The next 50 years

So I'm feeling my confidence again.  I've decided that training Pyper to pull like a sled dog will be a good direction to face.  I can get her pulling a bike like a sled dog and it'll be a blast.  Less exercise for me ultimately, but most mushers are pretty fit in spite of their dogs doing the work so there's clearly enough activity for the human in it.  I've been watching videos on bikejoring and teaching sled dogs.  I started just wanting to know how to put on the harness and opened a whole world of information I didn't realize I could access!  The internet's like that and I love it. I got videos showing lesson one, teaching them to pull tight and keep the tension on while waiting indefinitely for something to happen. That allows the musher to put the rest of the team on as well as preventing line tangles.  Setting up a rig for the bike is harder to learn because most folks are using pretty primitive solutions and solutions that don't account for ha...

So everything was peachy if a bit unnerving again.  It's been unnerving.  We had a third great feeding experience with everyone behaving beautifully.   I let Timmy stay on the floor a second too long and he got a bloody ear and a banged eye and spit all over his head and a terror that won't go away long after the rest is gone.  I freaked out inside.  I stayed firm on the outside and sent the big dog outside to the yard for an hour while I consoled the little dog and sought help online.  I got it too.  I learned that I was unrealistic in my time frames and we're talking months, not weeks.  I learned that keeping them apart wasn't a bad idea like I erroneously thought, but the right approach. So I took her out in the dark streets for an hour long walk. I learned she's fearful of traffic, the river, strange shapes in the dark, road crossings, and that in very dark places she is so unnerved she obeys me.  I learned that she can walk longer than ...

it feels like a huge mistake.  I know it isn't but I also am stuck here in the hard times feeling regret.  Not real regret, just fear and tension.  I didn't want a dog THIS big. She's impossible to exercise enough and Timmy is going all aggro on her because he owns all and she's got no right to exist in the middle of it.  Dan's going all aggro because he has no skills for self observation, let along coping with his feelings.  We're both tense worrying about this stranger in our house. Bigger than a wolf, she's big enough to kill everything we love and we're terribly aware of it. but she isn't. She's just a little kid hoping to please us and doesn't understand what we want, why we're shy, and mostly, why that little snapper is so mean.  I worry about her not understanding that my rabbit isn't prey.  Mostly I worry that Dan's outbursts will lead to a fracas causing harm to Timmy.  he loses his temper so unexpectedly.  He ramps up th...

I've gone too long without talking to this blog! We got a new 3d printer over christmas, it's a kit you assemble from super cheap parts.  We've been lucky so far that nothing is broken or catching fire, LOL.  These kits are not safe in that regard.    it helps we're saavy with electronics. We improved the connectors and such as that.  I haven't printed a lot with it yet.  I have to learn how to instruct the software to set up the print instructions properly.    The makerbot we already own has very little complications that way.  Less features as a result, but much easier to use.  Just take the model file and plop it into the makerbot software.  Tweak a setting here or there and hit print.  Now I have to open the file in software called cura, go over a whole bunch of different settings to tweak it, after finding out what fails, resave the printer file from it and upload the improved file to the printer via the raspberry pi we s...

I just had an epiphany on social media. I've got cancer. We get that. I didn't know I had it this time last year, although I was by then pretty sure.  After all the scans and such and my research, I'm prepared to assert that it back way back in the late 90s, 15 years or more ago.  Goodness, it could be 20 years now!  I got dismissed by doctor after doctor no matter what symptoms I took to them. They just kept insisting I didn't deserve anything but a pap test (always they want the pap test) and that I was hypochondriac. So I went without medical diagnosis or care till finally I got good and sick. If I'd been examined and found holding cancer, perhaps in say 2005, they'd have used 2005 medicines, tools, and methods.  The surgery I got was published in 2008. The medicine released in 2012, the radiation therapy only two years ago.  I would have died, just as my uncle did, as my father in law did.  I would have died "too young" but good and dead from the...

I have this head cold, see.  It's unusual, I've never had one like this, but like all head colds it's extremely annoying!  I'll feel on the verge of a sneeze, complete with facial twitches and watering eyes.  No matter how often I blow my nose or hold my sinus closed by pressing on the bridge of my nose, it wouldn't go away! I've been powering on the garlic, the coldfx, the assorted vitamins, etc., but got ill nonetheless!  Last week it was my back. I had cramps from my shoulders to my forehead, the kind of headache, neck ache, and back ache, that I got the time I had meningitis for 24 hours, about 16 years ago.  I suffered that experience alone, there was nobody to say 'hey, lets get you to ER" so I didn't go till I was feeling a lot better. At that point, there was nothing to see and I was dismissed by the doctor. I was at a walk-in clinic, not ER.  But I remember how that pain felt and this week, especially when it deepened to include my lower ba...

I have a potluck party tomorrow, and I intend to attend.  Not sure what I'll bring for alcohol, but I have a pack of mixed nuts thingy, and I'm going to dip marzipan balls in chocolate, and assemble sliced smoked turkey, sliced spiced gouda, and stuffed olives on toothpicks.  I'll put them on a platter with some fancy crackers.  That ought to suffice for my contribution, eh? I'm worried about my health.  Twice now they've cancelled chemo because my neutrophils were low and this week they're lower than last, not higher!  I'm having nasty back aches, headaches, neck aches, and have a swollen gland in my neck.  My chronic toothache got a bit scary on the weekend but I managed to stop clenching my teeth the last two nights so that's better. It has a direct connection to clenching, so I figure the problem is uneven pressure due to the missing tooth below it.  It can get bad enough to actually put a blister of pus in the roof of my mouth, a sinus that drain...