon, they canceled school for Monday and Tuesday, so it meant that there would be no more school before winter break!! Good thing I gave my kiddos all of their homework in advance, just in case the storm was bad! ;) Church was canceled on Sunday, so we basically stayed in and hung out all day. We barely ran out of milk the day before, so everything I cooked over the weekend needed to use powdered milk. Yuck! (I grew up on the stuff, so it brought me back...) Luckily, we had plenty of TP and other essentials to get us through the big storm.

The best sledding hill in the neighborhood is right next to our house. We 

could hear kids screaming as they went down it the whole day.

I was hoping the Doug would get the day off on Monday, but when he called the hotline it was an optional vacation day or something like that which basically meant he didn't need to go in, but he would have to take a vacation day if he didn't. He wanted to use his vacation days for later, so we managed for get him out the door before the sun rises as usual. He drove regular the hour and a half to work and told me later that the roads weren't all that bad and traffic was light. A lot of people took the day off, so he was able to get more projects... which is a good thing because the newbies don't get to do interesting things very often.

Monday and Tuesday I was home alone, with not much to do. The roads are/were yuck and it takes like 3 tries to back out of the garage with the piles of snow on either side, so I opted to stay in. So far I've watched about 24 episodes of Gilmore Girls, organized all of the baby clothes that my sister gave me (just to get rid of mind you, I'm not announcing anything :P), cleaned the house, and then decided to wash the cats (never a good idea). So, basically I haven't left the house since Friday night and it is now Tuesday evening...

Darwin looking oh so thrilled after me giving him a bath and then blow drying him to make sure he didn't get too cold.

The kitties keeping me company while I organize the baby clothes.

An aerial shot of all of the Tupperware containers full of baby clothes that my sister has sent my way. I guess I'll be able to use it all one day (unless I have all boys or something...)

Daisy died tonight. It really hurts. I wish Doug was here.

Crazy Cat Lady

So, I just added the picture of Daisy to my sidebar of the blog. I think I picked the third one for those of you that voted. I realized that I have now become a crazy cat lady. We were only going to be a two cat family and now we are a three cat family. We are officially outnumbered by our pets. I guess that means we need to balance it out now with more people!

New Addition!

Doug's dad was visiting this last weekend and they decided to go to visit grandma for the weekend. While they were out on a walk, they saw a man walking his dog being followed by a kitten. When Doug and his dad remarked on how funny it was that the cat followed him while he walked the dog, the man told him that he didn't know who the cat belonged to. It turns out that the county/city where grandma lives has a rule that if you feed an animal it becomes yours. So... no one was feeding this poor kitten and it was running alongside a busy road. Doug and his dad decided to take it home to save it from being roadkill. I got a call Sunday afternoon... and well the rest is history.

Doug named her Daisy. The name isn't sticking with me quite yet, but I think it will in time. She's very dainty and she purrs as soon as you pick her up. Her purr is so loud that you can hear it across the room easily. When she chases the blanket monster, (a favorite activity for all of our cats) she actually bites the blanket and gets fuzz in her mouth. She's really quite cute!

Darwin and Lucky took some time to get used to her. Lucky has found a permanent hiding place in the laundry room and Darwin and Daisy have been running around the house like crazies all evening. I followed them around for a while with my camera trying to get some shots where they weren't all blurry.

Which one should I put in my sidebar as a picture of Daisy?

"What a Little A-Hole!"

We went by my parents' house while Doug's siblings were visiting this last weekend. Allie was looking for a craft to do while we were in the process of making Katie addicted to Guitar Hero. Allie made this cute little race car out of a foam kit that my mom had sitting around. It came complete with a little pennant that they could put their name and a lucky number on. She did it with a little bit of help on my part, but it turned out great!

While we were at the zoo the next day, Allie accidentally left her little craft on the table. When we came back, Darwin had ripped her little pennant to shreds, but luckily left the car alone. I was having a bit of a flashback to when Darwin chewed my shoes, so I really could relate with Allie. She was really sad, but then she decided that she would "give" the pennant to Darwin since he was having so much fun with it.

We were kind of upset at Darwin until he started walking away with his tail sticking up and there was the A from Allie's name stuck to his butt.

Doug exclaimed, "What a little A hole!" :)

My Cat Sleeps Kinda Funny...

Darwin likes to follow me around the house and usually falls asleep wherever I happen to sit for a while. These are a few random shots of Darwin around the house. I don't know where he picked up sleeping on his back, but I think I may have figured it out while walking around the zoo on Saturday...

Catnip Mess

I don't have kids, so I take pictures of messes that my cats make. Last night I came down to this mess in the kitchen... unlike children who usually hide, cats have no guilt. He continued to lie on the floor even as I was sweeping and vacuuming it up!



We bought some kind of cat thing online and they gave us a bunch of catnip to go along with it. Darwin and Lucky didn't really show too much interest in it so I put it in our junk drawer. (in case we needed it?) Anyways, the bag of catnip was accidentally left on the counter. They had a bit of fun with it. Now it's where it should have been in the first place... the TRASH.

My POOR Shoes!

Sadly, I've found out the hard way that Darwin, my CAT likes to chew shoes.

I was at Walmart a couple weeks ago going grocery shopping and quickly browsed the shoe aisle for any deals. I had been looking for some quick slip-on shoes for getting mail and watering the garden. I found some cheap $1 Walmart "crocs." They were pretty ugly, but they worked for their purpose.

That very night, mere hours later, I was woken up a couple times by some weird chewing sound. It finally woke me up enough to check on what Darwin was getting into. He had chewed up my BRAND new shoes. They were ugly and only a dollar, so I wasn't too upset.


A couple weeks later, my sister Bekah came into town visiting from Hawaii and we went shopping together. She bought me these great flip flops (or slippers as they call them in Hawaii). I had been looking for a while, but I couldn't find any that were comfortable. Most of the bottoms are too hard, but this brand called "Rocket Dog" are super comfortable. I was so excited about my new flip flops, but later that night...


You think I would have learned the first time...

We keep all of the shoes in the laundry room/garage entry anyways, but now I have to keep the door closed for the safety of my shoes. I still wear both pairs of shoes. They now just have a little more character than new shoes usually have.

Sunbathing Kittens

I took these pictures of the kittens yesterday when I caught them sunbathing and decided to do a little sunbathing myself as well! I think I was a cat in another life... They didn't like me encroaching on their space.