Just a tad.

( Come into my yard, said the spider to the fly! )

great brook farm state park.

The Arboretum Pond. 
That white blob in the middle is a great blue heron fleeing upon my arrival.  No turtles or mink or beaver today. 
But tadpoles and dragonflies galore.

( dragonfly sex )

While I swept up a small ocean of fluff from this weekend stuffed animal decapitation, I heard Mojo start to bark and growl outside. Since, I am still keeping him tied up out front, I decided to go see what was up and to possibly bring him in. Apparently he was getting agitated because several people were walking by our front yard on the sidewalk.

One was a large 20somethings black man, who eyed Mojo up and down, then gave me a look up and down. He then asked "Hey! You have a pit! You want another? I got a female down the street."

I thought about it for a split second, looked at Mojo, then shook my head. "Thank you but no."

He replied, "Well if you change your mind, lemme know."



o.O

As much as I want another dog in the future, that is not the way I'm going to go about getting another.

All right. I have a metric crapload of blackberries ripening out there on the back acre. Clearly, I must do something with them. I found the following recipe that looks OMG good, for blackberry and strawberry empanadas:( Recipe behind cut for linkophobes )

Anyhoo, questions are as follows:

1) What can I sub for chicken stock that is less...chickeny? I'm out to make pastries with no redeeming social value here, and prefer to leave the "savory" out of the dough.

2) Similarly, can I sub any mild, low-liquid cheese for the goat cheese? Recommendations for a cheese sub that would be less, well, goaty? A little goat cheese on a salad or in ravioli stuffing is one thing, in my pastries is entirely another.

3) Who wants to come thrash around in thickets of thorny blackberry canes to pick a couple cups of ripe berries with me? There should be at LEAST two cups ripe by this weekend.

4) What's a good way to preserve fresh wild blackberries? Because seriously, since there's bright red unripe berries on the canes, I have found a TON of them, most just loaded with fruit.

Always fun times when Barrett's and the Brockton Fair mesh.

A fire alarm went off about two minutes into Hancock, so we had to exit the theater and stand outside for around 45 minutes. At least we got this coupon which allows us to see any other movie, at any date, for free.

Tough decisions staring at me in the face. Reality has set in, and no matter how much I shake my fist at it - it is what it is. I just keep repeating to myself that I live my life according to the following priorities*:

Me.
Mojo.
My family.
Everyone else comes after.

(order subject to change - but always me first)

Fortunately those friends who really want the best for me, understand and do not begrudge me the order i have put my priorities in. Because a lot of them remember my life when I put others before myself - how much pain I had in the process, and the loss of self-respect suffered during those times.

Plus, whether they admit it or not, they all have similar priorities. Although possibly minus the Mojo part, unless they have their own "Mojo" to contend with (a pet, a child, a mate etc). I do not expect any of my friends to put me ahead of their priorities; if they did it'd probably scare the bejeezus out of me.

I'm still skittish, after all.

Although perhaps, as someone has mentioned again, I won't ever lead a happy life because I'm skittish, or gloomy, or whatever negative adjective you want to enter here. Perhaps everyone who has ever said that to me is right in thinking that I will be miserable because I won't do X or I won't feel X or I won't allow for X to happen.

But I'm still okay with that. And the why is very simple - This is MY life. It is MINE to do what *I* want. It is mine to believe in what I believe in, to feel what I feel, and to do what I do.

It took me a lot of years to learn that and I'm not about to go change to make someone else happy. What is funny to me, the ones who tried to keep me in check for so long (my family) have also learned that this is not a bad thing for me to think. My family actively encourages me to live for myself now, although my father still doesn't like my idea of adopting another pit bull.

But that's the thing... they don't have to like my decisions or ideas. They, like everyone else, just have to respect my decisions. I'm to the point now that if there is someone in my life who can't respect me the way I respect them? Then I don't want them to be a part of my life.

It was a hard road getting here.
Not about to stop now.
I'm exactly where I want to be.


On a side note:

Dear not_eurotic,
One of your polls last week has inspired a whole messy chain of thoughts in my head. I hope to do a post at some point about it... But if I do or do not, thank you for posting what you do post... even if a lot of it goes over my head in one way or another.

Pat the dogs for me,
- Megan

Roo puked last night. I'd started weaning him off the prednisone a week ago, and he was fine until last night (he was on 10mg/day for 3 weeks, then down to 5 mg/day). I'm bumping him back up to 10mg today, and calling the vet on Monday, especially if he pukes again. My poor little man. He's also got a cut on the pad of one front paw (probably from assaulting Braxton), and told me about it by peeing on the carpet right in front of me, bless his heart. Once I picked him up and examined his paws and fussed over his ouchie, he went back to peeing on his towel. Poor little guy just wants someone to acknowledge it hurts! It's not a severe cut, so nothing to do but keep it clean and let it heal.

Suspect I'll be taking him back in for more blood tests, though. I'm going to try to take another fresh stool sample so we can do another float. What else should we be testing? Last time his white count was WAY high, and his hematocrit slightly low, and fecal was negative for parasites. He's on non-fishy food, Wellness grain-free chicken. Was previously on Wellness grain-free beef. There was no puking on the beef, and he's been on the chicken for several days now without puking. This is so frustrating and scary.


ETA: Oh, and who guessed "blackberries" for the unknown thorny plant? Because I have a HUGE crop of blackberries ripening out there!