One More Week (Stay Calm: Knit One, Double Crochet, Too)

Well. He's still with us. And that is all that really matters right now. There we were last week, all three of us: Dr. Thyme, me and our vet, blanket spread on the all-too-familiar floor. Me hunched over him, holding his head in my lap. She says, I want to check him out one more time. I'm biting my tongue and nodding. She walks over to him, bent over to be on his level. He gets up. She follows him over to the other side of the room, then this happens: He growls at her. We all go silent. She said, Alright. I need to examine him a little more closely. She escorted our boy down the hall. A few minutes later, in she walks with him in tow. His tail is wagging. We all compose ourselves again. Dr. Thyme and I look at each other. She said, I'll tell you one thing, he's a fighter and that whole growling at me thing. . . I'm pretty sure he's not ready to go anywhere just yet.

Never mind that for the previous week I'd had to hand feed him every single morsel of food his body would tolerate. Never mind that he began to list to one side--his weight had dropped so much, he'd begun to lose the ability to hold himself up. Agghhh! I felt like I was going to need to be checked in somewhere. . .but then we get the growl! So she gives him the heavy meds: steroids, antibiotics (because we now suspect he may be fighting a liver infection--the cuplrit is the liver still--that is not in question) and also an anti-nausea pill. Three pills a day. Within 48 hours, he was One. Hungry. Dog--devouring his entire bowl of real dog food. I won't elaborate here on what I'd resorted to cooking for him--but let's just say it was, um, not vegan. 

As we headed out to the car, our boy tugged husband so hard he nearly went face first into the back seat. It left us both stunned. We climbed in the front, meds in hand. We both looked at him, then at each other, and out of Dr. Thyme's mouth comes this: I'm. . . not. . . dead. . . yet!. . . with this cooky/crazy British accent! For those unfamiliar, this is straight from that Monty Python movie. My husband has this uncanny ability to remember entire lines of dialogue from certain obscure films. Obscure to me, anyway. (I've since been enlightened to the hilarity of Monty, though I still don't get some of it.) And that I'm NOT dead yet line sort of broke the mood and took us both from heavy-hearted and at wits end, to laughing so hard, we had tears streaming down our faces. Whew.

A few days later, our boy ate his first full bowl of food in several weeks. A major victory. I'd decided (and Dr. Thyme agreed)--I needed to get out of the house. So I went yarn shopping. More on that in a sec. When I came home all of my other yarn from a basket I keep next to my chair was tipped over, spread across the living room floor--like a little mini-tornado had hit! A puppy moment. . . all over again! Of course that made me laugh. No scolding. Just treats and a walk. Finally. He's back. At least for a bit longer. We'll take whatever we can. We absolutely are deserving of a break. We have no idea how long this next "spell" will last. All we know is that, the miracle of medicine is granting us a few more precious days, maybe even months with our very beloved, adorable, scrappy boy. (But he better stay out of mommy's yarn.) 

Now one other piece of news we learned last week. Dr. Thyme will not need that major eye surgery we had been dreading. This had also been hanging over our heads. He was given the news last Friday. We are both quite relieved. He loves his "new" eyes.

Meantime, I've been obsessed over a couple of things.

Vegan chocolate cake. (I have more than one recipe in this blog, please help yourself.) Having this cake in the fridge is mandatory right now. We've gone through an entire cake already. This is our second.

I LOVE this blanket. Love it. My crochet yen is big right now. I think the change is good. Plus with all the stress, it's nice to have something quick to work up in the evenings while hubby and I watch TV. (We have been glued to the set as the home town baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals have been playing for a chance to go to the World Series and guess what. . . they did it last night! What a game!) Anywho. . . with all the needle work, my hands have begun to hurt a bit--I'm trying to stick to knitting more during the day--then switching to crocheting in the evenings. This throw will be for the living room. I love watching the colors grow as I work it up. I was inspired to work on this after seeing Lucy's on Attic 24. I love her blog. Not only is she is uber-talented in the crochet department--her tutorials help tremendously. I certainly need to drop her a line because she also inspired me to make my hexagon throw. (Though not totally finished, I had done enough hexagons for it to at least take up residence over the back of one of the chairs. I love looking at it.)  

I bought one of these "ergonimically" correct crochet hooks last week. And truth be told, I feel a difference. Less stress on the hands. I work faster with it, too.

Then, during my trip last week to one of my LYSs, I picked up this yarn to make the Hitchhiker scarf. Forty-two points. Get it? Aren't those colors amazing. I love working on this, too. One of the women in the store was working on this. I fell in love with it right then and there and just had to start my own.

And here's the "coat". Sort of a love/hate relationship with this. I hope to finish it in the coming week. I am quite certain that when I get to the buttons: There will be tears.