it's been a minute ...

 ... since my last post.  There was a holiday blue funk I had to fight off.  A few days of why bother and what's the point.  Too much time watching movies and eating marzipan stollen.  

November came down.
December went up.

I finished a bead suncatcher for myself.

Wallpaper went up in the cabinets.
Doors came off.
A snack center was set apart that is reachable from the dining/living room side.

There was a visit to a new dermatologist complete with several spots frozen (deeply frozen) on my face, arm and shoulder blade.  But I like her.  She's extremely thorough, and listens, whereas my previous dermatologist was dismissive and in too much of a hurry to move on to the next patient.

Charlie has healed quite nicely and has a much needed and overdue dental cleaning this coming week.

Unpacking is still a chore I procrastinate too often, but I've made some progress.  I will be needing to make more progress this week as I've been forced to buy rugs for all the rooms.  We had a week of below freezing temperatures at night, and for some of the days.  

My glow-in-the-dark cat slippers were not up to the task of keeping my feet warm from the chill that was coming up from the basement, and I'm having issues again with frostbite-like symptoms on a big toe.  Reynaud's.  Ugh.  Oddly enough, the slippers have vanished into thin air.  I suspect a ghost has hidden them from my view because I have looked everywhere for them, and in this small house, there are not many places to hide.  I've ordered some winter slip-on snow boots to use as house shoes, and my amazing neighbor also bought me some temporary ones and "HotHands Toe Warmers" to use as well.  It never occurred to me to buy them, and I used to buy them all the time in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin.

A dining/crafting table is also coming next week which will force me to consolidate and declutter the dining/living room areas.  I really don't want to take tubs down to the basement to store craft supplies because I fall prey to the "out-of-sight-out-of-mind" concept too often.

I'm planning on writing again in the New Year ... picking up where I left off in My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs and wrapping up the last decade or so of my life.  My calculator just told me it has been 16 years, 2 weeks since it published.  Thankfully, time flies when you are trapped in an abusive marriage to an alcoholic meth addict.  I've been debating for a long time about writing "that" story.  A part of me doesn't want to give him the notoriety (or the time of day), but I realize there is a lot of healing in exorcising that decade from my soul.  Maybe it will finally put the insomnia and nightmares to rest once and for all.

Wishing you the happiest Yule season and a magical Solstice ... Ci💚

turkey day eve

 Charlie's wounds are healing nicely, and he is becoming sneakier at spitting out or detecting the antibiotics, so I have to become more devious with the rest of the pills.  If I hide it with food, he only eats that food item once, so then I waste half of a pill and the food.  (wasting bacon is a sin!)  Soft eggs only worked once.  Mozz cheese sticks only worked once. (wasting cheese is also a sin!)  He is too smart for his own good!

 But he does have a tooth I noticed is loose and almost out.  I don't know if it was related to the attack or not. I tried to pull it myself but was worried about hurting him so instead booked him an appointment for a much overdue and much needed dental cleaning.

 I did finish this project on Sunday as a gift for a bestie and have started a smaller one for myself to hang on an inside window.  Hers will be hung on an outside porch so is 3x as large as the one for me.  Heavier also with a stronger wire to hang on.

 My plans for the weekend are constantly in flux and dependent (very dependent) upon whether or not I have written down a passing thought before the train leaves the station and heads into a tunnel where there is no idea what will remain of the thought when it gets out of the tunnel.  Already this morning, I've lost my train of thought three times for things that I wanted to accomplish this weekend, and things I wanted to put down in writing for the New Year.  Not so much "resolutions" but changes I want to make in my carbon footprint.

 For example:  Body/hand/face soaps, shampoos & conditioners, laundry detergent.  All of those are available in bar form, or detergent sheets that come wrapped in compostable paper and not plastic bottles.  I need to shop smarter in the future for the planet.  I try to most of the time, but realized I could be doing better.

 Now ... where did I put my list?  Hugs, Ci 💚

Friday...

 But first, a long-tailed weasel caught on video!

I took Charlie to the vet this afternoon,  which was a good thing.  One of the bites on his ear had already developed into an abscess.

 Charlie's on antibiotics for a week, then I will send a picture via email to the vet to see if I need to bring him back in, renew the antibiotics,  or if he's good to go.

 He couldn't find the source of the blood I had seen that came from his nose, so it might have just been a bloody nose he got in the attack.  He did have bruised toes where I saw blood, but they couldn't find any open wounds.  The blood could have been from his nose.

 Stay safe ... stay warm ... Hugs, Ci 💚

thursday ...

 Yesterday turned into this:

So, I deleted the post I put up yesterday.

The dog I was prepared and invested in adopting from the shelter attacked Charlie unprovoked less than 15 minutes after coming into the house.  He was bitten twice, breaking the skin, but does not appear to be needing stitches.  He is going to the vet tomorrow after I get off work just to get a shot of antibiotics to be on the safe side.

I'm heartbroken because I really hated to bring her back to the shelter.  But she has serious food guarding issues that I do not have the time to train out of her right now.  The shelter itself does nothing to socialize the dogs with each other or people, and while she doesn't share a kennel and have to fight for her food, I did notice something else.  She has been in the shelter for four months and has gained less than three pounds in that time.  At 1-1 1/2 years of age, she should weigh 10-30 pounds more than she does.  Their dogs get deworming every month.  Every month seems a little excessive, but if they are eating their own feces because they are hungry ... it makes sense.

I just babbled about it in a live feed on Facebook that you can see here> On My Soapbox.  Please share it if you can.  Something has to change.

I hate being on a soapbox.  But someone has to speak for them.  "Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes."  ~ Ci💚