Who's Got Two Thumbs And Is Out of his Mind?

 

 Nope, not Loomis. Me.

This is a story, but it's a story with smiles in it for once.

Like I said, we lost our amazing dog and we've both been pretty bummed. My wife especially since she just lost her dad, she's been having chest pains and just spontaneously cries.

When I knew we were losing our dog, I started looking around for puppies of the same breed, the only breed we ever get. I didn't find any. Lot of long waiting lists, including one that could be up to 2 years. I paid $50 to get on that list.

Kept looking, but I didn't want to get one while our other dog was alive, and I also wasn't sure how the wife would react to another puppy so soon. My thinking has always been, No way can you replace a dog that great. But there's no room for sadness when there's a puppy around.

Anyway, the wife and kid were at the beach with her mom, and I'm sitting around Monday in an empty house, and I think...let me check a couple of other places. I find a legit breeder who has 5 puppies in North Carolina. I do some research to make sure the breeder and pups are good.

They are. I call the guy and he's super nice. Tells me they only have two of the five left. A boy and a girl. I tell him I'm interested in the girl. He says, sure, you wanna come see them, come any time. He says they're pretty close though, so he'd hate to split them up. Says he'll cut me a deal if I get both.

We've never had a boy dog, or multiple dogs. I'm like, I'll bring enough money for both and see what I think.

Then I gotta figure out how I'm getting to North Carolina and back with at least one puppy, while taking off a minimum of work since I'm already off on Friday for a convention.

I hit my brother up and he says he'll go with me, and we can take my mom's minivan so there's plenty of room for the pups to play in the back. One of us can sit with them, and we can switch out driving.

This is all Monday evening. I say, okay, let's leave tonight at 11pm. We drive almost the entire way, get a hotel for a couple of hours of sleep, then get the puppy and drive straight back.

We do it. We get to the hotel about 5:30am on Tuesday. I can't sleep--too much excitement and anxiety. Excitement to see the puppy, anxiety because what if they're not good or the wife freaks out?

We wake up at 11am, after about 2 hours of sleep for me, grab a quick BK lunch and head over there. The guy lives in a neighborhood with amazing houses. He's super friendly, starts showing us around the house, and I'm just like...where's the puppies?

He leads us to them. The father dog is there and looks just like my first dog. And he's SO friendly, I almost think he wants to go home with me. We arrived later than I said, so we didn't meet the mom dog--she had a groomer's appointment, so that was on me. I saw pictures though, and the papers show these puppies are purebred.

And the puppies are SO CUTE it's insane. I can see immediately how attached they are to each other. I mentally say fuck it, and get them both.

We get back on the road. We have to stop a lot, and crazily enough my wife starts texting me on the way back that she really misses our dog, and look, she might have to take a trip to Arizona to see these puppies from a breeder out there.

I was going to wait until she got back Thursday to surprise her, but figure let's see how she reacts. I face timed her in the car and showed her, and she burst into tears. She was so happy, she packed them up and said we'll see you at home.

All in, it was more than 14 hours of driving in a day. We made it back to my parents house, where my wife had stopped to wait for us. Man, she's in love with these pups and so am I. They are so happy and fun to be around.

But the insanity of how quick it all happened...and how much money I just dropped in a week...man...

Here's some pics of the cute buggers.(first two are from the van ride, last one is at my house)

 

 

Empty Home

 

 Let's go through this quick, because I don't wanna relive it. Seems like I should put it here just because this has always been sort of my personal log that I can look back on and find dates of when stuff happened.

I had called the people who will send a vet to your house. I wanted to schedule it for Thursday, because the dog wasn't eating, and was having a hard time pooping. She was still mobile, and if someone was walking by when you let her out of the house she would go full sprint at them, running back and forth as if nothing was the matter.

When she came back in, though, she'd be doing that weird huffing like she couldn't breathe. I didn't want to let it get much worse, but I also didn't want to lose her.

I made the call, and was surprised to find that at first I couldn't talk. I don't think I have ever had that much difficulty getting something out as I did after the girl asked, "How can we help?" She was super nice, super understanding. She said they were very flexible, so if the dog got worse before Thursday then they could move up the appointment. If she was having a good day Thursday, we could postpone.

Tuesday evening rolls around and all of a sudden the dog is eating. (not dog food, no) We cooked her steak, and she devoured it. She ate a bunch of my Wild Bill's beef jerky that she's always loved. She still wasn't pooping, but I still felt like she might have a good couple of days left.

So Wednesday I called it off. Said I'd call back when it got worse. Well, she stopped eating again Wednesday, and by Thursday she still wasn't eating. She would mostly lay around sleeping, and sometimes not follow me downstairs, which was totally her thing--she was my shadow.

I called and reset the appointment to Friday evening. She still looked good and was mobile, and you couldn't see just how thin she was unless she lay on her side or you touched her, and could feel she was mostly skin and bones.

The vet came. She was very nice, very sympathetic, and gave us all the time needed. Our dog Luna went very peacefully and never knew a thing other than her pain and discomfort  finally went away. Barely two and a half years old, and the best dog I've ever known.

And our house is very, very empty. 

My wife had planned on going to the beach on Friday, but instead left today with her mom and our son, since she's off work til next week. 

Weirdest part is how solitary I used to be. I enjoyed being alone. Preferred it, in fact. But all these years of having a dog apparently grew on me, and now it's strange coming home from getting a Slurpee and there's no one there to greet me. No one to sit on the couch with me and watch Joe Bob.

I'm on the hunt for another puppy now. It can never replace Luna, but I know that there's no room for being sad when there's a cute puppy around. I just need to find one from a reputable breeder this time, because hopefully I will die before this next dog.

Anyway, hopefully my next blog will be a little less bleak...

Fuck 2022 With A Machete

 

 This post is very hard to write. I'm tired of the last few years, but this year in particular is going to go down as the suckiest. We lost my mom's father back in May.

To make it worse, our dog has been getting progressively worse for months. She's not even three years old, but she had a genetic kidney disease that had us putting her on expensive dog food and getting expensive tests done to figure out what could be done.

Bottom line, not much. The last time we took her to the vet, the vet gave her less than a year to live, given how bad the disease was destroying her kidney. It was hard to believe, given how active and normal she seemed.

But now she's stopped eating. She can't poop. She keeps trying, but nothing comes out, so she'll move to another spot and try again, no go. She's gotten very thin. We tried subcutaneous fluids a month ago, which involves me sticking a needle for an IV into her back, just under the skin, where it would fill up a sac. That sac would gradually drain into her, thus helping her get fluids and help the kidney flush toxins.

Didn't seem to do much, and they wanted us to do it at least 3 times a week. It was an impossible task. She got very tired of it--she has to sit still for like 15 minutes, and she just wouldn't. 

So now here we are again, watching a dog die. I had sympathy for our last dog, but never really liked her much. This dog...man, this dog is the best. It's wrecking me in emotional ways that I didn't realize I could be wrecked. 

I'm trying to decide when's the best day to hire that company that comes to your house and euthanizes the dog. Like, the dog can still get up and run around, and she seems happy. She doesn't have much energy, so won't run long, and she won't follow me as much as she used to.

She's huffing though, after she does anything physical, as if she's having a hard time getting her breath. I don't feel like she'll make it through the week, but I don't want to put her down prematurely. 

Fucking sucks, man. And after, we'll be faced with that empty house again, and I'll have to figure out what to do about that. Another dog? What happens if this dog is a piece of shit? Nevermind that we have to go through the whole potty and crate training again...

Come on, Crom, just kill me already. Jeez.

Another Not-Much Update

 

Another year, another dull 4th.

Had a good dinner over at my mom's. Even ate a piece of bread for the first time in like 3 weeks. Chatted with the sister who was back for a couple of days from the land of cheese.

Day before that I went and shot that video and started editing it. Honestly, I'm not sure how many more videos the lady has in her. We shot for like 3 hours and there was still stuff she wanted in the video, but she physically was beat. Finally just threw in the towel.

Good for me if she gives them up, at least right now. It's tedious work and I don't really need the dough so I just as soon would stop. She keeps trying to get me to go this St. Louis auction, and I've said no four times.

I actually thought about what it would take to get me to do the auction, and it would take around $5,000 per day for me to consider it. Yeah, crazy high, but that's how much I hate getting up early, going to an airport, waiting to go through security, sitting around, then cramming onto a plane next to dickholes. Not to mention the actual auctions, which suck.

And they're not going to pay me $5K a day, so we're good. Not going.

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Vzon guy came by, and this is pretty funny. He shows up early to beat the rain, he says. I say, have at it, but don't cut my internet off cuz I'm working still. (only technically; my work was complete) He starts drilling holes to put the box on the side of my house, and is then going to have to run a cable up to the telephone pole(yeah, guess we still call them that).

It starts POURING rain about 15 minutes after he arrived. He's climbing up on the ladder to pull the cable up, and it's getting caught on my neighbor's shed, so I run out and help him out. I also measure where he needs to put the hole in my house to run power to this box.

We get all that shit done and the internet works. He sees my computers all over the place and says, "I guess you work with computers, huh?" I say yeah, so he asks me some questions about a hard drive he's having issues with. I help him through what he needs to do, but THEN...here's the funny part.

A lady calls him and says she's having a hard time connecting to the internet she just got from them on her laptop. The guy says "Hold on", puts the phone on mute, and asks me what I think. So I talk him through how to help her get online. He tells her I'm "a resource" he using to help out.

Feel like I should be getting paid by Vzon. Jesus.

Anyway, internet is BLAZING. The new roku upstairs has a remote that can take over your TV's remote, so now I only need one remote upstairs. I set up an account on Tubi and Plex and whatnot for my wife, so her constant watching of romantic comedies and holiday movies doesn't fuck up my recommendations and stuff.

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Rage against the dying of the light, because Laura still hasn't gotten back to me, so the light on T3 is definitely dying...

4th Weekend

 

 Took off Friday so I could go to a friday fun at Zig's. I took him over a roku cuz I got a new one, so we actually got to watch an episode of Joe Bob at his house while it's live. It's cool watching JB with friends who are present, instead of with only online friends.

Would have then had a four-day weekend, except I got an email from the auction lady who wants me to shoot a video Saturday. Means I'll be editing much of the weekend. So much for vacations.

One of my sisters is in town so my mom is having a small dinner, small because my brother and his family is in Ireland right now visiting some of his wife's relatives.

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We are approaching the cut-off on any hope of shooting T3 in October. I'm not sure what the exact date would be where I'd say "No way can I get everything ready in time", but I can tell you we're very close to it.

And still no response from Laura. I honestly don't get why people can't simply text me back. Shoot me back something saying No thanks, I stopped acting, or no thanks, just can't cuz of my job, or whatever.

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Internet is still fucked up, so I finally called V-zon and they're coming out July 5th. So I have to clear a path to where they can wire it in. My wife has cluttered the back storage room so much you CANNOT walk through it. It's like an episode of Hoarders.

Anyway, happy 4th, whatever that fucking means any more. Like, does anybody think we're a fucking democracy anymore?