Tale of a Shooting Star…

Happy Anniversary to us! Terry and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary yesterday. Nothing big or fancy. Just time together, enjoying life and each other. We went to dinner at The Olive Garden last night. It my first time at an Olive Garden and I really enjoyed it. We don’t go out to eat very often, so it was nice to have a night out. We had a lovely, romantic time together. We decided we should do it more often (go out to eat and have anniversaries)!

Thanks for all of the kind comments on the change of templates for my blog. I’m happy with the look. I tend towards the darker colors in web design, so Becca’s template goes well with my tastes. Purple might be better, though. 😉 Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great week!

I gave Phoebe a bath today and she gets SO wound up afterwards. She just runs and runs and runs around the house like a crazy dog. Sometimes I wonder if it’s her attempt to speed up the air drying process? What a cute little thing she is, though, especially when she’s wet.

That picture is from a February bath. I would take pictures every time because I think she’s so cute, but it’s pretty much the same thing. 🙂

Poor gal had a rough morning. I cut one of her dewclaws, which was a big production. I’m on the “one nail a day” cutting program with her and it works pretty well. Unfortunately, she chews on her dewclaws, so they get too short, sharp, pointy and scratchy. They sometimes split, too. So, anyway, one finally grew out long enough for me to cut. I pushed back the fur, pulled the dewclaw outwards slightly so I could see it, lined up and SNIP! Sure, she jumped up and ran around like she does every time. I checked the nail to make sure it wasn’t bleeding, like I always do. YIKES! She’s bleeding like a stuck pig. So, I tried to grab the styptic gel and a q-tip so I could stop the bleeding. She didn’t want me to touch the nail at this point, so I had to pick her up and move her into the kitchen before she bled on the couch. In the process, I got blood on her fur, on me, on the floor, on the bottle of styptic gel… Ugh.

I finally got the bleeding under control and cleaned off her fur. I rewarded her with a chew stick and she acted like nothing was wrong. Happy, bouncy little thing. We’ll see what happens when I go to cut another claw on Monday morning. She took the chew stick and I tried to do some model stitching. Hmmm… I suddenly noticed that she wouldn’t chew on the stick for very long. Oh darn, her paw must be sore. So, after a little bit of cuddling with her and her wandering around trying to find something to do (failing miserably in the attempt), I decided to take her upstairs and gave her a bath before Terry woke up. Afterwards, she got more treats.

So, she’s been roughed up a bit today, but she’s been rewarded quite handsomely, as well. All in all, she’s fine. I just feel bad about her claw, even though I was half expecting it. Next time I cut a dewclaw, though, I’ll have Terry there with the styptic ready to be applied. She’s now dry, soft and worn out, sleeping here right next to me on the couch. Sweet, crazy little thing.

I just finished changing my blog theme again. Sorry for the change, as I know some of you wrote that you really liked the other theme. However, I just found the blog of another stitcher tonight who is using the same theme. She has been using it longer plus I want to be somewhat unique, at least amongst stitching bloggers. This shouldn’t be terribly difficult when the vast majority of you are using Blogger and I’m using WordPress hosted on my own servers.

So, in a gesture of goodwill about which the other blogger will probably never know, I switched to another theme designed by the same woman who did the other theme I was using. If I had all of the time in the world, I would use this as impetus to design my own theme, but it’s going to take quite a chunk of time to do so. Plus, I have to redesign my personal website first, so that I can incorporate the look and feel across all of my personal sites, including this blog and my photo gallery. Lofty goals for one who doesn’t have time to even keep up with basic life functionality at this point! 😉

Don’t worry, it’s not bad. 🙂 I went at noon to a salon (the place was HUGE!) that’s just down the road a few minutes from where I work. A nice lady named April took all of 15 minutes to fix my hair, dry it and coif it. She was a very lovely person and thoroughly checked the work that the other stylist had done, snipping “corners” in the layers here and there. She did a great job and didn’t even charge me full price because she didn’t have to cut much. I feel much better and will be going back there for my next hair cut. I may even talk Terry into trying her, though I don’t want to twist his arm to change where he’s going.

Thank you to all of you wonderful ladies out there who commiserated with me, shared your own hair raising experiences and bolstered my self-esteem yesterday. I appreciate the boost! I have to remind myself that I should be grateful that I can even grow hair at all. Things could always be worse, even during your darkest hours.

So, if you couldn’t tell, I’m back to being Mr. Hyde today. I’m finding that I’m having some serious mood swings from day to day lately. I’m either Mr. Hyde, able to smile and laugh at nearly everything, being a persistent optimist, or I’m Dr. Jekyll, dark, moody, stressed out and unable to react to any situation in any way other than negatively. I’m trying to encourage Mr. Hyde to stay around a little longer! 😆

P.S. I never realized until my blogroll started failing today how much I rely upon it! When it comes back up, I’m going to have to bookmark everyone’s sites, just in case.

P.P.S. Good luck to Karen, who is visiting the dreaded hair mangler, I mean stylist, on Friday. 😀

It all started last Thursday after lunch. A trek into the stormy afternoon through an economically depressed area to get to a beautiful spa tucked away on the second floor of a mini mall. And a haircut for DH and I. It seems to be a bad time for haircuts, just ask Laura.

First, Terry’s stylist (he’s only been to her a handful of times, so she’s still new-ish to him) decided to give him a different hair style without even asking. She cut it shorter than usual and, using a lot of product (which stylists seem to like to do), spiked his hair up everywhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, he still looks good. The man would look good with a bad rug; he’s just hunky like that, at least in my opinion. 😉

Then there’s my girl. Now, keep in mind that I haven’t had my hair cut in a good 6 months, maybe more. Terry and I used to have the same stylist but she disappeared and I haven’t had my hair done since then. So, I came in to whomever they decided to schedule me with. Apparently, she’s a newbie. *sigh* It would have been easier if my hair were still all one length, but I let my old stylist give me a new, lightly layered style over a year ago. Layers must be a difficult thing. Of course, I made the mistake of telling Terry on the ride over that my hair was long and easy to deal with, so it should be goof-proof. Wrong-o!

To make a long story short, I walked out of the salon with my hair still damp (she didn’t manage to get it completely dry?) into the storm and that’s when I noticed it. I hopped into the car, pulled down the mirror and took a look at this lump of curl I felt next to my face. She blew it out straight, kind-of, but here was this chunk of hair that’s shorter than anything else on my head (other than my bangs), like an inch wide and not blended into any of the surrounding hair. I figured that I just needed to go home and redry it myself. Still wrong! I almost wanted to cry. I’ve been pulling my hair up every day since. I even wore it curly because curls seem to hide a multitude of sins and yet it was still a problem. And the bangs aren’t even straight. That almost makes me laugh because I made a comment to her about cutting my own bangs between cuts but that I didn’t profess to know what I’m doing. Hah!

Add that to the fact that the two stylists huddled behind the counter whispering while we were being rung up afterwards and mine looks up as we’re leaving and says something to the effect of “Terry! Shorter! Cut it shorter!” Hello?!?! Do you not see the ring on my finger? Sheesh. Thanks for adding insult to injury by trying to flirt with my husband.

Needless to say, I will not be returning to that salon. And I half wish that Terry wouldn’t, either, but if he’s happy with the cuts he’s getting, I don’t want him to have to switch just because I had a bad experience. I know I’m probably overreacting to the whole thing, but women identify very strongly with their hair, so if it doesn’t look good, I don’t feel pretty.

Bottom line: You’re supposed to walk out of a salon feeling beautiful, with a coif that’s near impossible to attain by yourself. A regal princess. Not a hag. So, I broke down last night and called another salon to get it fixed. I’ll be going there over lunch today. Wish me luck!

Wow, that title could have so many meanings and so many uses… 😈

But today, I’m referring to the internet. The routing today has been iffy, at best. I’ll try to browse somewhere and sites aren’t loading. I can be on the same site, but try to go to a different spot and it fails. The behavior changes from one minute to the next. It’s frustrating!

So, I don’t know who will actually be reading this entry today. And I don’t have much to say, so it doesn’t really matter. 😆

My weekend was uneventful. I have to laugh because even those of you who blogged to say that you had an unproductive weekend had a more productive weekend than I! I sat on my behind practically the entire two days. I washed dishes, cleaned the kitchen sink, ran the dishwasher, loaded the dishwasher. That’s about it. I did some stitching, but the model stitching was ripping and restitching some changed sections (frogging over one – yippee!) and the other stitching was on the small baby sampler that’s now overdue, as the couple had their child last Wednesday. *groan* I’m NEVER going to catch up!!! Oh, I did some graphics work that I’ve been procrastinating on for weeks, so that felt good, but was a small consolation. And I brushed all of the dog fur off of the steps by hand. The carpet nearly felt like new. But, that’s pretty much it.

When I get a chance (read, when I feel like it), I’ll slap the baby announcement WIP onto the scanner and post it. But, for now, I’m going to finish watching CSI: Miami and go to bed!