Happy Almost New Year!

Sorry I have not been good at blogging lately -- I know all four of my readers are deeply disappointed when they come here each day looking for something interesting to read.  I have no good excuse to offer, just laziness on one hand, and busy-ness on the other.  But here I am now!


Twenty five years ago tomorrow (Dec. 31, 1985) this very nice, earnest young man asked me to marry him at midnight in a gazebo overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  Twenty four years ago tomorrow (Dec. 31, 1985) the same very nice, sweet, earnest young man and I got all gussied up and said "I do" to each other at 7:30pm in a beautiful sanctuary still decorated for Christmas.  These crazy kids then headed back to the Pacific Ocean for a couple of nights before flying over it to spend their honeymoon in Hawaii.

Tomorrow night (Dec. 31, 2010) these same two lovebirds will celebrate 24 years of marriage and 25 years of togetherness, which they like to call "boo-boo-ness" but usually not in public because it makes people kind of sick.  And "they" said it wouldn't last, heh! There will be no Pacific Ocean this year (but there will be next year -- we are heading back to the scene of the engagement and spending the week after Christmas in Laguna Beach, celebrating with my family).  Instead it will warm up to a balmy 56 degrees, which I think is rather kind of mother nature, considering the weather we've been enduring of late.  And it will be raining and the snow will be melting, so if I squint maybe it will sound like the ocean?

KAYLA UPDATE:  Kayla is holding her own.  We are trying meds instead of the expensive and invasive MRI/spinal tap/muscle-nerve biopsy/surgery options.  Inexpensive meds -- a low dose of prednisone, which is a steroid I've been on in the past.  So far it has helped her, and the dose is low enough that our local vet isn't concerned about keeping her on it indefinitely, given her age and her ability to tolerate it.  It's not a great drug to be on for the long term, certainly, but the fact that she can get up and down the stairs unassisted, and has not fallen down as much (and gets up easier) suggests to Dr. A., and us, that her problem is NOT the untreatable degenerative myleopathy, but is one of the treatable three (spinal disk problem, canine meningitis, or neuritis).  And since we have opted out of the back surgery option, and since the other two are treated with steroids, for now we feel like we are on the right track and the job now is to find the minimum dose she can exist on and still get around reasonably well.