4 posts tagged “news”

I spoke with Mom on the phone. She can use crutches, she’s at home, and Ronnie is helping out a lot.

She’s got three cracks in her pelvis, a cracked tailbone, and lots of cuts and bruises everywhere, including a nasty hit to her head. She can’t really remember anything about what happened, but that’s not unusual so no one’s really worrying about that. Fortunately she is a nurse, so she knows how to recoup in the easiest way possible. ^_^ I’m really relieved. She was obviously groggy over the phone, but that’s the pain medication so it’s understandable.

I've also broken a tooth way in the back and need a root canal done on it.  Yays.  >_<  So, this Friday the 13th, I get a root canal!  And then I get a bridge.  Fun times.

But in better news, I have updated my homepage - It's pretty snazzy, you should check it out - and now it has a blog with it!  I want to do a Saturday Showcase feature to keep the content fresh, so if any of you out there in Internet Land have an Etsy Page or want to be a featured artist (I don't care what you do) give me a poke.  I've got some questions for you to fill out and some ways for people to see your creative goodness, so if you've got some times to spare, why not?

Anyway, I've got some chainmaile to do.

Later!

Crazed

I got a scary phone call earlier today.  My mom was in a car accident.

Fortunately she's not dead, but she cracked her hip on each side.  My youngest brother, Ronnie, was at home at the time hanging out with a friend so he wasn't involved, which is the good news in all this.  His friend's mom is watching him in case Mom has to stay at the hospital when school starts next week, so things are pretty much all taken care of.

It's things like this that make you realize physical space.  I'm in Pittsburgh, Mom, Ronnie and my grandparents are in Southwestern New York, and Chris is in Canada.  The geographical distance between us isn't a big deal, normally.  I talk with Mom usually a few times a week, just to chat.  I e-mail, IM and call Chris, and I even talk to my grandparents at least once a week.  They don't seem that far away because I can just switch on Skype and see them if they're on.  It's not uncommon for us to call or leave a voicemail saying, "Hey, get on-line!  I've got to show you something."

But right now I feel very far away, and it's not fun.

No, seriously.  Good things and bad things have happened since I last posted here, and things keep coming at me left and right.

First off, the Bad -
Sanjuro died early December.  She had mammary cancer, and was clearly not very happy with life.  There wasn't anything we could do because her age, combined with the inherent frailty of rabbits in general for surgery, meant that her chances of survival were very low.  But she wanted to go, so we let her.  We were all really sad, but she's with Bun-Bun now, and happy.

Work-wise, I haven't been able to do much chainmaile at all in the second half of the year.  No big deal, because the Ren Fest's new contract was downright draconian and pretty much left me with no rights, so I didn't sign it.  Things didn't go that well this year, because a LOT of people bailed.  Maybe the new owener will start listening.

Now, the Good -
Cheeks was very sad at losing her "big sister", but luckily the WPA Humane Society has the Bunny Blind Date program.  You bring in your rabbit in need of a pal, tell them what your bun is like, and they bring out some good candidates for a meeting.  The meetings are surpervised under the watchful eye of a bun-experienced volunteer in case of any fights (and to prevent them before they happen - there are signs), and they can explain the bunny bonding behaviours if thigns are going well.
Things went AMAZINGLY well for Chee! ^_^ She met Little Joe, and it was love at first sight.  At least, it was for Joe.  Cheeks is a girl in need of much attention and loves, but she seemed a tad nervous.  Joe was smitten from the onset, and when he first approached her she loafed up and demanded that he groom her ears.  He was more than happy to oblige, and she soaked it up.  It was exactly what we had hoped for! ^_^
Little Joe is a gorgeous cinnamon-sugar boy, the runt of his litter of Flemish Giants.  He's actually a bit smaller than Cheeks.  He has green eyes (very odd, but very pretty), huge ears, and is a bit shy but incredibly polite.  He would much rather kiss your hand than have you pet him, and spends most of his time within three feet of his girl, when he's not actively snuggling up to her or grooming her ears.  He even likes Bentley, who's learned that these two won't pick on him, and they often gather together in front of heat vents.
He has earned the nickname "Sir Joe the Little", because while he is shy and afraid of thigns like the vacuum cleaner, if something happens that alarms them he assumes a defensive position between whatever it is and Cheeks.  So he's not the bravest knight in the land, but he's chivalrous to the core.  If we're vacuuming he won't budge until after Chee  runs away from the machine, and then he's on her heels.  If she hides behind or under something and there's no room for two, he will stand outside and guard.  He'll be terrified (I feel so bad cleaning) but he'll stay put.

I did well at the shows I was able to do, though!  So to me the year was a success, business-wise.

Brian won the 2008 NaNoWriMo!  Awesome, awesome, and more awesome.

And the biggest, best news of all - I'm pregnant. ^_^ We're expecting our first child at the end of May, and it's a girl.  I'm about 21/22 weeks along now, and things are going great.  We'd been trying for a year when it happened, and honestly the timing couldn't be better.
After Otakon I wasn't able to do much beacuse the crippling fatigue left me so that I would sleep most of every day.  And then I fractured my wrist in October falling down the steps, and it took a month to heal because it wasn't in a cast.  I didn't know that pregnant women couldn't get even a extremity X-rayed - apparently the radiation can travel via your bones and get in other places.  The doc at the ER thought it was a sprain because of my grip strength, so I got a heavy-duty splint instead of a cast.  Of course, I didn't bother trying to tell him that my crazy hand strength comes from bending metal all day long; he seemed annoyed that I even showed up at all.  But, you can splint a break and it'll heal okay, but if you cast a sprain that can make the damage worse, so it was erring on the side of caution.
I normally heal injuries and sickness in half the time of most people ('tis a mutant superpower), but I have a freakish pain tolerance level.  Normally that is a handy thing, but that means I don't notice/feel a lot of low-level pain that most people would, so I would be lightly using my splinted right hand because to me, it felt fine 90% of the time.  And usually light use of a sprain is okay, because it actually helps.  It should have healed within two weeks, but it took four.  I have sprained thigns (badly) before, and I normally heal in a week, maybe more if it's a major muscle.  Small breaks, like in my toes, mend in two weeks.  But what pain I did feel and the swelling just wasn't going away until I realized that I must have fractured something, and using broken bones doesn't help them knit.  So I bought a sling to sort of remind myself that using my dominant hand was a no-no, and it got better in a week of not using it.  Still, I lost a whole month of chainmaile time, and then the holidays were upon us, so it was a whole autumn of no chainmaile.

Luckily, I'm getting back into the groove now that I can stay awake for more than two hours at a time, and the work is going well.  We've got happy animals, the house is nice, we're healthy - Can't complain!

Well, Thursday night/EARLY Friday morning was a bit of Hell for me.
Bun-Bun has head tilt!  Luckily, we caught it early and the vet gave us some good meds.  Bun's improved a lot in the past few days, and I know ways to help him navigate even though to him the room is spinning.
I'm kinda happy now that I have bad vertigo.  Mine usually manifests as a sensation of everything tilting one way or the other, but I do have to deal with nasty "zomg-everything-is-spinning!" spells on occasion.  What's odd is that to me, things only look and feel like they're spinning.  If something is making sound, like the TV or my computer, the sound registers normally.  So when the room spins I just close my eyes and focus really hard on that pinpoint of sound.  If I need to, I'll reach out and touch/grab/physically interact with whatever's making the sound.  I know that in my case, like a lot of people with nasty vertigo, the problem is not an inner-ear thing, but neurological in nature.  Something in my brain is acting funny.  The wires are crossed or connected wrong...  Something.
Anyway, if I have something that I can use to "ground" myself, I can usually think my way out of a spell.  Either I look at standing water - if things were really going all tilted, the water would show it - or I listen for stationary point.  Bun's problem is due to an infection, so antibiotics are clearing that up and he's doing much better.  But, I know things are spinning because his eyes are rapidly going left and right like someone trying to focus while on a merry-go-round.  Brian says my eyes do that too, sometimes.
So to help Bun-Bun we leave a DVD or some music going; something he's very used to, actually.  Sometimes we'll put in movies with a lot of bright blues and greens so he can use his eyes and his ears to orient himself.  They both enjoy "The Emperor's New Groove", "Weekend at Bernie's" (both of them), "Atlantis", "Dogma" and "Monsters, Inc."  Although "The Emperor's New Groove" is by far their favorite of that group.  They usually come thundering into the livingroom and flop right down when they hear the opening theme music.  It's really cute.
Fun Fact: Bunnies are mostly colorblind.  They only see blues and greens.
But that's the annoying/sad/scary news.  The good news is that yesterday was my BIRTHDAY!  YAY!  I'm 26!  *checks fingers and toes* Yep, they're all there and accounted for.  Seriously, getting older does not scare me.  To me, living another year is a freaking achievement.  If you can't walk across a flat surface without a bit of wobbling about (I've a lot of people compare my gait to Cap'n Jack or Sally from Nightmare Before Xmas) you'd be happy to survive another year, too.
And not only do I have all my fingers and toes, I can still walk/dance/jump and see straight.  I also have not been arrested for anything, so that's another "Huzzah for me!"  I've got art supplies, and Brian, and a house...  I'd say I ended this year ahead.  Brian got me a membership to the House Rabbit Society for my birthday! *dance dance* Now bunnies will find homes!
Speaking of Art Stuffs, I've got a pile of rings just calling my name...

Later!
Bran