{Out of the Blue}

Sometimes

Out of the blue

My husband

Will think of me

And bring me

A beautiful

White Rose

From

Someone else's

Wedding.

I

Love it

Just

The same.

Karma?

I busted my pinkie toe last night. I caught it on the coffee table while running around the living room. It took a good 15 minutes to catch my breath. I've got to say, I've learned a few lessons since then.

Karma Lesson # 1: I immediately heard the echos of my parents childhood warnings of why I shouldn't run in the house. It turns out that Mom was right.

Karma Lesson #2: What goes around, comes around. For all the little toes I've stepped on in the past I now have a painful reminder of my own.

Karma Lesson #3: Pinkie toenails are a little over-rated. Or at least they are for the moment. The impact of the crash sheared my clean off. What you see here is one pinkie toe, twice the width as it used to be with the circular remnants of what will probably grow back in 2-3 months.

Ouch!

My Broken Puppy

Davey is 7 months old today. He weighs an amazing 82 pounds and is longer than my refrigerator is wide. He's now up to eating 8 cups of food a day. I've starting running again, which hasn't been that bad, and I'm even entertaining the idea of someday running in one of the 5K+1 mile (4.10 miles) events that they have in Wichita in the Spring and Fall. But that's not the reason why I started running again. I started to run as a way to run down the energy-meter on my puppy. When he started using our living room daily as an obstacle course for his "Zoomies" (or what we used to call them as kids- Rampages), I realized that the 1.3 mile walk that we were taking everyday just wasn't enough. It's helped tremendously! I'm still finding it a challenge to get him to behave when another dog or human comes around and I'm holding out hope that this stage won't last very long. On the other hand, I really love how curious he is. Everything fascinates him. Like the electric can-opener, and the bath tub water spout, and the taste of UFO's (Unidentifiable Field Objects). He has developed an incredible smell and taste for random articles of junk (and Goose poop) in the back field and thinks nothing of devouring it quickly only to puke it back up 2 days later. Have no fear! I don't take pictures of that.

But, I kind of broke my puppy the other day. We were walking back home after a long walk when he started to slowly limp. As we got closer to the house the limp got worse. When we got in the house he immediately laid down. He wasn't to thrilled with me when I examined his foot and discovered that his pinkie toe was really swollen and the toenail was cracked from the top almost to the bottom. It's the white streak on the black toenail.

I'm not sure if I stepped on it when we were walking or if he did it on something out in the field. I felt horrible. He was a good sport about letting me play doggy nurse when I propped up his leg on a rolled up blanket and fed him ice cubes. He slept like this for a good 2 hours.

Have no fear! He was back to his normal self today as demonstrated by the picture below. He likes to walk around the house with a long strip of an old fleece blanket hanging from his mouth. He'll chew on it, toss it around, lick it, and happily place it soaking-slobbering wet on your lap when he's all done. For all the "Eeeeewwww" moments that I have with him, he makes me laugh and give him lots of kisses everyday.

This is what it's looked like outside for the last week. The weather channel says it will look like this until Saturday.

It's one giant formless grey cloud that doesn't seem to move. Now I know what it would be like to live in a nuclear winter, minus the falling ash and the radio-active burns that would randomly appear on my body. It's dreary and dull and 7 AM feels the same as 5 PM. Plus, it's really not raining either. It's just constantly misting so everything stays damp and cold all the time. It's wonderful hot-cocoa weather and the fall color on the trees are really beautiful!

Mid-terms are almost over. I'm glad last week is over. It was probably the most difficult, most stressful 2-week stretch that I have ever had in all my college experience. I had a major research paper due for my upper-division Roman history class on Monday, a mid-term in my Science class on Tuesday, a major take-home mid-term 8 paged essay for my upper-division Asian history class due on Wednesday, along with an autobiography and another essay about my conceptual framework of teaching for the College of Education that was due on Monday, and random homework assignments for my Educational Psychology class. For two weeks I slept 4 hours a day, 2 hours from 2-4 AM and 2 hours from 2-4 PM. Did I mention that how well I did on my Asian history mid-term would determine whether or not my professor would write a letter of recommendation for me? No pressure there! Plus, I have put an immense amount of pressure on myself to get the best possible grades so that I can make the Dean's List again this semester. I have to say, at the end Wednesday's classes I just about threw-up from the amount of stress and nearly had an anxiety attack/break-down in my car. Honestly, I think the running helped most of all in the stress department. I have another mid-term tomorrow and on Monday, so the grades should be posted soon!

I hope you have all had a wonderful October so far. Any Halloween/Fall parties planned?