Post-NSD Trauma

This past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day and I particpated. Man did I participate. I'm so tired this morning that I can hardly type. I had a great time participating in the 123-Scrap.com NSD cyber crop. I didn't get as much done as I had planned, but I learned some new techniques and stretched my scrapping wings quite a bit. You can check out my gallery at 123-scrap.com's gallery. I just have to show you what I'm most proud of here, though. This is a two-page spread about mine and my son's participation in two major Fiesta events: The Battle of Flowers Band Festival and the Battle of Flowers Parade. The left side contains the program from the Battle of the Bands and the right side has the participation patch and some pictures. By the way, his high school band won the Battle of the Bands and best entry in the public school section of the parade. Proud mama? You bet!

Now, doing the two-pager didn't really stretch me, but this one did. I had never made an ATC (Artist Trading Card), but it was brought up as a challenge this weekend and I thought, what the heck! This is my first ever ATC:

This picture was taken in 1991. Oh so long ago and so much hair ago :-).

Part of the reason I'm so exhausted this morning is that I stayed up late both Saturday and Sunday nights. Saturday I was up late downloading NSD digital freebies from all over the 'Net. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of it, but I got some really cool stuff!

Y'all have a great day!

Tribute to Tango

Today was a sad day to start with. We had to put our beloved dog, Tango, down because of her failed kidneys. I've had pets die before, but this is the first time we've had to make the decision to have one euthanized.

Tango came to us about seven years ago when my brother called and asked if we wanted a dog. His neighbor had two Australian Cattle Dogs and wanted to give one away. He told us it was a Blue-Tick Heeler. I looked for one online to see what they looked like, but couldn't find any good photos. A few weeks later, he and his girlfriend (now wife) brought Tango from where they lived. When she walked in my first thought was that she was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. She came trotting in and made herself right at home.

We took her to the vet to get her checked out and vaccinated and fixed. Probably the best thing we ever did because we didn't know her pedigree, if she even had one, but the vet fell in love with her immediately. She had two ACD's herself one blue and one red. Turns out that Tango's brother, Cash, was a red. Tango was a good dog, although she had trouble with incontinence in the house once in a while. I could count her accidents on two hands over many years.

We tried several times to get her a companion to play with in the yard during the day, but never had much luck. Our son watched someone dump a Rottweiler on our street that we took in and named Daisy, but Daisy wouldn't ever let Tango get to the food, so we sent her to a Rottweiler rescue place. Whenever we dog-sat for our son's cello teacher, Tango would have a grand time with Ella, so we knew she needed someone to play with. Then, when the cello teacher's wife rescued this big, dumb mutt from the middle of the freeway in a rainstorm and couldn't keep him, we took him in. Snickers has been Tango's constant companion for about three years now.

After several months, we noticed that Tango had lost a LOT of weight and seemed to be getting sluggish. We took her to the vet and about $1200 and a week in the hospital, it turned out that she had renal failure. They were able to jump-start her kidneys so that she was producing urine, but she had to be on a special diet for life. And she would need subcutaneous fluids when she started getting dehydrated. Not a problem. We found a nearby vet that could supply her food because her regular vet was miles from home. And we have a friend who would provide us with saline when we needed it. She was a happy, semi-healthy dog that was a member of the family. We found out last year that Cash had just withered away and died. We surmised that it was probably the same kidney disease that went untreated because they described exactly how Tango looked the first time.

Last week, she suddenly got bad. I was able to get a bag of saline from the first vet's office (the new one wouldn't let me administer at home) because our friend was not longer in a doctor's office, but at a hospital. Three days in a row I put in 250ml and she actually seemed to look forward to getting it, where before she hated having the needle stuck in and sitting still for 20 minutes. Those three slugs of saline looked like it would do the trick, but on Sunday I had to give her the last of the saline I had and by Monday morning, she wouldn't walk. I had to drag her out of the dog house to take her to the vet. She hadn't eaten in at least four days, by then and force-feeding canned dog food didn't even work.

When the vet looked her over, she had ulcers in her mouth and had lost about 25% of her body weight. She had a severe kidney infection and no output. They started her on IV antibiotics and IV fluids, but she kept throwing up overnight. Her blood tests came back as some of the worst he'd ever seen, I think. Much higher than he expected. When he called this morning, he gave me three courses of action. Spend even more money and hope it worked, keep her comfortable one more day and re-run the labs, or euthanize her. DH and I talked it over and then called the vet for clarification. He gave her a 15-30% chance of recovering enough to live on antibiotics and special diet the rest of her life. He didn't encourage it, but it was clear that for Tango's sake, euthanasia was probably the best choice.

We made the decision. It was hard. We still have to tell the boys. And we have to figure out how to keep Snickers from being too lonely. He used to be someone's housedog, so keeping him indoors while we're there isn't a problem. We just have to get ourselves over the pain of having to make such a difficult decision and the consequences that go with it. We've lost a close fur-family friend, but at least we can say we gave her the best life we knew how. Rest in peace, dear puppy.

EGGZ!

I know that Easter is over, but I just have to share this page that I made with my niece's egg hunt.


Journaling reads:

Kathryn, it was so much fun to watch you hunt eggs this year. Every time you saw one you'd scram at the top of your lungs, "EEEEEEEGZ!" It was a cold Ester in 2007, but that didn't stop the hunt. And bing the sharing little girl you are, you even wanted to let Kendall have an egg. John and Roberta's home 4/8/2007

All paper, letters, and ribbon (except as noted): Basic Gray Lilykate collection.
Vellum: Mrs. Grossman's
Flowers: Hobby Lobby Silk flowers
Microbeads and glass beads: Unknown
Large beadns and brass beads: my mother's old jewelry box

Parade Survivor

Today was the Battle of Flowers Parade. For anyone who lives outside of San Antonio, this is fairly meaningless, but today was a local holiday which allows people to take off from school and work to attend the "grandaddy" of the Fiesta Parades. Our son's high school band marched in the 2.4 mile parade today and many parents walked with them to support them with cooling rags and water. I was one of the walkers and DS was carrying a glockenspiel. Not many people use those any more, but it was a heck of a lot lighter than marching bells.

The band director told everyone a month ago to start walking and hydrating to prepare for the parade. I never got started and I was a little worried about how I'd handle it, but it wasn't too bad. Actually it was pretty bad because of the humidity, but I didn't drop out and neither did DS. We actually only had two drop out: one about a block from the end, one as soon as we stopped marching.

I recorded the parade and we came home and watched it later. It was cool to pick ourselves out on TV.

Now about last night. I wanted to post this, but was too tired to stay up and do it. Last evening was the Battle of Flowers Band Festival, also known as Battle of the Bands. There were so many bands there, that they had two parades through the stadium. I've never been before, so it was quite an experience. I was able to go to the other side of the stadium where they were parading to take pictures of the band

They were so impressive! When they went transitioned from March Grandioso and a normal march to Tribute to Troy and a high step, the crowd went wild. Not only were the paying seats cheering, but you could hear the band groups in the stands on the other side of the stadium! I was a very proud band mom.

After the parading and several feature bands they had a mass band performance and awards ceremony.

I don't know how many kids were out on the field, but I counted 78 tubas, alone. There had to be at least 3000 musicians on the field! When they started announcing awards, I thought perhaps our band might win the "People's Choice" award because of the cheering. When someone else won it, I figured it was all over. They didn't win any of the ones I expected them to win. There was one more award, though, that I didn't know about. When they announced the President's Award, I didn't expect anything because our school is fairly new and I know there's a lot of politics in some of this stuff. Imagine my surprise when they announced our school's name. All of us band parents on the backside of the stadium went crazy.

It has been a great weekend, but I am now ready to rest and cool off. I'm still a little dehydrated and tired. DH is asleep beside me right now, but I wanted to share my good news. I leave you with a photo of DS with the newly acquired President's Cup from last night and the two of us together before the start of the parade. Notice the hat :-). 'Night all!

What a Night!

Last night was some pretty rough weather. The three of us at home went to get haircuts, but we knew we had to get back pretty soon because the weather was predicted to get fairly violent. I didn't think it would come too quickly, but just to be on the safe side, we put the dogs in the garage before we left. They don't like thunder and lightening and wind and rain (Argh!). Thunder can be 50 miles away and Snickers will hear it and start jumping on the windows and whining.

Anyway, after we got our haircuts, we went to pick up some food to take back home and on the drive to the window, the lightening grew steadily more frequent and long and we started to hear thunder while driving. You know it's close when you can hear it in a moving vehicle. We made it back home and then watched a little TV. About 9:30 I went to finish patching some baseball pants for DS's college team and work on another layout. My sewing machine was giving me fits the previous night, probably because it liked its 10 year hiatus. I thought I got it going, but then last night it started doing it again. Soooo...it took some time to actually get sewing. Sorry for the rabbit trails, but I just feel the need to explain myself.

So back to the weather. While I was working in my craft room I could hear the rain start up and some thunder. For a while the rain was pretty heavy. All I cared about though, was that the electricity stayed on so I could finish sewing. About midnight I finally made my way to bed and the thunder was getting pretty intense. DH was asleep, so I tried not to wake him while getting ready, but he woke up anyway. So we went to bed and about 15-20 minutes after lights out, I woke up to hear him talking to DS#1 and asking him where he was. They were on their way back from Victoria after playing UofH there (they lost, darn it!) and were getting close to the school, but they were going through some hail.

Now one time last baseball season, the team was on their way up IH-35 towards Dallas when they got caught in a vicious hail storm in San Marcos. DS called us from the bus during the storm and it was LOUD. One of the front windshields of the bus was busted by baseball-sized hail. I thought that was appropriate for the baseball team :) And earlier this season, they got snowed on in Dallas and had to slog through ice and sleet coming home until they got to Austin. What is it with these guys and weather?

The airport got 1.6" last night, but I'm sure that we got at least 3 inches. When I went out this morning, someone's bag of garbage had floated down the street and stopped in our cul-de-sac. What a night!

Weekend Stuff

This was a fun/scary weekend for me. The big activity was to decorate our hats and the "mules" for the Battle of Flowers Parade, one of the three big ones for Fiesta San Antonio. But before that was concession stands at the school district's softball tournament followed by late lunch with my out-of-town family. My SIL was bringing me my Pampered Chef purchase from Easter. Well, true to my poor scheduling and paying attention, concessions were longer than I thought so I had to get late lunch rescheduled to early supper in the middle of the decorating party. Fortunately we got to leave the concessions early and drop by the party for a few minutes before meeting the family. That was all on Saturday!

On Sunday, after church I was going to try to be part of a welcome home group for the son of a friend who came home on R&R from Afghanistan, then celebrate another friend's 50th birthday, then take DS#2 shopping as he tore his pants pretty badly at school last week and he needed more of them anyway. So after church I called the first friend and her son had already arrived, but I did get to talk to him and tell him how much we were looking forward to seeing him next Saturday for his birthday, then I was able to go straight to the birthday lunch. What fun! There were 17 of us and our server said we were the best party she'd ever served. (All I can say is, "Church Group!") Then I took DS shopping and went home and did laundry I've been neglecting for too long. All of this was in the rain. Yech.

So much for the fun part. The scary part was talking about children in both contexts of social and church groups. At the decorating party some of the women were telling stories on their children about their sex lives and trouble they've gotten into. So far none of them has gotten into trouble because the parents warn them of the consequences of getting a girl pregnant, namely 18 years of child support. Some of the women talked about what they do to make sure their kids are drinking and such or what kind of things they've tried to get away with. I am so thankful that my boys are good boys. Neither of them dates except in groups, they don't like the taste of alcohol, and they don't smoke or do drugs. And they're not boring, either!

Then on Sunday, one of boys that's in DS#2's grade, although at a different school, had a girl sitting next to him that I'd never seen before and when they stood for the bendiction, I noticed she was pregnant. It's a large family so I figured she might be a cousin or something. I asked his mother after church who she was. That's her son's girlfriend. I'm sorry for the chaos that family is in right now, but I am still thankful my boys don't have girlfriends.

All of this shook me up enough to talk to my younger son about it. Older son was away with the baseball team and if something happens with him, he's old enough to get married and get a job to support a family, so I don't worry about him so much. I guess I don't have to worry about it because DS#2 told me that he plans to remain a virgin until he's married and can support a family. Praise God!

An Op-ed From An Emmaus Community Member

Violence
by Richard Evans
Today our country experienced another example of senseless and inexplicable violence against scores of totally innocent people. At least 33 students at Virginia Tech died and many others were seriously injured. We still have few answers and countless questions about what happened and why. How could anyone feel so much anger and channel it into such violent behavior? Why were those people the targets of that violence? Could anyone or anything have prevented it?

We live in a world of violence. There is far too much violence in our homes directed against spouses and directed against children. There is violence on our streets and in our workplaces. We’ve see violence in our places of worship. We read about it daily. It headlines our news programs virtually every time we turn on the television or radio. Hopefully we’ll never understand it, we’ll never become complacent to it, and it will always shock us out of a sense of complacency.

Officials will seek new ways to protect us from these acts of violence with mixed results. In the long run, perhaps the best plan is to turn to the Lord for guidance and some sense of understanding. Embrace His ministry. Teach the world to be brothers and sisters embracing each other. Help them achieve a sense of belonging, a sense that there is value in their life and in the lives of all God’s children. Perhaps when they can recognize their own worth and value, recognize that they are loved by the Creator of the universe; then they will begin to sense the worth and value in the lives of others.

Until such time as each of us has a belief in the worth and dignity of all mankind and each of us has a relationship with God; we can look forward to more news stories that remind us of the violent nature that is within mankind. I pray for a day when we all find a way to let God guide our actions and show us the beauty of a world filled with peace.

God bless you all!


Embracing the Lord,
Jan and Richard Evans