The other day this little sunflower bloomed in the front yard where I toss bird seed for the birds. Somehow this little sunflower seed managed to escape being eaten and beat the odds by germinating and finally blooming without anyone's help. Pretty amazing.

Well, you know the saying: what goes up, must come down. I'm sorry to say that Alex has relapsed a bit and is no longer in full remission from his lymphoma. One of his lymph nodes has become enlarged again, which isn't horrible considering the other nine nodes are normal. Still, it tells us that the protocol of drugs that he's been getting are not doing the job. So on his Tuesday vet visit we switched gears and will now go down a different path, hoping that we can get him back into remission. At this point, we don't see Alex becoming completely free of his disease, but more like keeping the monster at bay as long as possible with as much quality of life as possible. The original protocol promised the best outcome; this second tier of the protocol not as much.

It's disheartening, I've got to say. But I am trying not to let it get me down. The up side is if this treatment works it only requires one pill every three to four weeks. Since this drug causes anemia at times and can also affect the liver we have to do blood work before each treatment. Right now it's too soon to tell if it's having any effect or not—his lump feels the same to me as it did a couple of days ago. But, he's pretty happy and bringing me "pink bunny," asking to go for rides in the truck and eating pretty well right now. 

We are taking it day by day and doling out lots of love. What else can you do?

I am thinking that I am glad we cancelled our trip to Mexico. The owner of the house that we were going to rent has granted us a grace period in that if we rent the house within six months we can apply the deposit we already paid to the new lease. Same with our airfare, so we still have the chance to go without losing anything. March, maybe?

I have also been giving some thought to this blog. I've been blogging now for seven years and it may be coming to the end of its useful life. I've lost a lot of readers along the way and other than the handful of you that I know read it, I'm not sure it's worth it. I have to think on this some more, but it's not the first time the thought of closing the blog down has come into my head. 

Photo: Up and down awnings in Cartagena.

Joining in with Kathy's Song-ography today and only one thing and one photo came to my mind. Instead of trying to do an interpretation of the lyrics, I knew I wanted to dedicated this entry to my dog Alex.

This photo was taken back in 2003 when Alex was still a puppy. It almost got him on the cover of a calendar (he made January). Today that same puppy is about to turn 11 years old in October and is currently in remission from lymphoma. Keep on running Alex!

We are having September-type weather in August. It's weird. The nights are so cool that I find myself closing windows before I go to bed, otherwise the house is freezing when I get up. The days are beautiful: sunny, low humidity, and comfortably in the 70's. Although it feels great to not have the air conditioning on, it is just way too early for this. We are still supposed to be enjoying the pool folks! These nights in the low 50's are killing the pool temperature which has now sunk to 71 degrees F.

Our pool heater installation is going slowly. The heater is in and pretty much ready to go but we are waiting on the propane people (who are due on Monday) to lay their gas lines, etc., and also the electrician to make everything work. The electrician is going on vacation and not due until two weeks from now! Ugh. Dennis (our pool man) said he can rig something up in the meantime to get the heater running. So, we might have a few weeks to enjoy our heated pool before we have to close it for the season right before we leave for Colorado. It has not been a good pool year this year. I'm bummed. But, next year—just think—we'll have the heater to start us out early. Definitely something to look forward to.

Today our friend Carolyn arrives for the weekend. We have plans to go in to the city tomorrow to Chinatown for lunch and to revisit some of the shops that were on our tour of two years ago. It should be fun! I can't wait to eat at Dim Sum GOGO again. This time I also want to make it to the big department store, Pearl River, even if we end up taking a taxi!

Totally unrelated photo: bikes in Cartagena!

I swear, every time it rains, it rains frogs. I can't figure where else they are all coming from if not the sky right along with the rain. We've gotten a lot of rain over the past two days and this morning we pulled back the solar cover on the pool to reveal more frogs. Eleven, in fact.

We decided to do as Carolyn suggested and put them in a bucket. Rick is the official frog-fisher-outer since they tend to gather in the bottom of the deep end. It's a good thing our net has a nice extension pole on it.

Bella was intrigued by the whole thing.

She kept sticking her head in the bucket. Before I knew it, she had grabbed one in her mouth and spit it out on the deck. He seemed to be okay and I just picked him up and put him back in the bucket with his buddies. I don't know if it was the movement that intrigued her or she just likes frogs. It was hard to keep her head out the bucket and I kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn't try to eat another one.

One got away as I was trying to extricate it from the net and hopped off. He'll probably be back tomorrow. Or the next time it rains.

Rick took the bucket-o-froggies and walked their little green butts down to the creek and dumped them in. If the same thing happens the next time it rains you are not going to convince me that they aren't coming from the sky.