I keep telling myself that I really should use this blog thing... and then I don't. It's hard for me to believe that, after journaling almost daily in a Livejournal for about 5 years, I can't muster enough words for one post a week anymore. But anyway, I cannot tell you how excited I am to be pregnant with baby #3. So excited! And it's a boy. Two girls, and now a boy. It's going to be so different this time. I'm trying to savor every moment because I'm sure this one will be my last. Can I tell you a secret? I wish we could have 5 children. Why stop at 3 when you could have 5? Maybe the tables will turne sometime in the next few years and make that an actual possibility. We'll see. But for now, I'm happy. I'm happy with the two daughters I have, and I'm happy to be having a son, and I'm happy to be right where I am right now with my husband. I'm a lucky girl.

Blogging? I'm stuck

In all honesty, I have a blog just because having a screen name and login makes it so much easier to follow and comment on all of the blogs I enjoy reading. I've always been a writer and, for many years, even a journaler. I devotedly wrote in a Livejournal (remember that, y'all?) for years and years almost daily. And then when life fell apart for a while, I lost the urge to write, and except for bouts of angry, angsty prose-ish ugly poetry in the depths of my despair, I've had very little to say since. In actuality, I do have a lot to say. I have conversations with myself all day long, carefully crafted conversations where I can practice saying just the right thing over and over, as if once I get it right I can go write it down, but I still feel painfully unable to say what I think I need to or want to without looking back at it and being bored with myself and wondering why I wasted the time writing it all down. I don't know when the perfectionist crept in... the part of me who doesn't want to write anything if it isn't worthy of an audience. I never had an audience anyway, really. I also just don't want to put something out there that's not pretty to look at. I don't know the first thing about changing a blog layout to make it look nice (beyond the basic selection of this color or that) or posting pictures. If I'm going to document my life, I at least want to do it justice. I don't want to take something beautiful, a life that I love with daughters who are absolutely amazing and a husband/best friend whom I'm so, so lucky to have found, and turn it into something that falls so short of reality. And then there's what to do with it all. I have thousands of online journal entries that I will probably never actually pay to have printed... so no one will ever see them again. All of that effort, my words and emotions and realizations and notations of special moments, just disappearing into the black hole of cyberspace. Who wants that? So I guess I'm stuck with just this for now.

A Lesson in Pet Ownership

I'm posting this blog entry not to whine or complain. I'm posting it in the hopes that it will be informative and maybe give some people a few things to consider about pet ownership that maybe they hadn't before that they'll now think about before adopting a new pet. Especially this time of year, puppies, kittens, rabbits, chicks... they're everywhere! And they're cute and furry and we all want one, and we think to ourselves that food isn't that expensive and they'll only have to go to the vet once a year, and we can afford that, right? And that's where it all begins.


Here's a depressing realization: The cost of owning and caring for our 5 pets is pretty much what is preventing us from getting a new car, which also affects whether or not we have more children any time soon. How did we get 5 pets, you say? Well, kind of by accident.

We didn't set out to own 5 pets. First of all, Evan just had Coda, whom he adopted from Town Lake Animal Shelter almost 4 years ago. He was a single guy, and she made a great companion. I started out with just Phoenix, our first cat. I brought him back to Texas with me after he was rescued in the desert in Twentynine Palms, CA, by someone on the USMC base there. At one point, Phoenix got outside of our apartment and disappeared for a couple of weeks. At that time, the girls and I were so sad about losing him that we adopted 2 new kittens from Cat's Angels (in Cedar Park), hoping that having each other for companionship would keep them from the same escape-and-disappear fate that Phoenix had met...except that wasn't really his fate. After adopting June and Jezebel, Phoenix showed up back at home. And then there were 3. About a year later, my sister was concerned for Buster, who was her dog at the time. Her neighbors had a vicious dog who kept tearing down the fence, so Buster couldn't safely stay in the back yard other than to do his business and get right back in the house, and he's just not happy having to stay indoors all the time. She was also concerned about their ability to properly care for Buster in the coming months, since she had a baby on the way, and so did my cousin, whose son she was already watching and whose baby she would keep as well. That's double the babies (and triple the time) at once. Buster is the most polite, most sweet natured dog ever, so I agreed that I would take him in. So, I had 4 pets living at my house, and Evan had 1, and then we all moved into the same house, and then there were 5. So now you know the back story.

Vaccinations and annual exam for 2 dogs: $400
Vaccinations and annual exam for 3 cats: $525
Monthly heartworm preventative for Coda x12 months: $76
Monthly heartworm preventative for Buster x12 months: $80
Monthly heartworm plus flea and tick preventative for 3 cats x12 months: $495
Flea and tick preventative for Coda and Buster x12 months: $270
Teeth cleaning for elderly dog Buster: $200
Teeth cleaning for elderly cat Phoenix: $200
Dog food x12 months: $432
Cat food x12 months: $216
Cat litter x12 months: $108
Routine Care Total estimate: $3002.00

Buster tested positive for heartworm. He had an uncertain heartworm test last year in which they said he "might" be positive. The vet we were seeing at that time put him on a certain kind of monthly meds and led us to believe it would probably cure him IF he even had heartworms because it would be in the early stages. It did not cure him, and the new vet said that they put him at serious risk by attempting to treat him that way. I didn't realize it was that serious. That vet will no longer get my business. The disease has continued to progress. Now we're looking at a two-month heartworm treatment that is costly, dangerous for Buster and time consuming. When undergoing treatment, Buster will have to remain confined every single day for 2 months.

Initial preop workup: $344
First hospitalization and heartworm treatment: $243
Second hospitalization and heartworm treatment: $370
Heartworm treatment total: $957

Emergency trip to the vet for seasonal allergy flare-up and subsequent skin infection (includes wound care and prescription medications): $175

Total cost of owning pets this year: $4134.
That breaks down to $344.50/month.
That's a car payment.

Note that this total excludes any future emergency vet treatment as well as the cost of miscellaneous items, like replacing litterboxes or food bowls, treats or toys, collars, leashes, and kennel boarding if we go out of town and have no one to come to the house and care for all of them. And my annual care estimates were conservative because vet care costs fluctuate from year to year.

We love our pets dearly, and each and every one of them was rescued from a shelter or from someone who could no longer care for them. They enrich our lives, we enjoy their company, and I don't think we could imagine a life with NO pets. But, looking at the big picture of what pet ownership really costs annually, it's no wonder we're really feeling the strain as a middle income family. EVERYONE should look at the big picture when considering pet adoption, including taking into account that the costs do rise as our furry family members age and require more care. It's a serious responsibility that's also very costly in both time and money.

Do blog entries always need a title?

The writer in me has been on an extended sabbatical for about 4 years now. She whispers something about a comeback now and then when I'm too busy to actually write down what it is that she's saying, and then when I have the time, she's gone again. My journals are all covered with dust.

Because I Like Stars as Bullet Points

*Yesterday, my 9-year-old was a grizzly bear. That's hazardous to the health of the rest of us who have to live with her, and if she doesn't wake up as her normal self today, she may have to be caged... and I may even let her little sister poke her with sticks. And I'm only half kidding.

*I made a blackberry cobbler at 5 a.m.- On a Saturday. I even made my crust from scratch this time, and I'm so proud of it. It looks like cobbler, it smells like cobbler, and when I took it out of the oven, I wanted to stick my face in it.

*Family reunion today! I'm so excited. I miss my best-friend-Grandma, and I can't think of a better way to spend the day. My ex-Mr. let me keep the kids this weekend (because it's Crawfish weekend, and he'll be drinkin' it up with my brother, I'm sure), and my new Mr. gets to go with us, and originally I thought I'd have to go to this reunion all by myself and present pictures for proof that I actually DO have a family. It's rare that we ALL get to go to something together on a weekend.

*I'm hopeful that the housecleaning fairy will arrive while I'm gone, that maybe the scent of cobbler will lure her in and then she won't be able to get out because the shifting of our foundation sometimes makes the front door stick, which is hard for the 6-year-old to open, and surely a fairy is smaller than a 6-year-old, so she'll have nothing else to do but clean up around here. A girl can dream, right?

Holy smokes, folks, we're married!

It's his first and my second, and everything is just right. I'm so very happy. Wedding photos are on the photographer's website. Magan did an amazing job documenting our special day. http://urbangrey.com/2011/03/29/the-dabbs-railroad-hotel-wedding-gloria-and-evan/

My beloved, nasty, dirty car that has carried my girls and me for nearly 250,000 miles, across the country and through enormous life changes, died this week. And I'm ok with it. Of course, we're getting it fixed. But this is something that could have completely depressed me at any other time since I've owned it. That car has been dependable, reliable, the first thing of worth I ever really OWNED. It's been my lifeline, the way I escaped every time I needed to. It's carried those girls and me across nearly every inch of the state of Texas, across the deserts of NM, AZ and CA, into the mountains of AZ and CO, to fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants last-minute concerts in OK or Dallas or San Antonio, TX, to the grocery store, to the ER, to Grandma's house. I chose a Camry because I thought it would stand up to everything I could do to it... and it has. That car has meant so much more to me than I could ever quantify. But it's about time for Miss Camry to be retired. We'll get her fixed this week, and she'll carry us a few more miles before we upgrade. And I'm okay. Even without my car. Because life is good. There's nothing I need to escape from.

Christmas Past

Christmas is my least favorite holiday of the year. I'm glad that it has past. Somehow during this break, I keep staying up past my bedtime. Tonight, it was for the grand effort of making animals out of socks. Anna purchased a book on how to make sock animals with some of her Christmas money, and it's providing hours of entertainment. Evan and Amy made a seal/penguin tonight out of a Valentine sock. The pattern was for a penguin, but Amy insists it's a seal. I love that. Anna and I made a rabbit. Basically, that means she told me what to do to make her rabbit. I love that too.

WE is running a Hope Floats marathon. I do love this movie, but it always stirs up a longing in my heart for a small town life that may always be just out of reach.