UGH. Looks like it’s a furuncle, and I’m not really into trying to treat this shit at home, at least not until my vet assures me it’s safe to handle on our own. (I’m especially not diagnosing shit based on the internet, nor am I risking fucking it up worse. The vets are the experts – they can handle it.) I will be calling them tomorrow.

Shit, and I have to give her a bath tonight, for the demodex (aka, mange). Poor wittle puppy. She is going to be miserable. Good thing she’s already eaten all her breakfast today, and most of her dinner. Because I have a feeling she’s going to be miserable tonight, and will refuse food and treats until sometime tomorrow.

Bleah. Things are kind of poop, but not so bad.

Last night, I was hanging out with the pooch on the couch, and Greg was on his way back from his D&D game in Cary, heading home for practice with his band, Zardoz. (By the way, there are like a billion bands with that name. Okay, more like 38, on Myspace. And I get it – it’s a killer movie. But I wonder if any of them actually wear the outfit. Of course I’m going to be biased in favor of my husband’s Zardoz, but any Zardoz band that wears the gear is going to be my second favorite, and the rest can go fuck themselves.) Anyway! Shorter story: Jeremy got here early, Greg called to tell me to let Jeremy in (since Greg wasn’t home yet), I went to the back door, leaving Sabrina on the couch. Jeremy is at the front door, and knocks – not even that loudly – and Sabrina is startled and pisses herself. Not the end of the world, but pretty awful for her. So she ran into the bedroom, and into her crate, and I didn’t scold her (of course!), but gave her some treats and tried to help her calm down. We’ve got a wonderful woman, Jenn Merritt of Blue Dog Creature Coaching coming out this weekend, to meet Sabrina, and see how she/we interact, and evaluate things, and help us figure out a plan for getting Sabrina socialized and less fearful. Jenn also practices TTouch, which I’m interested in, and think will help Sabrina, so I’m pretty excited and looking forward to it. I mean, I know we have a lot of work ahead of us with Sabrina, but I’m psyched to feel like we’re on the right track.

The other kind of bad news is, my computer (my desktop) seems to have died. I don’t know. It just refuses to turn on. Not the end of the world – except that my bills spreadsheet is on that computer. And of course I *meant* to back it up elsewhere, but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. So Friday was payday, and now it’s time to pay bills, and I can’t access my spreadsheet and may have to try and start over from scratch. Fun stuff. Except not really. But I’m trying not to freak out about it because 1-it’s cool, bills will get paid, and even if they don’t, the mortgage, car payments, hospital payments, and CFI are on auto-payment, get drafted from our accounts, so I don’t have to keep up with them; so the worst that can happen is I pay the power bill for the apartment late, and they turn off the power – but we’re not living there, so no boohoo; 2-I need to stay calm so Sabrina’s anxiety doesn’t get worse from my own.

Hm. I just noticed a little hard white lump on one of her front paws. It kind of looks like a boil? Or milia? Do dogs get those? Actually, there might be a second one starting to grow near it. An allergic reaction? Shit. I’m going to go Google, probably turn up nothing helpful, and will definitely be calling the vet tomorrow. It’s probably nothing to worry about, but she doesn’t use her front paws to steady her Kong when she’s trying to get stuff out of it. I had assumed it was because she didn’t realize she *could* use her paws for that – but maybe this weird small growth has something to do with it. So, might better get it looked at. Wish I’d noticed it before last Saturday, so I could’ve saved her a (possible) second vet visit. Oh well.

One of the things I occasionally regret is not taking more pictures of Skeeter when he was a kitten, or of Daoine as a kitten. And not at all having pictures of Chalupa as a kitten or Sabrina as a younger puppy. There’s something about baby pictures.

Well, Sabrina’s foster mom sent me three pictures of Sabrina at three months old (in response to an update email with pics of Sabrina at Duke Gardens, which I haven’t posted her because I’ve been slack – or…not slack, but busy with life, and work, and hubbles, and the new dog, etc). And oh my fucking god, y’all: the ensuing repeated squealing to Greg of “Wittle puppy face!!!!!”

I could just eat her up. Nom nom nom.

And on that note, why yes, yes I have soft-kronsched her ears. I just don’t have photographic/video proof. Yet.

Natasha Richardson’s dead. Damn.

She was great. I especially loved her in Widows’ Peak.

Left work early today, because I was disgustingly nauseous, and my precious, precious anti-nausea meds weren’t working. Slept for, oh, about five hours, and drank a lot of water, and I’m feeling better. Boo to whatever made me feel so gross.

Now I’m working on a menu of recipes for the next seven days. I’m thinking about cooking dinners more often, and trying new recipes more often, and possibly blogging that. But I hardly think I’m ready for a dedicated food-blog, so it’ll just be the occasional item here.

We were without internet for about two and a half days at home, and of course everything I wanted or needed to do required the internet. BAH! I’ve become such a soft twenty-first century, technology-dependent asshole. I would never have made it back in the day.

Sabrina’s doing better, but still hiding out in her crate for a good portion of the time we’re home. That’s cool, though, it’s a lot of new stuff to process, and she comes out and explores when she’s comfortable, so, it’s all good. I pulled her up on the couch with me when I got home, and forced her to snuggle and sleep with me, and she did it – and I even think she enjoyed it. Cute.

I haven’t been paying attention to Knit on the Net lately, and that’s a huge fucking mistake. They just released their newest issue, and I am fucking DROOLING over it. Basically, I want to make all the patterns, but most especially Quadrato, Miss DeHavilland (seriously, how fucking hot is that!), Joan Crawford, and Ava. Drool, drool, drool. This is fairly timely, since I was a hair away from joining a Lion Brand crochetalong – I won’t mention the pattern, because I don’t want to badmouth Lion Brand, I really love them, their yarns, and a ton of their patterns, and have loved them from way back in the day when I was vegan and acrylic yarn was my best friend. What. I still love it. But anyway, so they have this crochet pattern, and the name, basically, tricked me into thinking I needed to make it – it appealed to my 1930s-loving, Poirot-watching, Miss-Lemon’s-dresses-coveting self. And the crochetalong was going to include how to hook it on the cheap (ie, subbing in cheaper LB yarns than what the pattern originally used, which is prohibitively expensive on my budget). So I went to AC Moore, but they didn’t have a great selection, and I couldn’t decide, and ultimately I just got a knitting mag and a crochet mag, some wooden size 3 dpns, and two balls of Patons’s stretchy sock yarn in that gorgeous Plum colorway, and decided to think about it. Well, I’ve thought about it, and in all honesty, I would never wear that fucking sweater. It’s…how do I put this nicely…goddamn hideous. Also, it wouldn’t go with anything. So I’m not making that my project, and now maybe I can do something from Knit on the Net. (My semi-new-year’s-resolution was to actually finish more clothes, aiming for one piece every other month, like, sewn, crocheted, or knitted, altered, whatever. Hasn’t happened so far, but I’ve been busy.)

Also, since everything I wanted or needed to do last night was online and we had no internet, and I tried playing Okage but that fucking game! It’s crazy-making! It’s not that there’s no point – there’s a point, an endgoal, but then the fucking game just won’t let you get there. GAH! I cleared out a dungeon completely and it STILL wouldn’t unlock the secret door, and the online walkthroughs are a fucking joke. SO. I bleached my roots and redid the purple, and it is looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. And now for the vanity parade (but that purple is gorgeous).

Before:

And after:

I should mention that, in the good news, Jeremy and Kimmie came over last night, and Sabrina did extremely well, and seemed to like both of them (and especially Jeremy). Even when we were playing our ukes, she was pretty chill. (Well, at first she kind of looked a little skeptical, but then she realized how awesome ukes are.) And I managed to play “Y.M.C.A.” with Kimmie, and she’s better than I am, but I think I did a pretty serviceable job. It was fun! Until Jeremy totally showed off on “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue,” which I would love to be able to play. (Little boo. It was still awesome to see it played, and hear it on a uke.)

My plans for today are to play the PS2, and the uke. And listen to the rain. It’s going to be sweet.

BOO. Sabrina just growled at Chalupa. I think maybe Chalupa got slightly too close, and Sabrina’s feeling slightly more confident, and so let Chalupa know she (Sabrina) was uncomfortable? I don’t know, but I did have to admonish her. We do not growl menacingly at tiny skittish kitties who are just trying to walk into the living room, and not even trying to fuck with the dog.

Poor Chalupa. I’m pretty sure she was in love with Sabrina, because she was always trying to touch noses, or be close to her, and I think she just recognized a kindred (timid) spirit, and was looking forward to the day they could cuddle. (Chalupa is really a cuddler once she gets used to you and past her timidity.) Aww. Poor Chalupa. I hope those dreams aren’t totally dashed.

More stuff Sabrina has taught me already in the four days we’ve had her:

1-6:30am is not as ugly as I thought. It can be rather pretty, actually. It’s also not as difficult to get up and get my shit together enough to walk a dog. Score!

2-You know about my extreme issues with shit, right? As it turns out, I can totally stick my hand in a baggy, grab a dog turd, and tie it up, all without even squealing, much less crying. It was not that bad. (It was a solid poop, though – I’m still living in fear of the first not-solid one.) I even forgot to bring my travel hand sanitizer with me, and the world didn’t end. Imagine that.

3-Sometimes, you have a kind of shitty day, and you just need to stay in bed. Oh wait, no – I KNEW THAT ALREADY. I’m just applying it to Sabrina today. It’s been raining, which I love, but she’s…it’s hard to tell. But I think she’d prefer it be dry. Anyway, she couldn’t go when we went out at 7:00 this morning, couldn’t go when I tried to dart out for a short walk around noon. So we took a longer walk, and that helped, and she managed to piss (no poop, though, but she hasn’t been eating that much, so she may not need to crap again yet). Down side? She’d been living on a farm when she was fostered, and playing outside, and as a result was pretty fucking filthy. I mean, not the worst I’ve ever seen – I worked in a kennel as a teen one summer, and some of the shit I saw, well, it was heartbreaking. (We fixed it up, though – the main person/groomer/kennel owner, Mrs. Teix, was awesome, and did alot of good for alot of dogs.) Sabrina’s not as dirty as I’ve seen – but on the drive home, I was petting her, and my hand got coated in dusty-smelling, brown dirt. I mean, country dog, come on. No big deal, except for the fact that she’s not a country dog anymore, but an indoor city-fied dog. So, she was pretty dirty, and kind of smelly. Not terrible, but not great. After an hour-long walk in a pretty good rain…(It wasn’t torrential, but it was pretty rainy.) She fucking stank, dudes. I was trying to put off the inevitable first bath as long as possible so she wouldn’t be traumatized, but it just had to happen today. And it was kind of like bathing the cats – I could tell she fucking hated every minute of it, but she held still for me and was very, very good. I dried her off with a towel (she’s soooo not ready for a blow-dryer yet), and luckily her coat dries really quickly so she wasn’t even that damp afterwards. I offered her some treats, but she wasn’t having it, and when I took her off leash, headed straight for her crate. She’s been in there since, with the door open, so she could come out if she wants, she just clearly does not want. But there’s a silver-lining: obviously, she feels safe and comforted in her crate, which is huge since I don’t know if she was crate-trained at all at the farm. (I know some of the dogs are, but she only came inside for visits, so I’m thinking she wasn’t.) So she’s basically crate-trained now, and it was almost nothing to do with us. Awesome. Plus she has a space she definitely feels safe in – she’s not shaking, she doesn’t look anxious, she’s just not ready to explore more of the house right now. And that’s fine. Sometimes you need a day in bed, and she explored the house alot last night, so I’m giving her a break. She’ll come out of the crate if I put her leash on, but I’m not going to force her, at least not until it’s time for the evening potty trip.

It’s a little different, because she’s a dog, and Chalupa’s a cat, but it’s almost exactly like it was with Chalupa. She has good days, where she’s brave and wants to explore and is more outgoing; and she has bad days, where she’s more nervous and needs a little more gentle handling, and just to be left alone and not pushed too much to do what she doesn’t want to. And I know we’re going to go back and forth between good days and bad, and then we’ll probably have a run of all good days and then a “relapse.” But Chalupa is so different a cat than she was three years ago, and the bad days almost never happen – it’s more like she’ll have a skittish moment every once in a while (plus we just moved back into the house, so she’s still adjusting to that, but pretty fucking fast, actually). So I’m sure it’ll be like that with Sabrina, and eventually the good days will far outnumber the bad days, and the bad days will happen less and less frequently, until eventually we’re like, “Damn, remember when Sabrina was so timid? That was forever ago. I almost can’t believe this is the same dog.”

I promised myself I’d play on the Playstation tonight (PS2, technically, I guess), but I’ve been busy doing laundry, paying bills/putting money aside for bills, editing photos of Sabrina, putting them on facebook, and I’m about ready to go to bed, to be honest. I think I might even be calm enough to get to sleep without the aid of medicine.

I realized today that Sabrina *is* totally the dog we needed. Here’s why: I was thinking I needed a dog that would make me feel more comfortable/safe when I’m home alone. Instead, we got an anxious dog that we’ll have to work with to make her feel comfortable/safe here. But here’s the thing – she’s like a mirror for me, and I was thinking today about how she’s really such a good dog. She’s amazingly well-behaved on her own, and training her is going to be like a piece of cake, because she’s so anxious about being good. Which is ridiculous – she doesn’t need to be so anxious, because she is SOOOOO good. I realized it was like my therapist telling me that maybe I’m not so anxious, really, that I just have this concept of myself as an anxious person, but that it might not really be true, that maybe I’m not as fearful as I think, or I won’t react in bad situations in the fearful way I’m afraid I’ll react. So I was thinking about what else she said, ie, that if someone broke into our house while I was here, they’d most likely turn and run away. I only have to worry about someone hurting me, really, statistically, if it’s someone I know who has a reason to hurt me – like an abusive boyfriend or something. So I thought about the situations I’ve been in with people like that: my dad, my sister’s ex-husband, a certifiably crazy guy I dated my freshman year. I was never fearful with them. I had no problem standing up to them, and they were fucking nuts and dangerous and I could’ve gotten hurt, and I never even worried about it, never even flinched. It wasn’t an option. I just took care of business. And the crazy guy I dated, was actually scared of me; and apparently Susan’s ex was scared of me, too. I don’t think them being scared is that realistic, since I’m anxious and not that strong – but I guess when 1-it really matters, and 2-I’m pissed off and/or trying to protect someone I care about, I’m not an anxious weakling, so, yeah, maybe they should’ve been scared. (In fact, if Moldy Voldy had hurt my sister, I would’ve gone apeshit on him regardless of the size/fitness difference, so, yeah, he wasn’t wrong to be afraid of me.) So, really, it *is* just this false idea I have of myself as a fearful person. In the most dangerous situations I’ve been in, the ones where I was realistically most likely to be hurt or face danger to myself, I wasn’t paralyzed with fear – I wasn’t fearful at all.

Sabrina is the reason I realized all this stuff. If it wasn’t for her, it would have taken me much, much longer to figure this stuff out, if I ever figured it out. So she is absolutely the right dog for me. What I also realized today is that 1-I don’t really want a dog that makes me feel more comfortable in the house when Greg’s gone, because then I’m just relying on the dog; what I want, is to learn to be more comfortable on my own, more confident in myself (just like Sabrina needs to learn). In other words, if I’m feeling alright when Greg’s gone because the dog’s around, what the fuck am I going to do when the dog’s at the vet’s overnight or something? 2-My old cognitive behavioral therapist (the very first one, not the shitty one before my current awesome one) was into the whole “fake it until you make it” sort of deal. And also into changing your thought patterns – replacing negative habitual thoughts with positive thoughts in order to permanently change your thoughts/emotions/behaviors. Re-programming, I guess. I don’t know, but it works. So basically, anxiety is catching. I get irritable sometimes when I’m around other anxious (or sometimes depressed, since anxiety and depression are linked) people, because their anxiety ratchets up my anxiety – I get irritable because on some level I see it happening and am trying to resist it. If I act anxious, or even overreact (too positively/excitedly) when Sabrina behaves in a non-anxious way, it’s going to feed her anxiety. What I have to do, is just act normal, act non-anxious, and act like I expect her to behave in a non-anxious way, and that will help her learn to behave in a non-anxious way. But here’s the thing (the number two realization that’s taken me forever to get around to, sorry): *my* behaving like that not only helps *her*, it’s going to help *me* to eventually be less anxious. Sure, in the beginning, it’ll probably be more of a conscious thing: “Gee, I’m feeling anxious, but I better work on my breathing and calm down so Sabrina doesn’t pick up on it and then she’ll be worse.” But eventually it’ll just be second nature to be calm, to be more in touch with my levels of anxiety and nip them in the bud before they become a problem, which is what I’m working towards in therapy, too.

So, I was right about Sabrina needing us. But I was wrong about her not being exactly the dog *I* needed. She absolutely is. It’s times like these, I could almost believe there’s some sort of higher order to the world. (But I’m feeling smartass right now, so I’ll call it “Cthulhu.”)

Also, this dog is the definition of “woodgie” (which is a word I totally made up to describe insanely cute dogs). Look at that woodgie little face:

More pictures tomorrow, and two more things Sabrina has helped me learn. (Less hippy, I promise. Well, slightly less hippy.)

Well, I’ve been trying to post pictures of Sabrina, but Picnik is having problems. Oh well. Tomorrow night, I guess.

Honestly, she’s so timid, she’s probably not going to make me feel any more comfortable alone in the house when Greg’s got a show or work or whatever. We went out to meet her Wednesday, and talk to her foster owner, and she was timid, but seemed to warm up to us, and we’d been waiting specifically for her, and she’s great. And she’s going to be great. She slept through the night last night without any problems. She heels on a leash beautifully. She and Chalupa seem to have an understanding – they’ve touched noses on several occasions, and Chalupa even rubbed up against Sabrina as she walked past. Skeeter hasn’t hissed at her, but he’s wary of her – I think because he’s never encountered a timid dog before. Instead of getting in his face (either aggressively or friendly), she tends to hunker down somewhere and stay there. And even when she seems to be pretty anxious (panting, shaking, startles easily, doesn’t want to move and has to be lifted up and carried somewhere), she’s incredibly gentle and tolerant. Until she becomes more confident, we have to minimize her interactions with new people. My plan for when we’re out walking, if crossing the street isn’t enough to keep people or children away, is to tell them she’s a fear-biter – but you know, I don’t think she is. I mean, I’m sure there’s a limit, and if she was pushed to it, she’d snap, but I’ll be very surprised if she ever bites anyone.

She’s definitely starting to get more and more comfortable with us. It’s the cutest thing to see her perk up in reaction to us entering the room. So endearing. Greg ran out to Radio Shack at one point tonight, and she was laying on the couch with me, and when he came home, she heard him unlock the door and lifted her head, and looked excited. She didn’t wag her tail, but she hasn’t done that yet – I think the feeling was there, though. The first time Chalupa sat on my lap, it was such a huge thing. I think it’s going to be similar with Sabrina – it’ll take time, and some work, but will be so rewarding.

I guess what I’m getting at is, she’s not exactly the dog I thought we’d end up with. I mean, I was hoping we’d get Sabrina, but I was thinking we’d get a dog that would help *me* be less anxious, instead of the other way around. But I’m absolutely convinced that we ended up with the right dog.

Anyway, pictures of her adorableness tomorrow, and a couple things she’s taught me already.