What a Difference a Week Makes

Let's begin with the good news of the past week, shall we? I had a great birthday! We celebrated at Austin's, our fave High Point restaurant, with an excellent dinner and a toast to another good year. And then, the song having been sung, we fired up the three candles ("past, present, and future") on my cake. Ooh...we all know how much I love cake!

I mentioned this on Facebook, but I'm still amazed at how closely the rose on my card from Mr. T (shown above) resembles the beautiful bloom on one of our new roses called Hynotized! (shown below)...which became part of my birthday bouquet. 

In other good news, as of the start of this week, I have retired my cane 'cause my foot feels better. Make that much better. Apparently, the foot doc knew what he was talking about (2-3 weeks)...imagine that. Anyway, I'm up-and-at-'em once again, although the observant might notice a slight limp. I have faith that will be gone in another week or so.

And now for the not-so-good-news. We had planned to take a little trip to Gatlinburg last weekend. However, on Friday morning, just as we were getting ready to take the pups to the Glamour Slammer, Mr. T noticed that Abbie was exhibiting some strange behaviors. She was quite agitated, wandering the house in a dazed state, and vomiting a mucusy-bile. Then she began pawing and scratching at her face and neck. Finally, she stumbled around and kind of fell over, like she was stunned.

I called the vet, but while I was talking on the phone describing the situation, Abs appeared to be settling down. She was breathing normally, drinking water, and she had stopped the frantic pawing activity. The vet suggested we monitor Abs for the time being, and if things changed to bring her in. 

So we "monitored her" for several hours. We followed the vet's advice to try to get her to eat, limiting her intake to plain rice (which Mr. T fixed...because he's gotten pretty good at making rice...;-) and some shredded chicken (we were lucky to have a leftover rotisserie chicken on hand). And, all the while we kept pondering "what was wrong with Abbie?" 

Well. Mr. T may have figured it out when he observed some wasps on the deck. We think she may have snapped at one (or more), like she does when the buzzing bees bother her in the garden, and she may have been stung by one (or more)...possibly even in her mouth. Looking back on her behavior, she was exhibiting signs of an allergic reaction. And doing some research on that makes me think we should take her straight to the vet should this ever happen again. Live and learn. 

Meanwhile, we had to make a decision about our trip. Should we go or should we cancel? Since we had a 5+ hour trip ahead that would mean being away for two nights, we chose to cancel and stick close to home. The mountains will still be there in a few months.

So we spent a quiet weekend at home, enjoying the simple pleasures: harvesting garden goodies like watermelons and sweet corn, playing with our Pound Puppies (who were both better by the next day), and just catching up with each other. It was nice.

Now, it's time to get caught up with all the other things I've had on hold. Since we have more tomatoes and cucumbers than we know what to do with, I am in full-on pickling mode: salsa, green tomato relish, zucchini relish, and sweet pickles. We enjoyed our first sweet corn over the weekend, as well as cutting into our first ripe Sugar Baby watermelons (check out the pics above). Oh my goodness...makes the hard work of gardening worth it!

I hope to get everything under control this week, since it looks like I'll be in GA more than NC in the next few weeks. A week ago, I was struggling to imagine ever walking normally again, much less getting things nailed down so I could start traveling. Wow! What a difference a week makes.

Indeed.