Morning Chaos

This morning, things were going along rather smoothly, for a morning, that is. I'm not really a morning person. Because of this fact, I tend to do everything the night before so I don't have to do any thinking before I have my tea. Since I don't get my tea until I get to work, I am basically on autopilot until around 8 am.

This fine morning, I woke up, toileted the girls, fed them, got ready to go, packed all of my gizmos-- Braille Note, iPhone and its accompanying display, meds, lunch, etc. etc. My bus usually comes around 7:30. I finished getting ready around 7:20, and went to put on my hearing aid... only it wasn't in its usual spot in my top drawer.

Thus began the mad search. I first tried a sort of half-assed search, hoping it just got jostled a bit and I could find it quickly. I soon realized that this was not going to happen. Around 7:22, Mill'E came up to me and alerted to the arrival of my bus. She was quickly followed by Laveau alerting to the same, then Gracy who is here for a visit, but who obviously still remembered how to alert. And I ask you, how the heck am I supposed to find anything if I have three dogs telling me the same thing over and over again?
Part of it was the driver who seems to have an unnatural love of his horn-- he loves to honk it. Several hearing people have noticed this and commented upon it to me.

So the whole thing went something like this.
Me: *starts taking things out of drawers*
Driver: *honks horn*
Mill'E-Max: *nudge nudge!* "Bus is here!"
Me: *acknowledges Mill'E-Max and begins sorting through contents of drawer, removing various items.*
Laveau: *nudge nudge!* "Bus is here!"
Me: *acknowledges her, and begins removing more drawer contents... lip balms (why do I have four tubes of the stuff?) lotion, allergy meds etc.*
Gracy: *nudge nudge!* "Bus is here!"
Me: *acknowledges Gracy, grits teeth, thinks fluffy bunny positive trainer thoughts. Searches through more stuff-- puts Bristol's eye drops in pocket so as not to forget to do them before leaving*
Driver: *honk! honk!*
Mill'E-Max: *nudge nudge!*
RINSE! REPEAT!!!!

Eventually, I found the damned hearing aid, got my dog harnessed, and my iPod set to play music for my dogs while I'm at work. While I was plugging the iPod into the speaker thingy which is on Baylee's crate, I managed to lock Gracy in there, some how! I only realized this upon my arrival home and not finding her anywhere, which freaked me out and caused me to think she had died, or something.

I also forgot to give Bristol her eye drops because I got so flustered from all of the honking and searching, and nudging.

So now I'm home early to give Bristol eye drops and to let Gracy out of the crate.

Woo! What a morning!

Confessions of a Dewclaw Killer

My porch looks like a crime scene, and if you were to ask Laveau, she'd tell you that this is exactly what it is. Laveau was growing herself some funktastic nail action. I mean she had some serious Drucilla nails. I had been meaning to cut them, but it seems like lately the moment I'd decide to cut them something else would need to be done and it would get pushed aside.

So today I decided that it had to be done and after lunch, I adjourned to the front porch. We started into reducing the nail-funk quotient by half. Everything was going along just fine. I had my nail clippers, and my styptic stuff, and the clicker with a big bag of treats. See, I'm a good trainer, or I'm mainly just imitating one and hope it rubs off on me!

It was going really well, until I got to her left dewclaw. I had done all her other nails by this point and was almost done. I put the nail through the hole, bent down to click and Laveau jumped, and then I cut.

What followed afterward was just repeated bouts of bleeding and stypticing (Laveau did the bleeding and I stypticed). And I swore a lot and felt really terrible and wanted to fall through the porch into the scary place under the house where the feral cats live. Ugh! I suck!

Eventually (PAH!) she stopped bleeding and then I let her go inside. I brought out Bristol, and out her clipped without issue. (Huge sigh of relief)!

It's thundering out and since Mill'E-Max has gotten kind of thunderphobic in her olden golden years, I really don't want to pick this time to clip her nails. Mister Pawpower has decided Baylee's claws are fine for now and that he and I would benefit from the judicious application of beverages which contain fermented grain products.