Life Goes On - Good

I have one week left of being on half-time, then it's back to the old grnd again. Actually, I have been working several hours a week at home "off the clock" in order to get some paperwork done. But still, I've been home.

Fargo and I have been walking nearly every day, for a minimum or 30 minutes and most often for 45 minutes to an hour at a time. Of course, the pain pills help. Today I walked the first time without pills before or after. Felt good until about two hours later and my right hip kicked up a big fuss. When I see the doc on Fri I'm going to have my right hip checked out, though I'll take pills before I'll consider any more surgery. This last one was a real bear. My oldest daughter tells me that I tried to sneak off to bed with my bottle of pain pills one night (no memory of this). She tells me I slyly slipped them in my robe pocket, said "night all" and headed off. When she asked me what I had in my pocket she telle me that I said "Oh, nothing". When confronted with the fact that she saw me take a pill bottle I responded with "Oh, it's just the pills I take every night". When told to "hand 'em over, please", I sheepishly said that I just didn't want anyone to have to get up at night to "help" me. I must have been really stoned on the stuff! The girls tell me that for the first week I was home I would whimper and cry in my sleep. Fortunately, I don't remember that either! When the docs said it would take a year to heal, I thought they meant just for the bone to completely fuse, not for all of the pain reduction to take place. Will know more after Friday. For the most part, my back feels MUCH better most of the time. The right hip is becoming a different story.

Fargo and I are encountering all sorts of flora and fauna on our daily walks. He found a dead rat, and was quite unhappy that I wouldn't let him drag it around or chew on it. He loves to meet people and children, but he does not like other dogs when he is on the leash. There is a
"green" area not quite half a mile from here with a creek running through it and wild blueberry bushes. Intertwined with the bushes is a ton of poison oak! I got a spot on my leg that blistered up, itched like crazy and is taking ages to heal because Fargo and I both bother it too much. We came upon two Teal ducks a few days ago, that flew up into the trees when we started them. Fargo was ecstatic - the big brave hunter dog. Today the ducks were down in the creek and when Fargo saw them he ignorded them as he hates to get near the water. I still wonder how on earth a "water dog" (Lab, Cocker, Terrier) can be so averse to the water. As we walked home, Fargo looked up and saw an orange cat sitting on top of a transformer box. "Grrrr", says Fargo. The cat bristles up to twice its size, hisses and spits and hastily drag Fargo aways away. I didn't want either one of us to get "jumped" on by that frightened and angry cat.

Fixed a fab dinner tonight. Put some lite maple syrup on top of pork chops, sprinkled on some bread crumbs, lightly sprayed with Spam and baked. Also had brown rice and green beans, but the chops stole the show. Yum! I thought about serving dinner at the dining table, cloth, napkins, candles and all, but decided I didn't want to have to put it all away again, so we ate out of our laps, the norm around here. Peace.