Survivors

Happy Saturday to you!  For having had a pretty crappy week, I'm in a great mood.  That is probably because my baby girl is doing really well.  Or I put extra sugar in my coffee.  You know how I am about my sweets.

I didn't tell you, Internet, but Abby had surgery yesterday and she is doing better than I ever expected!  Todd noticed a hard wart-like bump Friday before last.  Much different than any other bump she has.  So we chose a vet and got her in right away.  One week after seeing it, we had it removed.  Actually noticed a skin tag around her eye getting really big too, and we don't want her vision impaired.  Poor girl has cataracts, she doesn't need anything else impacting her vision.  I wasn't nervous about the surgery until after lunch time, and I realized I had not physically heard "all is good".  So Todd called, then I called.  Still in surgery.  WTF?  So a little after 2pm (picking her up at 4!), we heard the all-is-clear message.  Whew.  That's our baby girl I am talking about.  The spring in Todd's step.  The sass in our house!

I giggled to myself a little when I called the vet.  "Yes, this is Abby's mom, calling to check on her"--like all the other moms I hear making calls from their desk phones.  Of course, they know I'm talking about my dog.  ;-)

See?  You can barely tell.  She looks FABULOUS!  They are testing the large mass they took off her snout, we'll see what the results are.  I'm sure it's benign and all is well.  There is a little stitch at the outer corner of her eye, and about 4 or 5 stitches on her snout:

Tullybird just went through the same thing with her baby girl, so I was confident mine would be just fine too.  I hate putting furry loved ones under anesthesia.

Speaking of Tullybird:  SHE'S COMING TO SEE ME!  I'm so excited I could pee my pants.  When I left NV, I told her "you know you are going to have to come see me, cause I'm never coming back here".  To which she replied that she realized that.  So now, she's coming to see me!  Our close bond is surviving the challenge of distance.

I'm making a list of the bead shops and cooking stores we will hit.  We must visit my friends, Ray & Becky, at  Mission Fresh Fashion (and she will love the store), and take her to meet Kevin & Suzie and girls.  We have to eat Z-man sandwiches at Oklahoma Joe's.  What else is KC... I will have to ponder this agenda.  We have 5 days in May to goof off.  Oh the joy!  Pics of Booze-N-Beads will surely be posted.

Other visitors I am super excited about--SamsMom is going to be in the area Memorial Day weekend and I will go see her tons!  Can't wait to see her family & watch her talented son play baseball.  I'm going to sneak her away from the ball field to take her on her virgin voyage to LUSH.  WAHOO!  Talk about a friendship surviving decades.  DECADES!!

Speaking of a friendship surviving decades, I believe Jus is back home (or in transit, I'm not sure) from Afghanistan and wants to come up and see me!  I remember talking to her on the phone before she deployed, and I told her my goal was to be back in the mid-west before she got back.  Viola, I'm here!  Can't wait to hear all about her adventures in person.  She's a real survivor, that one.  To just up and go into the military and go off and serve like she has.  Wow. 

I am so excited to connect with so many awesome women! 

 
Spring has sprung, and I want to share my special flower with ya'll.  This is a bulb that was planted at our house back in KC before our Great-Migration-West.  I took this puppy with me*.  It actually multiplied in NV sand, amazingly--talk about "surviving".  Any plant that made it the 4.5 years we were there was a true survivor.  When we left, I dug it up and MAILED IT TO MY MOTHER.  So it's been to Oklahoma too.  I planted it last fall.  Now it has a happy home in Missouri:

So you may be saying to yourself, "Self?  That just looks like an ordinary hyacinth.  What's so special that she'd dig it up and plant it in 3 different states?".  Well, let me tell you what this specific bulb symbolizes to me.  *This was Roscoe's flower. 

Amber was not our first golden.  We had two wonderful dogs before Amber.  Todd's first son was Roscoe.  When Roscoe passed away in February of 2003, our Uncle Frank and Aunt Judy, who we are super close to and who actually knew Roscoe, sent us a condolence blooming bulb arrangement.  It was the sweetest thing ever.  I planted those bulbs, and the lone survivor of that assortment, is this very hyacinth.

I'll tell you some day about Roscoe.  And about his mom.  But not quite yet.  I still choke up every time I think of them.  Probably always will.

Anyway, one last pic of a few true survivors.  You might have thought I was a little crazy last fall when I tried to plant a garden so late in the season.  Guess what?  I may not have gotten anything to grow much last fall.  But now?  I have volunteer RADISHES!