Rest and Recuperation

Are the order of the next 4 weeks. The operation went really well, he got home this afternoon and after wandering around from room to room every 5 minutes he has just settled on his mat in the dining room. Belle was so happy to see him and gave him lots of kisses, checked out his bandage and even licked his shaved leg better :)
Belle left half of her bone in the sunroom this morning - It started raining and she got scared of the noise so ditched it to come in - and when Onslow came home, he ran to it and went to town finishing it off. By the way he was devouring it, anyone would think he hadn't been fed for 3 weeks!!




So he has to rest, stay inside and no running around.. and no walks for a while either :) We are going back on Tuesday to get the bandages off, and then every weekend for the next 4 weeks he has to get Cartrophin injections to help with his arthritis. He already has it in his hips, and as with any joint injury / repair he will develop it in knee as well. So the injections will help ease that pain and help the joint anyway.

The timing of getting the Rav4 couldnt have been better!! With his leg completely bandaged, all he could do was stretch out, and no way would he have been able to do that in the sedan. He was a bit funny at first.... scared and standing up and then falling over. Eventually he realised if he layed down its actually nice and comfy! Belle was the same last night. Although she wasnt injured and was standing up and running in cirlces whilst trying not to fall over! hahhaa Poor thing. There is sooo much room in the back for the 2 of them to lay down comfortably without being all on top of each other so its great! I should have taken pics of each of them in the back of the car. Not to worry, I can grab some next time :)

mm well I just made a yummy vegetable soup with some sausages in it for good measure. Should be just about ready... good cos im STARVING!!!! :)

Cuts, cars and cakes!

Well Onslow is probably knocked out right about now.. probably getting sliced open! We are just fixing his knee at this point and seeing how he goes. As he was not limping prior to doing his knee we saw no reason to operate on the hips. The vet was happy to do whatever we decided... hips, OR knee, OR get a 2nd opinion. I couldnt bear the thought of him hobbling on his ruptured knee any longer than necessary. I figure we can get that fixed and then look into the hip issue a bit more after he has recovered.

{Everything from Crazy Love - Dani Mogstad}

And today my new car was delivered to work!! woo hoo!! :) It is a lot bigger than I thought and so roomy inside.. full of all kinds of fun nooks and crannys to poke around in :) Seeing as Onslow has to stay overnight at the vet, we are going to bundle Belle in the back and take her out for a spin tonight. Maybe go to Windsor and have some grilled fish on the bank of the river or something.

I have been all into cooking lately! I found Calorie King which is a great Aussie weight loss / nutrtional site. I put in all my food into the calorie tracker to see how much fat / calories / fibre etc i was getting each day. I love things like this! Anyway I relaised I have a lot of white carbs and little fibre and protein in my diet, and as weird as it seems I am not eating enough fats or enough calories! So i have gotten all into beans and checkpeas and lentils and low GI stuff and things with "good fats" like avocados and nuts and things. And I am feeling soo much better for it. Much more energy to exercise with each day and already I have lost about 700g in 2 weeks. Ok that doesnt sound like much, but i only have 4kg to loose and I have been trying for 6 months and it hasnt been budging!

Anyway they also have a great recipie section! I made this Sticky Date cake for Travs birthday last week and it went down a treat! Actually pretty tasty and delicious warmed up with a smidge of butter. I made it exactly to the recipie (rare for me! LOL i always like to add my own 'touch' to things)

I also found a tasty-sounding Banana, Apricot and Date muffin recipie but didnt like the fact that it contained 1/2 cup of oil!! Nor did I have low fat vanilla yogurt on hand, or rolled oats, and I didnt like the apricots either LOL :)

SO here is my variation. When made like this, each muffin only has 164 calories; 4.4g of fat; and 1.8g of fibre!

1 cup Self-Raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup Ground Hazel Meal (Its been sitting in the cupboard for a year so I thought I better finish it off!! This was the rolled oats substitute)
1 3/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
2 tablespoon Honey
1 egg
1 cup Skim Milk (full cream milk takes the fat content up to about 5g/muffin)
2 medium bananas - Mashed
A handful of pitted dates - chopped

I chucked everything in the bowl all at once and mixed it up. Whacked it in the oven at about 180 degrees for about 15 minutes and thats it. Deeeeelicious!!!!

While I was baking and calorie counting, I whipped up a batch of home made biscuits from my Donna Hay book to take for morning tea at work. I loooove Donna Hay recipies. Anyway I had no real butter so I had to use my reduced fat margarine... and when I entered all the ingredients into calorie king, it only have 1g of fat! LOL I admit the biscuits werent very big, but I didnt feel guilty having one with my morning cuppa :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Diagnosis...

is, in a word, BAD!
It turns out Onslow DOES have a torn cruciate ligament in his knee, meaning the knee joint is "unstable" and which is why he hasn't been able to put any weight on it.

That would have been a super easy fix, except for one other thing...The x-rays showed that he also has Degenerative bone disease in BOTH of his hips :(

We were told from day 1 that it was unknown what would happen. He responded well to the tablets initially which was great, but the bones could degenerate super quick, or just not degenerate at all, or be somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately his regular vet is the resident expert on this stuff and more importantly this breed, and he just happens to be away and wont be back until Thursday. So the vet we saw today didn't want to fix the cruciate ligament and risk doing more damage, so he has to remain confined for the next week or so.

So... looks like he will most likely be needing surgery to fix his hips, as I had already thought. I don't care how they fix him, just as long as they can!! Its horrible seeing him hobble and want to follow us around but not being physically able to.

Anyway I am exhausted!!!! At 4:00 he started to wake up from the anesthetic, so I jumped in the car, already dressed for going out later on, and raced to the vet. Got there at 4:45, chatted to the vet, had Onslow in the car by 5 and took off back home. Got home at 5:45, locked Onslow in the spare room with his bed and water and let Belle say a quick hello before I seperated them and took off. I left home at 5:55, thankfully there was no traffic going to the City and I got to the cinema carpark at 6:42 - Movie started at 6:45. However I had to race down the road to the shops to get some cash, then back up, ring Travis who came out to give me the ticket and then I got to finally go in and relax JUST as the movie started to boot up!

We got home around 9:30, and I cooked a delicious low fat Sticky date cake (although I might have to add some caramel to the recipe... it just needed *something* else) Put some candles on and mustered up just enough energy to sing happy birthday to Trav.

I think I will sleep well tonight!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to Travis :) Hope you have a great day... and don't stuff yourself full of caramel mud cake at work! LOL

Here is the birthday boy with the injured boy before leaving for work this morning:



What a day! At least I got the day off work though ;)
Anyway lets start at Monday... I get home from work and Onslow was limping about and being all sad. Certainly not the boisterous dog he normally is. So I gave a few extra painkillers for his hip hoping he had just been playing rough with Belle and jarred his leg or something.

Well Tuesday came around and he was walking fairly normal, a little stiff but nothing to worry about. Wednesday saw even more improvement.

Anyway so I come home on Thursday, run out the back to do my exercise (30 minutes of skipping before picking Travis up) didn't really pay much attention to the dogs and Onslow spent the whole time laying down. When I finished skipping I called them in and thats when I noticed Onslow really couldn't walk. He wasn't putting any weight at all on his left back leg. about 18 months ago found out he had hip dysplasia in BOTH hips (He was only 10 months old at the time). Anyway the left was really bad, the right only partially.. My immediate reaction was "oh here we go.. the left hips finally gone"

he was no better this morning and I left bright and early to take him to the vet. At the moment I'm just waiting on the x-ray results. Its either a sprain / injury (unlikely i think), his hip has degenerated and needs injections and / or surgery, OR he has snapped a cruciate ligament in his knee! Which is apparently very common in Mountain dogs. Go Figure!! Anyway I was kind of hoping he would stay overnight because we are going into the City tonight to catch a German movie at 6:45pm. As it is now, at 4:00pm I have to run to Vineyard (45 minutes from home) pick up Onslow, chat to the vet about the x ray results and where we are headed, do the 45 minute (maybe more with traffic) dash back home, drop Onslow inside, and then try and get into the city (about 50 minutes with a good run!) before the movie starts! Its going to be tight :)

Well my free paper and alphabet appeared in the new Scrapbooking memories magazine! LOL It looks so funny to see my design in real life on paper, and even funnier to see the great layouts that the design team made with it :)

I am really loving rectangle layouts at the moment...


All the above layouts are in my gallery if you wanna check out credits :)
{click here for my gallery}

And this is one I did with the photo I restored for Travis' mum :) This is Travis' Aunt who passed away at an early age (in her 30's I believe). The title was all Travis' idea :)



CREDITS: I *think* the papers are from Meredith Fenwick... The Quirky paper pack I think; Gerbera - Possum; Curled frame - Nancy Comelab; Painted Frame - Jen Wilson; Painted flower - Helena Jole; Alpha - Meredith Fenwick; stitching - Lauren Grier

Well I took Belle for a 45 minute walk. It was so funny to take her on a walk by herself. usually she *insists* on being in front and zooms off at a billion miles an hour.. but because she didnt have Onlsow and Travis to race today she took her time and stopped every 2 meters to have a good sniff in the grass!! LOL I wore her out and now shes sound asleep instead of wandering around like a lost soul looking for Onslow :) I came back home and did my high impact aerobics and im exhausted now! I think I need a nanna nap before going back to the vet! LOL

:)

Lookie what I should be getting in about 3 weeks:


But in this colour (not this fancy model, I get the cheap base model above LOL):


Work has bought in a new policy that we are only allowed to get 4 cylinder cars (At the moment I have a 6 cylinder Holden Commodore) due to Environmental reasons and the rising petrol prices. Which is fine by me.

My car has been due to be swapped since October but I have had to wait for the policy to be finalised. At first they said we were only allowed to get a Toyota Camery (Still nice IMO) so I ordered one. THE NEXT DAY they said.. oh Rav4's are the same price we might add that to the list LOL So i made them cancel my order and waited and waited.. finally they said yes!

So I got to pick my colour and its all ordered and should be delivered in 3 weeks. woo hoo!!! Seeing as its just the 2 of us and we dont need the back seat, we can take it out and have HEAPS of room in the back :) We can fit all our scuba diving stuff in easily - including tanks, OR the dogs can spread out and not be squished fighting for room on the backseat of a sedan :) and i will be the first person at work who gets one!!! hehehehehe

oooh we are of to see the Red Hot Chill Peppers tonight :) I had forgotten all about this concert so im all excited now!! LOL

Weekend wrap

Well we left home on Friday morning to head out to mudgee.. and after sitting in a heap of traffic the majority of the way through the blue mountains, we finally arrived around 3:15 at Jessica's Guest house and vineyard.



The house was beautiful! A fully self contained 3 bedroom cottage about 7kms out of the town centre with its own vineyard. The views were beautiful and my favourite bit was watching the cows outside the kitchen window whilst cooking and washing up :)




There was a gorgeous deck out the back complete with hammocks and a BBQ. Oh and did I mention breathtaking views???






Anyway so Friday we explored the place and went out for dinner and basically just relaxed.

Saturday we went on a wine tour. We went with Mudgee Wine & Country Tours and had the best time!! Jan was lovely, made sure we had cheese and bikkies to clean out pallette after each winery and filled us up with bits of Mudgee trivia and gossip :) We went to 8 wineries and in total we bought 12 bottles. Cant wait to crack some of those open! If you head to mudgee and want to go on a bus tour to the wineries, I highly recommend Mudgee wine and Country tours!!



I love this photo of all the old vats:


Travis and I bought our bikes along, however there were these huge spike things in the grass which we werent warned about... of course all of our tyres went flat within about 10 minutes! LOL



On the Sunday we had another relaxing day, drove to Gulgong to wander around the town there, came back to mudgee for lunch, had a relax in the afternoon and watched the football and then went to Thai for dinner.

Jen booked a cab to get us at 6:45 as the booking was for 7:00pm, using the directions stated in the guestbook. Its only a new place, near the edge of town. So we are all ready, all 4 of us waiting out the back of the house, where we can see the highway and the long long driveway. We see a cab approach.. and then hoon past... go down the dirt road. Stop. Reverse. drive forward. Reverse. Turn. Go into someone ELSES driveway and stop. Jen rings up the cab company, and suddlenly is giving the driver directions. We were thinking wow, how neat that you actually get to talk to the driver! So she's going ok turn around. Keep going about 500m then turn right. Yep keep going. Um I think you've gone past it. Yep, cant see your lights. LOL Meanwhile Gregs in the background giving more directions, Jens telling him to shush and Travis and I find it funny. So the driver FINALLY finds the driveway, and says yep, got it.. and hangs up. Well, we told him to keep to the right and take the right-hand driveway, but he didnt. SO another phone call, more directions and finally we get in :)

So we are in there chatting away to the lovely driver having a bit of a laugh. Suddenly we hear over the two way radio, a lady ringing up to book a cab.. we all look at each other. We ask so... does that mean OUR conversation just then was broadcast? The driver goes "Yep! and all of Mudgee just heard you".

A few hours later we finish our delicious thai and hopped into the first cab on the rank. A different driver. We say we are going to Jessicas guest house. He laughed and said Oh its you lot!! Dont worry, I know exactly how to get there.. past the concrete wall, righ driveway.. no sweat. Apparently this guy had 4 male passengers at the time who were having a great laugh at the conversation :)

ANyway we left bright and early on the monday and managed to beat all the traffic and was home at 11:00 :) nice!

ahh bring on the long weekend!

Im so over this week! LOL
Just a shot one today as its almost home time! woo hoo :)

I have been blitzing the food shops in my area seeing as there have been 2 big big food poisoning incidents in other areas of Sydney in the past week. So I've been super busy trying to get a lot of people to clean up their acts! It just takes up sooo much time. I have had one restaurant which I literlly spent all week at. Randomnly walking through the back of the shop keeping them on their toes. They had some very very dodgy food preparation and food handling practises going on.. I served a notice, I issued nearly $1,000 in fines, and FINALLY they are doing the right thing!!!!

Anyway so for Easter we are going to Mudgee (I think I already said that LOL) and I cant wait!
Wanna hear something funny?! We have over 50 hot cross buns stashed in the freezer :) And I will stock up on some more before easter is over LOL I love them. I wish they were out all year round cos they are the perfect morning tea snack to have with a cuppa when im at work :)

I think i love rectangle now :) Lok what I did last night:


I dont miss her constant whinging for food, nor the smelly poos, nor the litter rocks all over the place, nor the scratching at furniture.. but I do miss snuggling up with her :) Onslow tries, but at 57 kilos its a little bit uncomfortable. Plus he fidgets and swings his head back so fast he headbuts my face.
ANyway, cerdits for the layout found
HERE

so on that note im off!!! One more day of work left and then 4 days to relax.. woo hoo for that :D