Back blogging!

I took a little unexpected break from blogging these last two weeks! We've been very busy with some happy happenings and late nights up watching Lost :)! Hmmm... I'm trying to remember exactly what I've been busy with, taking care of Bennett has been very time consuming, he's just so much fun to play with and gives me very sad looks when I hang out and spin with him (we're working right now on solving that sad look problem... I think it will be it's own post though!). I've been spinning for a shawl recently, with a group of people at our lys on Wednesday nights. We spin for 4 weeks and we knit for 4 weeks. I'm the only one working with a spindle, so I'm expecting to be spinning while others are knitting. I love the fiber I got (I'm still working on getting pics, sigh, that was one of the things I was waiting on posting for...) and I'm slowly getting this long draw on the suspended spindle thing down. I'm aiming for 3 ply, lace weight yarn, keeping my fingers crossed! I've been taking the bus down to the yarn store and Laurie has been picking me up there after she's finished at work. It's been fun!

Laurie's job is going really well, and it looks like she may be staying on at the Jewish high school for next year, too. I've been to the JCC, the school is located in the building, and have really enjoyed meeting her coworkers and watching basketball games. Everyone is really sweet and nice, it's kind of funny because the kids hang out at the community center, so there are students around pretty much all the time, even on weekends and such, which is a big change from St. Paul's.

My health stuff is still up in the air. We've been to see general surgery about the lumps that I've been getting, and we're still not sure what's up. I'm having an ultrasound of the one on my back this week, so we'll see if that turns up everything. The appt with general surgery was kind of funny, it took over 3 hours because we saw each level of medical personnel. First, we had the long, full medical history with the med students, then a look over by a resident, and then, just for good measure, the chief resident, too. Lots of fun. We'll see what happens. My PCP was wondering if it might be my muscle tissue separating and fluid getting in between, which could happen with the Elhers-Danlos stuff, but that's just a guess at this point. It will be interesting to see what the ultrasound picks up.

We had a fun outing today, with some of our friends from church, we went to the renaissance festival. It was a long day, and I was pretty tired from the rest of this weekend (to be mentioned in said other post!), but I managed to put in almost a full day there. We used my scooter, which worked really well, even though it makes me pretty tired to manage all the crowds, and it was a coupon day, so there were a lot of people there. I only hit one kid, and it was his fault :)! Although, I really can't stand the people who stop in the middle of the street in front of you, without any warning. I almost hit a couple people that way. It was a beautiful day weather-wise and we had a lot of fun. I learned a really funny song, that Laurie apparently has been holding out on me about constipated men of the bible. As usual, I got my hair braided. We used the same people who did it last year, it turned out really beautifully.

I think that covers most of what's been going on (minus of course, what I'm going to say in the next post, which might happen tomorrow because it's getting late and I'm exhausted... so I'm going to keep you in suspense a little longer!). We've been watching a lot of Lost lately, our watching is going to be coming to a bit of a close because Laurie's sick of nothing happening on the show. We have kind of been staying up late to watch episodes, so now I'm going to watch them in the day time, while spinning. While I'm on the topic of sleeping, I think now would be a good time to go do it.

Lots of pictures

So, finally, a post that I started writing on Friday but never got beyond one line and a bunch of pictures (out of order). These are the pics of my skiing from our California ski weekend. I can't wait to go back.

Getting strapped into the bi-ski

All strapped in and ready to hit the slopes and trying out the outriggers!

My first hill, on the way down to get in line for the ski lift, I was told to aim for one of the skiers at the bottom, sadly, the kid I was aiming for got away.

Out there hitting the slopes! At one point, some of Laurie's family passed over me on the chair lift, while I was skiing down the bunny slope and started cheering for me - it was such and awesome moment and an amazing feeling to be skiing.

Ok, now I'm really out there on the slope with my instructors! (Laurie loves this picture because I was getting all crazy with the outriggers on the one side.) You can also see me covered in snow on one side because I fell over. The ski seemed to be leaning to the left, so I was over correcting when I was transversing the slope on the right and falling over. The instructors we awesome, they kept making sure I was comfortable and not freezing cold when I was covered in snow. These are sadly few pictures because Laurie's parent's camera was loosing battery, we found out later there was a replacement one in the case, so we should have taken more pictures, oh well. We'll get lots next time!

So, this weekend, we did some major house cleaning in an effort to be able to allow Bennett into the part of the house that will be his roaming area. It's almost there. We were able to extend his area a little bit. He's still using the litter box with the extra space, even though he did mark a few times in the new space. I think that he will mark all of the new space he has because there was a dog living here before us and I'm sure it smells like dog to him everywhere. Luckily, the marking isn't that hard to clean up. We still need to do some bunny proofing in the bedroom, and then he will be an official house rabbit living with his owners, sharing their space. I'm looking forward to it, it's been so cool to peek in on him with the new space. He's not just locked in his room anymore and we can see each other. I even caught him eating hay off of the hay rack, which I've never seen him do before. So these next pictures I took on Friday. He was being pretty cute...

Just a puff ball with ears.

Bennett content. When we pet him, he settles in like this. As he relaxes, his back haunches get higher and higher as his head gets closer and closer to the ground until he's all laid out. It's really sweet and cute.

What? Did you say food?

Come on, mom, I'm on the potty.

A flying leap from the cage. 2 weeks ago, he couldn't jump from the cage to the ground and vise versa.

Bunny mohawk, brought to you by a bored Laurie.

I know the pellets are in there... Just shove my head in a little further!

This is a picture of a perfect bunny nose print on the mirror.

Come on, mom, my bowl's right there, just a few more pellets, please?

This is how the nose prints get on the mirror - he loves himself!

Bennett's weekend

Well, it would have been very silly to take Bennett with us on the trip up to the cabin this weekend, so he stayed home and our former neighbor took care of him. He's recovering very well from the neutering surgery. The wounds are actually left open, they are very small. The first night, they were bleeding a bit and his hair was sticking into them, which the vet told us we needed to watch. We used some ky jelly as hair gel to keep his leg hair out of that area and it worked really well. We checked the wound again Thursday night and it looked really good and the wound had closed. Really, checking the wound is a two person job, because Bennett really doesn't like to be turned on his belly, so I would hold him close to my leg and lift up one of his back legs and Laurie would take a peek. Because of this, I just had our neighbor check the litter box and his surroundings for blood or pus. When we checked them when we got home, they were still looking good but they were open a little bit. This is probably because we've been letting him hop around like he was before the surgery. He was reeking havoc in his cage locked in there and we thought it would just be better to let him do what he thought he could, that and there was really no stopping him. He did really well at the vet hospital. He charmed them all, they were taking pictures of him and thought he was the cutest rabbit they'd seen, with lots of personality. As far as what he's like post surgery, if he was a lover before the surgery, I'm not sure what you'd call him now... He has really mellowed out and want love all the time (in fact I just had to stop typing because he hopped up into my lap and informed me he needed some love). We used to have psycho bunny at night before bed, but now, all he wants is to play and be petted and snuggled. He starting to disassociate my fingers with treats, so he's not nipping them anymore. He's been hanging out here with me all evening while I've been blogging, alternatively all laid out next to me or hopping around playing or requesting love.

Anyways, he gave no trouble to Eileen really. Friday night, apparently he through a hay party in the room and Eileen was having trouble with the vacuum. I guess she didn't realize that we were out of cell range and tried to send a text to my cell but dialed the cabin phone. I didn't even know you could send text messages to land lines. The message was really garbled because a machine was reading it, and it came from a 602 number, so we were trying to figure out who was trying to reach us. Laurie had answered the phone and she said the only word she understood was vacuum. Eileen got the vacuum working and even though Bennett is afraid of it, she said he was brave. She took a picture of him to show her mom, Terry (who was also our neighbor) and Terry decided she had to come over to see his cuteness in person.

Eileen did a really good job of taking care of him.

In other Bennett news, it seems that over the weekend, he began consistently pooping in the litter box. So, he's doing really well with that. Even when we take him into bed with us to watch Lost, he uses the litter box. I think we'll be having guests at the end of February, so I think he might be graduating to more house room pretty soon (since his domain right now is the guest bedroom). We've been planning on extending his territory once he is very consistently litter box trained. He'll be in about half the house, as we don't really want him to chew up our living room furniture or our dining room furniture (even though he's not a chewer, we want to be better safe than sorry). He will be allowed in the laundry room, both bathrooms, our bedroom, the front entry and of course the guest room.

So here are some pics, the last is of the set we took in the kitchen a little while ago and one was taken through a mirror, so it's not the best quality.

The big ski weekend

This past weekend has been pretty eventful, so I'm going to break it up into at least two posts. Unfortunately, there are no pictures from our trip this weekend, I have to get them off of Laurie's parent's camera before I can post them.

Instead of flying everyone out for Christmas this year, Laurie's family decided on a big family ski weekend at their cabin, mostly because it was way less expensive to fly everybody out in January than at Christmas time. Laurie and I were flying in on Thursday, also flying Thursday was her brother and sister-in-law who live in Seattle. Her brother and cousin, who are living in Boston, flew out a little further in advance to see their friends and family for a longer period of time than just a weekend. So we were supposed to leave Thursday evening, but there was a tornado watch here in Phoenix and the airport was basically closed that night. We called before we hauled everything to the airport and our airline didn't inform us that they really weren't flying anymore planes that night, so when we got to the baggage check, we found out we had to haul everything home. Thankfully, there was a 6:20am flight Friday morning that had seats available, so we hopped on that flight in the morning. All the stuff we were hauling included my oxygen concentrator (aka the beast), a lot of snow clothing and the normal stuff, too.

""""""""""""" (<--- Bennett's contribution to this post)

So, we made it to CA (San Jose) in the morning, the flight was not as rough as we (and the pilot) expected and we set out to the cabin in the pouring (and very cold) rain. I waited with the bags at the airport while Laurie took a bus to the parking lot off airport property that her parents had parked a car for us. We were trying to make it to a 2 pm ski lesson for me and it soon became clear that we weren't going to make it. It rained consistently all the way until it started to snow on us. We reached chain control pretty quickly, about 2500 ft in elevation on highway 4. Luckily, we didn't have to bother with chains because we were driving an all wheel drive car with brand new snow tires. We thought we were doing pretty good on time, and then we had to stop for workers to clear trees, which slowed us up considerably. We were surprised at how many trees had fallen from when Laurie's parents had driven up (2:30 am) and us (11 am). We made it to the cabin about 12:30 pm and had no hope of driving up to the resort. It was still snowing pretty hard and there just wasn't going to be enough time (I needed to be at the ski resort at 1 pm for the 2 pm lesson). It was then that we learned about the harrowing tales that Laurie's family had about driving in the night before. Her parents did a 270 in their car with chains on, Laurie's sister and brother-in-law had a tree and power lines fall down right in front of them. We were all thankful that we got there safely. Arriving was also when we found out that there was no power. So much for dragging the beast with us!

I hung out and slept at the cabin for the afternoon and Laurie and almost all of the family when skiing out the back door. Her nephew, who is almost 3 stayed home with me and napped with me. We had Christmas that night, lit with candles and headlamps and flashlights. Mostly, all of us had already exchanged our secret santas but there were plenty of stocking stuffers. Dinner was some delicious salmon and green beans and rice with a delightful brown sugar/ginger/chile pepper/sesame seed/? sauce for the salmon. I went to bed early to rest up for my ski.

The next morning, we had chocolate chip pancakes and about half the family headed out for some downhill skiing at the Bear Valley ski resort. The rest of the family went out and built a sledding run for Laurie's nephews to play on. Unfortunately, some clock issues with the power out led to some miscommunications. Laurie's dad was supposed to head back from sledding so we could leave at noon and had to go be found. We had planned for 45 minutes to get me dressed and in the car, well because different clocks said different things, we ended up with only 20 minutes. So, all in all, we were pulling out of the driveway at about 12:50 pm. We got to highway 4 (about 30 sec worth of driving) and discovered that chains weren't needed and the low pressure tire light had come on. So, we drove back to the driveway, took off chains, added air to tires and headed out again. The road looked good, so we were surprised at finding chain control, oh, about 15 minutes ahead of us. So we put chains back on and made it to the resort about 2:30 pm. The resort was so wonderful about still letting me take the lessons. The lifts close at 4 pm and the lesson was an hour and a half. I used a bi-ski and the two teachers were wonderful about taking out a newbie. I had so much fun. I've never been skiing before, even when I wasn't sick. It was so awesome to be out there with everyone. At one point, some of Laurie's family went over me on a lift while I was on the slope and I could hear them cheering for me, it was just so exciting to be skiing! Adaptive technology has come so far, and I'm so glad. Ok, I'm not saying I was a great skier or anything. When the teachers were helping me balance, I did great, but when I was alone in steering and balancing (they had me tethered so I wouldn't escape) I fell a few times. My arms are so sore from using the outriggers and generally being used in ways they're not used to. I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to do this! Laurie said that she cried when she saw me on the slopes, it was that emotionally charged an experience.

When we got home, I collapsed into bed, very happy (both to be in bed and to have been skiing, Laurie was teasing me because my front teeth were freezing because I was smiling so much while skiing :) ). We had a birthday dinner for Laurie's mom and hung out before going to bed. This whole trip, we spent playing with Laurie's nephews who are 2 and 1. They are both adorable and the 2 year old is at a really fun age. He is always talking, mostly to himself, but there is always a stream of words coming out of his mouth and he has a fantastic imagination. He was a lot of fun to hang out with and Laurie got lots of nephew time in this weekend.

In the morning yesterday, we all packed off and headed off to our respective homes. We were a little worried about the drive from the cabin to the airport but we ended up with plenty of time. Our flights to Phoenix and Seattle were 10 minutes apart, so driving together worked out perfectly. The flight home was uneventful. I was able to spin on the plane, it wasn't very full and Laurie and I had a seat between us. Bennett was very happy to see us when we got home.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying each other's company and even without power, the cabin was well enough designed that we could cook and keep warm and even have warm showers. I am so very happy to have had the experience of skiing and we definitely have plans to do it again! (I promise pictures of me actually doing it soon!)

And then there were four

I've been blogging a lot lately about Bennett because I've been very busy with taking care of him and we are finally settling into a routine, so I wanted to talk a bit about what's been going on with me.

On Thursday, I have an appt with the Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) surgeon to see about what's been going on with lump things that keep popping up on me. The general surgery clinic was so backed up that they can't see me until the beginning of February, so my doc and Laurie and I decided we'd go ahead and see the ENT guys because it would be a bit faster. (Although, I am keeping that appt with general surgery.) Two days ago, we discovered another lump, this time on my right cheek. It's not all that noticeable if you don't know that it's there, just looks a little weird from the side. So that makes four: one on my neck/collarbone, one on my back, one on my right leg and now on the right cheek. I'm really kind of nervous about what's going on. I know that there is at least one, probably more, biopsy in my future, which I'm not really looking forward to. We'll see. Hopefully, I won't get stuck by a needle this week, but that they will order more imaging or set up something for the biopsy where I'm sedated or something (I'm not really counting on the sedation, my guess is it will be done with a local). On the other hand, I would really like to get down to the bottom of what's going on and see if something can be done about it, especially so I can get off the extra meds I'm taking. I'm sure I'll be posting back later what becomes of this ENT appt.

Laurie started her new job at the beginning of January, she really enjoys it, even with a longer commute. I don't know if I mentioned this already, but she's able to take the bus into work a few days a week, if she wakes up in time :). I went into work with her yesterday, even though she had the day off, to bring some of her materials that she'd collected from her time at St. Paul's in to her classroom. The school is actually in the Jewish Community Center in Scottsdale, and it's a beautiful campus.

A week ago Sunday, we took a trip to the eye doctor because I needed new sunglasses (my old ones, which I loved, were stolen out of our car sometime last year) and they insisted because it had been longer than a year that I get a new eye exam. Well, it turned out to be the right thing to do because my eye sight had apparently changed quite a bit between now and then. I guess I had just assumed my glasses were always dirty, because I can see so much more clearly with the new prescription. I got a really cute pair of sunglasses, too, 50% off!

This weekend, we're heading back to Laurie's family's cabin in the Sierras, in CA. We're doing a family ski weekend, and the weather is looking wonderful as far as new snowfall! I'll be downhill skiing for the first time ever, and I'm really looking forward to it. The ski resort by the cabin has an adaptive ski program, and I'm going to get some lessons and hit the slopes! I'm a bit worried, because Bennett is being neutered tomorrow and we're leaving Thursday night for CA, but our former neighbor, Eileen, is going to be taking care of him. It should be pretty easy for her because he'll be confined to the cage while he heals a little. I'm excited to see how non-hormone-raging Bennett comes home to us.

We're sitting here, listening to the rain. This weekend, since Bennett has been so good about using the litter box, we extended his territory. He now has almost free reign of the second bedroom, with the couch and the mass of cords for the printer/fax/copier and the internet stuff fenced off. He's just hanging out with me, but I better be going, tuna melts for dinner and I'm hoping to have it done before Laurie gets home. :)

Mr. Binky and the great escape

Life with Bennett has been good. Now that he's using the litter box consistently, he's been a lot easier to take care of - now I only have to clean the litter box every day, and not the whole cage. He's really seeming to finally setting in with us. A few days ago, he started "binky"-ing during his play time with me. I'm glad that I knew what a binky was before he started doing it because I would have been concerned about his neurological health otherwise. A binky is when a bunny jumps straight up in mid air and does a 180 degree turn while in the air. Also, it could mean running along and kicking their heels up. Some people call it dancing, whatever you want to call it, it's hysterically funny to watch. Basically, in bunny language it means that I'm really really happy right now. It's very cute and very endearing. He's been doing it consistently when we play now, so I thing that's a good sign that he's liking living with us. He's been definitely bulking up muscle-wise, which is really good. He can hop from the ground into his cage in one leap and we've opened up his play area a bit and he's ben loving the extra space, especially to binky in. Yesterday, he binkied all the way across the room and into his cage and then looked around like how did I get in here?

Even I've been benefiting from having Bennett around, other than the rewarding company and the feeling good about taking care of him. I've lost a little weight chasing after him, taking care of him and with all the funny I have with him. I'm definitely gaining muscle right with Bennett. :)

A few days ago, my mom and my little brother, Nate, came over for dessert since we had miss our traditional sunday night dinner with them, and they wanted to meet Bennett. So, after I had fed him his evening meal and played around with him for a little bit before dinner, I left the light on in the room (since we were going to go back in there in a little bit) and thankfully, Laurie closed the door behind us. When we went back into the room to get him out of his cage and show him off, when the door opened, he hopped out from under the chair towards me. Yes, he body-checked the cage door and it gave way, letting him free in the room. I'm sooooo glad that Laurie closed the door behind us because he could have been anywhere otherwise. As it was, he didn't reek too much terror. He peed in one spot that we found but that was about it other than turning over his carrier and a litter box and pretty much anything that could be turned over. So, we're doing major cleaning in his room right now, while Bennett and I hang outside. We were really relieved that he hadn't chewed on any of the cords that are in that room. The one kind of bad thing that resulted from his little outing was that the next day, when we were playing, he thought that he could go anywhere he wanted, so we had a little disagreement about where he was allowed to go. He's back to being a good, happy, binky bunny now though. Although, now we are locking the cage door with a suitcase lock so he can't body-check it open again.

Well, it's nearly lunchtime now and someone keeps nudging me for attention, so I'm off. I'm hoping to take some new pictures soon and I still need to take pictures of what I got for Christmas!

Oh happy day!

I'm so excited! I have to share this with someone... Laurie's still in her test and I can't wait! Bennett has been using the litter box to pee in!!!!!! YAY! Let me go back a little, yesterday when I came in to clean his cage and feed him and such, I noticed that the paper in the catch bin was pretty dry. There were some old dried out spots but nothing new, so I was a little worried. We were going to the vet anyway, so I thought I'd mention it there. I checked the litter box cursorily and it didn't look wet so I didn't really think he'd been using it. He peed in the carrier at the vet's office, so I was pretty sure that everything was ok (I'll talk more about the vet visit in a second here) and expected a wet mess for me when I got up this morning to take care of things. Mystified, again there was no wet newspaper at the bottom of the catch bin, none, not even anything dried. I was going to change the litter box today anyways, and when I picked up the hay on top, I was in for a big surprise. He'd been using it! The litter below the hay was soaked. I'm so proud of him! I didn't expect it before the neutering surgery, so I'm really happy right now! No more cleaning the whole cage everyday! Just the litter box - whoohoo! We've had him a week and things are already getting easier for me to take care of him!

Anyways, the vet visit went well. I really liked the Dr. and he seemed really knowledgeable about rabbits, which is really good for us. Some vets only do dogs and cats and rabbits are considered exotics, so finding a good rabbit vet can sometimes be a challenge. Luckily for us, there's a great one not that far from our place. We scheduled the neutering for January 20th. I feel a little bad about this because we're going out of town the next evening, just for the weekend. Our old neighbor Eileen is going to be rabbit-sitting for us. But when I really think about it, it might be easier for her to take care of him when he's recovering from surgery because he'll be confined to the cage for a few days until he's feeling himself, which puts that timeline to right when we get home. I think it'll be good. Ok, more on the vet visit... We got his nails trimmed and some of the mats sheared off of his private parts - he didn't not like either of these things because they had to hold him belly up to reach those parts. I am glad that his nails are shorter though! He doesn't have ear mites, what we had thought might have been ear mites looks to have been a scar from a bite or something from before we got him. The vet did say that his muscle tone is not very good, that he feels like he's been caged most of his life and that we need to work on getting him to get some exercise. We've been playing around with the idea of setting up a rabbit run in the backyard, but for now, we'll be exercising him in the pen or playing around with him in the kitchen so he can work on getting buff. The only other worrying thing is that he seems to have some tooth problems, which aren't unusual in rabbits. They are going to get a better look at what's going on with his teeth while he's under anesthesia for the neuter but it might turn out that we'll need to get his teeth filed every once in awhile. We were also concerned with a little bit of sneezing and discharge from his nose, but since we've had him such a short period of time, we'll just wait and see. If it gets any worse, we'll be making another appt sooner that 4 mo out.

Did I mention that yesterday Bennett was licking me? That's the ultimate sign of bunny affection! I am definitely happy to have him around, work and all! I can now attest to how wonderful bunny kisses are!