Flu Caution

There's a very virulent strain of respiratory flu out now, and it can get very serious very quickly.  Advice from the hospital website to keep in mind -

Go to physician if you can't keep fever below 100 (after taking tylenol/motrin) and if a persistant/productive cough with nausa and vomiting. Go to the Emergency Department if you are short of breath or having difficulty breathing, if your temperature is over 101 and if you experience nausa ...and vomiting for greater than 24 hours.

I could say scarier things that I heard at the hospital, but I'll leave it at this - pay attention to the flu!!  Wash your hands a lot!!

Thinking of you people I love so much.

Becky

Made a few Christmas presents this year, but not many

Some new things I made for Christmas presents this year.

For Page Quigley - my wonderful massage therapist
For Hailey Quigley

OMG - I found this old pic of Jenna Carol, my niece!

This was in August of 2007 when she was 11(?). Can you believe she fit in my ottoman that recently??

This was in the basement at Pfeifer Drive just before I moved.

She's a tall and elegant 15 year old, now.

Benji today while I was working on financial stuff - ad nauseum

Article about Luminaries at Indian Ridge

There's an article in the news about our annual Christmas Eve luminarias.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_2386d001-e5f3-5cf3-9f75-3c8debd39550.html

Nice!  I plan to walk around with Benji on his float - if he'll stay on it.

By special request - photos of the house

Susan Paxton has been reminding me to put up new photos of the house - so here they are!

And here are some more photos to give you a better flavor of the place.

We did get our historic designation (1955) and will have a nice tax savings as a result.  It is made of burnt adobe brick, which is highly prized here and not made (much?) any more because it was hand made.  You can see the marks where they pulled the bricks out of their frames.  It's very rustic looking.  We have a whole book about the architect and the sales brochures etc. that came out at the time the complex was made.  At the time it was the furthest one out of town and very bare.  Now it's lush and full of life, and the houses last virtually forever here if maintained because the desert is pretty easy on them.  I remember thinking when I first drove around out here, "Gheez, it's like the 50's and 60's out.  Stuff apparently lasts a long time here."  You also see a lot of vintage and older-model cars here.  Wish I'd kept my Intrigue forever.

It's a good thing you can't smell the house - Benji has made a wreck of the carpet  We knew that was a risk, but it's much worse than I could have imagined.  I've been catching him about to lift his leg on everything from a man's pants legs to the new curtains - oh, and including the love seat.  I've been watching him like a hawk as a result and planning his neutering...which is breaking Rod's heart.

The paint is as it was when we moved in, except for the yellow room, the lavender walls, and the pale yellow walls in the kitchen.  The kitchen had been baby-poop gold which we could not abide, and the yellow room had been pottery-barn green.  And there was too much green everywhere, so we changed that, and made a piano nook of the lavender area.

We love the high natural wood beam ceilings and wish all of them had been left unpainted.  Rod wishes all the brick had been unpainted, but I'm not so sure - it would be hard to keep clean I think.  Anyway, I think we're pretty lucky.  We learned recently that our house is in the oldest and best-made part of the Indian Ridge neighborhoods.  Only this first phase has the wood-beam ceilings.  The others have center beams, only, and cheaper aluminum windows.  We have the old steal crank windows, which Rod loves. 

I also heard from our Association guy that the industry has come out with, or will soon, triple paned windows that fit in the space of the old single-panes.  So we're thinking we can get better energy-efficiency and some SPF blockage that way someday. 

I also really like all of the plantation blinds.  They're a godsend in the summer and stay shut tight through those months, but they're pretty always and very private.

Benji and I were in a parade last weekend

At TMC they had a "Light the Tower" party - which is when they light up the big water tower on the property with Christmas lights.  They had a nice party for families, lots of kid activities, food, and a first annual "mini-float" parade.

Here's Benji in his float.

And  more photos of the parade here in my album.

Recent Purchase from Geeks.Com

A USB blanket!  Did you know they had such things?  I freeze in my office, every day, and have been using a heating pad, which was inadequate.  A space heater never seems like a good idea in the office, to me, so I decided to search for a USB-powered heat source, and found this:

It's working pretty well, but it's smaller than I realized - more lap blanket size.  But very soft and nice.

And the box it came in said this -

Ben's Recent Disaster

He knows when to get in trouble: when I'm getting ready in the mornings.  I was in the bathroom one morning and saw him come down the darkened hallway dragging something dark in his mouth, looking so proud!  I hollered at him, but he kept going and by the time I caught up to him it had already turned into a chase scene - around the couch, around the loveseat, around the chair, around the kitchen.

When he finally dropped it, this is what I found, the shawl I made and wore at Drew's wedding:

And I was thinking, other than "Aaaaaaarrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!" , "Last I knew, this was in the trunk in the bedroom.  How in the world did he get this?"

Well, upon examination, the wicker trunk had a small hole in it where he had torn back one of the wicker slats and pulled this entire shawl through a hole about 1/2" by 1/4".  No wonder it looked like it did.  Good thing I love him or he'd be dead.

Dogwalking Gear

I talked a while ago about the rigmarole I go through when walking the dogs.  Managing two leashes is more than twice the trouble, and along with pauses to pick up the poo, it gets quite complicated.  Try carrying a flashlight, too.  Then add fears over frequent sightings of coyotes, javelina bobcats, and mountain lions in the neighborhood.  So I got creative.  Here are my solutions.

Visit to Ohio 2010 Photos

Here, Visit to Ohio, October 2010 are a bunch of photos from the trip home in October. It was mostly quiet time with family, so not a lot of excitement - but pretty country, eh?  There are a lot of Benji pics.  He's just my new love.  :)

Benji here (tried to post this from the iphone back in October, but couldn't get it to work, so catching up now)

Yesterday Mom took me to a bunch of strange places. First a long car ride then a place with big noises and big trucks and lots of cars and we rode on a bus, at least that's what Mom called it. I wouldn't know a bus from a camel, myself.

Then a place sorta like shopping but with lots of people with bags all sitting around. I seemed to be the only person IN a bag.

Then we went in this really cramped space with too many people in it. I never smelled so many people in one place before. Mom put me and my bag under a seat and I never got to come out at all. I cried a little but not much and I could not  sleep with so much going on up and down the aisle.

Here's a photo of me in my bag. Everybody thought I was cute and that I have really big ears. I don't know why all the people keep saying that to my Mom.