Passion

Passion is a flower. A passionflower to be specific. It is one of the strangest blooms imaginable.

These are blooms on the plants at my mother's house. Earlier this summer, we went over there and dug up a couple of plants and moved them to our office. They died back and we were afraid they were done. Fortunately they are hardy little boogers and have come back well. They have not bloomed yet, but I expect they will before the frosts come.We planted them along the fence. They will grow up and cover it with sweet smelling flowers. What a nice reminder of mom.

They will go well with the other flowers we have planted around the office. My mother in law planted a golden trumpet vine a couple of years ago. She was pretty disappointed that it didn't bloom, or do much of anything really. This year, it finally started blooming, and she is thrilled. It is a pretty flower.

We also have morning glories. They are so pretty. Such vibrant colors.

We have planted a lot of things around the shop. We are lazy, and plant periennials because they come back, or things that re-seed themselves :) We have a lot of zinnias, hibiscus, and four o'clocks. I love them all. I am all about bright colors, and they have them. See the little visitor?

Here are some more of the flowers around the office.

Bohemian

This picture cracks me up. The only thing missing is me shooting the finger, which I usually do when I catch someone trying to take my picture. It is a sterling example of my attitude towards society in general. I think I am probably the strangest person I know, and you know what? I like me. If you don't like me, it's ok. Really. I can be kind of hard to take :)

I inherited this attitude from my mother (well, not the shooting the bird part). Had she lived in New York, I believe she would have become a true bohemian. After my father died, she really became totally involved with her artistic side. Her house was full of art supplies and craft stuff. Her greenhouse was full of the beautiful, the odd, and the oddly beautiful. She had always done artsy things. She painted, threw pottery, glued, scratched, cut, compiled, and every other art form known to man. Mom understood me. I think it made her smile knowing that I was sort of an oddball. She told me that if she had been younger, we could have gotten matching tattoos. What a hoot!

My father on the other hand....My father was a saint, as I have said previously, but he was a bit of a prig. I know after going through their papers that he led a very hard life in his formative years, so his rather stiff social code was understandable. He died when I was about 22. He would have been properly horrified by my tattoos. He adored me. He did not understand me. It was ok that he didn't.

I did not inherit mother's gift to create art, but I did get the couldn't care less attitude, and the ability to see things from a different perspective. I consider the work we do as a sort of art. It takes some creativity to turn sand, cement, rocks and water into a slab that will pass for Pennsylvania blue stone but, to me, it is not the same as making a painting that is actually pleasing to the eyes.

I was born in the early '60's. Really too late to make a good hippy, but I sure gave it all I had. I was that weird kid in school that just never fit in. I used to let it bother me, but at about 13, I decided, - screw them. If they don't like me, it's their loss. It was all downhill from there. There is incredible freedom in just accepting the fact that what other people think about you really does not matter. Instead of trying to fit in, I could just continue to be weird and not try to change to conform to the accepted standards.

All in all, I am just me. I hadn't ever really thought about it, but this is pretty much a definition of who I am (mostly - I don't know that I am exotic or radical) -

Bohemian adjective 1. (often not cap.) unconventional, alternative, artistic, exotic, way-out (informal) eccentric, avant-garde, off-the-wall (slang) unorthodox, arty (informal) oddball (informal) offbeat, left bank, nonconformist, outré conventionalnoun 2. (often not cap.) nonconformist, rebel, radical, eccentric, maverick, hippy, dropout, individualist, beatnik, iconoclasthc_thes Collins Essential Thesaurus 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2005, 2006

There is nothing "normal" about me... thank goodness.

Farrier day again

Craig and John came today. They are my farrier and his apprentice. I think that he is a really great farrier. Craig trims Baxter, and John does Susie. I was a little afraid that Baxter might be a pill. He has only been trimmed once since he hurt his hock. He has also been difficult to catch since then. Of course we had to have one little go-round, but he figured out that it was much better to wear a halter and eat cookies than it was to run in circles in the heat. Smart boy!

He was very good for Craig. No pulling or yanking his feet away. He actually closed his eyes. Good BOY! Susie was good, as always. She is such a sweet girl. I know I have said this before, but she makes my heart happy. I adore her.

I have decided that we are going to call John *Ian*. It is much less mundane. I am thinking about renaming all my friends. This could be fun.

Hell is cooler.

I have decided that hell must be cooler than Oklahoma. When you open the door at 5:30 am, it feels like you are in a tropical jungle. The sweat starts the second you go outside. Unfortunately, we can't work at night when it is marginally cooler and the sun is not beating down to cook whatever we are pouring.

This is the job we just finished. Here we have just torn out the old drive and parking area. The guys are picking out the little stuff.

Here is our destructo boy, Skip. He tears stuff up for a living. He is very good with that skidsteer. See his truck full in the background? Skip is a nice guy :)

We poured the parking area by the garage in two pours. They wanted colored/broomed concrete with stamped borders. Of course they wanted two colors, which is the bane of my existence. You have to color everything by hand, very carefully. This means more crawling around on my hands and knees. This job was particularly fun because the border cut through the middle, which meant that I was crawling on a walk board. The guys were stepping on the end of it and making it bounce! This is not amusing. Oh well, it's done now.

Here is a detail shot of the border. I hand tinted individual blocks to make it more rustic. She wanted it to have a lot of variation, so I used several colors. I like how it turned out.

Next comes the driveway. Here it is all set up. We had to move the rebar out so we could get the mixer backed up. It just fit inside the forms. Whew! I would have hated to have the guys wheelbarrow up that slope. Not fun. We dropped the rebar mats back in as the truck poured out. Much easier that way!

At least here there is a bit of shade. The parking area is full sun, and it was 100+ when we poured it. It is fenced on one side and thickly treed on the other. There was NO breeze at all. Curing concrete puts off heat and humidity. It's about 125 or so degrees on a curing slab. I do not sweat without artificial help. It's very difficult for me to pour in this kind of heat. The tools we use are black, so they get damn hot. I use an 8 lb, or a 12 lb sledge to set the tools. That means picking up that sledge at least a thousand times. Then there is moving the tools. Some of them weigh 45 lbs and are as long as I am tall. When it is 100+ degrees, this is not fun, but when there is concrete on the ground, you can't just stop. Bill helps me when he can. I move the tools and he sets them. Isn't he sweet? I sure think so :)

Here the drive is all stamped and cut. YAY!

And here is the final pour, the approach. It is the same color as the broomed part of the parking area. Thank goodness this was a small pour. Full sun all day, and 105 degrees. It is ridiculous. If it were just us, I think we would sell plasma during the sumer. Unfortunately, we have people depending on us to feed their families, so we work. Sheesh...some people just expect the world..... (just kidding).

Here is my man sealing the driveway. It is so hot that the sealer spins threads like a spider web before it can travel the 8 inches from the sprayer to the drive. Lord help us all!

Here are a couple of detail pictures. Unfortunately, it was way too bright, and I couldn't get any decent shots, but you can get an idea from these. I *really* like this pattern, and especially these colors. They are dark and warm.

If anyone has an answer, I need to hear it. I would love to know why it is that the *only* picture someone has taken of me in the past ten years that did not make me look like Bertha Butt is the one where I am absolutely filthy? Anyone?? Anyway, here is what I look like after a day of pouring. Fun huh? Anyone want to come help? Paige? How about it? I will make sure you have lots of cold water to drink. Come on, it's a blast, I swear! So here I am in all my Fairy Princess glory. Ain't life grand?

At last...

After many stumbles, and a ton of work, my mother's house is finally on the market. I met the realtor last Thursday, and handed over a key. He was excited about the remodel, and sounded very optimistic about getting it sold. He showed me the sign he was going to put in the yard. Said it was his good luck sign, and "see, it already has a sold sign on it!". I told him I would be pleased if it was sold by Christmas. He said that he would not, because that would really ruin his average, and that the sign he was using had never been in someone's yard for longer than 45 days. Hope springs eternal, again.

I went over a few minutes early, because I had not signed all of the papers, and needed a few minutes to do that. I was flipping through them and signing on the lines when I heard a buzzing by my head. I figured it was a wasp, and ignored it, knowing if I swatted it that it would pay me back violently. I went on... and heard it again. Again I ignored it. The third time it came back I looked around, and there hovering at eye level was a ruby throated hummingbird. I was surprised to see it there, and spoke to it. It hovered precisely at my eye level, and stayed for a long time. When I stopped talking, it actually nodded it's head, and flew off.

Now I am not superstitious, or a great believer in psychic mumbo jumbo, or life after death visitations, but this *was* my mother's very first favorite animal. She devoted much of her garden space to plants that would attract them, and had hummingbird stuff all over her house. I don't know if it was my mother or not. I do know that every time I have been ready to sign the sales papers some new disaster reared up. First, the phone stopped working, then the alarm didn't function, and lastly, the garage door would not work. Every time I got something fixed, another thing would go wrong. It was like she was trying to stop us from selling the house. This time, I felt like I had Mom's seal of approval. I am grateful for that.

Debby Hairy sings "I Feel Good"

Blondie, affectionately known as Miss Piggy (anyone who has ever lived with a bulldog knows why) had her appointment with the "Eye Specialist" yesterday. He was a nice enough man. Properly serious, and dressed in scrubs, with his magnifying glasses perched on his wrinkled forehead. He first looked at both of her eyes and pulled a face. Oh oh.... Then he did a moisture test on her right eye. This eye has a condition called "dry eye". She has had this since we found her. Our old vet prescribed a treatment that didn't do anything more than make her face dirty, so we quit that and opted for saline solution several times a day. That test showed that her eye produced very little moisture naturally. Then he stained her left eye, the one with the massive ulcer, and surveyed the damage under magnification. The whole time he is examining her, he is taking time out to dictate notes to be passed on to our new vet. He has an assistant who has obviously been with him a long time. She is working on a computer. As he is dictating, she is scrolling up and down, marking things on the screen. They work together so well that you can tell they are a solid team, and have obviously done this a time or two.

The doctor comes to the conclusion that she has an ulcer that has gotten way out of hand. He has grimmaced several times during the exam, and occasionally asked us a question, which we answered as best we could. He began rapidly listing off the medications he wanted to put her on. He asked us again about how we were treating her (now) good eye, the dry eye. We told him about the medication the other vet prescribed and why we stopped using it. He said that we could of course do what we wanted to, but that he would treat the eye with different medications. We agreed and he added those to the list.

We were very nervous about this appointment. She is effectively blind in her right eye, and has been one very unhappy dog for the last month, due in great part to the fact that she cannot see much of anything. This is a sad state of affairs for a dog whose whole world revolves around guarding her food. She will stand over a cookie and guard it, daring anyone (dog wise) to attempt to take it - or even get within 5 feet of the prize. If she cannot see, she must be on high alert constantly, making sure that no one can sneak up on her and steal her food. She has been in a state of high anxiety and pain for nearly a month. There was a lot riding on this visit.

When the exam was over, he explained what he had seen, and we asked him if it could be "fixed". Without hesitation, he said yes. When we asked about the loss of sight, he was non committal. We had to be satisfied with that. We were both happy that he didn't feel she needed the surgery. She is not a young dog, and we were afraid for her. She does not do well with the elizabethan collar, panicking when it goes on, and running blindly. If she had the surgery, they would have had to sew her eye shut for the healing process, and she would have to wear the collar constantly until the eye was healed. Not good for little flat faced girls.

We got our instructions from his assistant. She was very positive, reminding us not to miss any applications of the medications, and assuring us that the change would be remarkable. We took our little fat dog picked up the meds and paid the bill, grateful to be taking our girl home with us, considering the alternative.

I am skeptical by nature, so I had my doubts about all of this. After all, we have had no less than 6 vet visits and three different antibiotic medications in the last four weeks. None of them have helped *at all*. In fact, the eye has steadily worsened, so I was not optimistic that this would work either. Well, I was as wrong as I have ever been, and thrilled about it. Her dry eye actually looks pretty damned normal. Of course the iris is dark. It is damaged beyond repair, but they eye itself looks normal. It is usually cruddy and covered with a gunky film. Today, for the first time in almost 5 years, it looks like an eye and not a lint covered marble. Simply remarkable. Her left eye appears to be progressing. She is no longer closing it tightly, but is relaxed and normal for the first time in almost 4 weeks. It is nothing less than amazing to me. I think that the pain medication he gave us has helped her a lot. I had asked the previous vet about something to numb the eye, and they didn't seem to think it was necessary, despite me telling them that she had an extreme reaction to the antibiotics, clawing violently at her eye, causing us to have to restrain her.

For me to say that I am disgusted with the previous vet is a gross understatement. Their negligence nearly cost our dog her eyesight (and may still). If they had never seen this dog before, I might be a little more forgiving. The fact that they are the only vet's to ever treat her, along with a history of this very problem makes their negligence unforgivable. I will return their collar, and if they should care to ask, I will tell them why I am not bringing my dog back to them. Being the cynic that I am, I hardly think it will concern them at all. I can hope that they learned something from this experience, because I damn sure have. I will never again sit silent if I have that gut feeling that something is not right. If I question a vet (or anyone in any profession) and they get snotty, I will leave without looking back.

I am grateful for this. She is much improved in both body and spirit. This adorable little girl who has been scared, depressed, nearly silent and in pain for a month is almost back to her normal curmudgeonly self. She is happily growling over her goodies when people walk by, and merrily joining Monkey barking at at the dogs being delivered to the groomer across the street. She has limited vision, and still bumps into things occasionally, but I believe she is well on her way to healing and retaining her eye along with at least some vision.

She has been celebrating with her favorite snack - vienna sausages. Ain't that great? She sure thinks so!

Blondie AKA Debby Hairy

My little english bulldog Blondie has an issue.

Her issue is an ulcer on her cornea. Ordinarily this is easily healed and everything is back to normal within a few days. She has had several in the past that healed just fine. This time it's different. Blondie was a foundling. She came running up to us in the park, skin and bones, covered in fleas and ticks. We took her home and cleaned her up. We also discovered that she had a dry eye. This is a common problem for these dogs, but it is manageable. The sad thing is that she has very little sight in that eye, but has gotten along just fine...till now.

Now, due to an error on the vet's part, she is not healing, and may lose the sight in this eye as well. She has an appointment with the eye specialist to see if they can fix the problem. If not, she will be blind. She has already lost a lot of the sight in the good eye. I am hoping against hope that she will recover.

I am very angry that she is in pain. It is not fair for her. Of course I know life is not fair, but it is much more difficult to accept when the recipient of the unfairness is such an innocent little thing. Poor girl.