Our Little Daschund Mix

This is what the cute little wiener dog looked like before she became a miniature beached whale.  This picture is about 7-8 months old.  She's not that skinny anymore.  She looks like she could do advertisement for natural diet supplements now. It's not healthy for her to be overweight in general but being part daschund, it's not good for her longer back to carry that extra weight on her underside either.

But boy can this dog bark! She is so annoying.  I've been thinking about getting one of those high-pitched things that will beep at her when she barks.  I'm just not sure if they really work and hate to spend money on something that might not work.

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Wiener Dog Barks All The Time

Has anybody had any luck with Cesar Millan's books for dog training?  I need help with a serial barker who drives me up the wall (so I know she must drive our neighbors up the wall as well the way she yipes at them up and down the fenceline when the poor people are trying to sit outside their yards and relax). 

From what I've read, it could be insecurity or boredom so either lots of walks for her or the book mentions treadmills. I can't imagine this little wiener dog mutt running her short little stubby legs on a treadmill.  I'd fall over laughing!

She does need to lose weight though.  She's like a little beached whale when she flops over to go to sleep.  When I say "flop", she really does just flop over. 

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Living in a Redneck Town

Our local school district called on their parent connect lines last night to leave a message that they were dismissing the entire school district from school almost two hours early this Friday due to a varsity softball game!  What?  Huh? 

My 3rd grader, 5th grader, and 7th grader (who had her field day scheduled for that afternoon) are going to be dismissed from school early because a few 11th and 12th grade girls have a softball game they must travel to?  That irritates me to no end!  It's a good thing I am home and don't need to scramble for daycare or else I would be extremely mad instead of just annoyed.  I can rearrange my errands to be home for my children but I have to wonder how many parents this is going to be a problem for.

We live in a small redneck town (a dry town too) where athletics and religion are THE thing to be involved in here.  Besides christianity, athletics are their second religion, before mullets.  If you aren't a member of one of the many, many churches in this small, oppressive town, you're an outsider.  The varsity high school teams in our school district are treated like the second coming and I guess to heck with the rest of the school district. 

If I had to scramble for day care, I'd be on the phone with the school right now giving them a piece of my mind.  I don't need to do that this time but I have to wonder if their phone lines are going this morning with other parents unhappy about this decision.

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My Illness - Pelvic Inflammatory Disease

I said before I'd tell more about my illness later.  Well, it's later.

I was hospitalized due to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (due to bacterial vaginosis...NOT an STD which the doctors would not believe until the cultures came back proving neither myself nor my husband cheated on each other and gave each other a disease!) after an ER visit had me admitted for fear of abcess and the need for surgery.  I was really sick with high fever and extreme pain.  They gave me morphine in the ER for pain, then dilaudid (I think that's how it's spelled) once admitted, then Percocet as the pain went down.  Apparently, the flu I thought I had with fever for four days a few weeks ago was the start of the infection raging through my reproductive organs until they were screaming at me to get to the hospital.

The drugs at the hospital made me so tired.  I didn't need any type of sleep aid to get me to sleep. Unfortunately, the antibiotics (Gentamicin and Clindamycin) they had me on had such bad side effects (dizziness, nausea, ear pain and hallucinations) that I was happy to get off them after 2-1/2 days when I got sent home. I think it was the Gentamicin that did all that to me.  The faces flying at me in my head were bad enough (and the evil grins some of the faces gave me were downright scary) but when the Virgin Mary statue outside my hospital window turned and looked at me several times, I rang for the nurse to get me off the medications! 

I may be infertile now.  I'm not sure until I see my gynecologist for further testing to see what, if any, scarring was done to my girl bits.  Since we have our four kids and my husband's two children, we weren't planning on having anymore children anyway so that's not a real heartbreaker for me.  I don't like the fact that my choices may have been taken away but it's not like we ever planned to have another child anyway.

I'm still on antibiotics and the pain comes and goes.  I'm still healing.  I think it's going to be awhile before I'm back to 100% me.

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Blackhead Help

I know this isn't step-parent related but how the heck do you get rid of a blackhead? I have one on the crease between my nose and cheek and it seems like it's taken up permanent residence there. No matter how often I wash or what I use to wash my face (wash, exfoliate, let dry and rip off my face), it lives there permanently. Because of where it is at, it's not noticeable to others but I know it is there. 

I feel like I'm 14 instead of 38.  It's just gross. 

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