A Midnight Update

No, not an update at midnight. An update about Richard's dog, Midnight. Cousin Nancy was the one burning the midnight oil. I hope she's sleeping now.

Anyway, Midnight seems to be doing fairly well. We've got her on painkillers and anti-inflamatory drugs, and she seems to be responding well to them, aside from the fact that she sleeps a lot. More than normal, but that's the painkillers. It was really evident yesterday morning when we accidentally gave her a double dose of the painkillers. Richard gave it to her before he left for work, and I gave it to her after I got the boys on the bus. She slept very soundly for a good 6 hours. But she's none the worse for wear. Richard did comment the other day as to how much longer we want to keep drugging her. Eventually we'll have to up her dosage again. And then again. How long is too long to wait? That is the unspoken questions floating around our house right now.

Onto other things...

David has his last soccer practice tonight. If its not raining, that is. His last game is Saturday morning. Pictures. I must take pictures. One thing I thought was odd was that the kids didn't get any type of uniform. I remember having a uniform, at least a shirt of some sort. The kids here wear their own clothes and a pull over jersey that they give back after every game. For the $21 registration fee you think that they could give them at least a t-shirt that has "Sparta Youth Soccer" on it so something. Oh well.

A Difficult Few Days

I haven't posted anything for a few days. Wednesday I had no excuse, but Thursday & Friday, I had other things on my mind. Richard's dog, Midnight, who is 12 1/2 years old, began having trouble walking Thursday afternoon. I took her to the vet on Friday, and after X-Rays, the vet had some bad news. Midnight has a degenerative spinal disorder. She's lost some control over her back legs, and can't feel much in her feet. Its not going to get better, it can only be controled with pain meds. She's on the doggy equivalent of Tylenol and Codine, so she's spent a lot of time the last day sleeping. She is walking a little better, but we can tell she's still hurting.

Richard & I slept on our hide-a-bed last night, since she's not supposed to go up/down stairs anymore. Neither of us slept well, and I woke up with a migraine.

The boys know that she's not feeling well, and tonight, as gently as we could, we explained to David that Midnight isn't going to get better, and eventually we'll have to have her put to sleep. The poor boy. It breaks my heart that we had to tell him, but we felt we needed to prepare him. Please keep us in your prayers, as the next few days will be very difficult as Richard makes the decision whether to put her to sleep or keep her around for a while longer.

David asked me if we had pictures of Midnight. I looked through a bunch of pictures, and found the ones below. Most of these were pre-Nathaniel.

David & Midnight, February, 2005

Midnight (laying down) & Stormy, June, 2006

David & Midnight, December, 2003

David & Midnight, July, 2003

An outside tour

So here's the grand tour of the outside of the house. I'm hoping to get lots of cleaning/sorting done next week while the boys are at VBS during the day. If that happens, then you'll get the inside tour.

As I mentioned yesterday, I did take pictures last night. However, I downloaded them onto the laptop last night, and they weren't there this morning. Which makes me ill, cause I just realized that the pictures of David's summer school musical/play were downloaded as well last night. And they aren't on the laptop either. Oh well.

And now, the tour (drum roll, please).....

Here's our house; this is taken from the road. There is pasture to the east, west and north of us. Our closest neighbors are cows. They are pretty quiet unless a calf wanders too far from mom.

Here are some wild blackberries that are about halfway down our driveway. If you look in the picture above, its the big bush on the right side about halfway down. Yummy!

Here is the front of our house, from about half way down our driveway. The garage was an addition to the house, probably done in the late '70 to early '80s. The living room above the garage is about 24' x 24'. Its where we spend most of our time.

This is the pasture behind our house, this picture was taken from the back west corner of the house so it angles to the east.

This is the pasture at the back of the house, the picture angles to the west, as I took it from the back east corner of the house. We usually have cows in this pasture, but they are father east in the mornings, they come over this way in the evenings.

This is the back of the house. We don't use this door. Haven't even ever tried to open it. It opens into our laundry/utility room. If you were to walk out this door, you've have about a 45 degree incline to walk up if you wanted to go to the fence line (which would be about 15 feet away).

This is the east side of the house. You can't really tell from the picture, but its a gradual incline to about where the back addition is (its the part that doesn't have a first floor window), then it increases to about a 40-45 degree angle. It doesn't look like it, but it is a pain to mow!

This is the west side of the house, and the main door. See the chimney at the very top of the house? Yeah, we don't have a fireplace. I'm just guessing, but the house was probably originally heated by the fireplace, then got upgraded to coal (maybe), then heating oil & now it has an lp (liquid propane) furnace and water heater. See the propane tank to the left?

Here's Richard's dog, Midnight. He has had her since before we met. She was about 5 months old when I met Richard. That makes her 12. She's very active for a 12 year old lab.

And here's my dog, Stormy. Midnight is Stormy's mom. She came from Midnight's one and only litter. She's not much of a hunting dog like Midnight, but she's a great family pet. Both of the dogs are great with the kids. They can climb on them, try to ride them, whatever and it doesn't bother them. When they've had enough, they just get up and leave.