Thursday, October 11, 2007 - I'm a bad blogger

All I can say in my defense is that I've kept up a tad bit better with my dog blog at www.doghotel.blogspot.com

Since I last visited here, we came back from France, dealt with a broken microwave, printer, dryer, and television. The dog had an abcess on his tail from what turned out to be a thorn that he picked up in France, and it took almost 3 months from time of entry until the time of exit. It caused him a lot of pain and grief and as I still have not seen the vet bill, probably will cause me some additional grief as well. Within about 12 hours of our return in the summer, my mother-in-law's sister-in law was visiting next door, and she had a heart attack. There was no one here to deal with this other than me, and I was thanking my lucky stars and Inlingua that I bothered to learn German, broken as my German may still be. In regards to the heart attack I seemed to have all the necessary vocabulary (though I don't remember studying heart attacks in school, but we did cover visiting the doctor!). All these thing combined had me stressed out in a way that I don't normally find myself, and I broke out in a rash on my back in August and correctly diagnosed myself with Shingles. Sigh. I got on anti-virals immediately and I'm sure this was helpful in shortening the whole deal, but for about 10 days I would have to say I was pretty derned miserable. Bernd went to the mountains to camp with his grandsons while I was at my worst, so I think the dog had to suffer the worst of it with me. Our walks were pretty pitiful and short.

So now we are all well here again, we are having a new heating system put in and that work started today. We also had new flooring laid in Bernd's new basement office today and though this turned out to be way more complicated than if ever should have been thanks to an incompetent employee at the flooring store, it is finally in and looks terrific. Bernd will be moving home to work in the near future. I have mixed feelings about this but I'm trying to look at the bright side.....with him here I'll be a little more free to move around in the world even when I have dogs here, so that's good. I'm thinking we'll save lots of money on shirts and work clothes for him since he'll be living in his pajamas from now on. And then there are some real tax advantages so this maybe will all add up to be something good.

Oh yeah, and we recently went back to France for one more dose of Provence for 2007. We went with our French class and for 10 days spoke German. It was a fun trip but the language thing gets tiring at times. Thankfully our teacher speaks fluent everything so I was not totally lost in space. The French class is a mighty nice group of people and we had a nice time with them on vacation. We are now grounded until spring when we are headed for the homeland and a trip to the left coast. We are already excited and it is still 6 months away.