Stressed

I'm stressed, tired and ready for the Halloween candy to be gone from my house. The stress is because it's November. November is my busy month for sculpting. Everyone and their mother likes to order sculptures for Christmas presents. This is great for business but bad for my sanity. Plus I don't have the ability to say no. I take on way too many orders and then run around like a crazy person trying to make everyone happy. Last year I didn't take any orders, it was pure bliss. I might do that again next year. I do enjoy all the happiness that my little creations bring to customers, especially those who have lost a pet. 

Other stress inducing things: our little terrier Chance is having "issues". I think I mentioned that he did something to his back a few weeks ago. Well the week on anti-inflammatory meds made him revert to his normal bouncy self. The medicine ended on Monday. Tuesday he started his random yelping and back hunching. Wednesday he was worse, barely moving. So he and I went back into the vet clinic. This time instead of anti-inflammatory medication they put him on Prednisone. It's a steroid and the vet thinks it might help reduce the swelling in his disks in his back. This will be a 15 day trial and then we'll go from there. The next step would be taking him into the larger clinic in town for an MRI to scan his back and I'm afraid we won't be traveling down that path. He's nearly 11 years old. I'm hopeful this will work and we won't have to think about other options. So far a day on Prednisone and he's back to his crazy self. It's amazing how fast medicine can work its wonders.

The time change seems to have me dragging my feet around this house. I'm constantly tired. I tend to get the winter blues and I'm hoping the treadmill will help that. I've been slacking on my exercise lately and I'm missing the many perks of it. Time to get back at it, especially since my children have been thoughtful enough to share their buckets of Halloween candy with dear old mom. Ugh. Darn candy.

On a random note, I was out walking the dog in the front yard and was looking at the koi pond. It looks like it does every fall, full of leaves and nasty brown water. This year we had a bumper crop of baby goldfish born in it and I knew they'd all freeze to death about now. It's sad but it's not deep enough to support fish through the winter and with all the trees around it gets filled with leaves that then decompose and make the water filthy. I wish I had the means to bring all 482 goldfish into my house to overwinter them, but alas I don't (even though I did try that one winter, it involved a stock tank, an unused bathroom and a huge mess). Anyways, I glance into the pond and see a giant fish gulping air at the top of the water. I don't know how the poor thing was still alive. The night lows have been in the low 20's all week. So I ran in the garage and got the net and bucket and scooped the poor thing out. I then checked the filter box (where many fish get trapped) and found three more slightly smaller fish. Now I have a bucket o' fish thawing out on my kitchen counter. I hope the 30 gallon aquarium in the basement can support them through the winter.