Holiday Season in full swing

Saturday, Tim and I got busy cleaning the house like it's never been cleaned all month (Saturday was one month from Tim's surgery. Hopefully he'll be doing really great in the next two weeks!). We hung posters (good ole' Gorbachev above the hearth), swept all the pine needles, caught up on dishes and laundry, and finally cleared the rest of our things off the shelves upstairs. I zipped over to the ferry terminal around 9 to pick up Mom, Dad, Daniel, and Amanda in Grandpa's surprisingly large car, and we all headed to the house to give Daniel and Amanda the grand tour for their first visit, and catch Dad up on all the improvements since he was last here in September. Mom also created an excellent review of different methods of getting to the Island which I will include in a new page (using the tabs along the top).

Sunday morning Daniel accompanied Tilly and I on our morning walk, which was lovely to have the company, then Grandpa, Mom, and I went to the Lutheran church down the street where we were just in time for the children's Christmas pageant. We nearly filled both cars that afternoon as we headed to the mainland and my aunt, Beth's, annual tree decorating party. Tilly got to hang out on the back porch with another dog while Mom strung popcorn and cranberries on floss to decorate the tree while Daniel entertained our cousin's little baby who mastered the art of pushing the button to make Santa and the elves rap. Tilly didn't seem to have much interest in the other dog, surprisingly, but she did manage to get into the smoker where juices were still left over from smoking the turkey all day. Her beard makes it even grosser. That was the first strike, scratching at the screen part of the door was the second, and after she found baskets of dried grass to eat, she went back in the car for the rest of her nap.

Monday was my first day working alone, and after a long day cleaning kennels and talking to little birds, I was delighted to come home to a puppy who spent all day exploring new dog parks and running on the beach with mom. She is so wonderful! And with such good timing putting the puppy to bed moments before I walked in the door.

Dad and Tim went to Uncle Loren's house and borrowed some needed larger tools. Dad borrowed Uncle Loren's awesome leaf blower and cleared some paths through our leaves, and Tim borrowed an engine hoist to lift his lathe onto it's workbench after itching to do it for the last three months. His shop is looking pretty good! Once the truck was home, Dad and I turned right around and headed to town to donate money to the orphans of Southeast Asia in exchange for a beautiful, sustainable Christmas tree.

 Today, Mom, Grandpa and I ran some errands which included going to the recycling center where Tilly patiently sat on the scale and showed off her 30lb high score! We also picked up lights for our tree before eagerly heading home to get the house looking seasonal. Our small box of ornaments don't go nearly as far on such a large tree.

We've been showing off puppy tricks to the family. Tilly understands:
- "Go to bed"
- "Sit"
- "Down"
- "Back"
- "Wait"
- "Ok"
- "Hup"
- "Touch"
- "Come"
- "Heel"
Maybe others but those are the ones I can think of now. I think she also gets things like "Water", "Outside", "No", "Yes", "Off", "Potty/Pee/Poop", "Leave it/Drop it/Share" etc. but her execution doesn't prove much.

New jobs all around

The perk of starting my day at 6am, going for a walk with Tilly in the dark, then heading off to work, it the beautiful sunrise that was waiting for me at the top of the driveway, though waking up to sunshine and blue skies out my window at 8:30 is also a pretty good start to the day. Nevertheless, heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work I went.

My favorite part of work seems to be the birds. There are these guys inside who sometimes talk and love goldfish, and the outside bird building with a diverse crowd. They were all pet store rejects because they were born with deformities, so they get to live out long and happy lives with their birdie buddies, dogs barking, and daily love and care. There is one bird that was born quite ugly and has been living here for 20 years!

While I was playing with the critters and earning dollars, Tim was busy with his job all day - physical therapy. 45 minutes of every waking hour is spent wiggling his fingers and bending his wrist in a painful process of healing. The scar is being massaged away, the tendon scar tissue is learning to glide back and forth again, and the muscles are trying to remember what those "move" signals mean and fighting their way past the injury. It is a slow journey to recovery, but Tim is persistent. Tomorrow, Friday the 13th, is the one month anniversary of the injury. Hopefully by Christmas and New Years, his hand will be responding more normally to signals and working on gaining back strength instead of struggling to move.

(Tilly's new job is to try to be very good for Tim while I'm gone all day)

Leaps and bends!

Ariel's highlight of the day: getting a call that indeed, I have a job and will be going in to work tomorrow!

Three of Till's baby teeth from the floor of "her room".

Tilly's highlight of the day: going for a walk early in the AM, then going for another walk with Sandy and John (she was so good and even SAT while they walked up!), then going for another walk around Greenbank farm, then going for ANOTHER walk around Greenbank farm with a pack of dogs, then running into our favorite island Akbash and going for ANOTHER walk around Greenbank farm... then finally going home to nap all day with Grandpa. Also, it has got to feel so good to be rid of more of those puppy teeth that were bruising her mouth and ripping up my hand. Ouch all around! 

Old wrist angle and new wrist angle as Tim continues to improve.

Tim's highlight of the day: going to physical therapy and being granted the ability to bend his wrist between 0 and 30 degrees and start to use his muscles! Though it's painful and difficult, it is also great to know that turning his hand over won't make his incredibly stiff and muscleless wrist flop back and rip everything apart again, and see progress and improvement, actively moving towards having a normal hand again instead of passively waiting to heal. In a few weeks, he'll be feeling much better. 

Doggy dog day

Tim took off with Fritz for the day to explore the wooden boats of Port Townsend, and I went for a little drive up to Sky Meadow Farm to see about a job with their dog boarding and breeding program. It's not particularly high paying or intellectually stimulating, but it is part time and most importantly, starts immediately. It sounds like, with luck, I'll be working on Friday and starting to bring home some much needed money. Sky Meadow Farm 'breeds' (through artificial insemination and c-section) French and English Bull Dogs, which there seem to be about 30 of in the building. Because of their stubby little noses and such, they aren't supposed to go out side if it's very hot or very cold, which means a lot of pens to clean!

On the home-puppy front, Tilly went for her last pre-paid puppy class and first "adult" puppy class - only one of the dogs was over a year, but they were all over 4 months which gets them out of puppy kindergarten. We missed a puppy class while in Seattle for Tim's surgery, so this was a make-up class for us. Two of the puppies were familiar from the last class, but there were also some older newbies who were still struggling with the basics. Tilly was a model student and spent her waiting time silently sitting, backing up, waiting, then coming over for a treat. If we make it to two more classes, we can take the AKC "STAR puppy" test, though we'll see about our job situation before signing up for anything else. (If you click on that link, note all the Airedales on the banner at the top!)

Tilly's Christmas Wish List for those who were asking:
- Custom decorated extra large metal or ceramic pot (not too tippy) for a water bowl
- Dog brush
- Light up leash for night (and early morning) walks
- Yak cheese chew stick (bigger the better)
- More puppy classes at Canine Potentials in Clinton

Catch up and Ooblic

Friday, we made the long drive to Seattle for Tim's next appointment. The stitches are finally out and everything is looking good! Three more weeks until he gets the "green light" to take the splint off and carry on with normal life, but already it is so much better. Without stitches, he can finally take a normal shower without duct tape and garbage bags, and sleeping keeps getting easier. While we were out, Grandpa volunteered to take care of Tilly, so I put aside my fretting and left the house without her.

After the successful doctors appointment, we were already half way to Tacoma, so we figured we'd drive the rest of the way down and check out the "Science Dome" which was having a special planetarium night (free) talking about that comet that just shot into the sun from the far reaches of space and Google's incentive to motivate private groups to head back to the moon. 

Yes, that is what you've always dreamed of: a pool full of ooblic! They also used liquid nitrogen to make instant ice cream!

The show got out at 8:30, but we didn't pull into the driveway until after 11:30pm! Much later than we expected to be home, and although Tilly had an excellent day with Grandpa, she got diarrhea just before we got home and made quite a mess for me to clean up. At 2am, her house was finally cleaned with laundry done and my warm, dry, freshly washed puppy was curled up on my lap sleeping and ready for bed. At least she let us sleep in a little the next morning.

We have a new neighbor who moved into the smallest house on the lake with little Mr. Magoo, the grumpy older dog who doesn't appreciate being pummeled by a puppy twice his size. Though Mr. Magoo wasn't so excited to see us, his owner was very excited about her first morning waking up in her beautiful new home. 

We walked for quite a ways until I was satisfied Tilly was properly worn out, then headed back to the house to get Tim and drive to Oak Harbor and back on an unsuccessful trip to try to apply for a new ID (they closed an hour before we got there). It is amazingly exhausting and time consuming to run errands with an injured arm, a puppy, and long drives everywhere we go!

So that gets us caught up to today, which has been a laid back day of walking, UU church, more walking... While Tim rested his arm, Tilly and I walked around Greenbank farm until we found a familiar puppy from our puppy class and her family to walk with, then the puppies ran and ran and ran as we made two full slow loops around the entire farm. I put Tilly back in the car where she happily curled up for a nap while I checked out the holiday market and made fiber friends, then she slept all the way home and went straight to bed with no fuss. Even when Fritz (a fellow Juneau immigrant) and his girlfriend Gail stopped in for a visit, Tilly only sustained her excitement for a fleeting minute before passing out in my arms again and heading back to bed. 

More adventures tomorrow!

Balloon tricks

Let's see, Tim guided me through installing light fixtures in our apartment, giving us two new light sources downstairs. We waited all day for the floor guy to come to show him the problem spots but he never showed. I chatted online with my Masters of Teaching friend, Bernadette, and we got eachother remotivated to get busy with our papers. 

For lunch and dinner, Tilly worked on her latest greatest trick: bouncing a balloon on her nose! When Min Min came, she blew up a bunch of balloons for Tilly and gave them to her one at a time. Tilly barked at them and attacked them and popped them and ran from them. I had another idea of what we could do with a balloon, in my never ending hunt for new games and challenges for Tilly. Yesterday, I presented Tilly with a balloon which she barked at and ran from until I took it away. Today, I was determined to do better, and after about two minutes of lunch practice and a few minutes over dinner, Tilly was bopping away and ready for the camera! It is so amazing how, once I have properly shown Tilly what I'm looking for, she picks it up immediately. What a smarty-pup!

What a wonderful life!

Morning walk in the sun with friends - followed by tea, coffee, and conversation as the dogs wore each other out.
Lobster dinner at home with Grandpa.
Sitting at the foot of our bed next to a warm fireplace flipping through the latest Seed Savers Exchange catalog.
My awesome husband putting Tilly to bed with her new puppy-gate letting her stretch out in her little room under the stairs.
Life is so good!

Run around the puppy

After Tim installed are awesome new slam-proof, non-broken toilet seat (sliding around when you go to sit down is really not acceptable), we were enamored by the beautiful blue-skied day and went for a walk around Greenbank farm. It seems we were early as there were no other dogs or humans in the off-leash park when we arrived, but when we made it back to the parking lot, dogs started appearing all over the place. Tim went to check out the shops and warm up a bit as I watched Tilly take off after her new favorite creatures. We met an Akbash puppy about a year old who actually played with Tilly instead of getting fed up and pinning her right away. I think Tilly and I were both a little shocked at how different and more equitable the game was than her usual position of low-ranking nuisance. The owner of the Akbash was of course an alpaca farmer woman, just like Rolly who had the only other Akbashes I've met. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Tim and Tilly or Tilly and the Akbash playing in the beautiful sun. I think today may have been more walking than Tim's done since his surgery.

Handyman

My outstanding husband spent the day repairing all the shocks and tightening the steering on the truck, installed an outlet on the ceiling in the shop, and mounted his power cord reel. He velcroed  tools to his left hand and used his elbow to hold things in place. It's amazing how even with one hand he can do so many thing most of us would be intimidated to try under any condition. When we were working on the truck and he headed in to look for more tools, I tested my theory that his one hand can still do way more than both my arms combined - and I was right, as I pulled fruitlessly on the bar he'd been working through the steering column to re-tap a hole.

Oh right, now I remember why we had to get the truck all fixed up: after several weeks of missing trash pickup, having visitors, cleaning up the construction site, and grandpa moving in, we had quite the pile of refuse stacked around our house and I was beginning to feel buried so we loaded up the truck and headed to the dump. The dump is just outside Coupeville, which I believe is practically Oak Harbor, so we headed around the last few corners and stopped by the DMV - which is closed on Mondays and open Saturdays here on Whidbey, so that didn't work - then we picked up some other items like a new toilet seat, a cutting board, and nail clippers. All the essentials of life.

In the dark

Well, the power just came back on after an hour and a half of darkness (remember, even though laptops, tablets, and phones run off batteries, the internet still needs power). Right before bed is pretty good timing for a power outage at least! Everything flickered and went out around 9:30. Tim was in the other room, but I was sitting in bed with our most powerful flashlight by my side so I could light up the whole house instantly. I headed upstairs to check on Grandpa and ended up telling stories by flashlight of teaching and hospitals for over an hour. I always loved power outs as a kid and I guess they still hold a certain magic. When I came downstairs, Tim had lit our room with the bag of tea candles we bought a couple weeks ago just in case. Also, coming down the stairs in the dark and watching my step a little closer than before, I found out the balloons in front of my door are actually Tilly's fan mail with little love notes from my youngest cousin.

Before the power went out, I worked on my homework and Tim managed to repair our dishwasher, clean the house, and fitted the new switch panel into the truck after all his hard, one-handed work making it yesterday. I think this is pretty mad impressive regardless, but seeing him find creative ways to make this whole thing with one hand was particularly inspiring. That is a custom cut and painted metal plate which he measured, cut, drilled, and panted by using some vice grips in lieu of a second hand. We stopped by the hardware store today for parts and picked up a couple new outlets and light switches, as well as a bag of wire nuts in hopes of getting the wiring in this house finished up soon.