Oh yeah, I have a blog! Imagine that.

So, I’ve decided that this Spring is officially the stupidest Spring evar. Please allow me to indulge in some self-pitying rants.

First, about four weeks ago, Mara cut up her paw really bad. She was trying to kill another dog through our backyard fence, because god knows, dogs are not allowed to walk on the sidewalk by our house without being given a stern talking to by the queen of Nordeast. So she’s running up and down the length of the fence barking her fool head off, and she managed to ram a piece of the bottom of our chain link fence, which the previous owners didn’t feel a need to, you know, secure to the ground or anything, and sliced her paw wide open. We took her in, and she got stitches.

She had such a look of betrayal when they led her away from us for the procedure. It was just supposed to be a fun car ride!

Obviously, stitches in paws means obsessive licking sprees on Mara’s behalf. So the vet gave us a cone to keep her away from it. Which didn’t work, because Mara is large enough so that the small dogs cones allow her to get to her paw, but petite enough so that the large dog cones are too big to fit around her neck properly. What the hell is that dog mixed with, anyway? So we started putting her away at night and during the day while we are at work with not just a cone, but her muzzle as well so that she couldn’t lick. And what a sad puppy that made her! To alleviate some of the suffering, I hired a recently unemployed friend to baby-sit her for a few days, and took long lunches from work for a while to come home to be with her, but either way, for the most part she sat like Hannibal Lector in her office cell miserably for a good three weeks. And because the dog was so needy, the ever-faithful Zoey, banished to the upstairs do to our homicidal dog, has been pretty neglected as a result. I really have to get some fish or a bird feeder for her to watch.

And apparently, all for nothing.

Two weeks ago, as the paw was seemingly healing up nicely, she started limping. A few days later, she became a three legged-dog, hopping along everywhere. Which is very cute, but also pretty troubling, being that she didn’t limp at all during the first month. I took her into the vet, who told me pretty much nothing, but hey, they are willing to sell us an X-Ray! I took some pain meds home with me and went from there, hoping it was just the healing process, the uncomfortable scar tissue forming under her skin (it was a very deep laceration). No luck, she was still a three-legged dog. So we took her back in yesterday, and was informed that despite keeping her in a Hannibal Lector getup for three weeks, dutifully putting on her dog booties every time we took her outside, and washing out the paw with the ointment they gave us, her paw is now infected.

Right now, we are hoping it’s just the tissue, and she’s back on the antibiotics. We get to bring her in on Friday to hear the verdict – whether or not we will have to get an X-Ray to see if the infection has gotten into her bones, which my husband has assured me means that one of her toes would have to be lopped off. This poor pooch! We haven’t been able to walk her for over a month, which sucks for both her and myself, and her behavior is terrible. She’s bored, and we haven’t been as strict with her as we usually are, which means she feels she’s in charge. Which has led, thanks to the miracle of technology that allows us to videotape the dog, to the realization that when we leave for work, she howls – literally howls – for a good hour after we leave for the day. Her separation anxiety is back in full force thanks to our lack of dominance. It’s pretty heartbreaking to see her cry like that. It’s like watching the kid that just can’t hold back his sobs no matter how hard he tries, they just escape uncontrollably from his throat and fill the air with sadness.

Add this doggie drama to the fact that I caught the plague at the beginning of March and haven’t been able to shake it, leading to an absence from the gym, leading to a pretty miserably depressed and lethargic Stacy. I’m amazed at how much a lack of physical exercise affects my mood. I knew from friends that are physical fitness nuts that it works that way often, but to actually experience what a difference it makes is pretty intense. I started going back this past week, after a on-again-off-again weeks long hiatus, and I almost died on the elliptical. It’s tough to start over again. Oh, and did I mention I think my over-pruning self killed the beautiful Clematis that grows in my backyard? And that my lawn is pretty much a dirt pit, leading to a major financial investment in its repair that may not even work? So yes, even my joy in gardening has been taken down a notch. Oh, and NBC might be canceling Chuck. Which depresses me more then it probably should. And that pretty much sums up what I’ve been doing lately.

Seriously, people, I hate to whine, but I think I’m allowed a thousand words to vent here. Stupidest. Spring. Ever.

But, it wouldn’t be right if I left it at that. So on a few positive side notes – I have discovered Kombucha, thanks to my newly-graduated dietitian friend Molly, and it is awesome. I caught a cheap flight to Boulder at the beginning of March to see my dear friend Cara Jo and her family, which was awesome, aside from that day I was really hung over. I miss them so much! My job is still secure, which is awesome. My buddy Silas used our home for a movie location this past weekend, and it was really neat to watch him work, even if it was a long day. So that was pretty awesome, or at least was until our neighbors decided to have a bat-wielding brawl in front of their home in the middle of filming (which I have to admit, was a little bit awesome. Yeah, I really am that horrible with my obsessive neighborhood nosiness). Oh! And I’ve been playing the new Zelda on Wii, and that’s pretty awesome as well.

And hopefully that’s all I’ll have for the me me me me me ME blogging for a while. With the hilarious wingnut antics lately, such as the tea-bagging parties (AKA “Whiny bitches pissed off that the country doesn’t revolve around their childish demands that they never elect Democrats into office no matter how badly Republicans screwed up” parties) last week and the pretty devastating torture memos just released that confirm the worst of our fears about what the Bush administration was doing, there’s other things to talk about, no?