Zipping Along at the Speed of Summer...

Wow, look at that-- nearly a month since I posted. On July 25th I posted on my LJ about how sick Ghost was. Ghost is now, thankfully, just fine... now. She really had us scared. It started with a diagnosis of hip dysplasia, which itself was a pretty horrendous thing with a not-so-good future. For right now, we would go with joint supplements and anti-inflammatories without steroids, since giving her steroids for her skin problems in the past is what made her so chubby. She had a severe reaction to the prescription stuff, and more than a few times, we actually thought we were going to lose her. Everything coming out of her was (gross warning here) projectile water, blood and bile, from both ends. She stopped eating. Stopped. She ALWAYS eats. At one point I was sitting at the top of the stairs and scrubbing at a stain in one of the very same spots that Lily got sick in the night before she died, and I could feel myself sliding toward losing it. $400 worth of meds and multiple vet visits and x-rays later, she finally started to get better... and Goblin got sick. Not nearly as bad, though, and what we think happened was that a stomach bacteria moved in on Ghost when she was at her weakest, and that's what Goblin came down with. A couple of days of the same anti-dia. and antibiotic meds and he was all better, at about the same time she was finally done with being sick. Kudos to my Dad for daily babysitting from two to eights hours each for five days in a row. All in all it was an $870.00 nightmare. Now, thankfully, it's like it never happened (well, except for the vet bill) and even Ghost's hip seems a bit better. Once her system settled down, we were able to start giving her the joint supplements again, she's lost a little weight (which is easier on her body), and she's limping less. ::whew::

Not much else to report. Work is a bear. I'm waiting for word on HIGHBORN, which has been sent out in the world in proposal and sample chapter form. I'm working on a short story for an anthology which has to be finished by the end of the month. We're breaking our backs landscaping-- spiffying up the front a little with some accent rock and trying to finally finish the backyard. We're going to be renovating a bit around here, and to that end we bought a bunch of new stuff to replace outdated old stuff. The day job is non-stop, no-time-to-breathe work and I haven't been to the gym in weeks. We're trying valiantly to clean out stuff from the closets and garages, but alas, we get sidetracked so very easily. The monsoons are (I hope) finally coming to an end, having gleefully saturated the ground so that the weeds have grown up to six feet tall in some parts of the property (yes, I said SIX FEET). We've started on the cleanup but there's a whooooole bunch more to do. And here we're only two weeks away from September!

Gaaaahhhhh!