Amy the Mom

More animal mishaps

It hasn't been too cold yet here in Minne-SNOW-ta, but a couple of nights last week were furnace worthy in my opinion.  In spite of the thermostat being set at 72, I woke up shivering.  The temperature went as low as 59 in the house before it occurred to me that perhaps the furnace wasn't working.  I alerted Steve, who usually can fix anything.  His first response was to ask if the gas had been shut off.  Now, I'm not in the habit of having utility companies shut off service for nonpayment, so I became quite indignant.  He reminded me that the fireplace wasn't working either, and that he wasn't hinting about a delinquency problem on my part, perhaps there was a problem with the line, that's all.  I told him that the gas dryer in the mudroom worked just fine, so clearly that was not the issue. 

He finally took a look at the furnace yesterday, and determined that it was beyond his ability to diagnose.  Given that the furnace is only three years old, I was quite peeved that a service call was necessary.  But, I called the installation company and they sent a repairman out.  I worked from home and waited for him to arrive. 

The dogs announced his arrival, and I led him to the basement.  He took the cover off of the furnace while Nori repeatedly threw a tennis ball at him.  He asked me to turn on the thermostat, and I went upstairs to do so.  By the time I got back downstairs, he said the combustion blower wasn't turning and it could be a bird caught in there.  He claimed to have fished three of them out this season already. 

"A bird?  How would a bird get in there?"  Let me clarify my horror at this point.  I am an avid birdwatcher.  When I was a wee lass, my uncle gave me a copy of a Peterson's Field Guide and I not only treasured it, but I committed it to memory.  I'm a little rusty these days, but I can still ID birds with relative ease.  I have five feeders set up in my backyard, one bluebird house, three birdbaths and a pair of binoculars always at the ready.  In spite of my love of the ornithological, being anywhere near a bird scares the living shit out of me.  I don't want to touch them, I wouldn't want one as a pet, and dead ones freak me out more than live ones-well, not the tasty chickens and turkeys that I buy in sterile packaging from the grocery, just real...dead...ones...with...feathers. 

The repairman answered me, "They come in through one of the vent openings outside and follow this three inch pipe, right into the furnace." 

My eyes followed the pipe.  "But, that's a long distance-do they just hop, hop, hop all the way through?"  My skin was literally crawling at this point.

"Yep.  Oh, look-I was right-it's a bird.  You got a bag?"

full body shudder  "Ogodogodogod.  Yes, here's two bags."  wringing my hands, trying not to think of the carcass. "Can you please take it out to the curb, the garbage can is still out there?  I'll pay you extra."  Really shrewd negotiating skills like that constantly leave Steve wondering how I ever made a career out of selling houses for six years. 

The repairman could tell I was sufficiently creeped out-perhaps because I was seriously close to tears.  I told him about my phobia in spite of my birdwatching hobby, and how I found it totally perplexing.  He reflected that I must have seen "that movie" and it scarred me.  I actually think it might be Alfred Hitchcock's fault.  I did see The Birds when I was about five or six years old.  My family was staying at my aunt's house in Kentucky, and it must have been on one of those Saturday afternoon matinees.  For whatever reason, I watched that movie and it made an impression.  The scene I remember the most is the elderly person's body in the rocking chair with the eyes pecked out.  It also doesn't help that my mother is the most superstitious person in the world where birds are concerned.  She always said, "If a bird gets in the house, it means there will be a death in the family."  Well, twice I remember that happening when I was young and you can imagine the damage that will inflict on a child's subconscious.

An hour later, I'm just about over my skin crawling feeling when the dogs whine to be let out.  I walk toward the front door, and my eye is drawn to the floor....

AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINALLY!  I was beginning to think the poison didn't work on mice either.  Jesusmaryandholysaintjoseph!  How much can a girl take in one day?

A heads up would have been nice

Just about each and every autumn in Chez Harrison, we get a little mouse activity.  To remedy this, I will put out bait and traps both.  Usually I throw the bait around the basement in areas where the dogs can't find it, and under the kitchen sink where there is a garbage can full of tasty treats for a hungry rodent.  For some reason this year, I put a bait block in the bottom of my pantry which was stupid on two parts.  A) There was no evidence of vermin in the pantry, so why the hell would I want to lure them into an area where I keep my food? B) The dogs are constantly looking for any container of food carelessly left open by the minors in the household.  This is why Clark weighs 125 pounds-way too many opportunities to eat an entire loaf of bread (or two, if I've recently stocked up at the grocery store) in one sitting.

So, I'm in the habit of checking the baits and/or traps in the morning when I wake up, and in the evening when I return home from work.  Generally, after one week, there are no more mice and I'm good until the following October.  Yesterday morning, I carefully placed a bait block in the pantry.  A little voice(aka common sense) told me, "Don't do it, Amy.  You know how those dogs get when an opportunity presents itself."  I ignored the little voice, and set about on my mission to eradicate mice.  I returned home from work, checked the bait and noted that the visitor to the sink trash can would soon be buying a farm.  I then checked the pantry.  No bait.  Hmmm, maybe the visitor pushed it further back behind the coffee urn or crock pot.  I made a mental note to check it after supper. 

Nori continued to sniff around the pantry all night long.  After supper, I cleared out the pantry and found no evidence of the block I had set out earlier.  shitshitshitshit.  I told Steve, "I have a bad feeling that Nori might have eaten the mouse poison I put in the pantry."

He responded with my least favorite expression, the one that is a combination of disbelief and profound disappointment.  "Why would you put POISON in the pantry where we keep our FOOD?"

I called Nori over to my side and pried her jaws open.  Her back teeth were caked with the telltale green of mouse bait.  fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

At this point, I became hysterical, convinced I had both killed a dog AND put our family in mortal danger.  "I didn't put the bait anywhere near the food!  It was down by the appliances and pans!"  I was shrieking and my mouth was dry.  I called the emergency vet, they insisted I must bring her in.  Oh, and by then, it was ten o'clock.  I began the Google search, looking up the side effects of poison ingestion.  Not pretty, internal bleeding, hemorrhaging, painful death.

  pleasegodohpleasedon'tletmehavekilledthissweetlittledog

So, I threw Nori into the truck for another trip to the vet.  We arrived and a family was in a group embrace in the parking lot, sobbing loudly, no doubt over the fate of their own beloved pet.  I was trembling at this point.  Nori?  Ecstatic to be at a location with lots of potential friends!  Jumping up and down, straining against her leash.  We went inside and I gave the receptionist all the pertinent information.  She put us in a private room, away from the cat who had some horrible respiratory distress, the standard poodle who ate a pile of wood chips and was coughing as if he had croup, and the malamute who kept making the loudest dry heaving sounds I've ever heard.  I continued to listen to that sound through the door for the next hour and a half as I sat on a very hard plastic chair waiting for a doctor to examine my hyper (and oblivious to her fate) little girl. 

The doctor came in, I admitted to being the worst dog owner in the world and awaited his judgment and wrath.  He wrote down the offending poison-bromadialone, and told me he would check to see if she would need the Vitamin K injections to offset the certainly fatal ingestion or if we should attempt to induce vomiting.  Ten minutes later, he returned and announced she would have needed to ingest 100 grams of bait per kilogram of her own weight in order to be in a real health crisis.  (one gram equals a raisin...she's fifty-five pounds...one kilogram is about two and a half pounds...)I attempeted the algebraic formula and metric conversion in my very clouded brain and looked at him with a befuddled expression, "Layman's terms?"

"She would have needed to eat 100 bars of the bait to be in real danger of developing an anti-clotting issue."

*blink*

What?

One.hundred.bars? 

So, I just threw down one hundred DOLLARS and two HOURS of my life that I'll never get back, and you could have told me this on the PHONE?  Don't you think you should keep a little flow chart or reference book at the receptionist desk that would spare this kind of trip?  Fifty-five pound dog ingests less than a gram of a toxin.  Meh, don't worry.  Keep a close eye, if she starts to bleed out her eyes or butt, give us a call.

No, I didn't say any of those things.  But when he asked me if I wanted to spend another $100 on the vitamin K regimen, "just to be safe" I told him to bite me.

Okay, I didn't.  But I really wanted to.

 

   

So that's how their fur gets so shiny!

These two...

Keep eating these things...

I kept wondering what they were picking up off the warm, south facing driveway. The dogs looked as if they were chewing gum, their maws moving up and down furiously.  Finally, I watched Clark lick one off the sidewalk.  Tasty.  Any warm surface, especially the garage and front doors, hosts thousands of box elder bugs every autumn when the sun FINALLY makes an appearance.  I'm sure I'll spend the weekend on ladders contorting myself so that I can get the vacuum hose into light fixtures where their carcasses congregate.    

UPDATE:  Rashwatch 2007 is stagnant at Threat Level Orange.  Do you know just how hard it is to get a dermatologist appointment in a major metropolitan area these days?  Apparently appointments for rashes, acne and rosacea are subject to a waiting period of several MONTHS because so many doctors are chasing the big money for cosmetic treatments like Botox, spider vein removal and lipodissolve. 

ANOTHER UPDATE:  I got her squeezed in with the best looking dermatologist in the Twin Cities tomorrow morning.  Hopefully, this riddle will then be solved.

What's scaring the shit out of me this week...

Okay, it started out looking like this...

and now it looks like this...

and this...

This is Annelise's leg after three days of antibiotics, and topical cortisone cream.  I'm trying my hand at an Internet diagnosis and of course, scaring myself in the process.  Anyone know anything about bed bugs?  What the bites look like, allergic reactions?  That's the closest match I could find to her condition, though I can't find evidence of any here.  The red patch on her left leg has doubled in size since Saturday, in spite of the Cephalex and frequent administrations of cream.   

Update-a friend in Chicago called and suggested it could possibly be oak leaf gall mite, or itch mite.  Apparently they had a...forgive the pun...rash of outbreaks there this summer. Two doctors here are stumped, waiting to get into a dermatologist.  Any feedback is welcome!

A Meme I stole from Pajiba

At this point, I can only squeeze 14 blogs onto the blogroll.  Because my little vanity project has recently led me to some brilliant places on the web (shouting out to you Mrs. G!), I intend to figure that pesky bastard out.  At some point, I bumped the brilliant movie review site, Pajiba, off for another site that had won my favor, but it's still my go to blog if I want to know whether to spend two hours of my life and many of my dollars on a film.

Yesterday, critic Dustin Rowles called on the commenters to post Three Songs and a Lyric.   Permit me to paraphrase, then you play along! 

1.  What's your ideal wedding song, either the one you played at your wedding or one you'd like to play nuptials someday?

2.  What song would you want played at your funeral service?

3.  You’re the best relief pitcher in the majors.  It’s the bottom of the ninth and you’re about to run out of the bullpen. What’s your anthem?  (Think Charlie Sheen in Major League)

4.  What are your favorite song lyrics?

Here's my answers:

1.  There was no music at my recent marriage, but if there had been a wedding song, I would have picked "Air That I Breathe", but not the Hollies' version.  No, I would have selected the Mavericks' version.  Raul Malo makes that song all his own, and the operatic notes he holds on to at the end make the hair on your neck stand up. 

2.  Funeral song-hmmm, either "It Is Well With My Soul" by Dwight Yoakam, or Vivaldi's Concerto in D, which is my favorite piece of music-ever. 

3.  Anthem-American Woman, Lenny Kravitz version, OR Welcome to the Jungle-one of the greatest opening riffs EVER. 

4.  Favorite song lyrics-  REALLY tough choice, I hate to even commit to one, so here's my top 5 in no particular order:

• Sympathy for the Devil-Rolling Stones (though I could easily log a dozen other offerings from the Glimmer Twins)
• I'll Be Home For Christmas-you could make an entire Christmas mix CD of all the different versions of this song.  I love it, probably because since I left home twenty years ago, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually been home for Christmas.
• Dimming of the Day-Bonnie Raitt sang it, Richard Thompson wrote it.  Great wedding song, too.
• Me & The Eagle-Steve Earle.  The sparse guitar that accompanies the intro to this song is perfect.  It paints the most gorgeous picture. 
• In a Little While-U2, another great wedding song.

Your turn!

It's been like this for an entire week

The view from my bedroom window...

And this has been one of the nicer days.   

Business demands are consuming much of my free time.  The fellows are going hunting tonight though, so I believe I'll have some opportunity to post more frequently this weekend. 

No Bake Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

My son's friend Sam has Celiac Disease, and when he was initially diagnosed, I tried to accomodate his nutritional needs as much as possible.  I bought gluten free snacks, cereals and even flours so that he could enjoy waffles and pancakes.  I didn't notice a huge taste difference, but the texture was...off.  One product in particular made my tongue feel as if it was coated in a fine talc.  Regardless, I wanted to make sure that Sam never felt as if he didn't have any food choices when he spent the night.   My kids love to make homemade chocolate chip cookies when friends stay over, but after one try with the gluten free flour we abandoned that effort.  I did a little searching of my cookbooks and found an old favorite that is gluten free and almost as well loved as toll house cookies.

I've made these No Bake cookies for years after finding the recipe in a little self published community cookbook.  You only need one pan to cook them in, so there's no big mess to clean up afterwards.  We're all about scatalogical humor here at Chez Harrison, so we frequently refer to these as Dump Cookies, because, well, they look like little piles of poo.  Aesthetics aside, they're a wonderful marriage of peanut butter, chocolate and oatmeal.  Speaking of dumps-they also act as a mild laxative.  Ahem. 

No Bake Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

1 C granulated sugar
1/4 C Hershey's cocoa
1/4 C milk
1/4 C butter
1/2 C Jif peanut butter
2 C rolled oats

Mix sugar and cocoa in a medium sized saucepan.  Add milk and butter, then bring to a boil over medium low heat.  Boil for one minute, mixture should look glossy.  Take pan off the heat, stir in the peanut butter until thoroughly blended, then add the oats.  Working quickly, drop the batter onto waxed paper covered cookie sheets.  As the cookies cool, they'll harden.  Makes about two dozen good sized cookies.    

Poor little thing

Nori has kennel cough, aka Bordatella. 

She's back to normal today after a $70 vet visit.   

Things I don't want to hear on Friday

Or any other day for that matter...

• Nori had a diarrhea explosion in her kennel
• Clark threw up right outside the front door
• Nori threw up on the family room carpet
• I tried to clean up Nori's vomit, but I didn't get all of it and now it's all over the inside of the vacuum.  It was an accident.
• The microwave is broken.
• Nori is really sick.  She's coughing and her nose is really runny.
• (sound of dog heaving again)
• I'm at the school carnival and I need money now.
• (sound of approximately one gallon of dog vomit hitting the floor.  The carpet.  Of course.  Because the FUCKING TILE floor was only eighteen inches away.)
• Vet's office.  "We're totally booked tonight.  We have one opening at 8:30 AM tomorrow.
• (peek outside the door, dog is having another diarrhea explosion in the front yard)

Remind me. WHY do I have two dogs?  Because I enjoy a constant assault on my nostrils?

Quick Chili

I have two favorite chili recipes.  This recipe is the only one that my family will eat, because the other one is quite spicy and anything stronger than an onion is spurned in this household.  I'm trying to gradually desensitize their dainty, easily offended palates, but it's going to take awhile.  Right now, we're looking at a daytime high in Minneapolis of 83 degrees.  Yesterday we almost reached 90, so I'll be grilling this weekend instead of making big pots of hot, steamy soup. 

Amy's Quickie Chili

2 pounds ground beef or ground turkey
1 small onion, minced (Have you noticed that all of my recipes require minced onions?  This is the only way I can get anyone here to eat them without complaint)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Saute the ground beef with the onions and garlic.  When cooked through, drain the fat off.

Add to the beef:
2 15 ounce cans Contadina tomato sauce, more or less depending on how thick you like your chili (Here again, I've tried other brands with mixed results, so stick to my recommendation for the best end product.  As a bonus, it also has the lowest carb count of any of it's competition)
1 8 ounce can of kidney beans or cannelini beans, drained and rinsed (I serve these on the side, heated.  Drew and Steve like them, the other kids hate them)
2-4 Tablespoons of chili powder, depending on how spicy you like it.  The chili powder doesn't add heat, just flavor.
1 Tablespoon of Pampered Chef Southwest Seasoning
1 Teaspoon ground cumin

Incorporate the remaining ingredients into the meat, and simmer for a half hour.  Serve with a selection of condiments like sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, chopped jalapenos and onions, nacho chips or any other topping that suits your taste.