She’s Young and With It

This is how the story goes. On Saturday, I was having a mighty strong desire to ride my bike (despite the fact that it felt like 100 degrees outside). Both Clint and I have bicycles. However, all four tires are flat and we have not ridden the bikes in a few years. We naively thought that we could just go to a bike shop and have new tubes put on and we would be off. I felt a little silly when the guy told us that our tires are rotten and both bikes need servicing and… it would be around $125 per bike to make them ready for the road. So we humbly put them back in the car and continued on with our errands. No reason to spend $250 on some crappy bikes.

The errands conveniently allowed us a pit stop at Mellow Johnny’s, Lance Armstrong’s bike shop. I fell in love! With a man’s bike! It has leather seats and grips (that’s bad), but I love it! I just don’t think the female version is as cute as the man’s, but wouldn’t it be cute if Clint and I both got bicycles – one coffee and one cream? The men’s version combines my favorite color combo of chocolate brown and light blue.

Photo Credit: Schwinn

Another issue (besides the fact that I am not really in the market for a bike nor do I have much in the way of disposable income) is that I am also in love with a camera.

Photo Credit: Panasonic

It’s camera vs. bike! But they kind of go together. I need a camera for taking pictures when I ride my cute bike! I need a cute bike for riding places to take pictures!

I conveniently leave out the the fact that our neighborhood is not that large or that exciting for photo taking and there is nowhere to really ride to from our neighborhood. We have the ghetto on one side and crazy fast farm road on the other side. Do I really need a bike?

The remaining weekend adventures included a trip to Zinger’s Hardware to check out Mythic Paint samples (we picked up a coupon for the paint at the bike shop). I think we have finally selected colors for our bedroom and master bath. The bedroom will be green and the master bath orangey-yellow. It was later discovered that the colors resemble some of my bath products. I swear it was unintentional.

We also hit Ikea. We are building a giant trellis (roughly 6′ x 7′) for our patio!

I have tried all sorts of angles, but unfortunately I cannot really get a good shot of the new butterfly and hummingbird garden.

Mexican Firebush

Butterfly Bush – Dark Knight variety

Pentas

Lucky Peach Lantana (currently without any blooms)

Red Passionflower (still to be planted)

I think this is going to be a long one…

On Saturday, Clint, Callie and I participated in The Mighty Texas Dog Walk. It was hot! There were not frequent water stops, as promised, for people or dogs. We were about 1 1/2 miles into the walk before we found water. This was pretty disappointing since last year the weather was cooler, yet there were frequent water stops. All in all, the walk was fun though and raised money for a good cause. I just hope they organize it better next year.

On Sunday, we attended our dog training class. While Sherman and Callie still have some work to do, they are coming along with loose leash walking. In fact, our trainer said Sherman was the most improved walker! If you knew how badly he walked on a leash prior to training, you would be impressed. She later pointed to Sherman and said, “That’s a different dog… I can see his improvement since we started class.” He still has a long way to go, but he is improving for sure. She also referred to Callie as the sweetest dog in the class. Aww. But… she pointed out that since she is a pit bull, Callie must be the most well-trained dog ever so that people do not have any reason to give one of those stupid stereotypical pit bull reactions. We know Callie is a great dog. Everyone else should know too.

Monday was a freakishly scary day. I took Wembley in for his routine exam and vaccinations. We are a few months late this year, but he seemed to be doing really well on his asthma meds so we thought he was in generally decent health. Everything was fine for the first half of the car ride, but then he vomited just a little bit. I still figured everything was ok, but when I turned around to check on him, he appeared to be panting, or open mouthed breathing, which is not at all normal. When I arrived at the vet’s office, she thought he had gotten some fluid into his lungs when he threw up. She did an x-ray and put him on oxygen. What she found was an enlarged heart, or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. She kept him in ICU for a few hours.

Of course, I promptly googled it and got really freaked out. Tuesday she called to let me know that his bloodwork came in and showed that his heart condition was caused by hyperthyroidism. So, he is now on beta blockers for his heart, thyroid meds and asthma meds. Poor Wembley! We will have him rechecked in three weeks and he will probably eventually see a cardiologist.

Knowing that hyperthyroidism caused the heart condition is not a good thing because it means that we did not catch the hyperthyroidism early enough. However, if what I am reading is what I think I am reading, treatment of the hyperthyroidism might eventually reverse the heart condition. We are in for some hefty vet bills, I think. I guess that new camera and laptop will have to wait.

Tomorrow is the Mighty Texas Dog Walk. The goal to beat is something like 10,000 dogs walking. We will be walking Ms. Callie O’Malley, who as you can see above, walked last year too. I keep wavering on whether to walk Shermano, but I think it would be detrimental to his training for loose leash walking. He is doing good, but we have not ventured beyond our street yet with the loose leash training. As much as it pains me, only one of our three dogs will walk. Callie is such a good doggie that she can handle thousands of dogs and people.

This is what a Callie looks like after walking three miles and enduring the excitement of people! and dogs! and doggie ice cream! (Actually she did not eat the dog ice cream last year. I think she was a bit overstimulated.)

My company is a sponsor so I will be wearing a real sweet t-shirt with volunteer written hugely across it. The mucho exciting part is that it is downtown this year rather than a suburb.

A hummingbird stopped by to take a sip from one of my plants tonight! I was ridiculously excited!

Allergies have been kicking my butt. In desperation, I took a Nyquil Thursday night and then Friday I stayed home from work and slept the entire day. I did not leave the house again until Saturday evening. Stupid allergies.

I think dog training went well today. The six weeks are flying by. Flying by as compared to Neko’s “levels” form of dog training which technically lasted six months but we dropped out about four months in. We have been trying to remember what we learned during the first month or two of Neko’s training because we did not begin recalls and leash walking until about month three of her training. Yet here we are on week two of Callie and Sherm’s training and we are already on recalls and loose leash work.

Sleep is calling.