Kitty Cats & Cameras

About a week ago I played a little game on Facebook where I announced receiving the world's coolest hand-me-down and let my friends guess what it was. The answer: a gently used Nikon D50. Seriously. It's a big step up from the Fuji S700 I was using. I have much to learn and relearn about f-stops, apertures and film speeds. I spent some time this weekend playing with the nikon, shooting pics of my daughter and our two orange cats.

The leap to this camera is also motivating me to get on board with an online photo sharing resource. I have been uploading my pics to Blogger directly which I understand is a no-no. When I make the switch to my own domain in a few months I will lose all my existing photo links and will have to re-upload everything. So I'm curious, how do you handle your blog post photos? Do you use a third party resource like Picnik, Flickr, other? I would really appreciate your feedback and advice as to what you use, why you like it or don't like it, etc.

He did a bad, bad thing

Look at this face -- so sweet, so innocent. Surely he would *never* do something as diabolical as pee on the carpet...on purpose? I know this is not the most glamorous topic. But for those of us who are cat lovers and cat owners, it happens. Ours happened while we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago. Our senior citizen man-cat, Mango, got a little ticked off that we were away and decided to pee in my daughter's closet, on her vintage wooden dollhouse. Yeah I know, he really couldn't have picked a more irritating place to make his statement. What didn't soak into the dollhouse ran down the side into the carpet. I pretreated the carpet with Natures Miracle (which usually does work miracles) and then ran the carpet scrubber...4 times. Each time it dried, it smelled just as bad as it did before I scrubbed it. I was getting really frustrated. So I did what most modern day house divas do, I googled it! My search led me to catsofaustralia.com where I found the solution. A very simple recipe made of common household ingredients that you probably already have onhand: Baking Soda, White Vinegar, Dishwashing Liquid & Hydrogen Peroxide (3%). That's it! Here's the recipe and instructions if you're interested. I mixed it all up, worked it into the carpet, let it dry overnight (with the help of a small fan) and vacuumed it up the next morning. I'll have to run the scrubber one more time to perk the carpet up but we're oh-so-happy the smell is finally gone! Thanks catsofaustralia.com for this most awesome DIY remedy for a very unpleasant little problem.

Good Samaritans

Let's face it, not every day is a banner day. Look at the rap that Monday gets...it's not Monday's fault, Sunday's just a hard act to follow. And while we all want to focus on the goodness in life, there are surely weeks where tough stuff prevails. This has been one of those weeks for us. Our dog has been very sick since Monday. She is having her 2nd bout with IVDD in 6 months, this time losing the use of her back legs almost completely. Our veterinarian of two years gave us the runaround and did nothing to help. I was shocked that our vet and her staff would actively chose to makes things worse in a crisis situation. They even refused to give over our xrays to share with another vet, though they finally relented. I was so angry and confused by their lack of compassion and professionalism I wasn't sure what to do. Thankfully I had a contact at Dachshund Rescue of North America, Jane, who has been absolutely fabulous. Her advice, compassion and help have been priceless! She made a few calls, with the help of some other caring local DRNA folks, and found us a local vet that saw us right away. Commonwealth Vet Clinic was wonderfully caring and professional with very prompt service and reasonable fees. Bunny will be crate resting for several weeks, taking meds and hopefully improving. It's interesting in a crisis situation that a stranger is so willing and eager to help, when someone you know well may do nothing to help. Reminds me of my favorite Bible story, The Good Samaritan. The story is a reminder to all of us to help one another, have compassion for one another and to have the courage to reach out and take action on someone else's behalf. I chose this particular youtube clip because it's my kids favorite. Gotta love storytelling with legos! Plus it helps me to smile a little in a week that's not given me much to smile about.

sketchy subject

Wanna hear a secret? When you take the time to stop and sketch something - life actually slows down a little...seriously, try it. I think this one captures Mango's "inner kitten" ;-)