Our Hero Dog

Before making myself breakfast this morning, I let the dog out like I always do - and right back in since it was raining. As I started my eggs, I heard Crookshanks meowing repeatedly.  ***Oh for those of you who didn't know, we got 2 adorable little kittens 2 weeks ago! Cali and Crookshanks*** It was a "I'm trapped, let me out" frantic kind of meowing. So I started looking around, trying to think of places he could be stuck. I couldn't figure out where the meowing was coming from (anyone with one-sided hearing loss can tell you that it's hard to determine the direction of sound, when you don't hear in stereo). Meanwhile the dog is barking like a maniac like someone was at the front door. I kept telling her to shut up so I could hear Crookshanks better. I opened and closed all the doors, looked in the laundry room (did his claw get stuck when he was playing in there?).  I even checked by their food dish, since he gets a little upset if the food gets low LOL.  Lacey, of course, was still barking in the living room.  Totally not helping things.....or so I thought.  If I had listened to her though, I would have realized that she was playing the game "where's the kitty?" That we've been teaching her. I realized she was telling me where Crookshanks was. I opened the front door, and there he was, trapped between the front door and the screen door. He had dashed in between as I closed the front door after letting the dog back in.  Lacey found the kitty, just like we taught her,  and she is the hero of the day!

Inexplicable Fear

There's no rhyme or reason to it. Fear and anxiety sometime come with good reason, some kind of good explanation.  If a child has a bad experience with a dog, for example, it makes sense when they acquire a fear of dogs.  I can't explain my anxiety.  I sit at home, on my comfy couch, inside walls and under a roof, behind locked doors and windows, and I am anxious over every little sound I hear.  I jump when the fridge runs because my over-active imagination tells me it's a car coming down the road.  When the house creaks, groans and pops (like all houses do) I imagine a wall sagging or the ceiling falling in. If I hear leaves rustle or a twig snap outside, I imagine someone sneaking around my house with the intent to break in and steal what little we have, or to do bodily harm to me or my family.  Perhaps I've seen too many scary movies, and watch too much crime television.  I am always on alert, and it's exhausting.  In order to get any sleep at all, I have to play some kind of background noise, like a thunderstorm or beach waves to drown out all other sounds.  But here's the really strange part.  In the last month or so, I have been camping twice.  The first time was in an over-crowded campground, where our neighbors were camped out just feet from our tent and people were regularly walking by, so close that I'm surprised no one tripped over our stakes and rope. The second time was near the beach in Grand Marais.  It was festival weekend, which means the small town was crawling with people, strangers, drunks.  Only the thin, nearly transparent material of the tent stood between me and the world.  But I wasn't afraid. My anxiety never kicked in during either camping trip.  Why then, inside the walls of my own home, do I feel so anxious? What am I afraid of??

Pinterest Win #3

Another win from the Pinterest boards.  Doggy ice cream, or pupsicles.  Yes, I even have pins for my dog.  For this one, Madison and I combined two dog-related pins we found, and made some doggy popsicles for our dog, Lacey.  You can see the two below:

  

Madison actually did most of the work.  She chopped up and mashed the bananas, and measured the yogurt and peanut butter.  We let the mixer do the hard part, scooped the mixture into cupcake tins, and stuck milkbones into each one (btw - I would recommend letting these set for a short time in the freezer BEFORE you put the bones in, otherwise the bones keep falling over).  This recipe made 15 cupcake-tin pupsicles.  Into the freezer they went.  An hour or so later, they were ready. 

I scooped one out and let Lacey go at it- the milkbone worked as a perfect handle (I didn't want to get the ice cream on the floor).  Lacey made quick work of the pupsicle, and was immediately looking for more - which I took as the doggy version of a huge "yes" vote! 

Pinterest Win #2

Riding on the wave of excitement over that first t-shirt conversion that went so well, I decided to give another one a try.  I was inspired by another Pin I found from Wobi Sobi (you can find it here).  I decided, before I even started, that I wanted to tweak it a bit so as to show off the new (as of last year LOL) tattoo across my back/shoulders.  In the tutorial, they cut and braided the bottom half of a shirt.  I cut and braided the top half of my Betty Boop tee.

I really like how it turned out.  It's kinda confusing to put on, because the strings get tangled and there's only half a shirt holding the sleeves in place. But once it's on, I love it.  It had the same major downfall as the halter shirt though.  Hmmm, where's my duct tape?

Pinterest Win #1

Hello everyone.  My name is Rachel.....

     (hi Rachel)

.....and I am a Pinterest-oholic.  

Yep. I am.  I love Pinterest.  LOOOOVE it (I sang that, you should too).  I have boards for clothing, food, fairy gardens, things I find for the kids, decorating ideas for the house, projects for my hubby's to-do list, even one for all things "Harry Potter".  I know I'm not the only one.  You're a Pinterest addict too aren't you?  How can you not be?  You can find anything on Pinterest.  Want a recipe for yummy cinnamon rolls?  Look on Pinterest.  Want a new hairdo for your daughter's hair?  Look on Pinterest.  Looking for a funny meme about whatever it was that you experienced today?  Check Pinterest (being a long-time retail employee, my favorite meme is "Retail Robin".  Look it up.  If you have ever worked in retail, you will appreciate it, and hopefully get a few laughs).  As you scroll through pin after pin after pin, adding things to your collection, you think "ooh I should make that craft" and "ooh, that looks yummy."  But really, how many of your Pinterest pins have you ever really gone back to and done?  For quite a while, my answer was "none" or "a few".  So I am here today to tell you, folks, that I have DONE some of the things on my Pinterest board!!

And I'd like to share some with you.  I already have a post about a Pinterest fail (find it here).  but now, I have a couple wins!  The first one I'd like to share is a halter top I made out of a regular old t-shirt.  Ok, it wasn't an OLD t-shirt.  I actually went to JoAnn's and bought a plain gray t-shirt.  Yes, I know.  I have tons of shirts in my closet I could have done this with.  But most of them have logos, or stains, or they don't fit...... The aim of this project was to have another shirt I could go out in (by going out, I mean date night with the hubby at the local dance club - there isn't a dress code, but people tend to dress up a bit).  I have a couple nice "going out" shirts but 1) I like to have a variety and 2) they are included in the stained or don't necessarily fit right category. So i decided to start fresh.  

I followed the directions I found, via Pinterest, on Wobi Sobi here.  No sewing required by the way.  A few snips later, I had a modest-in-front-but-show-off-my-whole-back halter top.  Then I modified it a bit.  I wasn't looking for modesty (ok, I wanted to, ahem, show off a little cleavage).  I cut it lower in front.  Snipped the straps shorter (the long straps tickled my back, which I found annoying after the first 3 hours I wore it).  Here it is:

Then, because I wasn't really comfortable with my WHOLE back being totally exposed, I took in the back a bit (oops, there WAS some sewing, but only because I ventured away from the original plans).  My verdict?  Absolute WIN!  It's cute, a little sexy, and best of all....it's made out of a t-shirt so it's super comfy.  

My only problem with it (Caution: guys, you may want to stop reading here.) How do you wear a bra with it?  I'm sorry.  My girls have nursed 2 babies, and they're 36 years old.  I have faced the fact that they just won't stand at attention on their own anymore - they NEED support!!!  BUT, I have not joined up with the whole "seeing your bra is ok" movement that seems to have taken over everywhere.  I don't want to see YOUR bra or its straps, and I don't want you to see MINE.  It's an underthing.  Which means it should be UNDER your clothing, not PART OF the outfit.  Ok, that little rant is over, sorry about that.  So, what to do?  It was a conundrum for me.  BACK TO PINTEREST!  I'm not going to go into detail on this.  You can google it yourself.  I'll just tell you that duct tape is now a permanent part of my getting-ready kit LOL. 

Today, as I drove home from work, it started raining cats and dogs.  It was really coming down.  I passed an older gentleman, arms full of groceries from Meijer, struggling with his umbrella. 

I follow several "acts of kindness" pages on Facebook. My favorite two are Random Acts of Kindness and One Spark.  Inspired by these pages, I pulled over and had a quick little chat with myself.  Could I just leave the man to walk in this pouring rain? Should I give him a ride?  It can be dangerous picking up strangers. Finally, I started backing up.  As I neared the man, I saw that his umbrella had now collapsed due to the wind, and I knew I had made the right decision. He didn't hesitate to accept my offer, and thanked me countless times during the 1/2 mile drive to his home.  He dropped a couple dollars in my cupholder as thanks when I dropped him off. 

When he unpacks his groceries, he'll discover I slipped the money into one of his grocery bags when he wasn't looking.

Update!

I just realized that I posted about the little lump I found, but never updated you about it.  Someone asked me about it, and said they had been worrying about me.  Sorry.  I didn't mean to make you worry!  First, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read all about it HERE.

I had a mammogram and ultrasound done on the little lump. I showed up at the doc's office, a little nervous, but not too bad since I had done my research and I was PRETTY sure (although not 100% sure) that I had nothing to worry about.   They led me to a changing room and gave me a lovely cape to wear.  Yes a cape.  Not the typical open-in-the-back hospital gown.

Ooooooh.  Gorgeous, isn't it?  Since there were no sleeves, I had to be careful not to move my arms around much, or I would have shown the world everything.  Next we went into the mammogram room. You can't tell from the picture below how nice the room was. They obviously tried to make it feel very homey and comfortable.  A big comfy chair (I was sitting in it when I took the picture), carpet, paintings and plants.  Right in the middle of the room was the dreaded mammogram machine.

The nurse was really nice.  Obviously she's experienced a mammogram, herself, and completely understood.  She explained in minute detail what she was doing and why.  She also kept apologizing about it being uncomfortable.  "I know, I'm sorry.  It's just for a minute."  I lost track of how many pictures she took. Each one required careful placement of my breast, which she had to do - how would I know where to put it? Thank god her hands were warm though.  Then the machine would squash it until it couldn't squash any more (ok, it probably COULD have squashed more, but then it would have HURT), took the picture, and released. There was a top, diagonal, and side view of each one.  Then a couple extras of the area where the lump was.  

I don't know how they can see anything in those pictures.  It just looks like cloudy stuff with some stringy looking stuff in it to me.  On that left picture, can you see the little dot on the left side of the picture? That's supposed to mark the area where I found the lump.  I see nothing.

Next was the ultrasound.  Yippee.  I didn't get any pictures of that part.  If you've ever been pregnant, you know how an ultrasound works.  They squirt some goo on the area, and then move a wand thing around on your skin to get images of what's going on beneath the surface.  First, they mapped out the whole breast in 12 sections (marking each section 1-12 like the face of a clock).  Then they pushed and prodded and moved and jiggled the little lump in an attempt to get a good picture of it.  Remember in my previous blog, I said it was tender to the touch?  Yeah, ouch.  They actually had a hard time getting it on the screen.  Apparently the sound waves from the ultrasound go deep, and the lump is JUST under the surface of the skin.  They had to use a rubbery spacer, which looked to me like a slab of fake fat. But it enabled them to find a clear picture of the lump (as clear as an ultrasound can get, anyway. Still looked like nothing but static to me) and they were able to measure it.  They didn't tell me what they thought it was, but said it was nothing to worry about.  I have a follow up appointment in a few months, for another ultrasound, just to make sure that it's not growing.  I guess if it's growing, then it IS something to worry about.  So I keep checking it.  If it's growing, it's growing slowly because it feels the same to me.