He is a colt, we will call him Dylan and he is just perfect.


photos at :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/webber0075/tags/americancreamdraft/

We finally got our puppy! Here is Morgan our new Cardigan Corgi during our hike at Barr Lake yesterday. He is about 11 weeks old, so the 2-3 miles we did were a lot for his 3-inch long legs (not to mention that he is dragging his nekkid boy parts around in the snow). We’ve had to create little trails for him around the house because in most areas the snow is too deep for him to walk in, he has to do these little half swim half hop things to get around. Although this is supposed to be a working breed he wants nothing to do with the barn, horses, or goats and would much prefer to run madly around the living room.

There is a motherfucking snake in my barn.

Just damn.

Arg.

My third book of the year is Bodies and Souls The Century Project

This book is amazing and should be required for all Americans. The book is a complilation of photos of nude american females from birth to 94 years old. Not every age is represented, but the vast majority of them are. The women and girls in this book are from all walks of life and cross many ethnicities. Photos are usually accompanied by either a writing done by the model or blurb from author about the model. The collection is compassionate, respectful, enlightening, and deeply moving. How many of us see the beauty of a naked woman in her eighties or of a woman who has survived violence, or disease? This book shows the beauty of ALL women and in doing so it tells the story of how women in America live.

http://www.thecenturyproject.com/

http://web.mac.com/hwebber/iWeb/Huw%20Webber%27s%20Photos/George.html

On Thursday morning my sister found my old gelding, George, unable to rise. He was alive, but in terrible pain, his circulation having slowed to nearly nothing. She called me and the vet and we both rushed out.

During the hour and some that it took for the vet arrive my brother-in-law and I tried unsuccessfully to get him to his feet or to roll him over so he could try to get up from the other side - both to no avail. I spent most of that time sitting as close to him as I could, trying to add my tiny warmth to his body and trying to keep his head and face out of the snow. He kept having fits where all his muscles would tighten and his legs would stick out stiff while he bit the snow or the blanket I placed under his head.

Finally, the vet arrived and we managed, between the three of us (my sister is 7 months pregnant and so had to keep well away) to get him turned to his other side. We gave him a few minutes to rest and untangled his front legs, so that he would had the best chance of being able to stand. While he rested the vet explained that once a horse goes down like this that they lose circulation to their back legs and eventually are not able to control them enough to stand. Once they get that bad there is little you can do, the choice is to put them out of their pain or bring in a crane with a sling to pull them up and to keep them in a sling in the hospital until they recover, and even then once they go down, the chances are it will happen again and again until you have to euthanize them.

Finally, George was willing to give it another try we pushed and pulled and he really, really tried. It didn't work, he fell back to the same side he was on when we got there and lay prone, worn out by his effort. I went to his head, and propped it against my thighs while I waited for the vet to return from his truck with the injection that would stop his terrible pain. His heavy head pressed me to the fence and I reached down and petted his head, telling him again and again that it would be over soon, that he wouldn't hurt any more. When the vet returned we had to pull him away from the fence and he lay down flat, clearly exhausted beyond measure. I kept one hand on his forehead scratching him in just the way he liked and the other over his eye, holding it shut while the injection was delivered and his pain was ended.

R.I.P. my friend.

Sadly, our horse Gandalf had to put down on Friday. He just never really recovered from the colic despite being under extremely good care. On Thursday night I though he actually seemed a little brighter, but when I spoke to the vet Friday morning it was clear we were at the end and that euthanizing him had become an act of mercy. Poor guy, he was just a great horse, I wish I could have made it better somehow.

RIP my friend.

Gandalf made it through the surgery and is now recovering in ICU. Since they did a bowel resection, he is likely to be there for 10 days or so. His chance of survival is still at 70% but the vet thinks he is doing fairly well. He is still uncomfortable (that seems normal to me, all things considered) but he has not tried to lay down so that is good. His intestines seem to be moving but so far nothing has gone past the re-sectioned join. They did not empty his stomach and every three hours they are putting water in his tummy and pumping it back out which removes some of the feed (horses are unable to vomit). His vital signs are all good and when I saw him yesterday he seemed quite a bit more alert.

Evidently his omentum became tangled in his intestine and cut off the blood supply to the omentum and section of the intestine. She removed the omentum and about 2 feet of intestine. From her expression I gathered that this was really weird and not something she had not seen before.

I'm going to visit him again today and maybe tomorrow too since I'll be at work M-Th. and I work really far from the hospital.

Our recently acquired horse, Gandalf, is presently in colic surgery at a local large animal hospital. I found him colicking this morning at about 8:30 and have spent the entire day waiting to find out if he would need to have surgery. Finally, at about 10:30 p.m. the vet called (I'd gone home for a few hours) and we decided to do the surgery. My last report from the surgeon suggests that he has about a 70% chance of a full recovery. They had to resection his bowel, untangle it, and empty is stomach. He has good health and youth on his side, but the surgery is very serious and there is still a 30% chance we will lose him. It is 1:00 a.m. now and I think the surgery will be over in about an hour - I'm going to stay until they have him upright as this is probably one of the most critical moments for him. Once he upright his chances of survival should be higher. He will still be in the hospital for at least the better part of a week.

Quite apart from the emotional stress there is unfortunate consequence that we are going to have to take out a second on our house to pay for this, but when the only other option is euthanizing a young horse that is a perfect fit and that we care about it is hard to say we won't at least try.

Everybody cross your fingers.

Either I need little string undies so small they go under all my little incisions (and my giant estrogen patch) or I need some kind of massive grannie panties that will fit over these things (ideally reaching approximately to my rib cage). Strangely, all of the underwear I own is of the in between "bikini" variety and every last pair has an uncomfortable strip of elastic going right across the enormous patch or over an incision. Damn you Victoria's Secret.

The other thing I'm having an issue with is the patch itself. The stupid thing is like a flexible frisbee. The result is that it bends easily without peeling up is you bend it in only one direction at a time. I am not a slender woman, so putting it on my belly means it is pretty much always going to be bending with the curve of my tummy. Physics at this point suggest that in the course of moving the dumb thing needs to bend in other directions and so the top edge keeps peeling up. This is after 1 day. The instructions say that I should just press it down, but if it comes off I must discard it and apply a new patch. Why does this sound like a good way for the company to sell more patches? Or was that too cynical?

In other sudden menopause news I got my new Chillow today. This is supposed to help disperse the heat when you have a hot flash or night sweat. Since one of the new joys of having no ovaries is waking up wrapped in a wet blanket and smelling like an armpit, I'm quite hopeful this will work. Please, please, please let it work.

So, when you have surgery they stick all kinds of things on you - not just actual incision bandages, but also adhesive snaps and all manner of band-aidy sticky things. For example on Friday night, fully 2.5 days after the surgery I realized I had an adhesive snap on the side of my ribcage. When I got back to Denver on Saturday night I finally removed the little nausea patch which had become inexorably entangled in the hair behind my ear. On Sunday I realized I had a sticky clear thing that looked just exactly that the saran wrap type coverings over my incisions on my tummy. Like any sane person, I removed these bits of post-surgical flotsam.

Today, I realized the one on my tummy was actually an estrogen patch.

Ooops.

So I called the surgeon's office and they called me in a replacement which I picked up and duly applied. This thing is totally different, rather than a clear little saran wrap thing, it is fully 3 inches across, opaque and ugly as sin. Good thing I'm not allowed to have sex anyway, since this thing would pretty much put anyone off. For example in addition to being huge and obvious it has little writing on it - but just the drug and dose, not anything good that someone might enjoy reading while in the area. Personally I think they should put naughty pictures on it, or maybe oral sex tips, you know something useful.

Oh, and for anyone still paying attention it is an Estradiol 0.1mg/day once weekly patch.

Yes, I've been through the endo excision surgery and in addition to removing the endo and my uterus, my remaining ovary was a big scary looking mess, so they took it out too (this was the consensus vote of 4 surgeons consulted). I'm left with only a lonely cervix and a lifetime of hormone treatments ahead. When I look at the pictures, even *I* can tell something was terribly wrong with righty. So, off we go into the hormone desert (at least my skin will probably clear up).

More when I'm up to to it.

I've just been busy busy busy.

Lessee, I'm having surgery with a specialist in Atlanta the last week of the month. I'm rather hopeful it will solve my never ending girl problems.

Emma hurt herself and ended up having surgery on her leg and being confined for 6 weeks. I just let her out Tuesday and I don't think I've ever seen such a happy horse! webber0075 is taking riding lessons and I'm going to try to find him a horse in April.

The goats and cats are all silly and amusing. Great entertainment value.

I've been taking some writing workshops in the hopes of producing some new stories, so far I have about 2/3 of a story, but the talent is still there so I'll keep working away at it.

webber0075 is drunk with power at work, but at home I still think of him as "cabana boy".

Work has been slightly insane, but I think after May it will calm down for a few months. My boss is busy building her empire, so at least it means there should be more people around to help with the workload.

I'm in love with Pink - by all means find the video "Stupid Girl" and watch it (repeat as desired). Also I caught an episode of the US version of The Office and it was great, I'll be watching them all. I'm impressed they translated it so well from the UK version (which is also painfully good). Finally, I recommend you find and download "The IT Crowd", another UK show that I recently discovered (I got it from filecloud.com, you may need to download a viewer,I used one called VLC).

Hoping to have a good vacation later in the year (finances allowing) - somewhere very tropical is my goal.

And to keep up with my journal *sheepish grin*

Poll #593248 What to see in Las Vegas next week
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

What to see...

Why?

Other suggestions?

You *must* read this post.

Trust me.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/naamah_darling/66235.html

Alan Rickman is hot.


That is all.

1. National Show Caves (dan yr ogof) - Just terrific in a kind of 1950 theme park way. First you go through an extensive cave system that took maybe half an hour. Along the way your journey is narrated by "Jeff and Tommy" the gents who discovered the caves in 1912. The poor acting makes it a real hoot. Then you come out and go to a really large cavern that is quite impressive except that at the front someone has made a diorama of "primitive people" doing some kind of skull oriented ritual (this is related to a very skull oriented display on the hills between the caves). Veeerrrry spooky.

The best bit was the Dinosaur Park, where there are about 70 or so life-sizeish plastic dinosaurs on display. They even had one with it's digestive track on the outside so you could, you know, envision how it eats. Huw thought my obsession with the dinosaurs was silly, but really - where can you go to see that many plastic dinosaurs in a realistic setting? Hmmm?

They also have a small farm you can tour with some of the fattest most lethargic critters you can find. The best bit was that they have a pen of exotic prairie dogs (Plague of the West!) on display.

2. Wedding - very nice and it accomplished the state goal of marrying Pete and Nerys. Very like an American wedding. It was preceded by a bachelor party the night before in which many many interesting things were learned, to whit: don't mistake the hotel room door for the bathroom door late at night when you are staying alone, drunk, naked, and have to pee. (not us, ahem).

3. Amazingly, festivals in small Welsh towns are almost exactly the same as folk festivals here (without the funnel cakes). They even have the same tat for sale. Somewhere there is a company churning out boxes of "festival crap" for sale around the world.

4. Swansea now has a strip mall. It is only a matter of time before all of Wales will be covered in Walmarts.

5. A wildly handsome Welsh gent sitting next to me in the back seat suggested the proximity was slightly saucy and a bit of a treat *swoon*

6. We actually found a good restaurant. This means I'll get at least one solid meal every time we go to Wales. Maybe there is a god.

7. I accepted all tea offered, Huw on the other hand tried twice to refuse - he was however largely ignored and eventually drank his tea like a good boy. Amazingly two different people noticed small things about our tea last time we were in Wales and then went to some trouble to make sure our tea was just how we like it. It is amazing to me that someone would remember a small detail like this for two years ( about someone they don't know very well ) and in both cases they went to the trouble of actually *buying* something they thought would be appropriate. I can barely remember what I like, let alone what anyone else likes. Amazing level of hospitality.

8. Pasta should never be combined with stilton. Just saying.

9. Also, the word "salad" should imply lettuce. At least a little.

10. Ladies of ample proportions, of semi-advanced years, or in the later stages of pregnancy should seriously consider not wearing 1) midriff shirts 2) shirts so low cut they don't join until the waistband or 3)skirts that end at the crotch. When people stare at you, it isn't in admiration. Trust me.

I just don't know what to wear.

We are going to Wales next week to attend a wedding and my husband is the best man. I don't think there is a significant difference in dress or formality as compared to the U.S.. My problem is that on the one hand an afternoon wedding in August points to a light colored nice dress, but not too formal. On the other hand my husband will be dressed very formally since he is a member of the bridal party.

Help me. Please.

This was among the results when searching for sleep disorders on medline....