Yesterday I cleaned out our junk-laden garage. Don’t get me wrong. There’s still plenty of junk in there, but I took out the obvious never-going-to-need-it-again garbage like broken lamps and torn dog beds. Normally I would need weeks to build up enough motivation to tackle such a project, but this was totally spur of the moment. Why, you ask? Because of an uninvited guest(s).

See, when we remodeled our kitchen two years ago, I bagged up some food that I planned to donate. As usual, I procrastinated about dropping it off, and it ended up getting shoved into the garage with other kitchen paraphernalia to get it out of the way. Turns out, that food did get eaten after all. Yesterday after I dropped Falco off at preschool, I went into the garage to find an air pump for Matt’s birthday balloons and instead found empty, gnawed boxes of pasta and oatmeal and popcorn and the like. I started moving things, finding more rodent evidence, moving more things, until I had cleared out almost everything.

I actually saw the mouse three times during the cleaning process. (Let’s just say it’s one mouse and not a colony like in Ratatouille. Maybe two mice, a childless couple, would be OK.) I gave several warnings letting know the vagrant know that he was not welcome and should find a new home before the poison showed up. I got rid of every scrap of food and bedding and any other thing that would make the place hospitable for the little bugger, convinced that he would leave once the free food had run out.

This afternoon, Falco is getting ready for his nap and starts looking out his bedroom window into the garage window, saying he saw something. He goes on to say that he saw a mouse walking around. Then I remembered that I left the one remaining food source, grass seed, on top of the shelf under the window. After Falco is tucked in I go out to the garage, clap my hands to let Squeaky know I’m there, and the mouse walks out from under the grass seed and looks at me before running away! I leave to throw away the bags of seed, come back in to check for anything else I forgot, and when I glance over that little son of a gun is just sitting there looking at me. I tell him that I can see him and he gets out of sight, but not in much of a hurry.

He’s probably so fat from all the Pasta Roni that he can’t run. Or maybe he thinks we’re intentionally feeding him and he’s our pet. I’m not sure what to do at this point. Now that I’ve looked him in the eyes twice, I feel bad to try to kill him. I guess I could use a live trap and go release him miles from here, or I can just hope he leaves on his own now that all the food is gone. I don’t even want the pets I have; I certainly don’t need stray mice adopting me.

The good news is, I found the air pump.

It’s that time again. Time for a huge catchup post because I’ve fallen behind. This time I’m even more behind than usual because something went horribly wrong with my Wordpress. I couldn’t log into my own blog, but thankfully Matt straightened it out. Now I can fill you in on the last couple months.

1. We thought we didn’t get into any preschools because we only applied to two and we were waitlisted at both. We thought we’d hang around at Slippery Fish for another year, but then we got a call from Playmates at the end of May with the good news that a 3-day morning spot opened up for Falco. We were thrilled to accept, and Falco will start there at the end of August. It’s a co-op, so I’ll work one morning and he’ll be there without me two mornings each week.

2. At the beginning of June, Falco fell down a step at school and broke his clavicle! It was very sad, and he had a rough couple days. He didn’t need a sling or anything, so we just had to wait for it to heal. He bounced back incredibly quickly. Within a week he was only guarding it a little, and after three weeks he seemed like nothing ever happened.

3. A few days after Falco’s injury, I got rear ended again, smashing the rear window again. The dude who hit me wanted to pay for it on his own, and I went to a body shop where he knew the owner. The guy ended up getting a black door that he could swap out so it was a cheap fix, which was fine with me. However, now the back door doesn’t quite match, it isn’t water tight (which I need to get fixed), and the exhaust makes a weird noise. It just passed 100,000 miles and is looking a little worse for wear, so I’m hoping to trade up for a Prius soon anyway.

4. We went to Mississippi last week, and Falco did great. The flights were 1,000 times better than last time, and he slept well and was cute and fun. We stayed in a fancy pants condo on the beach with a gorgeous pool, and that made for a nice getaway. It was really nice to see my family, and I was especially glad Falco got to see his great grandma, Ma-Ma Hazel, who is about to be 97!

5. The pets are all fine. Rosco is back on meds for his only eye, and he has regained some vision. Adelaide is stable on her current meds and pretty much acts like a civilized pet again, though I don’t really trust her alone in the house. Miu is still around and unremarkable.

I think that’s all the exciting news I have to share, and people probably stopped reading a couple paragraphs ago anyway. Stay tuned for photos TOMORROW!

1. Scan and shred our endless supply of random paperwork instead of keeping stacks to be filed someday.
2. Keep our house guest-ready all the time.
3. Write at least one blog post every week.
4. Make coffee at home more instead of paying $3-4 per day on mochas.

I’m sure there are many more ways I could improve myself, but this is it thus far.

At her recheck yesterday, Adelaide is up about seven pounds, and an overweight whippet is just so wrong. She used to be such a refined, delicate animal, and now she’s a desperate scavenger. The vet told us we could stop the phenobarbital as of yesterday, so here’s hoping that her appetite gets back to normal.

On the Falco front, so far two is the cutest age ever. He is talking a lot (constantly) and is very busy and fun. Right now he’s super snotty with probably his fifth cold so far this winter, but he is enjoying all the holiday decorations all the same. I’ll post Thanksgiving and birthday photos and stories as soon as I can tear myself away from Fable 2. Who can blog about their kid when there’s polygamy and arena battles to be done?

Falco and I just walked in the cold wind to Safeway to buy ingredients for white chili. I picked this soup for dinner because I had a loaf of delicious potato and rosemary bread and wanted something to eat with it. In a moment of weakness, I decided to leave Adelaide out of her crate since we’d only be gone about 20 minutes. I made sure (I thought) to put all food out of her reach…

Upon arrival home, I found said loaf of bread half eaten in her crate. She had to climb pretty damn high to get it off the kitchen counter. I threw her outside in the cold, got rid of the remaining bread, and threw her in her crate. I am so tired of her ravenous appetite and horrible behavior, but I don’t know what to do about it. She has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, where I will hopefully be told we can stop one of her seizure medications, which causes increased appetite. While I hope that will help, she will still be on prednisone and has developed bad habits that probably won’t be easy to get rid of.

I’m going to go try to swallow my rage and let Adelaide out of her crate. Maybe.

So as to be on top of things, I made our Thanksgiving pies tonight, one pumpkin and one key lime. I was in a bit of a hurry, but I still took the time to cut out an adorable pastry turkey wearing a pilgrim hat for the top of the pumpkin pie. The filling seemed thicker than usual, but whatever. Pies are baked and ready to cool. Done and done. Then I’m putting away the two cans of evaporated milk I bought, one for the pie and one for the mac and cheese. Wait a minute. Why are there still two?

Crikey. I made the stupid pie, probably the simplest recipe ever, with no evaporated milk. I tasted it to be sure, and it does in fact taste bad. So, my first ever pie with cutout just went into the trash, and I have to make another one in the morning. Falco wakes up before dawn, so I should be awake in plenty of time to bake and cool it in time to eat it by 1:00 or so. If not, the key lime pie seems to be in order.

I’m a total goof sometimes.

OK, so maybe I overreacted a tad with my last post assuming that Adelaide’s days were numbered. I freaked out when her condition started deteriorating again, but after increasing her steroids again, she is doing well. She is back to having a ridiculous appetite, but we’ll taper her again in a couple weeks. Her disease is strange and variable, so we never know what to expect, but she seems out of the woods again for now.

For those of you who don’t know the story, Matt was hit by a car while riding his bike to the train station on 9/30. The driver didn’t see him and made a quick right turn, taking my poor husband out in the process. I got a very scary call on my way to Falco’s school from a stranger calling from Matt’s cell phone. He said that Matt was in an accident and asked him to call me to let me know. The stranger, Tom, said that he was OK but confused, and an ambulance was on the way. Matt does not remember Tom or asking him to call me, but I’m so glad he did. I dropped Falco at school and met Matt at the emergency room. His poor head was banged up, but he was awake and oriented.

Turns out he was scraped and bruised all over and had facial fractures. He was wearing his helmet, which definitely protected him from worse head trauma, but his poor face still hit the asphalt. He needed a laceration repair on his eyebrow and ultimately surgery to correct his fracture. There are many stories about his time in the ER and rechecks and day of surgery that are outdated and unpleasant, so suffice it to say that he is recovering and doing well, all things considering.

You may remember that we have a child, Falco, who I used to tell you about, post cute photos of, etc. I will be sure to write my next post soon about how hilarious, adorable, and brilliant he is. Stay tuned.

Matt came home yesterday evening after his surgery, and he is doing well. I will get to whole the story of his accident soon, though it’s pretty old news by now. The good news is his injuries were fixable, and he is on the mend. He isn’t feeling great and still has to heal from his surgery, but hopefully the worst is behind him.

As if this wasn’t enough, I took Adelaide to the vet on Monday because she seemed a little off to me. She wasn’t exactly off balance or anything I could put my finger on, but she was acting sluggish and not herself. She passed her neurological tests, and the vets said they couldn’t see any abnormalities. She still didn’t seem quite right to me, but I assumed I was just being paranoid. Unfortunately, after another day of seeming quiet and lethargic, she had a seizure tonight. We have been tapering her meds, so it seems that her symptoms are returning at this lower dose of steroids and seizure drugs. So, it’s back to the doctor with her to see where to go from here.

We knew her disease had a grave prognosis, but her recovery was so dramatic that I was starting to think it was all a mistake and she was cured. I guess that’s what steroids can do for you. She can’t stay on high doses of steroids forever though because they are too hard on her body, so it’s unclear what the plan will be from here. At least we were expecting this and knew she may not have much time left. She has had a pretty good couple of months at home with us, and we won’t let her condition become nearly as bad as it did when this all started. I don’t mean to be too morbid, but realistically, we likely have some sad times and tough decisions ahead.

I have been so busy living my life the past couple weeks that I haven’t had time to write about it, but I’m going to catch you up. Adelaide has already been home for three weeks now, and she is doing pretty well. She has some side effects from the steroids and seizure meds, but she is mostly herself. She started on a chemo drug called Ara-C that has been shown in clinical studies to significantly improve the lifespan of GME patients, so hopefully that will be successful. It is injectable, so I have to give her shots at home twice a day, four days per month. Now that this treatment has started, we will start to taper her other meds next week. I’m nervous about that because there is a risk of her getting worse again, but we’ll just have to see how it goes.

In other news, we took Falco to Seattle over Labor Day weekend to go to PAX. The only other time we have travelled with him was our trip to Mississippi when he was eight months old, so we were nervous, especially about the flights. Our worries were not completely unfounded, as you might expect, since we were going to be trapped on a plane with a very active 21-month-old. We got through it, but not without a lot of squirming and whining and seat kicking and crying about ear pain and squealing every time the PA system turned on, etc. We couldn’t really engage him in any activity; he wouldn’t sleep; and on the way home he got so frustrated that he started hitting us. We couldn’t do anything about it for fear of causing a meltdown, so we had to just take his bad behavior and all be miserable.

The good news is, when we were actually in Seattle, he did great. He slept well in the Pack and Play the hotel provided, and he was in a pretty good mood and excited to see new things. We couldn’t really do much of PAX because it was crowded and filled with a lot of stuff he wasn’t allowed to touch, so we spent a lot of time in the room. Overall, with the tortuous air travel, such a quick stay, and missing most of the conference, I don’t know that it was worth the trouble and expense. It was fun to go be with a bunch of fellow nerds for the weekend, but we were all happy to get home.

I don’t know when I have felt as lucky and happy as I did this evening. Matt and I took Falco to a cafe and then to Golden Gate playground before dinner, and we all had a lot of fun (especially Falco, who jumped in puddles and sand and got filthy). Adelaide is doing great; no one would know that she was in critical condition just two days ago. I am immensely happy to have my dog back, my kid is beyond adorable, and I have a fabulous husband. Today I felt like I couldn’t ask for more.

(OK, I could have asked Falco for a little less whining, but I think he is a really good kid by toddler standards.)