For the next couple of days I’m going to be floating around numerous different hosting companies. Based on personal experience I’m looking to get into one of the more well-known ones to avoid anymore issues than I’m currently having. While I’m content with leaving my personal websites on a reseller, I’m thinking of downgrading even more and using a shared account. I’m not sure if I’m going to actually take that route though because of the organizational issues behind it. I own too many domains to just keep everything hosted under a shared account, no matter how inexpensive it’s going to be.

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.

I’ve been slacking off on my exercise but there is valid reason for it. My sciatica has been acting up pretty badly. For the past few days I’ve had trouble moving around and today was kind of my boiling point. I woke up pretty early this morning and by the time I got back home from a quick trip to the store and a walk on the beach I was not only mentally exhausted but physically as well. This lead to me laying down in bed to just relax for a little while. Unfortunately I was unable to get back up after that happened and it scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t roll either left or right and the fact that I had to pee wasn’t helping me very much either.

I wound up falling asleep for a few hours and when I woke up I managed to very slowly roll myself to one side of the bed so I could get up. With the way my bedroom is there’s really no room to get out of the left side of the bed so you either have to scoot down (when Sean’s asleep) or roll to the right side and keep on rolling until you can easily stand. It’s a very bad place for a bed but instead of having the larger room as the bedroom we’re using it as an office. It makes for an annoying time but considering the room is only there to sleep in, we’re making due for as long as we have to.

I haven’t been feeling well on top of this, my stomach has been bothering me lately and I can tell that a cold is coming on just with how sluggish I’ve been lately. However, I’m unsure of the cause of the lack of energy. My diet is the same but I think since I’m not burning off the calories the way I was up until these past few days is taking it’s toll on me.

In other news, since I have been able to really get up and go the way I’ve wanted to, I’ve been playing around in Photoshop and I hope to have a new template here sometime soon. I should have done something for January 1st, but I figure better late then never. I’m going with pretty tones and maybe throwing some stock images into it. I do also have a few themes that I’m hoping to put up in the “Templates” section as soon as possible. I’m not sure exactly WHEN that’s going to happen but I’m certainly working on it.

While I absolutely hate to admit it, part of me believes that I’m beginning to lose my eyesight. When you look at a screen all day long and rarely focus on anything else, things just don’t work as well as they used to. I still have better eyesight than anyone I know, probably because I come from a family where almost everyone needs glasses in order to see, and my sister is one of them but she’ll NEVER admit to it until she’s completely blind and attempting to drive somewhere. My father on the other hand, he’s needed glasses on and off for quite some time to read and now he really can’t do much of anything without his glasses. Up until he was about 30 years-old he never needed them, he had better than 20/20 vision, now things are so blurred for him that he’s more than likely going to be blind at some point later on down the road.

Another person with really bad eye sight is Sean and unfortunately he doesn’t have medical insurance to even get his glasses fixed, let alone update the prescription in general. I do believe that with my search I landed upon what I believe to be a Great Discovery: Zenni Optical. They sell prescription glasses online. There’s a huge selection of frames with everything from single vision lenses to bifocals. They even have tinted sunglasses for those who need corrective sunglasses as well. I guess no one likes the “clip on” look anymore…heh. They sell internationally too, so no matter where you’re located you can still get the prescription you need.

And the Best Thing Found: Zenni Optical sells everything at such low prices because they only sell their own manufactured frames direct to the customer, with no middlemen and no advertising budget. So you have to say that the ability to purchase Zenni Optical $8 Rx Glasses is a pretty damn good deal. Head over to their site if you’re interested, tell ‘em I sent you because I truly believe that anyone being able to save money on anything Health/Vision related is a great thing.