He’s all ‘I feel much better now, thanks for all those happy pills’! It’s good to have him bounding around and looking for trouble again. It’s amazing how fast he went downhill, and how fast he’s rebounding!
Barclay’s sore throat
Saturday morning we had to rush Barclay to the emergency vet! He had been coughing on Wednesday, lethargic the past two days, and Saturday morning I followed him around the yard and he looked like he was so weak he was going to collapse. I had already decided he would go to the vet that day, and planned to call them as soon as they opened at 8, but here it was 5am, and he wasn’t looking good. I took him inside and gave him some soft food, and he ate a bite, then just stared at the bowl and shivered. That was it, he was going in NOW.
We got to the vet and they examined him and determined he was running a very high fever! They took him back to do xrays and blood tests, and had to knock him out because he was so upset about it. They found a sore in the back of his throat – they think he may have poked it with a bone. I think it was the ‘pig ear’ rawhides he likes. Some of them are thin and have pointy ends – I could see him swallowing a chunk and hurting his throat.
They put him on an IV, for fluids, antibiotics, and pain meds, and kept him all day. I was so worried I called to check on him every couple hours. Navi didn’t know what to do with herself, being the only dog. By afternoon she was sitting in the hallway yapping at nothing – I think she was just nervous. Being the only dog is a lot of pressure for her! By evening the vet said Barclay was eating solid food and drinking, and was so upset about being there, they were ready to send him home so he could rest.
Of course he was super happy to see us! We took him home and he drank and ate and slept in the middle of the living room where he could be the center of attention. Navi followed him around wagging her tail, and sat on the couch watching him sleep until she fell asleep too. He pretty much slept on our bed all night. I heard a couple coughs from him this morning and we got up and gave him his pills, he ate and drank, and even barked at the front window a little. But mostly he’s resting.
Hopefully this will be a quick recovery. The vet says there’s a chance the sore is a tumor, not a wound, but I am assuming it’s a wound, and that’s what the vet felt was most likely too. It makes sense, and I refuse to even think about another dog having cancer at this point. He’ll get another exam in a couple weeks to see how it looks. The first thing I did when I got home is throw out those ‘pig ears’ – no more of those for him!
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Kitchen Light
Continuing our upgrades, Dave scored a nice vintage light cover for the kitchen. It’s 19 inches across, which is HUGE, and has little dots/bumps all over it for the light to sparkle through. We had no problem removing the old light and fitting a new fixture. The new light shade covers everything, and even hangs down enough to fit fluorescent bulbs underneath.
I think the kitchen is really looking up now. Most important, we’re both having a lot of fun finding these treasures for our house, and getting them installed!
We were at Home Depot looking at lights last night, when a lady came up and said ‘We have a special offer for people who don’t like their kitchen cabinets..’ and we looked at each other and said ‘No thanks, we LOVE our kitchen just the way it is!’. No Home Depot kitchen for me!
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Woodpiles
When we moved in, there were two big woodpiles, one on either side of the yard, covered in ugly brown tarps.
We peeked under the tarps and discovered some mouse poison right after we took possession, so we spent some time looking for any more of it before we brought the dogs over, and then I’ve watched them like a hawk while they’re out in the yard to make sure they didn’t find any we missed. If those logpiles weren’t already on my to-do-list, that put them there for sure – the woodpiles had to go!
So Last weekend a friend came over along with two other friends with full size trucks, thinking they’d each take a load of wood and it would all be gone. Not quite. It took FIVE full size pickup bed loads to clear the piles away! The one closest to the house was the oldest, and a lot of the wood was rotten and full of termites! Yikes! They took as much of that as they could too.
That left me with a lot of debris to clean up:
And a new, and not entirely enjoyable view, of the neighbor’s yard!
Hey, I moved away from the farm to get away from that sort of ramshackle chicken coop/blue tarp stuff! Oh well.
The other pile left less of a mess. At least it was all good wood, none of that rotten stuff. But it was still full of mice and rat droppings. I didn’t find any more poison hidden in the piles. The boxes had looked pretty old, so it had probably all been consumed by mice long ago, but I wouldn’t take a chance of the dogs getting any. I’m sure we displaced a lot of rodents though.
Much to Navi’s delight. She’s been hunting mice every time she goes outside. She caught one the other day. She’s fast! I don’t think these mice came out of the woodpiles though, she’s been hunting mice in the garden area.
Our next big outdoor project is to clean up the big garden and reseed it for grass so the dogs will have more grassy area to play in. I don’t need that much garden anyway! Not sure when we’ll get a dry weekend to do that.
Maple Leaf Swag
My husband is so awesome! He surprised me with this lamp today!
This is a special lamp, because it’s exactly like the lamp that was in Grandma’s house! I saw one on ebay but it was really expensive. By some miracle Dave spotted one on Craigslist (for a lot cheaper) and went and picked it up while I was at work. I came home and saw it all lit up in the window – I couldn’t believe it! The one at Grandma’s house was right by the front door, so it was the first thing you saw driving up in the driveway. This gave me warm fuzzies to see it here in our little ‘vintage’ house!
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The UFO
Sherry and Scott (and Sake and Sitka) came over for dinner – first dinner party at our new house! And after dinner Scott installed our new lamp. I held a flashlight, that counts as helping, right? I was amazed when it lit up, because it did something I hadn’t expected – the fiberglass shade lit up like a UFO! So cool! I couldn’t be more happy with this little treasure!
But…now I’m going to need a vintage table to go with it!
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Furnishing the Rancho
Now that we have started to settle into our charming little Mid-Century house, we decided to go looking for some Mid-Century furniture to go with it. We did not have a lot of furniture to bring from the other house, much of it was so worn out it went to the dump (even Goodwill wouldn’t take it), and we never had a real bedroom set.
The first thing Dave wanted to replace was our country-style knotty pine buffet. Not that there was anything wrong with it, it just fit into the farm-house better than it does here.
So we went shopping around antique stores until we found a nice vintage bedroom set that struck our fancy:
Love it! This is the sort of furniture we both grew up with, and it looks very cool. Just what we wanted.
And it has a matching dresser!
Look at those little legs! So awesome!
Our bedroom is shaping up nicely!
Next on our list was a vintage swag light for the front room, which we didn’t find, but we found something we weren’t looking for – a pull-down dining room light to replace the large greek-style modern lamp a previous owner installed (which doesn’t fit with the kitchen style at all).
Here’s a better look at it:
It has a brass base with a large fiberglass disk. It’s just too awesome! We found it at an antique mall and the note on it said it was new (by which we assume he meant it had never been installed), and had a piece of the original box label.
I can’t wait to get this installed in the dining room. Things are going to be pretty retro-cool at the Rancho if we keep having this sort of luck!
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New Camera, Kitty update
Yesterday I did my part to help the economy by picking up a new Nikon 5100 DSLR at Best Buy on a Black Friday sale. In my research to buy a new camera I discovered they are pretty much priced the same everywhere, with sales popping up here and there, and the sales are always the same amount too. I don’t get how that’s legal. Anyway, I decided to go for it and get the latest model in the amateur DSLR line. Unfortunately only one of my old lenses will work with it, but the kit lens seems good.
My first test shot: Mighty – on my desk:
Handheld, without Image stabilization turned on, with just the light from my desk lamp – nice!
BTW, the kitties are doing fine in our new home. I’d kind of like to keep them inside, but I don’t know if they would be too bored after having been outdoor kitties on the farm. On the other hand I don’t want them annoying the neighbors, catching birds, getting hit by a car, or chased by neighborhood dogs. A friend suggested an invisible fence they make for cats that could keep them in the backyard, but they would still catch birds, and the gardens in the backyard are full of birds. The other morning we were making breakfast and watching all the birds playing in the bushes and taking baths in the bird bath – fun! I think if we let these two out the birds would go somewhere safer! So for everyone’s sake, we’ll see about keeping them in for now at least.
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Almost done
This has been a very stressful two weeks! We started moving into our house just over a week ago. On that Saturday a friend came over and helped us load furniture, and with a small box moving truck, his pickup, and our full size van, we moved everything we needed for the house in pretty much one move, except little this and that stuff. When we got to looking around the new house, it needed more cleaning than we expected! But we moved in anyway, and have been cleaning while we go – exhausting!
Also, we decided to use the moving truck to get a load of garbage from our house to take to the dump. Since we were doing that anyway, we looked around the new house to see if he’d left any garbage. We started throwing stuff in the truck, piles of stuff here and there around the backyard, stuff hidden in the garage, even a rusty old pickup bed cap leaning against the house. Two hours later we’d filled the truck! That hadn’t been in our plan! So we got that stuff hauled to the dump right before it closed.
The past week has been a blur of working late nights, getting everything moved over, cleaning up the old house, and getting my husband’s business moved into storage. thank goodness he doesn’t work during the day, or we couldn’t have gotten this far! We’re finding it challenging to stuff everything into our tiny house.
The biggest accomplishments in the last two days:
The trailer, snuggled into it’s spot in the backyard.
The Mustang, safe and dry in the tiny garage.
I’d say I felt worse about leaving our farm, but there’s been no time to reflect on it. Just working, eating out (because we haven’t gotten our kitchen unpacked and cleaned until yesterday) and sleeping good and hard straight through the night – that’s what physical labor will do for you. Lots of ibuprofin for my sore muscles!
The official handoff is Tuesday evening, so we’re almost done. It will be nice to finally sit back and get to know our new house and for our lives to settle into what I hope is a much less stressful routine than the last few years has been.
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Steff Does Stuff! 