Someone please tell me what this means.

Hey. Remember me? I know. It's been a while.

Anyway, I have a story for you. Ready?

A weird thing about me is that I very rarely remember my dreams. I'd say, like, once every three or four months I'll wake up and remember dreaming. The rest of my life, it's just dreamless sleep.

Well, this morning I woke myself up yelling. And oh my goodness. I will tell you the dream, but please don't judge me. Just help me figure out what it means. Because I'm stumped.

My family is at my parents house. We're all hanging out and it's my sister Ellie's birthday. And also her baby Micah's birthday as well. (How this is possible, I don't know since Ellie was born on May 14 and Micah was born on May 20. Anyway.) Everyone is sitting at the table and I am over in the corner. I am wrapping Micah up in a large piece of wrapping paper. Just have him sitting in the middle of the paper and am taping up the sides over his head. I lean over him to grab a side of the wrapping paper and and I do, my mom yells, "Becky! What are you doing?! Your ...! (Editor's note: insert female body part that rhymes with hippo ... sort of)" And I am like, "Mom, relax. I have clothes on." But she is really, really mad.

Well. That set me off. I am furious. Shaking mad. Spitting mad. I can't even say anything, I am so angry. So I walk out the front door. In bare feet. In a snowstorm. I stalk up down the front walk and start down the block. (Towards the sumo house. Somehow, though, my feet weren't cold.) Suddenly I look up and there are three very large Great Danes.

They are attack Great Danes. (Um okay.) They are moving like lions, circling their prey. And they are huge. They are able to jump, like, 20 feet in the air. The only way I can think to get away from them is to climb one of the tall pine trees. (The ones on the other side of the driveway next to the Kreuger's house.) They don't have branches until, like 25 feet up, so I have to shimmy it like I am climbing a palm tree.

So the first Great Dane reaches the tree and suddenly turns into a very short person and starts climbing up after me. As his hand comes near my foot, I slam my heel into his hand and he falls. Right at this moment, my dad saunters out of the front door and sees what is going on. By then I realize the other two Great Danes have also turned into short people and have climbed the other tree next to the one I was on. One of them flings himself over to my tree above where I am holding on, hangs by his legs as if over a trapeze swing, and the other one grabs his hands in a sort of acrobat-like move.

I see that my dad had just meandered over to his convertible and is just watching what is going on. I start yelling, or trying to yell, but of course, I am hoarse, "Dad! Dad! Dad! DAD!"

And that's when I wake up.

Any ideas what the heck all this craziness means?

Babies

We know, like, a zillion people having babies. Forget H1N1 ... pregnancy is spreading, people. It's very contagious.

That being said, I saw this trailer today for a new film from Focus Features. I dare you not to smile.

P.S. I know what you all are thinking. The answer is NO. :)

My Brother Was Right ...

In all I read 3.25 of the Twilight books. You might remember my post after the first one.

My brother saw me reading it and told me it was a waste of time. I told him to shut up. But you know what? He was right. It was a serious waste of my life.

So when I saw this video on his Facebook page, I had to post it. It's funny. And it shows you just how awful the story actually is. It's so bad, I'm embarrassed that I ever liked it.

Oh, Christmas Tree

I know I'm not supposed to start out a post by apologizing for not writing. Besides, that's so overdone. Instead, I'm going to just make a list of things I've done since I last wrote. (This list is not comprehensive. In case you were wondering.)

• Went to Minnesota
• Changed Teams at Work
• Cut a Christmas Tree
• Sat in Front of the Fire
• Made a Wreath
• Slept
• Read Jane Eyre
• Watched The Biggest Loser Finale

Last weekend we went to cut our Christmas tree. Thankfully, the weather gave us a break because both the day before and the day after we went were bitterly cold with temperatures in the single digits. Friday, however, was in the 40's.

So with the sun shining, we set off to Woodland Park. You see, unlike some people (ahem ... New York) when we cut our tree, we actually go out into the wild and go on a tree hunt. In the real forest.

Anyway.

Upon entering the designated tree-cutting area, we parked, spread out and within 15 minutes, we found it.


Chris and Gabe did the manly work of cutting it down. It took about 7.5 seconds.

Then Gabe hoisted the freshly cut tree ...

... and proceeded to carry it back to the car.

By himself.

Then we all posed with the tree like we helped carry it.

Here it is packed up for the journey home.

And then it's time for the portrait session. The boys ...

... and the girls.

A tree that looks tiny in the forest looks a lot bigger when you domesticate it.


Last thing is the star on top and ...

TADAAA!

P.S. I'd like to apologize for the poor quality of these photos. I've been playing with the manual settings on my camera and I forgot to change them. I promise to improve!

Covered in Rain

In the absence of time to write, I'm posting my favorite live version of my favorite song by my favorite singer.

Right about 6:00 he kicks it into high gear. Oh my word.

Beware of the Grass Awn

Well, if you follow either Chris or me on Facebook, you know we've been through quite the saga with Havana. I'm happy to say, after 4 surgeries and over $1,000 in vet bills, it's finally over.

[Warning: This is long. If you're only interested in the Cliff Notes version or photos, scroll to the end. Also be prepared ... the second picture is pretty nasty.]

It all started back in August. We noticed she had some swelling on her side, by her back leg. We were a little worried and took her to the vet. He checked it out and thought it was likely some lymphatic fluid buildup. He put her on antibiotics and told us to monitor it. The antibiotics seemed to work, the swelling went away, and we thought it was over.

Then, a week or so after the antibiotics ran out, we noticed that the swelling returned. Some days it seemed to be getting better, and other days it seemed worse. Havana was acting normal and eating and didn't seem to be in any pain, so we figured it wasn't anything serious.

In early October, we flew off to Phoenix for a wedding. My parents were watching Havana. Early Sunday morning, my mom called us and told us that they needed to take her to the emergency vet because she looked like she'd been shot. There was what looked like a puncture wound on her side. Back by her leg. (It was actually an abscess that had burst.)

Surgery #1
When we took her to the vet on Monday morning, they told us what it was - a grass awn. How we've never heard of this before, I have no idea. Apparently, they're very common and found all over the country. And now we know they are also very expensive. Anyway, they opened Havana up, found a "drainage track" which confirmed their suspicions, took out a bunch of small pieces of grass and sewed her back up.

A couple weeks later, we went in and had the sutures taken out. It seemed she was finally healing. Everything looked good until two mornings later. We noticed that she was paying particular attention to the area and to our horror we saw that the incision had opened back up. It was red and swollen again.

Surgery #2
So we took her back into the vet. They told us they had to go back in there. We left her for her second surgery and when we picked her up that night, we started the whole recovery process again. She seemed to be okay. But then we noticed that she was again swelling up at the top end of the incision. The vet had told us there may be a small amount of swelling at the bottoms as stuff drained, but it shouldn't have been at the top.

Back to the vet we went. To make a long story a tiny bit shorter, they had chosen to go the more conservative, less aggressive route with the second surgery because everything had looked so good. But when she got swollen up again, they realized they made the wrong decision and should have been more aggressive with their surgery.

Surgery #3
For the third time, poor Havana went under the knife. This time, the incision they made was twice as long and they took out some of the infected tissue. They sewed her up and we were very cautious with her. We made her wear the Cone of Shame at all times. We limited her activity to going outside to go to the bathroom and going downstairs to sleep. We didn't want to do anything to mess this one up. We were hoping this was it. When we took her in to have her sutures removed, she looked fantastic. The vet was very happy. And so were we.

Ten days later, we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw swelling. Again. We were totally discouraged and at a complete loss because it seemed we were in a never-ending cycle. How long would this go on? If she went under the knife again, how would we know it wouldn't just come back? We took her back to the vet knowing what we he would tell us. Because it was the fourth time and we felt like we were getting nowhere, we decided to get another opinion. (Her side, by the way, was getting worse by the hour, it seemed. The swollen area was getting bigger and it was obviously very painful.)

Surgery #4
The new vet confirmed what the other vet had told us. She needed another surgery. So we had no choice. We left Havana with the small hope that this vet would be able to do what the other one hadn't - find the cause of the swelling. Less than an hour later, the second vet called and (FINALLY) said she had some very good news. She had found the biggest grass awn she had ever seen in her life. And she's been doing veterinary medicine for a long time.

Here's what she pulled out of poor Havana ...

THAT little thing - a piece of grass - is what was responsible for months of stress and worry for us, pain and swelling for Havana, four surgeries and over $1,000 in vet bills.

Because of the amount of infection, they had to leave an open drainage tube from her wound for a few days.
So. There you have it. Our latest dog drama. I have some more thoughts to share, but I'll save those for another time because this is already way too long.

If you're still reading this, thanks for persevering! I'm willing to bet you're probably related to us.

Stop This Train

I have a post on Compassion's blog today and I'm pretty sure this is my favorite one yet. It's my heart, packaged in some words and a few photos.

I know I'm biased, but still. I recommend you read it. :)

My husband, a.k.a. Blog Editor Extraordinaire, exercised his editing powers and sadly John Mayer got the ax.

However, this is my blog, so here is the ending I originally wrote which is the perfect summation of my feelings ...

This makes me proud and sad and happy all at the same time. I truly feel like parent whose child is growing up too fast.

Someone tell me, how do I stop this train?