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I saw this commercial a while ago and it was the second commercial I saw for this medication. I liked it better than the first one, the one with the talking dog.

I didn’t really think much about it. That is, until Leia started itching and then she started chewing. She has the red spot on her belly to prove it.

I had a TeleTails consult with the vet today and tomorrow, we are going to pick up some Apoquel and we have to give her a probiotic while we give her the medication because of her super sensitive stomach! We are only up to 11 kibbles for each meal she gets of her prescription food, otherwise, it is still a bland diet.

I am really surprised that I am not an ASPCA member by now!!! Probably will only take a few more commercials…

I’ve been watching the news during this whole pandemic and I was extremely concerned about what I was going to do for the upcoming presidential election. How was that going to vote? I requested my absentee ballot a while ago and was able to fill it out on Monday. My Mom also requested an absentee ballot and she filled hers out on Tuesday. Just this morning this video popped up in my YouTube feed:

And today, my brother took our completed ballots to the dropbox in our city. He sent us this video and I still can’t figure out how to embed it into my blog post after the latest update so I will just write another post on both Facebook and Twitter. I’m not even ashamed to say that I cried because I did! It’s NOT a sticker but… I like it!!!!

STILL NOT in order and I didn’t even share this song on Facebook before posting it here on my blog. This song came up in my YouTube feed and ALWAYS reminds me of my brother, Dave! What a perfect time for this song to oh man after he stopped by, made our dog bark for the first time, and brought over some cookies then made me break my diet! It was worth it! I had two!!!

We got Leia on April 28, 2020. Since that day, she is pretty much silent. Occasionally, when she’s sleeping, she will give off little baby sounds and twice when we were watching TV, she barked at the dog who was barking on TV. Other than that, for the past almost six months, she doesn’t bark. I don’t mind that at all!

Well, all of that changed today. My brother Dave stopped by on his lunch with some groceries for us and my Mom gave him some lunch to eat. We kept the front door open because we knew he was on his way. As soon as he got onto the porch, Leia started to bark! I was completely startled by the sounds that are coming out of her mouth! I backed up and started to record it.

She is not a big dog and her bark isn’t that big either but having never really heard it, it startled me and I laughed!

I cannot figure out how to put the video here on my blog so I will just post the video directly to Facebook and to Twitter. On the video, I missed out on her more powerful barks at the front door and once she was back in her bed, they started to lessen in intensity. My brother laughed and he told me that she was protecting us (my Mom and me).

I nce my brother left to go back to work, I looked at her and smiled, I thanked her for protecting us and my Mom rubbed her up and kissed her. I can’t reach her sitting in my chair. Once we shut the front door, she curled up and went to sleep. What a sweet girl?!!!

I have been seeing so many posts of this new challenge on Facebook, the #blondetodarkhaurchaalenge. Lots of my friends have posted pictures and even one of my brothers! I have never died my hair and I am a little bummed that I can’t participate. I came across some old pictures in my phone today and posted my own version of the challenge. To put this in context. I think I was about 32 or 33 years old so we’re talking five or six years ago. It made me laugh to post pictures and these are the ones I posted:

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I think that I had to be above 32 because if Sean was a new older than 12, he would not have taken these pictures of me. I also was still working and still driving. I posted in the comments on Facebook that retrospectively, I wish I would have purchased the Medusa wig but, I had to be responsible and I had bills to pay so I couldn’t justify spending $24 I think on silly nonsense. I really DO wish I could’ve been irresponsible and just bought the wig. I STILL would be wearing it and laughing about it today! So, I really haven’t done this challenge because I’ve never dyed my hair but I wanted to post something!

So, this is my hair back then when I still had a manual chair and still worked:

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So many things have changed since I took this picture so long ago, or had Sean take it. Or maybe it was my Mom?

I haven’t been out of my house since October 1 for my dental cleaning. It was overdue because I had to cancel my appointment early in this pandemic. Dental health is EXTREMELY important for me because I have MS. When I was out of my house, the leaves had not yet started changing. I started wearing a winter hat indoors a couple days ago because I feel so much colder since I can no longer control my internal temperature!

I love Fall the season and I love to watch the leaves change color. I don’t think that I will make it to cider mill this year to get cider and roasted, cinnamonsugared almonds and that kind of bums me out.

My Mom took Leia for a walk this morning and she brought Fall to me:

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I smiled and I am so touched by her gesture! Just like in Sense and Sensibility, when Willabe brings the flowers to Marianne because she is injured, he tells her, “Since you cannot venture out to nature, nature must be brought to you!” That’s exactly what my Mom did for me!

My nephews’ fiancé tagged me in the picture she posted on Facebook:

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This picture really made me laugh and especially today because in the beginning of us having, #MyGirlL, all of the Chewy boxes were either treats or toys. I thought of this picture because now that Leia has a sensitive stomach, the Chewy deliveries are more for us and not her.

I ordered her new prescription dog food yesterday and it arrived this morning. She is still on a bland diet that she has been for over a month. We are “slow walking” introducing dog food back into her diet. She already has had her teaspoon of food mixed in with her rice/hamburger for the day.

Because of her sensitive stomach and her new food, we no longer can give her chewies for her heart worm. We talked to the vet yesterday and we are going to combine both her heartworm and flea and tick medicine to be administered in one application. So I will be placing another Chewy order sometime this week to Chewy Pharmacy. Coupled with the food, I had to add two squeeze balls that were pretty cheap to have enough to get free shipping. This new combination of heartworm and flea and tick prevention is pretty pricey so I don’t need to add any toys with that order.

So, my hair has been getting pretty long in these past six months! Not too long ago, I remembered that I would French braid everyone’s hair on my basketball team before our game. If it was an away game, I would do it in the bus. If it was a home game, I would braid their hair on the bleachers or in the locker room. It took probably five or six games for me to realize that I was the ONLY person without braids because no one else knew how to French braid!

That’s when I asked my Mom to braid my hair in the morning before school when I had a game. She did that for the rest of my games my senior year. I vaguely remembered taking this picture and seeing it when I found a photo album from my school. I can’t remember the kid on the left’s name. I think it was Zack? But I am Facebook friends with the boy on the right’s sister because we went to school together and were on the same basketball team:

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So today, because my hair has grown so long, my Mom French braided it. It was definitely difficult because I’m sitting in my wheelchair and it was a strange angle but it got done!

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It has been 21 years since my Mom has braided my hair and I felt like a child as she did. I HAD to have her take a picture of it because I never thought I would have my hair braided again as my disease has progressed and since I chopped all of my hair off 12 years ago to make things easier for me. Now, I can say that she did it again even as I am a grown woman!

This morning, I turned the news on and the guest said that he feels old when he tells his children about what he was doing in 2001 today. He said that, “Everybody has a 9/11 story.” As I watched the news this morning, I began to cry. Today has always been somber for me since then and while I worked and we had our moment of silence to commemorate the lost souls when the planes hit.

My students were all too young or not even alive when that happened and one year, a student asked me what it was like. Of course I remembered what I was doing but took me a moment to gather my thoughts. I was speaking to children who had no idea about it so I didn’t want to say do much but I just said that I was in college and I was pregnant and yes I remember.

Just this morning, I afriended a former student of mine on Facebook. He is a man now and NOT skinny 12-year-old kid. That’s insane to me!

I’m especially sad today so I will share my full 9/11 story that I don’t have to truncate for children. I don’t think that I have shared the story and it’s entirety before…

I was in an auditorium in my psychology class at U of M-Dearborn when the first plane hit. Lights were off and we were taking notes from the projector. Class ended and I was headed to my second class of the day down the hall and there was lots of buzz in the hallway. I didn’t know what was going on.

Once I got to the next class, the woman who always sat to my left was explaining to me what what’s going on. Then this guy, another student in the class, entered into the doorway and exclaimed, “The second tower just fell!” The professor came into the room just after he did and the woman sitting next to me me began to bawl. She used to work in the second tower.

The prof looked at the woman and told us to find a TV on campus somewhere and that class was canceled. I left the building headed toward the library and I called my Mom. It was strange that time almost seemed to standstill and everything seems so surreal! I received a phone call from my son’s dad and my Mom decided to call my brothers.

Images of that day keep playing in my head on loop and even 19 years later, because I am in my house, I am crying on and off.