DragonBlog

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For some reason I like this picture best out of the mini photo shoot Kayla and I did this morning with Snowflake.  He and I have been coming to terms.  Clearly he likes his cage a.  particular.  way.  Thus, the litterbox has swapped corners with the toy corner, I have moved the hay hanger and bin from the back to the front of the cage, and today I removed the food dish that he kept flicking all the food out of before eating it and instead put in one of the very bowls you see in the picture above.  He also gets his salad served to him on a matching white rectangular plate these days.  Perhaps he just likes to color coordinate all his dishes with his fur, or perhaps he just prefers the texture and shape of these dishes.

He tends to communicate his hunger with his teeth.  He’ll either bite at my clothes if I’m holding him, or he’ll start trying to rip up the rug if he’s been out to play as is often the case.  He’s only bit on fingers once or twice and never enough to draw blood – just his way of reminding us that he’d like more of the lettuce those fingers were holding before he snarfed it down.  He’s picky about his carrots – so far he’s only liked them hidden in treat-form or in peels mixed in with his greens.  I put out a metal 9×9 baking pan with some of the aspen litter I’ve been using and he and I have adjusted it’s placement on the rug until he is mostly litter-trained even when he is out playing in the family room.  The real problem is the litter itself.  I’m thinking I may need to get some sort of rug that will keep the litter in as he leaves, since it’s ending up all over the rug and then the kids’ socks and beyond.  Ugh.  I keep sweeping up and then snagging the dustbuster to deal with the stragglers, but I’ll have to work on a solution to keep them from getting so far.  I’m thinking we could get a rug to extend off the carpet, but I’d need something that will either attract and keep the litter or have an edge that sticks up?  Perhaps my bunny-savvy friends will give me some ideas there…

There are more pictures, some with Kayla too, and hopefully I’ll get some others online.  Meanwhile, I’m overwhelmed with the backlog of things that didn’t get done before or during the holiday break and also usually feeling overmedicated to the point of either exhaustion or tears or both, mixed with a healthy dose of the usual pain.  Ugh.  And now, somehow, the husband and one of my friends who are both tracking workouts and calories on an iPhone app have gotten ME tracking the same info for myself.  It’s only been a couple of days but one of them I nearly doubled the amount of calories the damned thing allotted me.  It was at least a little heartening yesterday, when I snacked, had all three meals AND dessert, but came in nearly 300 calories UNDER my target… because I’d worked out that morning.  Heh.  If only I had the time (and energy) to do that every day.  I hate diets.  So I’m NOT dieting.  I’m just… submitting to peer pressure.  *sigh*  I’m going to miss aobut 1/4 of my own cooking, as  Brian slowly goes through my recipes as I cook them and determines the calorie intake per serving.   While most of my recipes ARE turning out just fine, SOME of them are just decadent.  Although, even Brian says that the app calculated a smaller calorie budget than he would have suggested, so I have a little wiggle room.

On the medical front, I’m going to be getting a second opinion in a couple of weeks, from a different doctor.  It’s not that I don’t believe I have this Fibromyalgia thing.  It’s that I want the “healing” process to involve less drugs and yet happen SOONER.  I woke up around 4 am a week or so ago and found myself staggering and stumbling drunkenly when I tried to get to the bathroom.  I FELT drugged and it was frightening.  I’ve been feeling a lot more shifts as time-release drugs kick on and a lot more moodiness from the most recent drug addition – Lyrica.  I’m seeing the Rheumatologist tomorrow though, and I’m sure she’ll either dial that one down or change it.  Nonetheless, I’m still going to go for the second opinion.  I’m growing more concerned that my high blood pressure is on the sidelines and I’m just on too many meds as it is to add another one so I’ve been stalling both my primary and my cardiologist from giving me anything.  I need to have OTHER stuff removed without leaving me in agony – and I’m already in some pain as it is, since I’ve been refusing to up the dosages on the pain meds.  I don’t need to be any more drugged up – I have enough days that I feel like I’m wading through a reality fog just to focus on the task at hand.  And some days I have to bully up my willpower just to go from sitting to standing as I never know if I’ll find more pain in the process.  The idea was supposed to be that we were going to retrain my brain and body to understand signals correctly, but I’m still getting the same signals – some seem to be getting worse!  There are days I just want to stay in bed.  My emotions are all out of wack, so I sometimes burst into tears over the tiniest thing…

Oof.  Enough of that.  I could go on for hours.  But I’ve got a little boy to go get from school, a little girl to wake from her nap, and a bunny to play with when we all get back home.  I like those options MUCH better.  *grin*

Perhaps I’m not TOTALLY a cynic after all…

Not long ago, a lady looked at Kayla and I in the hardware store and asked me “How can you refuse that cute little girl anything?“  and I had to reply that sometimes… I can’t.  This bright-eyed little face decided to come inside from playing in the snow.  I popped off her hat and found curls and a smile waiting for me.  I took pictures and then we ate the snow off her scarf.  Heehee.  I suggested it tasted like “cold Outside” and she sagely agreed.

11:36 pm.  Solstice Night.  The children tried their best to stay up ALL night.  Frankly, I was impressed they made it past 11:00…

Now it’s all up to the grownups to keep vigil, awaiting the sun’s return. 

Tonight is Solstice, the longest night of the year.  For those who don’t know, this is what we celebrate in our little family.  A few years back we startled everyone when we suddenly announced that there would be no more gift exchanges from us.  While we do enjoy and continue to attend ALL the family gatherings, as they celebrate Christmas – we celebrate Family and the spirit we hold within our own home-made holiday.

There are plenty of people who already celebrate Solstice (mostly Wiccan, I believe), but we didn’t really consult them when we fashioned what WE wanted our holiday to be.  “Fine, let’s just celebrate the seasons,” I had told Brian one night after we’d had the same old conversation about how Christmas didn’t “mean” anything to us anymore.  Since Brian studies things like Shamanism, he couldn’t argue the logic of celebrating the four seasons instead of Christ’s birthday or the Hallmark/Santa gift holiday.  Christmas had become an exhausting ordeal of gathering the “right” gifts for everyone and worrying that it wasn’t the right one after all once it had been wrapped.  I’ve always enjoyed the cooking aspect – especially when they let me delve into the wonderful world of baked cookies and chocolate delicacies.  I’m already waiting and thinking on what I intend to bring this year.  We kept that tradition, oh yes.  But, since we weren’t practicing Christians, it seemed hypocritical to be celebrating the birthday aspect.  So Brian suggested we celebrate Solstice & Equinox holidays.  And, since then, each year we work to slightly define each holiday just a little bit more.

Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year and, in ancient times, they feared that the sun was leaving or burning out.  So they would light fires and keep vigil, praying for the sun’s return.  In respect to that heritage we will spend tonight staying up and keeping vigil until the sun’s return in the morning.  At that point we will feast and celebrate (before passing out in staggered naps, I expect), making seed and peanut butter pinecones for the birds and maybe even stringing popcorn to hang on the trees.  Some of our family members will be joining us (most have to work this year) for the breakfast feast and we’ve scheduled it so that the feast will begin shortly after the sunrise so that we can all see it together.  We, at least, do not take that big ball of light for granted.  Let us celebrate it’s continued nourishment, as our world would not be habitable without it.

As for the long night itself, the kids are excited that we have told them they can stay up.  I imagine they’ll make it a couple hours past bedtime at least, although I suspect that Jareth will try to make it further before passing out on the couch or something.  Once they are asleep I’ll wrap up the little things we’ve got for the stockings.  Nothing, however, ends up wrapped beneath the Solstice tree (yep, still have a tree too – not so different from all the other households, really), but there is a little bit of gift exchange mostly just some fun little stocking stuff and this year’s gift – one blue-eyed, white dwarf rabbit named Snowflake.  Last year we got fish (not nearly warm-fuzzy enough for my needs, but fun to watch) and the children each got a wooden toybox which we spent part of the next day painting with them.  This year we’ve got other craft plans – peanut-butter birdseed balls, made with pinecones we collected in the fall.  We might also do some popcorn strings as we never got to that one last year.  We also are going to make our own ornaments this year, since I’ve come up with a craft that even Kayla can do – felting!  I picked up a felt kit during a holiday market at our school.  One of the parents makes them (http://www.mysmallwonders.etsy.com) and she had a cute setup with a felting needle, unspun wool, a foam block, a cookie cutter and some instructions.  I tried the kit, which was one to make a flower, and enjoyed it quite a bit.  This resulted in my sending off some felted flowers in with the cards my kids drew for their teachers this year.  I was hedging on doing it (since I’m pretty sure ALL the teacher have felting experience at that school and my efforts are probably amateurish at best), but Jareth liked the idea and made me do it.  What can I say, I let them twist my arm when it comes to the non-essentials.  I just hope the teachers liked them.  Next year, I’ll make the kids do their own, after they’ve had some further practice, starting with the ornaments for this year’s tree.

Other plans on the agenda tonight include talking about how last year went - compared to how we wanted it to – and how we envision the next year.  This is the time we really decide on those New Year’s resolutions, really.  Time to reflect and dream.  Time to visualize how to make those dreams a reality, or at least get a step further by next year’s end.  We also take time during the long night to gather clothes from our closets – things we no longer wear – and pile them into bags for donation.  Our way of trying to give back to the community around us.  As the kids grow older, we will find other activities to include for community as well.  We’re considering going through the toys this year too, as there are a lot that the children have either outgrown or no longer play with.

We often get ambitious, and there will be some things that don’t get done tonight or tomorrow, but then I don’t expect that to be any different this year.  After all, we have a bunny to play with!  I’ve already spent half the day just lounging about in the family room, letting the rabbit run free.  Brian got a bunch of Plexiglas and installed it into strategic points to prevent the rabbit from getting into a few restricted areas.  So, except for when I needed to run my back-saver (roomba) around the family room to clean up some hay from last night’s play, Snowflake has been exploring the family room (and the kids) most of the day.  I am amazed at how easily this rabbit is handling the bouncing and hopping of my two loud rabbit wannabes as they spent most of that time bouncing on their knees, trying to encourage Snowflake to jump around like them.  I will admit, there were a few moments where I think the bunny was outsmarting the kids…

Happy Solstice everyone!  Sleep soundly, for we will be keeping this night’s vigil.

A couple of months back, shortly after Jareth’s class introduced a rabbit as the “class pet,” we decided to pick up a rabbit cage we saw on craigslist.  While we convinced the kids that it was “in case Pearl (the class rabbit) came to visit, we were secretly conspiring to bring a rabbit into our home as our Solstice “gift” for this year.  We’ve been trying for our seasonal gifts to be something enriching as of late – last year we gave them each a plain wooden toy box that we sat down and painted with them.  It wasn’t just the boxes we were giving them, but the excitement and closeness of the activity too.  We also introduced a fish tank (found on freecycle), and we all went to pick out fish together too.  This year, we felt it was high time to bring a warm, fuzzy animal into the house.  I’ve still been missing our two cats who we had to give away once we found out that both Jareth AND I were allergic.  However, neither of us (or anyone else in the house, as far as we know) are allergic to rabbits.  Thus…

Please welcome our newest family member.  We wanted a good “winter” name, to represent the timing of her arrival and the color of his fur.  He’s also got gorgeous blue eyes, which we were told was a little rarer in white dwarf rabbits.  After some discussion involving snow, ice, icicles and more, Jareth suggested Snowflake which just seemed to settle nicely into everyone’s minds.  So here he is, stopping to pose for me a bit while exploring his new home:

He came to us after we spent some time petting, holding and falling in love with him over all the other beautiful rabbits over at the local rabbit rescue, No Splitting Hares Rabbit Rescue, in Algonquin, IL.  Frankly, there were three we wanted to take home, and Kayla seemed to want to have us take every single rabbit out so she could pet them ALL, but this little guy was the one that seemed to warm to all of us.  Kayla was actually the first of us to hold him, and she didn’t actually hold ANY of the other ones.  I think he small size was part of what made it easier for her, especially since she often shies away from animals.  I’d been all over the internet to find out about rabbits and was expecting to come home with a female rabbit, ideally in the super-soft Angora breed.  As usual, however, pet love does not always conform to your expectations.  But I’ve always found that the pet that “feels right” is the one who will exceed any expectations you had.  The women who helped us at No Splitting Hares were super helpful and showed me how to pick up a rabbit, trim nails, etc.  They were also able to answer my questions and give me answers to questions I didn’t realize I needed to ask.  Thanks so much ladies!

Okay now.  Let Winter “officially” begin, for Snowflake is here already!