Vizzie from the Mormons

So I've mentioned my Mormon friends before, mostly in Maggie on Monday posts. Elder LeSueur & Elder Huckzinger* came to my door and I opened it, looked at them standing there in their suits & I said, "Mormons?!"  (this never would have happened when I was living out in the wilderness at the River House) and started laughing. Then they started laughing and we stood on my front porch laughing. And we've been laughing ever since.

I thought it was Elder H's b-day so this was his card:

I also made one for Elder L.

And I made Elder H a Mormon candle out of a blank Catholic one:

I cut the picture out of one of the booklets they left me & mod podged it to the candle.

Back of the candle. 

Did you know that they have to wear their suits at all times? Even if one of them spontaneously decides to climb onto my roof in the almost-dark to clean out my gutters?

Really?  Elder L on the roof. 

"How did you get up there?" I asked. Elder H said, "On my shoulders." Silly me!  Getting down was a bit more of a challenge. It was a long jump down. I suggested the back porch might be closer to jump. As I was walking thru the house to check, we heard a THUD on the back porch. Elder H said, "Yup. I guess it was closer."

I've had them over to dinner a couple times. They have to bring another person with them to come into the house. So last Friday they invited me to a dinner at the church. I said, "You know I'm gluten free, guys. It's kinda hard to eat out." It turns out that one of the women cooking has a son who's GF, so she made me GF pasta. I took some glutenzyme, just in case. But it was delicious. Then dessert was a cake auction to raise money for the girls to go to camp. These were some fancy cakes! One went for $135.  I said, "What?! You've invited me to a gluten auction?!"  In the end, I bought them a cake:

Who needs forks?

Elder H is v. fond of Tabby Bobcat. He calls her Bob:

Demonstrating proper flying cat form.

I once caught a cat this big.

 I took this picture mostly to show off Elder L's tie:

Nuclear orange.

Elder H rockin' the Secret Service look.  Elder L's tie, still saying, "HELLO!  I'm a tie!"

 Sadly, Elder L is getting transferred about a half hour away, so the dynamic duo is breaking up. His new partner will be Elder Pounder, whom we met in an earlier Maggie on Monday post. Elder H will have a brand new guy. He's going to stop by & we're going to pretend it's our first meeting. Shhhh . . . . but Elder H doesn't think I can pull it off. "You'll just start laughing," he said.  We'll see . . . .

So for Elder H's b-day this Friday, & Elder L's going-away, I got them each a Mancala game. I lent them mine a few weeks ago & they are big fans. And they got very good, very fast & beat me!

Playing it up for the camera.

I also made Elder L a Mormon candle. 

Elder L says that Elder H looks constipated in this photo. Hahahaha

 Elder H took my camera & took some pix:

Hahahaha  

Me & Elder L.

Elder H's foot with Tabby in the back ground.

And then I sent them off with some homemade GF bread:

YUM. They said they don't miss the gluten. 

*I just realized that it's Elder HUNTzinger, not Huckzinger. I guess I will have to stop calling him Hucky when I'm talking about him & Elder L (aka LeSwee) to Brother Atlasta.

Maggie on Monday

It's been an almost ordinary week with Maggie. I've had a few sleep-deprived nights. For a dog with one foot in the grave, she's exceptionally chipper. Saturday night she woke me at 4 a.m. barking at my bed and swinging that tail of hers in jump rope formation. *Snurf* Whaaaa?  She gets her bone and starts gnawing on it. It seems much louder in the dark than when we're sitting in the living room watching TV.  I finally fell back asleep at 6:30a but it kinda threw off my day.

I've had a problem with her peeing her bed due to a combination of bladder infection & sound sleeping with a lax, old lady bladder. My friend Lena had suggested garbage bags to protect the bed, but they're so LOUD. When Maggie gets up in the middle of the night to readjust herself on her bed, it sounds like an army marching thru a pile of Cap'n Crunch. That, coupled with the daily laundry, called for another solution. So I got some puppy pads and spread several layers, so that if she has an accident I can whisk a pad away. Is this TMI? Oh, well.

The good news is that bladder infections are relatively easy to address, what with modern medicine and whatnot. Antibiotics to the rescue!  Except. She's not fond of taking pills. I know that Mari can relate to the challenges of camoflauging her meds to get her to swallow them! That she'll eat her Deramaxx is a miracle. These antibiotics were beef flavoured tablets.  She wouldn't eat them. So I put them in the favored method of delivery, cream cheese. I watched her chew. Ah ha! Success!  And then she went PLEH and spat out the tablet onto the floor in all its gooey glory. *sigh*  I tried to hide them in other cheeses & tasty meat treats, but she was having none of it. PLEH, PLEH & PLEH. So Dr. Morgan, our vet, ordered a liquid version from a compounding pharmacy so I could squirt it into her mouth. Chicken flavoured. Brother Atlasta suggested I put peanut butter on the end of the syringe so that she would lick that off & then I could give her the squirt. Easy-peasy. He assured me dogs like peanut butter and that his own dog, Sally Jack Russel, was a "peanut butter slut and would sell her own puppies for a spoon."  I got some peanut butter and put it on my finger. Nothin'. Add peanut butter to The List.

I went back and forth between the stress of forcing her to take the medication versus having the infection and in the end, even tho she clamps her jaw shut with death grip pressure, I manage to get it down her gullet. She hates it. And I must say that the SMELL could peel paint, so I can't imagine the taste for her. But I follow it with sardines, which she's very fond of.  Her bed-wetting is MUCH better and she's been pretty dry.

This morning we were up at 5a and she had a regular breakfast of Taste of the Wild. She's snoozing by my feet and I'm looking out the window at SNOW?!  It's really coming down!  So! Snowy pix to come. In the meantime, a few pix from sunny days this past week:

I was sitting on the front porch and this is the view thru the slats of the ramp.

Looking alert.

And then, not.

Zzzzzz . . . . 

Squishy face.  :-)

Maggie on Monday

We had a snowy preview on last Monday's post from the snow that started on Sunday. Here's what it looked like Monday morning:

Heading down the ramp.

Mmmm . . . snow. So snowy . . . . 

Hello Sweetie.

I had a pop-in from the Mormons on Thursday to look at a fallen tree down by the lake on my property. This Saturday, Elder Chainsaw is coming to chop it up.  Maggie was on the front porch, but as I was walking back up to the back yard, she had followed us!

Elder Huckzinger with Tabby. 

Maggie settled in.

Flying cat! Elder Huckzinger was demonstrating how his dad used to wake him up in the morning with their cat. Tabby Bobcat was not amused!

Maggie with Elder Huckzinger & Elder New Guy--can't remember his name. Bumper? Something ending with an -er. POUNDER!  That's it.  From Utah. 

Here are a few different times of Maggie & Tabby on the porch. They really are so sweet together!

Some sort of action happening over at Neighbor Thomas's. 

Hullo.

Another time:

For the most part, Tabby stays inside. But she does like to hunt in the woods. So Maggie will go outside just to watch her. Here's Tabby back inside, so Maggie comes to the door:

And jumps up out of the way.

And sits. Like the Sphinx. 

Yesterday I was clearing out my massage room. It's been a storage room since I moved, but I'll be doing massage in between John Morgan Seminars seasons, so I started to get organized. Maggie of course managed to come in and plop down as soon as there was space!

Love this sweet girl.