We work in back. We see no smiles.

This is what happens when you let strangers, who don't understand the concept of "tell us 'when'", take your picture. Taken at the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint in Arches National Park with Three Gossips and The Organ in the background.

I'm outside! I'm outside!

Uh-oh, sunbeam. Ooof.

You know what makes me nuts? (Technically, it's just one more thing on my giant list of things that make me crazy.) People who don't listen and can't follow simple instructions. When I say to you, "If something comes up and you can't make your appointment, please, give me a call and let me know.", I'm not just talking to hear myself talk. It's bad enough that I scheduled a client appointment in the middle of the day on a Saturday, which also happens to be my husband's birthday. I did it as a convenience and favor to you because I'm a small business owner who still believes in customer service. Leaving me sitting here, waiting and wondering where you are all afternoon is just rude on your part. Apparently, calling to let me know you weren't coming was too complicated. Also, when I leave a message on your voice mail and ask you to call me back on my business line, I really do mean call me back on my business line. I know I called you from a different number and that's what your caller id shows, but I specifically gave you my business number twice during the message and asked you call that number for a reason. Listen to what I am saying. It's really not that complicated.

Hey, look. It's Utah!

Stay tuned for more.

EDIT: For the curious, this was our first view of the Park Avenue canyon in Arches National Park. We hiked the length of it and back (roughly 2 miles total) on our first full day in Utah.

Happy Birthday, Mr Moo!

(Wasn't he a cutie patootie?)

We had visitors to our patio last night.


Haven't seen the raccoons in a while. Then again, I haven't had the cam pointed out back in a while either. Having it in the bedroom window isn't going to work any longer so I need to find a new home for it once again. I wonder if Mr Moo will engineer me some kind of cover so I can put it outside.

While we were in Utah last month, I bought this cute Christmas ornament from Zion:

It's laser cut wood and has a little Kokopelli hanging in the middle. I'm still amazed we managed to get it home without it getting completely crushed.

Our high temperature today is supposed to be 75F/24C. The high tomorrow is supposed to be 91F/33C. Yikes! That's a jump. And it's going to continue being hot all weekend and into next week with the worst day being Sunday. It could get to 100F/38C. Due to the shape and location of this room (it's nothing but roof on the outside), it's pretty much like working in a greenhouse when it gets hot outside. Fortunately, when we finished it, we equipped it with it's own heating/cooling system. I can cool just this room without having to do the entire house, which is a big energy and money saver.

I've really got to stop wearing my watch when I'm outside in the sun.

How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

EDIT: In this case, none. It was a trick question! He wasn't changing a light bulb. He was changing the battery in the smoke detector.

Everyone needs a little cuddling once in a while.

The Canadian pharmacy website charged our credit card yesterday for Josie's head meds. I hope this means they're on their way. I'm totally not looking forward to this whole process. Josie will have to wear an e-collar for upwards of a month. While it's amusing to see in photos, it's not nearly as amusing in person since it makes everything 10x more difficult for her and I don't like seeing her in such misery. Also, the actual treatment is going to be very tough on her. Basically, the medicine will burn the sores off her head and new healthy tissue will grow in their place. This means she's going to have to spend some time with open raw wounds, which, I imagine, will be rather painful. I hate to put her through all that, but it's for her own good in the long run. Hopefully, the meds will be here soon because the sooner we get started, the sooner it will be over.

I've had several inquiries so I thought I'd post an update. Zoe's transfer yesterday went as well as can be expected. Fortunately, her ashes were sealed in a plastic bag inside the box they sent her home in. We put bag and all into the urn so there was no pouring involved. It still broke my heart to see the tiny bag of ashes though and know that was all that was left of my precious Zoe. We miss her very much.

Zoe's urn arrived yesterday (Saturday) morning. I only ordered it on Thursday night, so I was very impressed. Unfortunately, when I opened it, it brought everything back and I broke down. I didn't cry for too long at that moment, but it put me in a funk and I cried off and on for the rest of the day. It's been nearly two months since she's been gone, but the wound is still very fresh. I don't know how else to describe it all except to say it's hard and it hurts.

We're going to transfer her ashes today, if I can hold it together long enough.

I'm ready to set up the Random MooCam again. Not sure where to put it though. Birdfeeder outside the office window? The patio out back? My sewing area? The kitchen? Someplace new? Suggest something.

We ordered an urn for Zoe's ashes tonight from Best Friend Services.

We got the small size in evening blue. I'm not looking forward to pouring her in, but it will be nice to have her in something a little more secure than the cardboard box she came home in.

Mutts by Patrick McDonnell

Fret not. I'm not dead. Just busy with work.

I hate this thing. I hate this thing. I hate this thing.

Suckage! Turns out the woman I spoke with earlier from Walgreens didn't know what she was talking about and gave me bad information. She quoted me a price of $27.49 for a 12-dose box of Josie's medicine. I now know that it's $27.49 PER DOSE, not per box. That makes a box cost $329.88. And we need two of them. Good grief! I've been looking around online for better prices. Looks like Canada is going to come to my rescue. I've found a couple places that have the same medicine for about $100 per box. It's still ridiculously expensive, but at least a bit more reasonable.

The first set of baskets for our coat rack/bench in the front entryway have arrived.

Given that we still have that crappy UPS driver who throws and kicks my boxes around, I'm amazed they arrived undamaged. I probably shouldn't say anything until after the other set arrives.

The vet finally called. He had good news and bad news. Bad news is the sores on Josie's head are pre-cancerous. Not what we wanted to hear. He had a big long garbledygook name for it, which I didn't even try to write down. I did catch the "squamous carcinoma" part of it though. Ugh. The good news is it's very unlikely to turn into full on cancer and spread to her organs, and it's kinda sorta treatable. He gave us three options for treatment:

1. Do nothing and just let her live with it. Not recommended since it could get bigger/worse, which could make it even more difficult to treat in the future.

2. Treat it for 30 days with Aldera, a prescription cream for human genital warts. Yup, genital warts. The idea is to dry up the scabby parts and get them to fall off so new healthy skin can grow back. I would get this medicine from a regular pharmacy, so I have to call around and see who will sell me the small quantity that I need and how much it will cost. The vet guesstimated it would be about $250.

3. Radiation. There is a veterinary oncologist in Portland who can zap the area with a radiation gun. The vet said she is very good, but also very expensive. One treatment would run us somewhere in the $750-1000 range. Ouch. And she might need more than one treatment. Double ouch. The biggest advantage to this method is it would be done in one day instead of 30.

I spoke with Mr Moo about it briefly. Needless to say, he thinks $1000 for one radiation treatment, which isn't even guaranteed to cure it, is insane, as do I. Assuming I can get the Aldera cream in the quantity we need, it looks like that is going to be the treatment of choice. This means conehead kitty is going to make another appearance. I haven't told Josie yet though. She's going to be thrilled.

EDIT: Walgreens sells the cream in 12 count single dose packets. This means, instead of having to buy way more than we need for $250 (a 10 pack of full sized tubes), we can get exactly what we need for about $60. WOOT! (see later entry)

"Hello. I would like..."

"Speak into the microphone, please."

"I would like a number four combo meal with a Diet Coke, please."

Patience...

Payoff!

Guess who got to spend most of this afternoon and evening lying in bed and wishing for death with a sleep mask on and a pillow over her head. Yup, that would be me. I haven't had a full-on migraine like that in quite some time. I've been able to manage them with meds and my caffeine intake. This one, however, snuck up on me a couple days early and I wasn't prepared. I'm still feeling a bit woozy, but my brain no longer feels like it's trying to climb out of my skull through my eye sockets and I don't feel like puking anymore either. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

In Josie news, still haven't heard anything from the vet regarding the biopsies she had last week. The lab results should be back any day now. Much to her delight, today was the first day she was allowed to go without the lampshade on her head. Her sores oozed for quite a while. We didn't want to take any chances, so we made her wear the collar for a whole week instead of the 24-48 hours the vet suggested. Better safe than sorry, right? She's got some nice hard scabs now, so she should be fine.

More before and after photos from this weekend. Here is our side yard before, completely overrun with weeds:

And here it is after Mr Moo and I spent several hours attacking it:

The shadowed area was really dark so I lightened everything in Photoshop. I'm really pushing Mr Moo about having a landscaper come in and do something with the yard this year. We've been in this house for over 10 years now and the yard is still a hot mess. I used to have a lot of nice plants in this bed, but I never bothered to replace any of them as they died off. The bed needs to be widened and the sprinkler system in it redone. I didn't want to fill it up with plants only to have to dig them all up again. Time to get moving on it now that it's empty.

I came across this photo in the MooCam archives recently and thought it was too funny to not share.

That's Zoe watching Lord of the Rings on my laptop. She was such a weird cat sometimes.

I miss her.

This is what our vegetable garden used to look like:

It took us two weekends, but we got this and the rest of our flower beds cleared of weeds finally.

Now we have to decide whether we're even going to bother planting any vegetables this year. It's already mid-June, which is very late for planting. And, if we do plant now, we might be going out of town again right when everything would be ready to harvest. Decisions. Decisions.

For Sandy:


I hope she doesn't faint. :-)

Remember the coat rack/hallway bench combo we bought a while back?

I wanted to buy some baskets for it, but was having a hard time finding anything that would fit and I liked. Life then hit and the Great Basket Search of '08 was pretty much completely forgotten. Now that things have settled down a bit, I renewed my search and actually managed to find some. At Target.com no less!

I bought a set of large baskets for the bench and a set of small baskets for the coat rack. I'm not sure I want to put baskets in the top, but I figured I'd better buy them while I had the chance because you know, if I waited, they'd be gone when I finally decided to get them. Hopefully, they'll be here by the end of next week.

With her plans to take over the world and kill everyone in it temporarily abated, the creature sleeps.

And not always gracefully.

Josie made it very clear to me last night that having to wear her lampshade and not being able to properly clean herself for two days is not acceptable. Yeah, she did a giant butt drag across the hall carpet. Sigh. I gave her a reprieve from her fabric prison just now so she could have a bit of a bath. She did okay for about 30 minutes. Actually, she slept for about 26 minutes of that and only cleaned at the end. Unfortunately, she started the head scratching with the back foot thing so I had to put the collar back on. She's really not happy.

I hate you all.

I am a pirate! Arrrrrrrr!

CNN ran an article today about the terrible storms that are plaguing the Midwest right now. They included a couple photos from the small town of Ceresco, Nebraska, where a tornado touched down yesterday.

My cousin and his family live in Ceresco. My aunt sent the following in an email this morning:

Their house was spared but their neighbors lost their house and they had much damage to theirs - windows, roofing, etc. They said they were in the basement huddled in a shower stall and the noise was horrifying. They could hear water being sucked out of the toilets.

A huge tree fell across their driveway and just missed D's truck.

The building D has for his business was totally demolished.

They are so grateful just to be alive.

Please keep them in your prayers for protection today. The weather is still terrible and more storms are predicted.

I just got home from lunch out with a friend and picking Josie up from the vet's office. She had a minor procedure done this morning - Josie, that is, not my friend. There's an area on the right side of her head in front of her ear that has been oozing and scabbing over for quite some time. At first we chalked it up to an overactive scent gland and tried some ointments on it. It cleared up quite a bit, but never went completely away. We've tried antibiotics, steroids, pills, creams, you name it. It just won't clear up. The doctor is getting as fed up with it as we are. Since a slide swab didn't show anything, we decided to go ahead and have it biopsied just to be safe. She had three plugs taken this morning and is now the proud bearer of three stitches and an Elizabethan collar. (You know I will be taking photos. Stay tuned for those.) Fortunately, they were able to do the biopsies with just a local anesthetic, which is a big relief. At her age and given that her kidneys aren't doing all that great these days, putting her out is risky business. I was hoping they wouldn't have to do that. So, we're home now. She's attempting to sleep on the blanket in front of the space heater, but is having a hard time getting comfortable with the lampshade on her head. It's soft fabric, not hard plastic, so it's folding over her face when she lies down and she is not liking that.

The doctor just called, too. He said we should have results in about a week. There is a tiny chance that it's melanoma, but that's very, very unlikely. He said it's probably some sort of viral infection, which we can treat with meds. The important thing is to find out exactly what we're dealing with first, then sort a treatment. In the meantime, she needs to wear the collar for at least 24 hours, longer if she tries to scratch at her head. The wounds should be healed in about five days, the sutures will dissolve on their own and he'll call when the results come in.

Mr Moo and I went to the late late showing of this on Saturday night:

It was teh awes0me! Loved every bit of it. Yes, I realize that the filmmakers played a little fast and loose with physics, but you have to remember it's a movie based on a COMIC BOOK, people! It's not a documentary. Besides, Robert Downey Jr's hotness more than makes up for it.

Phew! Is it getting warm in here? Seriously, it was great to see him sober and doing good work again. I've always liked him as an actor. It was a shame to see him throw away so many years on drugs. Granted, I think his past is part of the reason he was so good in Iron Man, but still. I'll always prefer him clean, thankyouverymuch. Already looking forward to Iron Man 2!

While we were on vacation, Mr Moo and I bought a cable so we could plug my iPod into the rental car stereo. It was so nice to have every piece of music we own available to us from such a small piece of technology. On one of the days we were changing locations and had a multiple hour drive ahead of us, we had a discussion about what songs we would put on our "favorite driving tunes" playlist. I believe we decided the song topping both our lists would be Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith. Also on our mutual list:

Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation
Get Ready For This by 2 Unlimited
Spybreak by Propellerheads
Rockafeller Skank by Fat Boy Slim
Gettin' Jiggy Wit It by Will Smith

After that, it turned into a whole lot of "That song? Ugh, no!" and "Well, I'm not putting that song on my list!" Tell me, fishies, what song(s) would top YOUR "favorite driving tunes" playlist?

Oh, hai.

From this year's Chick-fil-A calendar, One-Hit Wonder Cows:

This tie-dyed trio made people believe that eating chicken meant sticking it to the Man. They staged sit-ins. They organized burger protests. They stampeded on Washington. But the Herd was best known for their performance at the legendary music festival Livestock. It was there that they coined the phrase, "Make chicken, not war, man."

My sister planted her first ever vegetable garden this year. She sent me an email to let me know she harvested her very first cucumber last week. Unfortunately, it had a small issue.

She used Velcro straps to tie the vines to a trellis. Apparently, she didn't see this particular fruit and it got caught in the tie. Oops. Appearance aside, I'm sure it still tasted fine.