They just walked in the door about ten minutes ago. Candy has an enlarged heart and theirs fluid behind it. She’s now back on numerous medications and is receiving a specialized senior diet. I’m sure that’s going to be rough considering she’s used to pasta, chicken and other table-food that dogs typically don’t have unless they’re spoiled. Hell, even Bella eats that way because of my distaste for dog food - and everything that could possibly be wrong with it based on the previous recalls. We all know that she’s not going to be around for much longer, but hopefully she’ll at least survive for another couple of months so that we can all easily work into the inevitable - especially Karen, she’ll definitely take it the hardest.

I started on this template last night and for some reason I couldn’t leave photoshop until I had the header image absolutely perfect. I saved and walked away to restart this morning, after about a half hour of coding the template is finished and I’m pretty happy with it. There’s a lot more color than the previous one and this one directly connects to a health and fitness lifestyle. The previous one was a pre-made for my freebies, just to show it off. I’ll have that linked up soon, with all of the different colors it comes with.

I’m in a funk right now because of a rather hectic morning. A little over an hour ago, Karen’s dog made a horrible crying/moaning sound and collapsed. She’s 16 years-old, with a level 3 heart murmur, arthritis and a thyroid problem. Yesterday she had a similar episode where she just fell over, I awoke to the horrifying scream coming from Karen who needed help. Today it was a bit worse, and Karen wasn’t here to witness it.

Candy did her usual pacing around the house. She spends a lot of time sleeping so I guess to get her exercise she walks up and down the hall for a little while and goes back to bed. While that may not seem like much she’s a Shih Tzu who only weighs about 15-pounds so she really doesn’t have to go very far in order to get some kind of exercise during the day.

I saw her walk past, she looked at me as she usually does “Who the hell are you?” because she’s pretty old, close to completely blind and when she sees a waving hand she attempts to come closer but half-way through will forget what she’s doing there. It happens at that age though, based on charts she’s the equivalent of an 82 year-old woman. (It’s not 1 year to us is 7 to them, it’s based on weight and actual age).

She headed down towards the living room and the next thing I hear is a screaming cry that scared the living hell out of me, her legs didn’t buckle she just toppled over and then urinated all over herself. She was barely breathing, her heart-rate very obviously increased (you could see the little thing pounding out of her chest) and usually if you touch her or if another dog (Say Bella or Princess) comes anywhere near her, she’ll typically take off. She didn’t move.

I called Karen at work and couldn’t get through the four times I did. Sean finally called and used a term other than “Emergency” because supposedly the other member of support at her job has no idea what “emergency” means and changed it to “very important, life & death situation”. Within two words “It’s Candy” she hung up the phone and within five minutes was in the drive way.

Now both her and Sean are at the Vet, they have been for a little over an hour now and I have to say I’m concerned. She did this yesterday without the cry and the urination so obviously something pretty bad is going on.

Karen is obviously upset about it. Candy is her baby and she’s reacting in a way that’s shocking to everyone. She was the sole-caretaker of her mother (Sean’s grandmother) for quite some time before she passed away. Whenever something went wrong Karen was in full control. Say Shorty (grandmother’s nickname) had trouble breathing or she broke her hip or just something that would happen to someone with disintegrating health, Karen always had the right paperwork in hand when the paramedics showed up and she knew exactly what to do in order to fix the situation.

When it comes to Candy however, it’s the complete opposite. She becomes erratic, has no idea what to do and screams bloody murder if something goes wrong and she needs someone’s help. This makes me wonder what would happen if Sean and I did actually make that move to Ohio a few months ago. Would she be able to manage a situation like this on her own? Would Candy have passed away by herself because no one was here to look after her during the day? It’s just questions on top of questions and it does scare me. Candy is Karen’s baby, she actually treats her better than Sean sometimes but that’s a whole different situation. She gets full priority and I honestly believe Karen wouldn’t know what to do with herself if Candy was no longer around.

Lately she’s accepting of the fact that she’s a very old dog and a lot of trouble to take care of. From medication, having to hand-feed her because too many things on a plate can be overwhelming, to grooming, wee-wee pads having to constantly be picked up because she refuses to go in the same place twice unless it’s clean.

It’s a lot to maintain and at the same time Candy keeps it interesting. She’ll tell on the other dogs when they’ve done something in the bedroom. She’ll tell on anyone who walks within a few feet of her because they’ve disturbed her. She’ll run too quick (which isn’t good for her heart) and wind up bumping into something because she didn’t see it coming. And while it’s horrible to laugh at something like that, she’ll then tell on the wall for being there so you honestly can show no other emotion but humor when it happens.

It’s almost 2pm, they left around 12:30. I just hope she comes home with her. Something tells me this is going to be a very difficult week.

That’s exactly what I feel about life right now. For the past few months Sean and I have been tirelessly working on getting our own apartment. Finally it dawned on me that there’s an easy way to do it, it would just take a bit of time to work things out.

Not only do we need our own place but I also desperately wish to go back to school. So I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and look into the obvious option of a Student Loan, numerous companies will give you the option of up to $40,000 a year and you don’t have to pay it back until after your studies have been completed. So I started to brainstorm that idea even more and look into Financial Aid to see just how much they’ll cover so I can figure out loan numbers from there.

Even though I have a job and don’t even live in the same state as my father anymore, the only way I can be covered as “independant” with financial aid is if I’m either knocked up or going for a bachelors. My original plan was to enroll in DeVry Online and earn my associates in Web Graphics Design. Now, for the most part I know what I’m doing but someone with a degree (even if I happen to know more than them) will get the job because there’s a piece of paper proving they can do it. Never mind the girl with the 10 years worth of experience, you know?

So now I’m considering the University of Phoenix Online. It’s a Bachelors program and I should hopefully be able to have Financial Aid cover the bulk of the enrollment expenses. The rest of the money can be paid by the student loan, and part of that money will be used towards housing. I think having a more ideal environment to work with (ie: my own SILENT office) would make more sense then to have myself locked in a bedroom listening to all of the random noises that a full-house can make.

Unfortunately I can’t get a student loan without two years worth of taxes and I didn’t have anything to file in 2005 due to a very bad year, so I’m honestly unsure of what I can do at this point. I’m not going to ask my father to co-sign because he’s already co-signed on a loan for me and the student loan would basically consolidate the existing loan and just give me more money to pay back to someone else.

All I want to do is get an apartment and go to school. How come everyone else can just have it handed to them and no matter how hard I work I can’t get shit?

This is extremely frustrating.

I finished dinner a little while ago and I’m still too full for words.  Since my father hasn’t had a home cooked meal in quite some time, I went ahead and fired up the crock pot at about 4am in order to start some sauce.  Tonight I made lasagna with sausage and meatballs.  I was very good at keeping my portions under control.  It was hard considering it’s the only thing I’ve eaten today but I woke up about 2pm so by the time 7pm rolled around I was hungry enough to not care that I hadn’t eaten earlier in the day.

Everyone seemed to enjoy dinner, so that’s always a plus.  I did sneak in a little bit of bread but when you go out of your way to bake it for everyone else, just a small crusty piece isn’t going to kill you, right?  In order to burn off the extra calories I took a few laps around the block with Bella, I then burned even more carrying her home considering her little legs gave out on her.  She gets tired if she walks for too long, not sure how that’s possible considering she’s so low to the ground.

Dieting aside, it’s been a fairly calm day.  I’ve done some laundry, straightened up the kitchen and cooked dinner.  I’ve been unable to work today because Sean has taken captive of my laptop.  I’m considering purchasing another one sometime soon, I’m just not sure what company I’m going to go with.  I don’t use my laptop for anything graphically anymore because of my new iMac.  If I use it for any “big” programs it’s usually Dreamweaver CS3 and having anything less than a gig of ram would be stupid on my part.  I did hear, however, that in order to have Vista on a laptop you’re going to have to have at least 2 gigs of ram because Vista takes a gig to run from the get go.  So factoring all of that in, i figure I’m going to need something in the $650-$700 range.  I’ve been poking around on TigerDirect for a refurb, I’ve also poked around Newegg for a newer one and naturally I’ve been floating around eBay as well.  I’ll hold off for a few months, I just know that my laptop is slowly dying on me.  The lag right now is extremely annoying and it’s also about 2 years old so upgrading wouldn’t be the worst of ideas.

An unexpected October heat wave came through Delaware this past week.  While I was still able to accomplish all of my daily routines, this doesn’t mean I was happy about it.  It’s a myth that you lose more weight in the summer than you do in the fall.  I understand that sweating more is good for you but when you’re already feeling dehydrated due to a recent illness, you’re not exactly looking forward to your usual exercise routines.  I’m still doing a few miles a day on the walking front.  I will say that I’m not going as far as I used to based on the fact that I haven’t been feeling very well, but I’m still eating right and I guess that’s all that matters.  I’ve managed to master an 800 calorie diet, and I’m still working hard on losing about 1000 calories a day.  My water intake has gone up, my crystal light intake has gone down.  While I love the flavors, the plain water is equally as tasty for me now that I’ve found a brand of water that I’m content with.  Deer Park has the best taste out of all of the water I’ve been consuming over the course of the last few months.  I’m down another couple of pounds, I’ll get around to updating the sidebar sometime soon.

Guess I should get myself ready for bed.  I’m a few hours behind on my schedule but I’ll make up for it tomorrow I’m sure.