INCOMING!!!!

Crawling out of my foxhole kitchen just briefly to update you on a little get together scheduled for tomorrow in Pittsburgh. Two fab bloggers, Devra and Sarah, are visiting us as the first stop on their roadtrip to BlogHer. (I'm not bitter. I'm not bitter. I'm NOT bitter.)

In less than 72 hours, kdiddy and I organized a little meetup/tweetup for them, tomorrow at 6pm. We have an awesome host, iTwixie, and got some wonderful fresh produce donated by Isidore Foods, and the terrific AlphaLab is letting us invade their space on Carson St in the South Side.

My kitchen is in high gear, especially since I have two short windows of opportunity (aka Kid Nap Time) to get it all done.

If you're in Pittsburgh, you really want to join us. This is NOT an event just for MommyBloggers. These ladies are entrepreneurial bloggers operating in the stratosphere. We have a lot to learn from them. And I have it on very good authority that Sarah likes beer.

So join us. Let me know with a comment, an email, a smoke signal, a tweet...whatever method you want to use.

[UPDATE: Someone else is cooking for the meetup too. And she's bringing Twister!]

a boy and his bear

It was a quick trip to the zoo this morning but very worthwhile as we finally got to see a polar bear from the tunnel. According to a sign near the bears exhibit, polar bears spend just 10% of their time in the water. I would say our odds of seeing the bears from the tunnel are not even that good.

Given that "impatience" was the theme of the day, it was a challenge to get Oliver to stay very long. He saw the bear make one lap of the area and was ready to roll. I was lucky to grab this shot. The bear was rubbing his face with his paw as he swam. I doubt he was really in deep thought.

branching out

Readers who have been around two years or more know that I usuallyblog about the Tour de France in July. It looks like I skipped the blogging part of the Tour last year, probably due to going back to work and such. I was watching, honest. I was recently asked to contribute to a sports blog, Draft Day Suit, so I'm going to put my Tour posts over there. My first post went up today. Go check it out! I use cool words like "pfffft". And get your fantasy fix by creating a team on the Fantasy Cycling Challenge at Versus. Join the draftdaysuit league and kick my butt. If there are three or more participants I will come up with a Tour-related prize for the winner. You have two more days of practice. It starts for real with stage 5.

Huge thanks to Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah, for asking me to join her merry band at Draft Day Suit. I didn't pee my pants when you asked, honest. Okay, maybe a little. Our little secret, ok?

a very nice little word

Benign. Nice little word, don't you think? It was my favorite word two days ago, when we finally got the results of Penguin's biopsy.

A few months ago I found a tiny lump in Pen's shoulder area. I took her to the vet, where they aspirated the lump. Nothing troublesome was found and we agreed to just keep an eye on it. Then the lump got a little bigger. Not huge, but a little bigger, about the size of a marble. (The biopsy report says 2cm but that surprised me. It didn't feel that big.)

Since it was time for her annual exam anyway, I made another appointment and took her in. This time when they aspirated the lump the composition of the cells was different. Still not screaming "cancer" but worrisome enough that my vet thought it worthwhile to put an 11 year old dog under general anesthesia.

I was in for a big shock when I picked her up from the surgery a week later. The incision was enormous!

Apparently the thick and loose skin of her breed made the giant incision necessary. So there you have it, FrankenClumber. She was groggy when we brought her home but back to normal within 24 hours. Though I had five days of pain meds for her I stopped giving them when she started trying to climb the dining room table on day three. She was not a dog in pain, that's for sure.

We thought the biopsy results would be back in a week but it took more like 11 days. The vet's office received the report via fax while I was in having Penguin's sutures removed. And there was that beautiful word...benign. She's a happy dog and we look forward to more healthy time with her.

[Can't believe I forgot to throw in a plug for the Clumber Spaniel Health Foundation. We're young but already doing great work to improve the health of Clumbers everywhere.]

milestones

We hit two milestones today. Eleanor started talking about bedtime while we were in the car tonight. That should have been my first clue. When she starts says, "No bath! No bath! Brush teeth!" she is thinking about bedtime. She said she didn't want any dinner. She says a lot of things that are not true these days so I didn't think a lot about it. Then she barfed. No biggie. Every few months she barfs, usually at school. She falls asleep soon after and is fine when she wakes up. I tried to get a little dry toast into her but she was having none of it. I put her to bed and she conked out immediately, without any of her usual chattering.

She woke up when I checked on her about 90 minutes later. And promptly barfed again, all over her bed. As I was trying to comfort her, she barfed one more time. All.Over.Me. That's our milestone, the first barf on mom or dad. Since we have six kid years under our belts, we should probably consider ourselves lucky. The funniest moment? Eleanor telling me to clean up the "crumbs". No, dear, those are "chunks" but close enough.

Within a couple of minutes she was asking to go to the dinosaur playground so I'm thinking she's got it all out of her system.

And the second milestone? That's easier. This blog is 4 years old today.

ladies and gentlemen

Pardon me as I ease back in to this blogging stuff. Apparently I have a bit of a performer on my hands. A ham, even. Though he left his old school a couple of weeks ago, he was invited back for the end-of-year party and puppet show. His teacher gave him the emcee and stage manager duties. He introduced the show and manned the lights.

Learning the lines was pretty simple, giving us a few days to work on his delivery. I just wanted him to speak slowly and he accomplished that. The rest? All Oliver.

tomorrow, not today

In yet another blinding flash of the obvious, when I said in yesterday's post that I'd be back for real tomorrow, I didn't really mean today. More like day after tomorrow. Or Thursday. Follow?