Scars

This week's Fun Monday hostess is Lil Mouse, who would like us to bare ourselves and present our scars, physical or psychological. Interesting topic, ma'am, and thanks.

My psychological scars are too numerous and too eclectic to even go into here. I spent 12 years in Catholic schools, remember? Just kidding, Sister Blanche!

My very worst physical scar is located on my daughter's body. Yep, she has it and I am responsible. Guilt? Oh, yeah!

When Julie was a toddler, she lived in 'bag-a-baby' sleepers. She could run faster with no actual leg openings than most children could stark raving naked.

We were in the family room and I had just made myself a cup of instant coffee. Back in the day, I used to make instant coffee with boiling hot water. Juls brushed the end table with her arm, the coffee spilled onto her arm and melted the nylon sleeve right into her arm.

I am nauseous just typing that sentence. I can still hear her scream - outrage, pain, disbelief, and anger.

We lived, at the time, 25 miles from the HMO to which we belonged. Thank God it was all freeway. We got to the Emergency Room and they took her right in. They tied her to a backboard, escorted me from the room, and proceeded to remove the nylon pajama that had been melted into her arm. I can still hear her.

Her little arm was SO little that they used a cloth finger cot with a hole cut in the end of it to hold the bandage on. We went to that medical complex every day for 6 weeks so that they could clean and bandage her arm. It got so that she started screaming when I took the freeway off-ramp. I can still hear her.

Her burn was on the outside, upper left arm. As she grew, the scar naturally moved down her arm. When she was in grade school, I had her convinced that it would just slide right off the end of her fingertip as she grew.

She is still ticked that I lied.

Scars

Goose

This is Goose - as in "Duck, duck, goose". This only works because Duck has multiple personalities.

This is the puppy someone dumped at the business next door. I said, for at least 3 days, "this is not our puppy. We will not feed the puppy. We will not pet the puppy. We will not name the puppy. This is not our puppy." I said this often, continuously, and without prompting.

I said this until the morning that I opened the front door and the puppy was sitting on my porch. Someone (any volunteers, Moose?) had left the gate to our yard open. The puppy was sitting there, looking up and smiling. She is ours. She is NOT a house puppy. She is strictly a yard puppy.

She has had her puppy shots and she is on medication for the ringworm she picked up from the cat at the business next door. Yeah, I know. I should have let her in the yard sooner.

She is friendly and bouncy and very, very puppyish. Duck is better with her than I thought she would be. Holly does not like her. Holly does not like anyone else. Bonnie plays with her - a lot. So far, she can sit and stay. She goes out with the other dogs to walk the Dad to the trash can. She knows the word "yard" and runs like heck to get there first.

Bits and Pieces

I have been internetless for the last 13 days. Our service provider upgraded their service and somehow we ended up without any. Imagine that.

12 phone calls later, we are back on line. Hurray! I know that doesn't sound like a lot but when you consider that each phone call was during business hours (ie, my lunch hour), lasted at least an hour and ended with a very nice and very sincere person telling me that the new modem would be shipped immediately, it adds up.

Naturally, during this time, I had to make online arrangements for a Board (Pharmacy Technician) Certification Test. No problem making the arrangements. I used the WiFi at our local coffee shop. The problem? Printing the Authorization letter, the directions from the testing center, and all of the other necessary paperwork. It finally occurred to me (thanks, Julie) to copy the email into a work document and then print it out at home.

I took the test yesterday and hurray! I passed.

We are all (me, Shorty, Juls, and Moose) on vacation this week. We had plans to go to Carlsbad Caverns but life interfered. We are now sitting around in a circle, staring at Juls' dog and contemplating changing the dog's name from Bug to Carlsbad. Yep, she's where the money went.

Bug is doing better. She still lists to the right, walks unsteadily in circles, and oh, did I mention that she has lost her sight? Yep, she's blind. We don't know yet if this is permanent or a transient result of the previous cerebral hemorrhage, but we shall see. She can't but we shall.

All in all, life is pretty darn good. A year and half ago, I became a door greeter for our local megamart. Now, I am a Board Certified Pharmacy Tech for the same store. My family is all healthy, my 4 (oh, gosh, none of y'all know about Goose yet) dogs are good, and Bug is improving.

Hope y'all have a great rest of your week. We are going, in no particular order, to the zoo, the stock car races, a movie or two, the museum, and the teppan grill at the local Kabuki.