Zhinka dinka doo

WIP: needle felting and Gertie update

Crafts are good for distracting oneself...

These little needle-felted wool felt motifs are destined to be decoration patches on felt needle books, end-of-year presents for Max's kindergarten teachers. After Max finishes the needle felting (he's been doing all of it), I'll trim them down a bit and attach them to the books.

Except for the danger of 5 super-sharp barbed needles going through a little finger—and that's a pretty big "except"—this is an fun activity for kids. I got the Clover needle felting tool and mat for Christmas, and after a 3-day frantic search through the house for it, it took us all of 30 seconds to get going. The Clover tool has a little safety cover that theoretically prevents one from puncturing one's body. In reality, we found many ways around this safety feature. Not because we were looking, but just because they came up. Ocassionally the cover would stay retracted and not come back down to cover the needles; disassembling and cleaning the unit seems to have helped. There's a "lock" position, but it very easily wiggles out of lock and into the open position. So we've stressed keeping fingers away and never testing whether it's locked or open on your hand.

The only problem we're having is that the felting tool leaves pretty big holes in the felt. Can you see them in the photo below? They're most obvious in the door and in the light felt to the lower right of the house.



I'm wondering if perhaps we poked more lightly (don't push the needles all the way in), maybe it would make smaller holes.  The felter says it has fine weight needles, so I wouldn't image that needle size is the problem. On the yellow flower I was able to sort of brush the top of the flower and make the holes less obvious.

Does anyone have experience with needle felting and can give me any tips on this?

Gertie update: I just talked with the vet, he said her blood tests show that she has hepatic lipidosis.  The infectious diseases panel showed no FLV, FIV, FIP, so that's good although it means they don't know what led to this problem.  She's on IV fluids and antibiotics, and he suggested either a feeding tube or home care with appetite stimulants, anti-nausea meds, and special foods.  I'd much rather try the less invasive technique, but not if she's so far along that any failure with this method would be Really Bad.  Unfortunately, the vet was unable to say if this was the case, I guess the blood test results are not that specific.  He could only say that her values were elevated, but not the worst he's seen.

So we're going to try home care first, to see if we can get her to eat with the extra pharmaceutical support.  I hope it's the right decision.

Get well, my little Gertl

We brought Gertie to the vet this morning and they admitted her to the kitty hospital right away. She hasn't been eating or drinking since Monday, and has been very lethargic. We were certain something was wrong when Couga curled up next to her, and Gert—the self-proclaimed alpha cat—didn't kill him.

The doc looked at her for about 30 seconds and pronounced the situation dire. She was very jaundiced.  I didn't know how to look for jaundice in cats, its difficult because they're covered in fur.  But her nictating membrane (third eyelid), gums, and inside her ears were yellow. This indicates a liver problem, which is consistent with her not eating for a few days.

Cats can't fast, they need to eat regularly or their bodies will begin to do things that lead to total failure. One step along the way is hepatic lipidosis, which is a buildup of fats in the liver. Because of her fragile state, he wanted to immediately put her on fluids, get some bloodwork done, and perhaps start alternative feedings.

We don't know what caused this. She's been on a low-calorie diet for about a year. All the cats have been on the same diet, how does one give just one cat out of four a special diet? The others have shown some weight loss, but not Gert until now. Her weigh-in today was 12 lb. and 14 oz., compared to 17 lb. a year ago. We haven't weighed her in the meantime, but she never felt any lighter. In fact, in recent months she was starting to feel heavier. If she has lost 4+ pounds in a week or two, that's serious.

The doctor said this could be due to liver disease, or diabetes, or gastroenteritis. Hopefully we'll know more tomorrow after all the tests.



These pictures were taken this February. I really hope we can get her looking all happy and healthy like this again.

Red rocks and blue skies

Two weekends ago we went out to Wupatki National Monument for a photo shoot. A friend of ours wanted to take a family picture of us. Sounds really nice, doesn't it? Well, we're a photo-phobic family (except Max), so we whined about this for a very long time.

But in the end, Wupatki at sunset was absolutely beautiful, getting to spend unhurried time together as a family was wonderful, and seeing our friends was great.

The Grand Canyon is the obvious landmark of northern Arizona. There are also a bunch of smaller national parks and monuments nearby. While the canyon is indeed grand and pretty much beyond words, I find that I prefer these smaller parks. They're smaller in scale, they have fewer visitors, and they're much easier to get to know. Wupatki and Sunset Crater are like friends I'd have over for a potluck, while the Grand Canyon is a celebrity who I wave to as she drives by in her convertible. This isn't really fair to the canyon, lots of people get to know it "personally", but until Max is more interested in the canyon than in the bus system serving it, we're sticking with the smaller parks.

Do you have a favorite "close friend" park/monument? Please tell me about it in the comments. (Especially if it's on one of our favorite driving routes between Flagstaff and Boston.) Let's advocate for the lesser-known places!

Wupatki is thought to have been occupied as recently as 800 years ago. There may have been 100 people living just at Wupatki Pueblo, with several thousand more within the "metropolitan" area (within a day's walk). There are 5 accessible pueblos (clusters of buildings in various states of preservation) with many more scattered over the large area of the national monument.

The photo at the top is Wukoki Pueblo, built atop a rock outcropping. The tall building has multiple storys, you can see the remains of the logs used as ceiling/floor. The doorways are very short and narrow, to minimize heat loss. The view from up there is spectacular.

We enjoyed the view for a while, but then got back to the business of taking our picture. Corey decided he would rather go to a different pueblo, so we packed back into cars and drove to the Citadel. It doesn't have the tall buildings of Wukoki, but it does have an equally spectacular view, and there are fewer precipices over which we might lose the children. Here's Corey checking the light:

The kids playing:

And sunset.

It was a very nice afternoon.

Hoo-ah! We won!

Results were delayed until this morning, as the number crunchers carefully examined the really close entries. In the end, we won!!! It was a really fun week-long competition, and I'm really glad I did it. I'm taking my bike in this week to have new brake pads put on, and then I plan to be back on the bike.

The photo above is our bike team (resolution degraded, to protect the innocent). I'm the one on the far right, with all the hair. One of the things I think it's really great about this bike team is that we're all ages, all fitness levels. For the week, we had 36% of the staff ride their bikes. Pretty damn good!


And finally, here's another reason why riding your bike is good: (Warning to Heidi, I don't think you'll like this!)

Bike to Work Week, day 5!!!

I made it! I biked in today! All 5 days, yay! Look at my goofy grin up there!

We tallied our family statistics (we're a family of geeks, this is how we have fun) and found that this week we biked a total of 133.7 miles, with an average trip length of 10 miles. The average was brought up by S, his work is way out in the woods. His average was 21 miles. This means that we saved 4 gallons of gas or about $13.80. I compare this to the $27 for the new pedal after I broke one in half yesterday, plus $40 for dinner out two nights because everyone (except Max) was just too tired to go grocery shopping or cook anything. Clearly we can do better money-wise with better planning. But of course it's not just about $$.

We don't have the official results yet from the workplace challenge, but we hear that it's a very close race between us and one other place, with a difference of less than 1%. It's a photo finish, or would be if this were a different sport.

Bike to Work Week, day 4

Day 4. I'm still here, I made it to work on the bike again. That's my bike up there. It's about 15 years old, still in almost pristine condition because I don't use it much. After I got it and tried biking around here, I found that I really despise hills. Which is something I'm working on now...

Today is the last day of the workplace challenge. The place that fields the largest percentage of riders wins bragging rights for the year, plus a new bike. We won it the first year it was on, but then came in close but not first the last two years. So far our ridership is up and we're doing pretty well. This year it's a 4-day challenge whereas the previous 3 years it's been a 1-day challenge. I think moving to 4 days is a good idea, but I did prefer just one day.

So please send good vibes, I hope we win this year! It certainly would make all this work feel just a bit easier.

Today is Bike to School day and S biked Max over to school this morning. I'll be picking him up on my bike in just a little bit. We got two mounts for the Trail-a-Bike, that makes it much easier to do this hand-off thing. Yesterday on our way home from school, Max said "You know, we can bike when it's not Bike to Work Week. Can we do that?" Yes dear, but first mama's going to need a little time to recover.

I'm not sure if I'll make it tomorrow. To be honest, the workplace challenge has been what's kept me on my bike, and since it's not going on tomorrow I may not have enough motivation to overcome the aches and pains. I happily admit that the ride today was a tiny bit better than yesterday. Progress in the positive direction, yay! So we'll see about tomorrow.

Bike to Work Week, day 3

Max's red cruiser bike

ughhhhhh...owwww....hhhhsmmmffffffff.....

Today is the third day of Bike to Work Week. Day 1 was much more fun. Day 2 was OK except for the butt-hurting thing. Day 3. All I can say of day 3 is ouch. My tush feels much better with my super padded seat plus padded bike shorts. But almost the entire rest of me hurts or is completely worn out. The worst is my shoulders, from pulling on the handlebars as I climb up (small) hills and make my way over rocks and felled branches on single track. I guess I should have remembered that this would happen, but I didn't. Surprisingly, my legs hurt the least, they're just tired of all the work. As am I. I plan to keep going, but I'm so tired.

On Monday, I had a plan for today: (all on my bike) take Max to school, go to work, meet a friend for lunch, go to violin lesson, pick up Max at school, go home. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What a nut job! I did go with Max to school today, but S pulled him on the trail-a-bike (thankyouthankyouthankyou), and I did climb the hill to work. And I will be biking home. But that's it. I'm going home, picking up the car, then I'll go to violin and pickup Max.

We got to do the bike-to-breakfast this morning. Once again, Max was so excited! He was awake at 6am, got dressed in a flash, and was so happy to be riding his trail-a-bike to school. We stopped at City Hall for bagels and orange juice. The nice people there were giving out Hawaiian leis to all bike riders (one woman was chasing them down as they stopped at the light). They also gave Max an apple and a power bar for later. The ride to school was nice, but only because S was the one pulling Max.

I keep thinking back to high school, when I ran track. Sprints, the 400-yd almost killed me every single time I did it. At the beginning of each track season, I would arrive with absolutely no off-season training. The first week would be pure hell (kinda like this week), the next week would be a little better, then after that it would be a constant low level of pain. I'm much older now, so maybe it will take me more than 2 weeks to feel better? I think I could keep this up if I knew it would get better. Since it always did in track, and then again in crew (rowing) in college, I feel pretty certain that it will here too. But then my body says OH YEAH? SHALL I REMIND YOU OF THE PAIN HERE?

And then I tell my body to shut up, what does it know? Except with age it's getting harder to out-shout it.

Bike to Work Week, day 2

In our continuing saga of Bike to Work Week, we awoke this morning to this:

A couple of inches of snow. Undaunted, I was still going to bike to work, right after my 90 minute dentist appointment for crown prep. We found out that school was delayed by 2 hours, which for kindergarten means it's cancelled because kindergarten is only 3 hours long. So there were a few more hours at home than planned, a drive to drop Max at a play date, then riding to work.

By then it had stopped snowing and was a bit warmer and more pleasant. The urban trail wasn't too muddy, I didn't get a skunk stripe up my back. Those are the good points. The bad? Man oh man does my butt hurt. After picking up Max from his play date, we hightailed it over to the bike shop and picked up a new soft, squishy, gel-filled seat for me. I'll report tomorrow on whether it helps or not.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and warm. And it's bike to breakfast day! Yay!

Bike to Work Week, day 1

Art by Karen Knorowski, click picture to go to FlagstaffBiking.org

This week is Bike to Work Week in my town and in lots of other cities across the US and the world. This ties in well with a Low Carb(on) Diet that we're on with a bunch of other friends (more on that later), one of the things we're trying to do is to reduce the amount that we drive to reduce the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere.

BTWW is fun, with lots of activities planned. Today was the kickoff ride around the downtown center, with some breakfast goodies at the end. And then a bike-police escort to school! Officer Dave's bike was complete with red and blue flashing lights and a neat little siren! Very cool for the kids. I think that Max was the only kid there with training wheels. There were others about the same age, but they were on trail-a-bikes (which we'll do the next time too). He did really well, riding 3.8 miles total. He just rides slow; he has training wheels so he has no need to go fast, and this was a much longer ride than he was used to. We were bringing up the rear of the opening bike parade and had two traffic wranglers, the bigwig in biking in Flagstaff as our personal cheerleader, and a police pickup truck keeping all traffic back as we slowly brought up the rear. Happily, everyone in cars was really nice. No one honked or tried to jump the bike line. On the ride to school we weren't able to keep up with the police escort; after we crossed the main busy street with everyone else, we stopped, rested, and walked a lot. But we made it to school in time, just as the kids were going inside from the playground, and everyone cheered as we came into the parking lot. Max was tired but really excited about his adventure. He did request a ride home in the car, though.

After dropping him off at school, I biked to work. Unfortunately, I work at the top of a 400-ft. hill. It's not too bad to walk up, but biking...that's another story. The road is pretty steep. Lots of people at work make a real effort to conquer this hill. And I think that many succeed. But me, I take the back way, up the urban trail (nice wide, woodchipped trail through the forest, no fumes, deer for company). I biked until my lungs were working serious overtime and my heart rate was way past "training" and into the "call the paramedics" range, then got off and walked the rest of the way up. It was so pleasant. I arrived at work tired but not peel-me-off-the-floor exhausted, and was able to actually work while I was there! I have biked all the way up before, but then I just lay on the floor for two hours and don't do anything. Not very useful. Especially since we had a friend of Max's over for a playdate today. I didn't want to be so tired that I would turn on the stove burners and tell them to make themselves lunch while I crawled into bed.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, but I have rain gear (because I'm married to my husband, who for some reason always seems to hike in the rain), so we'll see what happens. Then Wednesday is Bike to Breakfast day, with free breakfast stops all around downtown. Thursday is Bike to School day. I'm planning to bike every day this week. Who knows, with luck this may become a habit.

Blessings

Last week I returned home to a box outside my door (love boxes!). Because all boxes are Max's (or so he thinks), we opened it together to find these amazing goodies inside. They were from the lovely and super sweet Debbie of puanani.

There were so many wonderful things. A beautiful and really colorful koi nobori for Max for children's day. Max also got a great book about seasons in Hawaii and a fun card.

There are two amazing Hawaiian cookbooks: What Hawaii Likes to Eat and Best of the Best from Hawaii Cookbook. I had seen "What Hawaii..." on her blog a while back and had asked about it (repeatedly, but only because my browser wasn't working, really), so imagine my surprise when it showed up at my house, and brought a friend too!

I spent a wonderful month in Hawaii when I was in grad school, as part of my research. It was quite an amazing time. The people, the land, the weather, the food were all indescribable. I came back from my adventure with one tiny pamphlet cookbook that I got at the Bishop Museum, and ever since I've regretted not getting something more substantial. But now I have the opposite problem: there are so many tempting recipes, I don't know where to start!

I'll have to work on that. In the meantime and to distract me from my indecision, there's a wonderful Hawaiian quilt kit. Have you seen Hawaiian quilts? So beautiful. A kit is perfect for me. And it's in blue, Max's favorite color!

To top it all off, there was a lovely bag of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, which my hubby thinks are his. I'll probably give him a few :)

I've "met" some really wonderful people through blogging. Debbie and I have never met in person, but I do feel like I know her almost as well as I know the people in my sewing group. I feel truly blessed to have wonderful bloggy friends and local friends in my life. Thank you, and mahalo!