gaysknits

sometimes i think dogs are smarter...

than most humans. mine is anyway.

we are having great difficulty administering medications to the german. he knows things. he figures things out. he's on to us.  he can lick the peanut butter dry off a pill and then spit it out. he can eat all the cheeze around the pill and spit it out whole. he can hold it in his throat for 15 minutes and as soon as you release his muzzle...he can spit it out...on the floor right in front of you...mocking you...as if to say "i told you no more pills." rice ball, bread ball. hidden inside a hot dog you name it he will fall for it once...one time only then you have to find another method.  i don't think there are many more ways ways to hide a pill than i have tried already are there? he chews everything he eats now throughly and with great care and attention to detail and if there is anything foreign he spits it out.  he has started to enjoy the home cooking though and miss husky thinks it is christmas because she gets all the fat, the chicken skin, the benefits of the germans illness without all the stomach upset and the blood...oh the blood. if i never see that again. i swear it was harder to watch him  than to be there myself and i was once and know the pain left behind after the episode so i was only upset momentarily and had a suspicion it was a situation related to the possibility of a stomach ulcer at least that is what we are still hoping turns out to be the case.  i just didn't expect it to happen that fast. it was too quick, he was only taking aspirin for one week and before  that a week of clean out and before that a week of those evil meds for arthritis.  makes you wonder if there is not more to that dog year theory...everything happening at a faster rate of time.  hmmm just a theory...of sorts! at any rate he is showing no more signs of bleeding from the inside. he is eating and drinking which are his most developed and strongest skillz aside from whining and barking and he is doing a lot of resting. miss husky is doing her best to stir up some trouble and to aggravate him...she is not the supportive type and the guy and i carpeted the two steps from the back porch to the kitchen and the landing with carpet scraps last night so he can go in and out with less trouble, no hesitation and very little falling.  my my.  i hope no one with an eye for design waltzes through my house any time soon. one look at this patchwork of color and print and texture i call area rugs and i'll be on the "how not to decorate your house show" which will be a new show started in my honor just for me on hgtv!  later and have a happy saturday.  ours is rainy and i plan to send some of it at the grocery store and some of it cooking for my dogs and maybe some of it arguing with stupid people who are trying to cheat me on ebay!  ah me and my ebay...later...love   g 

he may not be the most important dog...

that has been in my life. important seems like a word not ordinarily attributed to ones dog but i once had a dog that was an important dog. she was a stray. a co worker of mine found her wandering aimlessly along the side of the highway with what we assumed then to be her brother.  to make a long story short she kept the boy dog hansel and i the girl which she named gretel and whose name i changed and should not have because it was a cool name for a stray dog. she still calls her gretel.i came to think of her as an important dog very shortly after she came into my life. she was a stray and was more than likely abused at one time but at any rate she was a dog that lived by her instincts more than any other creature i had ever lived with. she reacted to life and behaved as a dog in the wild would and i learned more about life from watching her than from any other experience. i loved her dearly because i understood her so well.  no one else loved her because a dog that lives by the rules of the wild does not often make friends and ingratiate herself with folks. she lived with me until she could no longer and even then she refused to take her last breath without a fight.  i bought the german when she had lived with me for about five years because i thought having a pack mate and friend would mellow her out but it did not.  all it did was turn the german into a simpering docile cry baby of a dog. she was the boss of everyone and took no crap from him nor did she give him any quarter. she stopped having fun and started alternating between protecting him and scolding him.  she was happiest when she was at the cottage in the mountains and was set  free to roam until she was ready for sleep.  i can honestly say i do not miss her. she was difficult. i do think of her often with fondness and the memory of her brings a tear to my eye and she was the most important dog.

the german on the other hand captured  my heart. as i said he may not be the most important dog but he is my best dog and my most favorite. he is the sweetest, smartest, most charming boy i have ever had the privilege to know. he is mellow, he is gentle, and he is a mommas boy and i am going to miss him like crazy when he is gone.  i have had many days recently when i think that day will be here sooner than later. ask anyone in western pennsylvania and they will tell you we had wicked storms last night. the topic of conversation at the office this morning was who had a flooded basement, who lost power who got it back and how long it took, who had to take a detour due to a road closed or a tree uprooted.  we had a storm all right. i did lose power for about twelve hours and it it was a real inconvenience because i did not sleepthrough the powerless ordeal.  the german was having a fitful nite and awoke at midnite vomiting blood. lots of blood. ordinarily it would have been a major chore all that cleaning up at midnite but doing it by candle light and by flashlights that were too exhausted to shed any more light  was nearly impossible. of course no laundry could be done until the power was back on and so the soiled towels and sheets and blankets stacked up and were waiting for me when i got home from work this evening.  thank god for hardwood floors...carpets would have been history. today he is taking three different types of medication for a possible ulcer which was most likely caused by the meds and the aspirin he has been given for his bad hips. i can only truly hope that an ulcer is the cause of his bleeding.  his hips will be getting bad again i'm afraid. right now he is not anxious to eat much of anything but some home cooked rice and boiled meat and ordinarily this would bring him great joy but today he is sad and he is sick. i am cooking food to feed him and doing laundry and washing everything else that was in the way. i am exhausted.i look forward to a good nights sleep for all of us tonite.  later...love   g

two days in a row...

what is this world coming to?  yesterday afternoon i bought a bound carpet remnant that was a nice quality with a comfy cushy pile  in a dark hunter green to put in front of my fireplace in the living room. the german was instantly appreciative and scratched himself an imaginary hole in the ground plopped himself self down in it and enjoyed a relaxing evening in front of the tv sleeping on the floor.

i wonder if i get him another remnant for the floor at the bottom of the bed if he would be happy sleeping there instead of on the bed.  hmmm.  i doubt it but it will eventually come to that  i suppose.  he was put on doggy nsaids which seemed to work miracles until i read about the hideous side effects and decided against them.  he is back to his usually troubled gait. the german was affected by hip dysplasia at birth. it was noticible before he was a year old and he was x rayed by my vet who repeated every time he saw him that he was one of the handsomest gsp's he'd ever seen with the most magnificent chest and upper body but his rear end  was the worst and most hideous he has ever witnessed. i loved that vet. he was a country boy at heart with a certain flair and a way with words and he could handle my 40 pound three legged evil cat like he was a hamster.  he got many points with me but unfortunately after the german was spayed he would no longer voluntarily enter the door of that vet's office.  he is now passed away and i go to the guys vet . the german doesn't like him much better but he will follow miss husky anywhere and she is one dumb little girl but her dim wit comes in handy because she will go anywhere with great enthusiam including to the vets to get shots!  i call her the blond...no offense to blonds out there but it is a generalization that suits miss husky to a tee.  the german has now been weaned off of the nsaids and in  a few days will start a regimen of aspirin and glucosamine which btw he has taken quite regularly since his birth.  i am afraid to take him on a big adeventure but with the half acre of property i own he finds much space to do as much walking or running as he needs. i just have to make an effort to walk him around.  i have lots to do down there in the back forty to occupy my time so that is the plan.  the door to the basement stairs has been hung back on its hinges and miss husky is not at all happy. she discovered a piece of old foam carpet pad that i was saving for what purpose i do not know but every after noon when her soap opera was over she would sneak down there to spend some quality time on her special project which was to tear it into thousands of tiny pieces.  i threw it in the garbage last night so she is mighty upset with me and is now looking for some other trouble to get into.  she needs to go on another vacation. the german does not he is on permanent vacation!  i am off to do something with my sunday!  later...love   g

i almost gave it up...

i swear i was soooo close to giving the whole thing up.  i decided to knit a bit last night and was happily knitting  my second sleeve of the black and blue cardi. i started my sleeve decreases earlier than on sleeve number one and did them more reliably  every six rows and had a nice taper going on and then i tried it on and.....uggggh. the sleeve was too tight around the forearm, not too tight but tighter than i wanted it to be, and it was still too damn baggy under the arm pits. that's when i started banging my head off the wall then i threw it down and stomped on it and swore i'd leave it in the ufo pile for ten years before i touched it again...if then...i wouldn't even bother to rip the son of a bitch out because it was to damn much trouble.

you know i really didn't do that right?  alternating skeins every few rows makes for a nice pattern of striping with no pooling but it also makes for a pain in the ass. cotton yarn in general makes for a pain in the ass. i'm in a bad mood can you tell?  any way i looked at the color changes in the yarn and fell in love all over again.  so i tore the second sleeve back to the join practically and decreased the hell out of it at the arm pit and a few other places at the top of the sleeve. ah that's more better.  that should do the trick.  that should solve the baggy pits problem and now i find myself with the exact number of stitches i wanted to have and can knit straight to the elbow and maybe beyond. ahhh.

now mind you i still have to rip out sleeve number one but the whole sweater is not a loss anyway.  i am keeping pretty good notes on each sleeve variation so i can make two sleeves alike but i hope nobody will ask me or will want me or may desire me to write up this stupid pattern because i hate it! ok okay i love it. i love the cuffs and the sleeve length and the color and the absolute coziness of the fabric when it's knitted up. but i am so sick and tired of my fingers turning black every time i knit with it. that really gets on my last nerve. as if i have even one nerve left.

you know i put in a request to be transferred out of my department at work before i left for vacation and it will most likely be a very very very cold day in hell before i get that transfer.  it is bad again...really bad and i have lost all faith in the kindness of people and in their ability to be reasonable and sympathetic when called upon to do so in the face of tragic or sad circumstances. i am ashamed of some of the people i know and i am exhausted from all the drama of late.  emotionally i am drained and i turned to knitting again to sooth my soul.   knitting does sooth my soul but that damn black cotton yarn doesn't. later and may you have much happier knitting than i am having...love   g

one day last week...

the guy was sitting on the recliner watching cnn and he said "do you smell something burning?"  to which i replied "well if you do don't you think you should get up off your ass and lets go look for some flames?"  i didn't exactly use those exact words..uuhhh...welll...maybe i did but any any rate we searched and nothing was aflame and nothing on fire but something sure did stink.  it sort of smelled chemical. i thought maybe there really was a meth lab in the wink wink empty house next door. but that was just a fleeting thought. my next idea was that perhaps the body shop down the hill was doing something with something toxic smelling and the fumes and the smell blew up the hill with the wind.  then the house started to stink.

 

then i realized it was miss husky.  this is a dog that is very dear to the guys heart.  let me say that she is so much more trouble than any dog i have ever met in my entire life and i have met plenty.  i have cleaned my floors, laundered my bedding, washed her more than once and tried every single home remedy i could think of with the exception of dousing her with either tomato juice which i understand only turns the dog pink or mouthwash and that is next on the agenda to try to neutralize her body odor.

to top it all off i was up last night until 2:00 in the morning knitting the same row over and over and over until i thought i would exhaust myself and self destruct from the repetition.  as usual it was a stupid counting mistake and also i didn't think to take into account that i had substituted a different lace pattern in the tree jacket and it might be wise to change the stitch count.  that has all been resolved but i have only this one row of lace to show for my effort of having stayed up half the night knitting furiously and wiping the tears from my eyes caused by the fumes coming off of a wet, skunky dog.

a wet, skunky dog is way worse than a dry, skunky dog let me tell you. the good news is plenty though.  i love this arucania pomaire and love love love this shade of green!  i got my knitting mojo back and i have been selling off stash yarn for cheap on ebay to rid myself of the stuff that i wanted to knit at one time but now know i never will knit! as expected i have purchased even more yarn...nature cotton to be precise.

webs is having a closeout on the stuff and i have surrendered to my love of black in spite of my inability to knit with black yarn because i can't really see the stuff well.  nevertheless i am making another version of the burnished tunic out of a black and grey and blue version of the nature cotton. this time with no pattern in the stitches so it'll be easy peasy and i won't have to worry about the fact that i can't see what i'm doing...i can knit stockinette with my eyes closed....really... i've tried it!!!  i'm off to the back forty to bundle sticks.  more of this good news later...love   g