Fridays & Good News

Well, two weeks ago I was bit by a dog ... on a Friday afternoon. It involved a hospital.

Last week ...Friday... I caught two young people tagging (grafitti) in our neighbourhood. That involved the police.

I'm hoping for an uneventful Friday today. Not to be superstitious...but a ho-hum Friday would be nice!

I heard from the health department earlier this week that they quarantined the dog that bit me and after 10 days he was re-examined and he is fine, therefore I should be fine (I am. My arm is no longer sore and the wound has almost completely healed). There is a two bite limit here which means that if this dog bites again he will have to be put down, which makes me sad, but what can I do about it?? Nothing.

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School is officially over here and we're into our summer break! The summer weather arrived once the calendar said "summer" and the a/c is on. Our garden is growing well although we had quite a hail/rain/wind storm yesterday and one of our tomato bushes looks like it took quite a hit. We'll see how it does.

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Received some good news today - our nephew Eric & his wife, Elyssa have a new addition to their family, another little girl named Brooklyn Elise, 8 lbs., 4 oz. CONGRATULATIONS Eric, Elyssa & Brianna and Rick & Irene!

Not the Friday I'd Planned...

Well, last night I was supposed to go to sell some homeschool curriculum at a sale but that didn't happen...I went to the hospital instead. Grrrr.

On Friday afternoons I always help Alyssa deliver her paper route -- I go along for company and I like getting the exercise too. I've delivered papers for over 8 years and have only had one dog lunge at me. No bites. Until yesterday.

We'd only done less than half of the route and I was coming out of one driveway when I saw a young neighbour girl walking her dog. She's always friendly to me so I said hello and continued out of the driveway. It was NOT her driveway...anyway, she's small; her dog is big and he lunged at me and took a bite. OUCH! I couldn't believe it and she was quite upset about it. She's in her early teens and was walking the dog after getting home from school. I wasn't sure what to do (and this pic doesn't do it justice -- it was about 1" round and like a blood blister/bruise with two puncture marks. It didn't hurt but it burned. It only bled a bit.

So I went home and called my doctor who told me that they were just closing but I should go to the ambulatory unit in town.

When I first got there I felt a bit silly -- there were people with all kinds of serious injuries -- bone breaks, burns, a man whose nail gun nailed two fingers (ouch), a little boy who touched a hot lawnmower exhaust...stuff like that. Then me with a small dog bite.

But they took it pretty seriously. Apparently all animal bites by law have to be reported to Public Health, so I suspect that they'll be calling me. Thankfully this dog was up-to-date on his shots, including rabies, and my last tetenus shot was a few months ago.

The doctor ordered my arm to be x-rayed -- apparently to make sure that any fragments of teeth (or actual teeth!) weren't in the skin (it was fine) and then they cleaned it, bandaged it and gave me a script for antibiotics. Bacteria is bacteria and the dog had punctured my skin so his bacteria was in my body. Ewww. I'm glad that the dog went for me and not for Alyssa or especially at a child -- my arm was at the level that a child's face would have been. Scary.

What a night!

I had to do some googling to see if the script that they gave me contained gluten or not. The pharmacist wasn't positive and when I called the 1-800 # for the drug company, they're only opened from Monday to Friday. So last night I risked taking the medication. And I didn't get sick. (Thank you, Lord!)

My arm is sore when I move it and especially if I lift it up. It feels worse than after having a shot, but sort of the same way in that you move your arm and then feel the pain -- and remember that yah, you've had something done to your arm.

So that's my weekend so far...I hope the next few days are less eventful! That's enough excitement for me.

Dad's Birthday Pics

As promised!

Darren & Lisa's Leah, Eric & Elyssa's Brianna,

and Roland & Maureen's Mikayla -- in the sandbox

Alyssa, Dad & Mom

Cousins - Lisa & Heather; Eric's wife, Elyssa
(baby due in less than 2 weeks!)

The group is getting larger & larger

Volleyball (of course!)

And a rainbow to end off the day

(after the rainstorms -- we actually had a double rainbow)

Finally, a post!

The "manly" tree fort
After Suzanne's "feminization" work!

I know it's been a while since we posted here...I didn't plan to not post, just that life took over and there have been many other things to work on. We're thankful that Andrew's back has improved dramatically over the past few weeks and his pain is lessening. Andrew fell off of a ladder at home at the end of February (landed in snow, thankfully) and his back seemed to do okay and then it got really bad. He's still not 100% but much, much better than before. His back got so bad this time that we wondered if this was a forever thing. It's never taken him that long to recover and it was frightening (and painful). Going from sitting to standing is still the worst part, but he is faithful with his back exercises and they help a lot. He's still seeing his chiropractor and that helping the improvements too.

We've been working on our gardens and moved a large lilac tree. A lot of work but the seedlings and large tree have transplanted well, so we're happy about that. We needed to move it so our vegetable garden would get more light. Growing veggies is tricky here -- we need to have the garden as far away from the critters (deer etc.) and as sunny a spot as possible! We needed to get a fence up around the garden also so those pests will stay away. We'll see how the "crop" will go this year! We certainly have had more than enough rain.

Laura (Darren), Suzanne & Stephanie (Cheryl)

The school year is winding down -- which I'm happy about and so are the girls. Suzanne will need to complete a few more courses in the fall but she should be finished grade 12 by the end of the year. Then it will just be Alyssa and myself homeschooling for the next 3 years. Hard to believe that our homeschooling days are winding down. This was our 15th year. Suzanne plans to work on the farm for (hopefully) one last summer and Alyssa is still looking for a job. A babysitting gig would make her happy but there's nothing firm set up yet.

Mom is doing well and might be getting into the Toronto Memory Program. She signed up for it herself after hearing about it on the radio. If she can help others with AD, that's what she'd like to do, so we're encouraging her in that. The program itself is an immuno-therapy program and sounds quite promising. My sister Cheryl is taking mom to her appointments in Toronto.

Angela, Alyssa, Suzanne

Work stays busy but not overly busy. Andrew Peter has had quite a few days off and it's interesting to see how he much prefers to be working, keeping busy. The last week that he had a few days off he set himself busy working on our been-in-progress-for-a-long-time tree fort. He had part of it completed and was happy about it and then Suzanne feminized it...HA! (see pics above)

Clinton & Elizabeth's wedding (top)

Mom's brothers -- Clifford & Stanley, at the wedding (bottom)

Other highlights of May were a wedding of my cousin Craig's, daughter (mom's side) in Alliston; out for dinner with mom & my siblings/spouses to celebrate Melanie & Peter's 25th wedding anniversary; and watching fireworks at the P's farm with our friend's. I didn't get any photos of the anniversary celebration (can you believe it??) but we had a wonderful time all together. We have two more weddings this summer -- next is for Greg & Krista (Darlene's daughter) in July and Rebecca & Jon (Melanie's daughter) in August.

We celebrated Andrew's dad's birthday this past weekend and it was nice to have Lisa (Henry & Mary's youngest) & Darren and their little girl, Leah, to celebrate with us!

I'll come back to add the b.day pics