According to his adoption records, Rion was born ten years ago on October 20 to a Miniature Schnauzer bitch in the Pikes Peak Humane Society foster program. He has had some health struggles over the years: the most severe of which is a seizure disorder, which developed when he was two. (Rion doesn’t have gentle, stare-at-the-wall seizures. His seizures fling his body across the room.) Fortunately, his seizures are completely controlled by a wonderful drug called Zonisamide, and he bounces around an agility course like a much younger dog. Considering the statistics on dogs with idiopathic epilepsy every happy, healthy year feels like a win.
On August 1st, we closed on our new house, which had been in the process of being built since the end of March. Two days later our furniture was delivered.
We are mostly moved in at this point and the house is quite livable. We still have items in storage at a friend’s that we are working on getting placed in the house and garage, though a lot of the stuff will probably get donated to thrift stores. Downsizing from a 2300 square foot house with multiple outbuildings to a 1600 square foot with a three car garage is a challenge. We specifically did not have a basement built so everything has to go in the house or in the third garage.
I love the floor plan. The kitchen, dining area, and great room are all open so there is a roomy feeling. The master bedroom suite is also quite roomy which is one of the reasons we chose this layout. Also contributing to the feeling of spaciousness is the nine-foot ceilings. The nine-foot ceilings allowed us to hang some suspended platforms in the garage which helps with storing little-used items like holiday decorations.
The house has a lot of accessibility options which we hope that we don’t need for many years. I am not missing have steps at all, though.
The first ten days were a challenge since we moved in before the fence was built. The dogs required walking four or five times a day. We also didn’t get our refrigerator until we had been here for several days so we had to make due with ice chests.
Jack has the smallest of the three bedrooms for his office, and I have a slightly larger room for my craft room and office.
A few days ago I noticed a sign in front of a neighbor’s house that said Private Residence as I left to run errands. When I returned home, the same sign was in front of our house. Since we are still in a construction zone, I assume the signs are there to let tradesmen know which houses are occupied.
This is one of my favorite photos of Rags, taken about ten years ago. When we left in May for a six-week road trip, he was in fair condition: not too bad for a thirty-three-year-old horse. A few weeks before we got back, the friend who was taking care of him said he was losing condition. Even worse, he was losing his appetite. When I got back, I realized he had lost at least a grade of condition. Jack and I decided it was time.
A little while ago, his vet came out and agreed that he looked far worse than the last time she saw him. She said it probably cancer. She administered the injections, and he was gone in an instant.
We had Rags since he was an eight-year-old: over twenty-five years.
This morning our personal weather station reported that it was -7F at the lowest temperature. When I took this photo around 11:00 am, it had risen to a balmy 20F. This has been a winter for wild temperature swings: on Sunday the high was 60F.
For two or three weeks starting the week before Thanksgiving Rion had some very scary symptoms, starting with some infected wounds close to his eyes, and including lethargy, high respirations, and refusing to eat. (Oddly, he kept drinking and never became dehydrated. His blood work wasn’t that far off normal, either.) He had six or seven vet visits in that three week period, ending with a thorough follow-up exam when he didn’t react to any of the palpitations and manipulations.
While I was nursing him, I swore that if he survived, I was going to have the groomer do a full clip, because the long hair of his eyebrows and beard really interfered with medicating his eyes and giving him oral drugs. At the last exam, his vet said that I could take him to the groomers.
It is so much easier to administer his medications now. It’s also easier to clip his nails. I rather like the look, now that I’ve gotten used to it.
Back in August, I decided to start a morning practice of yoga, with the goal of doing at least a little yoga every day. My craft room has enough empty floor space to put out a yoga mat, and a door to keep the dogs from joining me. (Sometimes I let one in, but it’s very hard to do yoga around a dog.)
I’m not sure how I discovered Adriene, a Texas yoga instructor who has a million instructive yoga videos on Youtube, but I decided her 30 Days of Yoga would be a good start. She has several thirty-day programs, recorded in different Januarys, that are sequences that build on one another.
Her style(s) seemed quite similar to the instructor of the small yoga classes I attended in person a couple of years ago. My initial rule was to stick with the whole practice, even if I had to considerably modify things depending on how decrepit I was feeling on a particular day. I was quite pleased at the end of the month because I practiced every day but three. Two of those days involved our trip to Nebraska to see the eclipse.
In September, I changed the rules a bit: if I wasn’t getting into a particular practice, even with modifications, I could quit after fifteen minutes and still consider it a success. I enjoyed the 30 Days of Yoga program so much that I repeated it, and practiced every day in September.
In October, I changed the “rules” again while doing her Yoga Revolution thirty-day program. On days that I didn’t feel like doing the practice from Yoga Revolution, I would switch in one of her other practices. I practiced every day but one in October.
In November, I fell on ice early in the month and my upper back went into a spasm for over a week. I had to find some very easy practices that didn’t involve the neck and back much. I had planned to do the thirty day Yoga Camp program, but have only done a handful. I’ll probably pick those up again in February. So far I’ve practiced every day in November one way or another.
After years of wanting some sort of daily yoga practice, I am very pleased how I am doing now. With a few exceptions, I practice first thing in the morning, before I feed the dogs. I have a much better chance of getting it done before the day starts. I usually finish up with five minutes of chavasana after the practice ends.
