Robin Chartier – Page 156

cast iron stomach

Did you know that grapes are toxic to dogs? I did because my brain holds on to useless pieces of information while discarding gems like Josh’s work phone number or my street address. I am not your go-to girl if you need to get directions to my house, but dog toxicity issues? I’ve got that covered.

So grapes (and raisins) can be deadly to dogs. They can cause kidney failure and no one knows if there is a “safe” amount to eat because some dogs are fine after ingesting grapes, others keel over. There is no known pattern to the dogs that are affected: size, breed, grape color, it’s a crapshoot.

By now you can guess that Micah got into some grapes, huh? I was upstairs putting Camille down for a nap and I came back to find a bunch of grapes on the living room floor that had been picked naked. Normal people would have cursed the loss of expensive grapes (it was $7.70 for a medium size bag, ouch!), but my brain immediately pulled up the “dogs+grapes = EMERGENCY” file and my peaceful afternoon was over.

Josh and I were supposed to have a few hours to ourselves since the boys were out and the girl was asleep, but instead we had to tag team googling poison control home remedies (since of course it was the weekend) and dog watch vomit duty.

I knew from my previous hydrogen peroxide experience that all I had to do was give the dog a few teaspoons of the stuff and those grapes should come right back up. Problem solved. Except that he didn’t throw up. Dr. Google said it could take between 5 and 15 minutes, so we sat outside waiting for our prize. Other suggestions were to feed him bread along with the peroxide so it would bulk up in his stomach and give him something to regurgitate. Another site suggested jiggling his stomach so it would be mixed with his stomach acid and make him feel really nauseous. Oh, and still another said to take a syringe and give him extra water. Did it all. No joy.

The procedure calls for administering a second dose, but by now the dog was on to me so I first had to catch him. Giving a dog peroxide the first time is easy, the second time? Impossible. I was pretty sure I had gotten enough down the hatch when I read on another website (by googling “dog peroxide no vomit?”) that said the peroxide had to be fresh or it wouldn’t be foamy/bubbly enough to make him sick.

I tested our peroxide by swishing some in my mouth — hmm, not that powerful. Still nasty tasting though. Then we had to decide whether to give up or go get new peroxide. To make this horrible, painfully long story short, I’ll cut to the end: Brand new peroxide, double strength (oops!), much waiting, jiggling, bread feeding, water boarding, no throw-up, gave up, dog fine, wasted afternoon.

The end.

putting down roots

Since we’ll probably be here for two years (inshalla/God willing), the best thing I can do is make it feel like home. What makes me feel at home somewhere? Putting my hands in dirt and growing edible plants. Ever since we’ve lived in Oklahoma I have had a passion for vegetable gardening. I had a huge backyard there and devoured books on square foot gardening, raised beds, mulching and composting, trellising vining crops like cucumbers and melons, and four season gardening (extending the growing season with hot water bottles and bedsheets or cold frames).

The result of all that study was the garden of my dreams — 3 four foot wide beds that were twelve feet long. I grew long rows of baby lettuces that I would snip with scissors to have fresh salad every day, a green wire trellis covered with sugar snap peas, half a bed of purple, yellow, and green bush beans, rows of carrots, beets, swiss chard, and spinach, bushes of yellow and green squash, cucumbers and melons sprawling on an A-frame trellis (the key is to support the growing melons inside pantyhose slings), and half a bed full of corn. The other half held pumpkin plants that quickly overgrew their beds and crawled across the grass — we just mowed around them until pumpkin harvest was over.

In addition to the beds I had 8 huge tomato plants along the back fence — cherries, yellow pear, early reds, a variety called sungold that held orangey bite sized tomatoes, and sweet 100s that grew in bunches like grapes. Add in some pots of cilantro, parsley and rosemary and that covers most of it. And that was only a “temporary garden.” A few years later we pulled up our stakes (literally and figuratively) and headed down the road. I’ve never had the same sort of space to work with, but I’ve grown vegetables ever since. Whether it was a small bed that I dug alongside our house in VA (I couldn’t bring myself to actually eat anything from this garden since we’d been warned about lead, asbestos, and unknown chemicals in that housing area and I was pretty sure the ground was contaminated as well), or growing hot peppers at the edges of our lawn in 29 Palms, edible growing has been part of my life everywhere we’ve lived.

I put a few things in pots the other day (and posted a picture of it), but it wasn’t enough. I needed more dirt. Since I have a husband who is very supportive of my gardening efforts (and is the one who did all the heavy digging in the Oklahoma clay to create the original huge beds), we headed to the nursery together. Unfortunately we got sidetracked for a few minutes by a burning smell coming from the car as we pulled up.

It’s quite the man that can handle car repairs and babywearing at the same time.

(It turns out that the burning smell most likely was coming from a combination of the manure/fertilizer and burning tires in the area — but we do have an electrical issue in the car that is being worked on today).

Caleb holding my new “beds.” We bought a bunch of dirt (6 huge bags of it), a few more seeds and some flowering/vining plants and decorative ceramic pots to put them in. We barely fit it all in the car and we only had 2 kids with us.

We have this rooftop space that we want to turn into a garden/outdoor room.

Jasmine, Morning Glories, and this plant of unknown origin. The guy at the nursery didn’t speak much English so we would ask, “Flower?” And he would nod and either point at the color on something else or say the name if he knew it. This plant is supposed to have two-color flowers, but I don’t remember what colors. I’ll just have to wait and be surprised.

Carter planted sunflowers — I do veggies, he always plants sunflowers.

She kept trying to poke bean seeds into my carrot rows.

We have 2 plastic chairs right now, but eventually want to get some sort of outdoor couch

Tiny tomatoes

My beets and swiss chard have sprouted!

They are in the same family, so I won’t be able to tell which is which until they get bigger. And honestly, I’m not so sure I trust the labels on the locally produced seed bags anyway. What they called “psinish” was certainly not spinach seed — it looked more like wood shavings.

I’m betting that these are beets because of the red in the seed leaves . . . I’ll find out soon.

Micah’s not impressed with my gardening, but at least he’s not scared to go out on the roof anymore (I had to carry him up the stairs and out onto the roof yesterday, big heavy baby).

I think I might need a few more big pots . . . really. I was looking online for some more seeds and I found my favorite purple beans, a variety of faux-spinach that is supposed to do really well in the heat (real spinach likes cool, spring weather), a miniature red pepper that is supposed to be perfect for containers and a few new lettuce mixes that I haven’t tried before. So yeah, I’m out of dirt space, but I have 7 more seed packets on their way.

We’re hoping the vining plants grow up and distract from some of the pipes, A/C units and satellite dishes on the roof.

Waiting for it all to grow!

clutter

is the closest I can come to describing what it feels like inside my head these days. Friday mornings feel especially disjointed because I’m never mentally ready for church. I was telling someone this morning that it feels like I slam into “Sunday” each week. I spend the previous 5 days keeping track of kids, various pick-up times, signing off homework, games, dinners and lunches (kids do their own breakfasts of oatmeal/cereal/cereal bars), and on Thursday night (faux-Friday) I am ready to exhale and unwind. Until I realize that I don’t have that luxury because we have church in the morning and I have to corral overtired kids again.

Add to that the fact that I spend the entire time at church in the toddler class, keeping a low profile while strongly encouraging Camille to go play with the other kids, and it doesn’t exactly put me in a spiritual mood. She’s getting better though. Instead of hanging onto my leg the entire hour, she was absorbed enough that I was gradually able to ease across the room until I was sitting closer to the door than I was to her by the end of class.

My ultimate goal is to leave her in class and go to church myself, but it will probably take a few more weeks before I’ll be able to leave the room for a bathroom break. Trust me, she’s not the kind of kid that would stop crying after a few minutes. I was cracking up today because one of the teachers smiled at her and she stared her down with a suspicious frown in return. I would take her to service with us, but she squirms and hasn’t mastered the art of whispering yet, so this seems like the best solution for now.

After church today we went over to base for lunch. This photo about sums it up:

Camille climbed on Josh’s lap and ate more than half of his food (and is drinking his maple syrup), Caleb, extra tired from a sleepover, kept hanging on his neck, and Josh is wondering why we can never have a normal meal.

Tomorrow is Saturday, both real and virtual — the one day of the week where things line up with normal life back at home. Just like you, we’ll be doing yard work, running errands, and enjoying the day off. Along with decluttering our house and yard, I’m hoping the rest will help to declutter my brain as well. I need to make space for next week!

Not enough hours in the day . . .

Yes, I know I haven’t been blogging as regularly lately. I’m trying . . . really, I am. But this little monkey takes up most of my time . . . or maybe just all of my energy.

I think this was lotion — no wait, it was sunscreen. This was from a few weeks ago, but I forgot to post these photos at the time. See what I mean? The days just keep slipping away. The newest, hairy creature also takes a lot of my mental energy. Especially since he is kind of mental himself. He is sweet, gentle, and calm, BUT he has serious separation anxiety so he follows me all over the house (just shadowing me from room to room — thankfully he’s not all up in my face about it) and when I leave the house he freaks out and yelps and claws at the door to his crate.

So I end up trying to take him with me in the car when I can, or dreaming up things to keep him happy when he’s alone: we’ve tried music, TV, melatonin, calming chews, an anxiety wrap, spray cheese treats, clonapin, pig ears, dried bull penises (yes, really!) and several other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten as they have all either failed or haven’t worked enough for me to tell much of a difference. It’s worse for him than for me, of course, but it would be nice to get him to the point where he could chill out and enjoy a snack and some peace and quiet when I leave the house. He doesn’t know how good he has it — I’d love some Cheeze Whiz and a house to myself.

We were out the other night so the dog could burn off some of his extra energy and we saw this flock of chickens roosting on a neighbor’s wall. They are scrawny things that must run around in the yard all day, but roost on the front wall at night since that’s the only time I ever see them. Other neighbors have a peacock and down the street a guy has a two story aviary in his front yard with parrots and other exotic birds in it. As Josh says, “People see our dog and think we’re the crazy ones?”

I don’t think I’ve shared that Caleb started Boy Scouts. A few of his friends from school were doing it so he really, really, really wanted to do it. Since it meets at school and I have to pick Calvin up around that time anyway, it doesn’t add too much extra driving to my day. It’s probably good for him to hang out with some boys for a change anyway. We usually take the dog and hang out at the dog park for an hour while we wait. That’s where a lot of my blogging time has gone: taxi driving, juggling multiple varied schedules, and burning time so we can combine trips.

As everyone in the states prepares for Fall and Winter, I finally get to put my hands in the dirt. It’s still 100 and humid, but that’s better than 110 and dripping. Today I went to the nursery and bought some vegetable plants and seeds, potting soil and pots. I would love to have some actual ground to plant in, but I’ll work with this. So far I have tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, lettuce, spinach, beets, swiss chard, mint, cilantro, and a few other things.

And then Camille and I fell asleep for 3 hours. I only woke up because I have an alarm to remind me to pick up the boys from after school activities/basketball. Good thing, otherwise we might still be snoozing.

Wednesdays are busy because I pick up the boys and we head to base. Then we have to kill time for an hour or so while we wait for Calvin to finish basketball. He walks over to base, we meet Josh, grab dinner and head straight to Bible Study/Home Group. Our group is made up of several families — we eat, the kids have a short lesson, we sing and then the kids all go play upstairs while we study and discuss whatever is on the schedule for the night. I’m really enjoying it, but it makes for a long day when we don’t get home until after 9 and then have to race to do lunches, make sure homework is done, and get everyone to sleep.

The boys got an after school snack at Taco Bell and when they asked her for a bite, she quickly shoved everything she had left into her mouth. Then since she couldn’t get it all down at once, she pulled most of it back out, satisfied that they wouldn’t touch it with her saliva all over it. She knows how to get exactly what she wants.

I didn’t think I would have time to blog today, but after my 3 hour nap this afternoon, I wasn’t tired after everyone fell asleep . . . but now there’s only 6 hours until I have to get up. Time to sleep!

Basketball season

Basketball season means a lot more driving (boo!), but on the bright side there are weekly games (yay!).

They play teams from all over the island — this game was at Riffa.

He used to play point guard — the short guy who always brings the ball up the court. I’m not sure what he’s playing this year . . . shooting guard? Is that a thing? All I know is he’s the one throwing the ball in to the person who then brings the ball up the court.

She loves yelling, “Go Calvin!” the entire hour.

Caleb was off sitting with several girls from his class (of course!)

They didn’t win today, but we’re used to that. Calvin has been on a losing team every year that he has played, poor guy. When I say “losing team,” I mean that his teams have never won more than one game the entire season. Rough!

We have high hopes for this year though since they won last week and they have a pretty good team overall. One of the challenges that he always has is the teams he plays on are transient (made up of military kids), but they play against teams that have been together for years. He has certainly learned how to lose graciously, but we’re hoping he can enjoy a few wins this time around.