Look what I noticed this morning in my front yard! The maples have popped!

Such a welcome sight! And temperatures in the high 60’s today!

Now the next welcome sight I hope to see today is my name not on the list of reporting jurors for tomorrow!

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Addendum this afternoon: YES!!!!!!

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Superior Court of New Jersey/Passaic Vicinage

Jury Reporting Information

For Petit Jurors On

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012

JURORS DO NOT NEED TO REPORT FOR JURY DUTY ON

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012

YOUR SERVICE IS COMPLETE FOR 3 YEARS.

Do you see my name listed here?

Superior Court of New Jersey/Passaic Vicinage

Jury Reporting Information

For Petit Jurors On

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012

THE FOLLOWING JURORS MUST REPORT TO THE JURY ASSEMBLY ROOM ON

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012 BY 9:30 A.M.

William Mitchener, Gloria J Snyder, Antonio Maciel, Gina Castro, Beatrice Jarrett, Cynthia Tassitano, Denise Rodriguez, John N. Bikoff, Michelle Ganguly, Kishor Rana, Laura A. Viade, Ceyhan Elipenahli, Clara Pena, Susan Bush, Javier Delrio, Kevin P. Meade, Darlene Pugliese, Andrew Bacsik, Rosalie Fisher, Evan OConnor, Katherine Bellorin, Susan Clair, Charles Jenkins, Vickie Gonzalez, Ellen Lee, Maribella Velez, Nexhmije Bedeni, Zoraida Lopez, Maryan Firrincili

ALL OTHER JURORS MUST CHECK THIS WEBSITE AGAIN ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012 AFTER 6:00 PM

?????????

No! I don’t have to report tomorrow! Update to come on how the day went.

Neighborly crocus!

I struggled with what to call this entry. It’s a mishmash of stuff really. I’m sure you are wondering how it all goes together. Truth is; it doesn’t!

Alex continues to improve daily. Tomorrow I don’t think I am even going to give him the same amount of pain medications.  Tonight I will start weaning him off and within a few days he will no longer need them. I don’t think he needs them now but I don’t want to stop him, shall we say, cold turkey.

I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to report to jury duty!*** Blech. I’ve never had to do this before and I am not looking forward to. Especially since I have to drive down to Paterson (not a pleasant place) to do it. I will no doubt spend the day in the selection room with a bunch of other potential jurors waiting around. I hope they see something in me that they don’t want in a juror and sent me packing. I am taking my iPad and a good book.

I am doubly not happy as the weather is truly glorious and will continue so during this week. Not a week I want to spend inside a stuffy courthouse!

Not in my yard but neighbor Luke’s. I love the striping.

My guest room do-over is now on hold until I know about this jury thing. Last week it was Alex; this week jury duty. Excuses, excuses. But really, I can’t move forward unless I am home. Very frustrating but I’m sure it will all sort itself out.

If you live in the U.S. and have been watching the news lately, you are familiar with the term “pink slime.” It’s a by-product of beef that has had the fat spun down out of it and ammonia added in to the whole (rather) digesting mix. This process is widely used (who knew?) in ground beef aka hamburger.

Now, I have to admit that one of my favorite meals is a really good hamburger. I might have to rethink that. When we make our trips back to Colorado/Wyoming for our cabin trips we are always struck by just how good the hamburger we buy at the grocery tastes. Like real beef.

With that in mind we set out to grind our own chuck yesterday. We bought a chuck roast at the Market Basket in Franklin Lakes (stomping grounds of the Real Housewives of New Jersey), unearthed the meat grinder and ground our own “hamburger.”

In the second photo please notice the dog (not in focus) in the background. You can just make out the blaze. It’s Alex.

The whole grinding process got attention. (Bella in front; Alex in back)

No pink slime here — guaranteed! The hamburgers were delicious! None of my photos came out and I think that was because I was so excited to eat it that I didn’t have the patience to get the shot right. You’ll just have to imagine in your mind’s eye how wonderful it looked and how good it tasted.

If you don’t hear from me for a few days you’ll know I’m being held captive at the Passaic County Courthouse!

***Actually as I am typing this entry I don’t know for certain that I will in fact have to report to Jury Duty tomorrow, but since my Juror number is 0004 I am guessing they won’t cut it off at Juror 0003. It’s a given I will have to show up.

My amaryllis (or is that amarylli?) are outdoing themselves. The new one I just bought is on its second huge bloom.

And now the oldest one I have (given to me in 2008) is blooming as well and has another flower stalk coming up from the base!

The other one I have had since 2009 also has a flower stalk coming. I had given up on both of the older ones, thinking that they didn’t have it in them anymore. But they do.

And so does Alex. He has bounced back from Terrible Tuesday in ways that make my heart glad. This morning as I came downstairs and took the baby gate down from the stairs he whipped past me before I even knew what was happening and ran up the stairs and jumped up on the bed with Rick. Good grief. He really shouldn’t be jumping on things just yet. But, this is his morning routine and he decided not to be swayed from it.

He also picked up a toy and carried it around for the first time since his surgery.

We are cutting back on his Tramadol over the weekend to see how he handles that. Frankly, I’m not sure he needs it anymore but I don’t want to stop too soon. It’s only been a week after all.

We are getting ready to do some grocery shopping and I don’t think he’s going to let us leave the house without him. We’ll gently lift him in the truck and back out again, but I think he’s ready for a ride.

How wonderful is that?

Yesterday was a rough day. I’m not going to lie. Alex could barely get up, let alone go outside to take care of business. I thought to myself oh my god, I put this poor dog through surgery and now I’m going to lose him just like that. It was that bad. He was miserable. He could barely walk once we got him up and he limped and could barely move. When he came in he was shivering. I’m still not sure if it was shivering as a pain response or the fact that he drank a lot of cold water right after he came back in. He was just laying there shivering and would not even make eye contact with me. The shivering stopped after my covering him up and rubbing his body to warm him up, but he did not, and would not, get up. I knew he was not crashing and in need of immediate care because his temperature was way down from what it had been and his color was good with nice pink gums.

I had a call in to Oradell Animal Hospital (the emergency vet) but we still had not heard anything by around noon. Not getting any response there, I called my local vet just so I could be assured that he was indeed stable albeit miserable and didn’t need to be seen. My vet concurred that Alex was in no immediate danger but probably needed more pain meds and most likely an NSAID like Rimydal. He didn’t understand why they would not send him home with it. He was going to try and call them since it was not really his place to either up his pain med or prescribe another drug in case they had a reason they did not want to.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. In the meantime my dog is in pain and feeling like crap. I felt awful too. I called Oradell again and complained after waiting on hold for ten minutes in a queue of calls. I didn’t hear from my local vet either but I imagined he had the same trouble getting through to them that I did. Plus, he sounded like he had a pretty full day of his normal appointments.

Alex started to come around to feeling a bit better after we had to hand feed him while he was laying down for his evening meal. How sad is that for a big dog to not be able to even lift his head to eat? Rick sat on the floor and hand fed him piece by piece of the round steak I had cooked up for him. Pretty sad. But he was eating and drinking (I had to bring the water bowl to him) which was a good sign.

Finally around 6:00 the doctor from Oradell finally called. She thought his pain might be coming from having been manipulated under anesthesia, pulling on his legs to position him, etc. It made sense since I was seeing it mostly on his front legs. She did apologize but it didn’t sit well with me. She said she hadn’t realized I was trying to get in touch with her, so what good is their system I ask you? At one point the person who answered the phone and I let loose on about it all said that after all if I was concerned my dog was not well I should bring him in. Right. Bring in my dog that is not ambulatory at this point to sit in your office for how many hours before he could be seen? Don’t think so! The vet told me his pain dosage was the absolute minimum for a dog his size, so I should increase the dosage. Duh! Also that if he was not improved to call back the next day and let her know so she could fax over a prescription for an NSAID to my local vet. I pretty snarkily asked her how I should go about doing that in a way that was better than the way I tried to contact her today?

I called my vet’s office after I had talked to her and let them know that Dr. Louer didn’t need to call me and gave them the low-down on what was going on. About a half hour later Dr. Louer called anyway, as I kind of thought he would. He talked mostly to Rick. This was around 6:30 p.m. He said he had tried to contact them but he couldn’t hold for ten minutes until they answered his call. He was pretty disgusted. Around 8:00 p.m. the phone rang again with Dr. Louer on the other end. He apparently had called and (in my mind) reamed the other vet out for not getting back with us and for not prescribing what he thought were the correct meds in the first place. She countered with saying that Alex was doing so well when they released him that they didn’t think he needed the additional meds. I told him that she wanted me to call back the following day regarding how he was doing and if he did indeed need the Rimadyl, and Dr. Louer, bless his heart, just said he was writing me a prescription for Rimadyl that I could pick up in the morning. He had obviously had enough of the other vet!

We upped his pain med overnight and Alex greeted us with wagging tail and got up much better than he had the previous day. His continued improvement over today has made my heart glad. He moves around from room to room, goes outside for business without incident (still a little ouchy) and is so much better. This afternoon when I went outside to get the mail he got up and was looking out the window barking at me! Hurray! He also was sitting and waiting to be fed and ate out of his bowl on the stand without coaxing. After that we had a walk on the leash into the backyard with me holding him back from breaking into a trot!

Go Alex!

I feel so much better today than I did with all the stress yesterday. And, so does poor Alex!

We are looking forward to Daylight Savings Time starting on Monday and drives in Mia (whose insurance we just turned back on after the winter). And, hopefully a good outcome of the biopsies. Fingers and paws crossed.

Thank you all so much for caring. Alex thanks you too!