Went to the Worcester RMV today to register my new (to me anyway) car. ANY time spent at the Worcester RMV is too long, but I only had to wait 45 minutes, which wasn't too bad. Then because I was too early to pick up Jackie at her play rehersal, and there wasn't really enough time to bother going home first, I stopped at Barnes & Noble for a while. While I was there, I saw TWO (yes TWO!) Mr. Darcy vampire books. Not "Pride and Predjudice and Zombies", but "Mr Darcy, Vampyre" and "Vampire Mr. Darcy's Desires". My mind reels. What's next? "Wuthering Heights" as a werewolf story? "Anne of Green Gables Possessed by Demons"? It boggles the mind. Maybe there'll be a rewrite of Moby Dick destroying the Pequod with merely the power of his mind.

Went for a trail ride with profesor today. Riding in the snow is beautiful, but it has its drawbacks. On the trail downhill through the woods, Leaps marched purposefully through all the low hanging branches covered with snow. I ducked and dodged and pushed branches out of the way. Snow went down my neck, up my sleeves and in my lap to work its way between me and the saddle. What happens when you sit in a pile of snow? You guessed it, a wet butt. I was first in line, so I caught the brunt of it, but there was plenty of snow left on the branches for profesor and Medallion behind me. You just can't be annoyed about little things like wet jeans and snow down the front of your jacket when you're out on horseback on such a gorgeous day.

Went to an orthopaedic doctor with Jackie yesterday to have a look at her knee. It's been bothering her for a couple of months. Apparently her left knee cap has shifted slightly to the outside, causing pain and inflamation during strenuous exercise - ie, karate and riding. So, the verdict is physical therapy twice a week for six weeks, with a follow up after eight weeks. So, now we need to work two PT appointments into the weekly schedule. As far as the karate and riding, the doctor said she can do anything that doesn't hurt too much. So as long as Mel doesn't have Jackie spend her entire lesson in half seat, she should be fine. :)

Jackie got a part in the school musical. They're doing Anything Goes. I'm not familiar with it, but apparently it's set on a cruise ship. Jackie has the part of the purser. Not sure how big a part it is, or if it has any lines at all. All I can think of is Gopher on The Love Boat. Rehersal schedule is still to come, but judging by last year's schedule it's pretty strenuous. See above note about adding PT appointments. I'm not sure how this is going to work. Will tap dancing affect her knee? Good question. Got no answer. Do purser's tap dance?

Brian is going to do a few private fencing lessons with one of the senior students. Apparently he fenced for nearly a year with a left handed foil in his right hand and no one noticed. Obviously he needs a little personal attention. The kid who will be teaching the private lessons seems very compenent. He's about 17 or 18 with dreadlocks and a nice smile. He teaches the little kids class.

Got stuck behind some guy in the supermarket line who was running a huge cart of groceries through the self serve line. None of the other lines seemed much better, so I just hung out with my six items and skimmed through the People Magazine issue on the Sexiest Man Alive. Johnny Depp for the second time. No argument here!

I recently listened to the new sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula on audio, Dracula, the Undead. I very much enjoyed it, though it had some issues. It was written by Dacre Stoker, Bram's grandnephew (or great-grandnephew?), and Ian Holt, who is a Dracula historian. They took the original plot, wrenched it around 180 degrees and sent it in another direction. Naturally, this created plot holes between the first and second books you could drive a truck through. They explain this by saying that the first Dracula book was based on a story that was told to Bram Stoker by a 'Man In A Bar'. Bram is a character in the sequel (and not a very sympathetic one!). Apparently Bram listened to this wild tale, edited it to suit himself, and published it without changing any of the names. Therefore, any inconsistencies between the book 'Dracula' and what REALLY happened, are due to Bram's editing, not flagrant abandoning of timelines.

I went back and am now listening to Bram Stoker's Dracula again to refresh my memory about what things happened when, and yeah, there are some inconsistencies. The "Bram wrote lies" explanation covers the plot holes, mostly. Still, it was an interesting book with another historical evil vampire in it - Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary, who used to cut the throats of peasant girls and bathe in their blood. Certainly I find the writing style easier to read/listen to than the endless pious moralizing that Bram Stoker does in the first book. Yes, I know. The time period. Still, I get rather tired of constantly listening to the characters being described (and called to their faces) noble, brave, strong, valiant, heroic, etc, etc. Mina and Lucy, especially, are shoved so high on a marble pedestal of virtue, kindness, sweetness and light, that I suppose they wouldn't recognize a non-virtuous thought if it jumped up and down in front of them holding a sign. How can you do character development if your characters are already paragons of all virtue? Dracula is still a good story, piousness or no piousness, but I tend to roll my eyes a lot.

Anyway, the second book ends with a set up for another sequel, which I'm hoping they do. Could be fun. :)

Thursday afternoon we went to Thanksgiving dinner at my SIL Lauri's house. It was nice, if chaotic. There were 25 for dinner. My MIL came down from VT with another SIL. She recently had a hip replacement, but is doing well.

After dinner we drove out to NY to my parents home. My brother & family were there from IN, and my sister & husband from RI. Friday evening we went out to dinner at a Japanese Hibachi place, which was fun. This is where the meal is cooked right in front of you. The chef was quite the performer, and put on a good show. There was a TON of food! I'm not a very adventurous eater (big understatement!), but I managed to pick around and find plenty to eat. My son (who is even pickier than me!) gamely ate a little bit of everything.

When we got back after dinner, we opened Christmas presents. (My family does Christmas at Thanksgiving, so we can all go to our in laws for Christmas without conflict). It actually works out really well. Now I can take the kids' lists and start shopping for the things that Grandma didn't already get them. :) We came home Saturday afternoon. Brian has since been glued to his Xbox, playing the two new games he got. (I'm told Modern Warefare 2 is epic. :))

My gifts to everyone were a touch - anticlimatic. My son's school had a fundraiser - order gift cards (from a very long and impressive list), pay the face value, and a percentage goes to the school. It's a great idea, but the damn things didn't come in time. So I had to wrap up index cards with "L.L. Bean Gift Card $25" (or whatever) written on them. I'll have to send the cards out to everyone when they actually arrive. Which better be soon or I'll have a fit the PTO will long remember. :)

My parents bought a new car, and offered us their old minivan. We gratefully accepted. My minivan has 175,000 miles on it, and Randy's Mazda has even more. Both cars are paid for, and yes, I'm putting the amount of one car payment in the bank every month. But that's ONE car payment, not two. Two car payments are NOT in the budget. My parent's van has 93,000 miles on it, but that should still give us a cushion for a couple of years. We should be able to replace the Mazda without financial strain. We're going to keep my old minivan for Jackie to use when she gets her license.

Today belongs to grocery shopping and laundry. And I can see from here that the dog expressed her displeasure at our absence by sleeping on the furniture (which she is not allowed to do!). The sunshine coming through the window is lighting up a rather impressive display of dog hair on the couch. Better get to it.

This past week was really long. Not sure why, but it was.

Last night we went to a play at the High School. Jackie wanted to go, and it sounded like it would be interesting, so the whole family went. Jackie met several of her friends there. They sat in one row, and Randy, one of the other kid's moms and I sat behind them. While we were hanging out in the lobby before the show, Brian was complaining about feeling left out. Two minutes later, a chorus of "Hi Brian!" went up from a pack of teenage girls passing by. Turned out they were in the Pirates of Penzance play he'd been in last spring at the middle school. Naturally Jackie had to tease him about his 'random fan clubs'. Left out, huh?

The play was The Crucible, which was every bit as grim and depressing as I remembered it from when I read it in high school. If you're not familiar with the play, it's about the Salem witch trials. The students who put it on did a great job. The guy who played John Proctor was very good, as was the girl who played Abigail Williams. When we got home we had a long discussion about witch hunts, the blatant miscarriage of justice, how afraid people must have been with no way to make anyone listen to reason. How the people doing 'the devil's work' were the judges, not the accused. It segued into how religious fanatics strong arm the Bible (or any other religion's beliefs) into saying what they want it to say, with no regard for what the founder of the religion (be it Jesus, Muhammad, or anyone else) set out to do in the first place.

So we added the Salem museums onto our List of Things To Do When We Have Time. (It's a long list!) We're going to try and cross one of the items off today by going to the Boston Museum of Fine Art to see the Egyptian exhibit.

Jackie and I went to the Equine Affaire in Springfield today. Lots of horses. Lots of shopping. Lots of rain. We went to a couple of clinics - the Canadian Cowgirls talking about drill teams, and Tommy Garland on yet another take on natural horsemanship. The highlight for us was the Versitile Horse and Rider Competition - aka 'The Challenge Course from Hell'. As usual most of the competitors were on Quarter Horses, but there was an Icelandic, a Lucitano and a Rocky Mountain Horse there as well. Only one paint, but he was the best one. Gorgeous black & white - mostly white. His owner had him SPARKLING clean. He was blindingly white. He was great - nothing bothered him. The biggest obstacle this year was the pumpkin patch. You had to dismount, put four pumpkins in a wheelbarrow, wheel it over to a line of haybales, put the pumpkins on the haybales, wheel the wheelbarrow back over to the patch where your horse is supposed to be standing quietly, mount on the offside, then jump the haybales with the pumpkins on them. The problem was the 'supposed to be standing quietly' bit. Some of the horses felt that they were supposed to follow their riders over to the haybales and help them with the pumpkins (or snack on the hay). Several decided that since they knew where the exit to the arena was - that's where they were going, forcing their riders to run after them. A couple of the riders decided not to take any chances, and brought their horses along with them rather than trust them to stand on their own. Other obstacles included sidepassing, polebending, a barrel pattern, putting on and taking off a cloak, hitting a small ball with a long mallet through a couple of cones, and a horsie-go-fast finish around the perimiter of the arena. Some of those horses could really haul! Then there was the Lucitano - it took him halfway round before it sunk in that his rider was asking for more than the usual dressage slow canter! Then the lightbulb went on in his head and he charged down the homestretch probably faster then he'd ever gone in his life.

Today the kids have a karate tournament. Busy weekend!

Hi all,

Below is a link for a coupon for the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic. 30% off, and 5% of that goes to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. What could be better? Shopping discounts and a charitable donation all in one - just in time for some holiday shopping! The coupons can be used multiple times in all three stores. Feel free to forward this link to everyone you know!


It's Gap Time Again!

The LLS Gap Give and Get Discount Coupon is now available from lls.org (see: http://www.gapinc.com/giveandget/lls/).

Note that the dates for this promotion run from November 12th - November 15th.

With less than a week, please share news of this campaign with all of your contacts, partners, friends and family -- and lets make this the most successful Give and Get Campaign to date!
Best,
Nancy Klein

Nancy Klein I Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
1311 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY 10605
914.821.8812 I www.lls.org I Nancy.Klein@lls.org

Went down to Warrior's Naadam yesterday. I wasn't traveling with horses, so I daytripped it. 2 1/2 hrs each way, not too bad. mare_in_flames set up a really nice course. kweenmatt is now officially an equestrian marshal! Hurray! Lord Gunnar let me ride his horse, Pig. Pig and I got along really well, and we had a great time. He's a cutting horse (as in cows), very agile and responsive. I believe the quote was 'can be steered with your butt cheeks', which turned out to be perfectly true. We won the competition. The prize was a box of chocolates, and a book about the lost fleet of Khubilai Khan which looks very interesting. Pig and I fooled around for a while after the competition was over, which was fun. Which is why I'm a bit sore today! Wouldn't be a big deal except tomorrow is the Tufts 10K Run/Walk, that I am participating in. Sore from riding plus a 10K walk is going to mesh really well. :) I'm still a bit short of my fundraising goal. So if anyone has a spare few bucks for a good cause, check out my website. The money goes to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/tufts10k09/ktatro#

First off, the dog. Tests are back, ultrasound done. No infections, but the kidneys are smaller than they're supposed to be, and are obviously damaged in some way. We may never find out how or why. So, I have some samples of dog food formulated specially for dogs with kidney problems, and a bottle of fish oil supplements for her. Low protein is apparently the word of the day, so I'm going to look into low protein dog treats. I hope there are brands of the special dog food that I DON'T have to buy at the vet's office. Naturally, I'm sure it's more expensive than the regular kind of dog food. The vet is very optimistic that we've caught it early enough that the progression of kidney damage can be arrested or slowed so that Mandy can go on for a long time (years) before it becomes an issue for her.

Second, me. I've had a sore throat for about 4 or 5 weeks now, but there never seemed time to do anything about it. I finally took today off from work and was seen. Infected lymph node. I didn't know they got infected, but whatever. Antibiotics for the next 10 days.

Third, Brian. He's had a stuffy nose since July. No other symptoms. The first diagnosis was sinus infection. Two weeks of antibiotics cleared it up, but it came back within another couple of weeks. The next diagnosis was allergies - though he's never had allergies before. Clariton did nothing. Clariton D did nothing. Zyrtec did nothing. Today the nurse on the phone said he might just have to live with it. I'm skeptical. Randy's response was unprintable. Not sure what to do next, but there must be SOMETHING.

Fourth, Jackie. She came home sick yesterday, but seems to be fine today. Good. If anyone else tells me they don't feel well, I may bury them in the back yard. :) Since the only household members left are my husband and the guinea pig.......

I posted a week ago about my dog Mandy not liking needles. Well, she's had to put up with them quite a bit in the last week.

Her annual physical/rabies, bordetella,lyme vaccination visit was 9/17. On 9/18, we got a call from the vet saying that there was something weird going on with her kidneys. Enzyme counts were up. Could we bring her in for another test? So in she went again on 9/19 for another blood test and urine test. Got more results on Wednesday. Enzyme counts way up. White & red blood cells in the urine. Urine very diluted. Dogs with counts like this are usually visibly ill. Mandy is not. Best case scenario - lyme disease again (it'd be her third go round) or a urinary tract infection that spread into the kidneys.

Another vet visit today. Another more blood tests and a sterile urine test. Lyme titer came out negative. Tests for urinary tract infections and another blood test for leptospirosis sent out to the lab. Should hear about those by Monday, Saturday if we're lucky. Came home with massive amounts of antibiotics to be given 3 times a day, plus the vet recommends over the counter Pepsid AC once a day. Gonna have to go pick that up. Leptospirosis, BTW, is a disease that dogs can get from the leavings of wild animals. (Like from eating rabbits, I asked? She caught one a couple weeks ago, ate it, and spent the next two days vomiting it up onto the living room rug). Ah, could be.

Both leptospirosis and the urinary tract infection can be cured by the antibiotics. Cross your fingers for me that one of these will be the issue. (Except that leptospirosis can be transmitted to humans - fun, fun.) Because if not, then we're looking at chronic progressive kidney disease. Not a good scenario for a 7 year old dog.

Went to the equestrian practice in Endewearde this weekend. It went really well, I think, though most of the horses acted like buttheads. It was really, really windy, which can make them hyped up. That probably was one of the reasons. Both Jackie and I had issues with Brady, and when Kiena took him for a spin, so did she. Something sets him off, and Kiena and I are determined to figure out what it is. One minute he's standing quietly, practically asleep, the next minute he's stomping, fussing, backing up and generally being a pill. We must figure out what is wrong so we can MAKE IT STOP!

We left the event around 7:00, and arrived at Kiena's after 11:00. Jackie & I crashed there rather than unpack the truck and repack my car. In the morning, Kiena & I went riding. We managed to get Brady into a stomping, fussing mood which gave us some insight on possible causes. Boredom? Irritation? A disinclination to repeat an exercise more than twice? Structured settings vs open fields? Banu leaving him? Doesn't seem to bother him to leave Banu, but it bothers him when she leaves him? How like a man! Some of it can probably be worked through. Some if it we're probably going to have to be sensitive to. Some of it he'll just have to get over. It's a process.

After putting the horses away, we hotfooted it down to peacockduchess's house for starseeker and shadowpony's bridal shower. It was very nice. I hope they enjoyed it. Made it home around 4:30, shortly after which I fell apart. I didn't sleep much at all on Friday night, and while Saturday night was much better, I don't think it was enough. By 6:00 Sunday night I was barely coherent. Randy ordered me to go to bed around 7:30 pm. Good thing he did. When the alarm went off this morning I was more or less functional.

I'm swearing off sleeping in tents, however, for the rest of the year. I don't sleep well when I'm cold. Or when it's really windy so the tent walls go flump, flump, flump all damn night long. Don't know if it's getting older, getting wimpier, or what, but I'm done with cold weather camping. There's a couple of equestrian events still this fall, but at River Wars and Warrior's Naadam I won't be traveling with horses so there's no need for me to stay on site. I can probably even day trip Naadam.

I finished an interesting book the other day - Doomed Queens, by Kris Waldherr. It was on a clearance table (buy 2 get one free) at Borders, so I picked it up. It gives a short, tongue in cheek bio of historical queens who've come to bad ends, from ancient times (Olympias, Roxane, Cleopatra, Empress Wang, etc) through the dark and middle ages (Boudicca, Zenobia, Sibyl of Jerusalem, Theodora of Trebizond, Maria of Hungary, etc) the renaissance (the Tudors take up a lot of this chapter), baroque (Sophia Alekiseyevna, Marie Antoinette, etc) and semi-modern (Caroline of Brunswick, Alexandra Romanov, Princess Diana, etc.) After every chapter is a short quiz to see if you were paying attention, plus a quiz at the end to determine whether you yourself are a doomed queen. I'm not sure how good the scholarship is - not being familiar with the stories of Galswintha or Mumtaz Mahal to name a few - but it was an interesting read.

My dog Mandy had to go to the vet today. Just her annual physical, rabies vaccine, etc. She was in excellent health, and the vet thought she was great. I think he was rather surprised when I suggested that he muzzle her before giving her any shots, but he thanked me for the suggestion and took her into the back for the shots. Once a few years ago, Mandy was receiving a shot, when - quick as lightening - she had the siringe in her mouth and the vet was staring at his empty hands. Never even saw it happen it was so fast. Now we always remember to suggest the muzzle.

He brought her back a few minutes later and thanked me for telling him she hated needles that much. Apparently she was very good for the first two shots, but the third needle stick was TOO MUCH! She apparently snapped and snarled the whole time they drew blood for the heartworm test. I guess the information that a dog is likely to bite is usually given to the vet after he's already been bitten.

She's a really friendly dog, very sweet, not brave, and pretty submissive. Needles are the only thing that EVER have made her snarl. That's my Mandy.

The kids had a karate test yesterday, and both passed. Brian is now a brown belt with stripe, and Jackie is now a black belt. Woohoo! It was a LOOOOONG test. Jackie had to be there at 8:30, and Brian at 9:45. The test ended about 2:30. We asked Brian to give us a call when they wound down to just the black belts, but we got there about 2 minutes after Jackie did her board breaking test, so we didn't see it. However, she broke both her boards (3/4" plywood), one with a hammerhand type blow, and one with a kick. Brian will test for his black belt sometime between six months to a year from now. My babies can kick ass!

My daughter has to memorize all the state capitals. Personally, I think it's silly. Surely if she needs to know the capital of a particular state she can look it up. Why waste brain cells on this? I was agreeing with her on the general uselessness of this exercise, when I suddenly wondered if I could sit down with a piece of paper and write down all 50 states without forgetting any of them. I got 46. Actually a bit better than I thought.

SO! I challenge you to sit down and write down all 50 states and see how many of them you forget!

* Extra credit - write down the capitals too. (I didn't bother to do this, since I don't think I'd have gotten more than a dozen of them right!)

The kids started school this past Tuesday, and each survived their first week. Brian was pleasantly surprised at his classes and teachers - he's been dreading the start of school. But all seems fine, the teachers are good, and 8th grade seems survivable.

Jackie started her sophomore year at Shrewsbury High School, so far so good. She dropped orchestra in favor of chorus - and found that this year the chorus trip was to Hawaii. We went to the informational meeting on Thursday and found out more about the trip. It's a bit more money than I'm comfortable with, but how could we say no? They chorus will be performing in a couple of places - possibly even at Pearl Harbor - and will be doing some touristy things as well. Naturally some of the list is educational and culturally broadening - this is a school trip after all. :) My parents said they'd pitch in for the $400 down payment due next week, and I told Jackie I expected her to do some serious work with the fund raising projects the chorus has planned for this year.

Friday night the whole family went riding at Quick's farm. Jackie rode Charm, I rode Diamond, and Randy & Brian shared Teak. Randy put Brian on a lunge line for a while, then rode himself. It was fun. Teak isn't fond of cantering, and she isn't shy about expressing her feelings. She'll trot forever, and is safe for beginners, but if you know what you're doing she's not so nice. Randy got her to canter several times around the ring. After failing to adequately 'express her feelings', she gave up and cantered quietly. One of the boarders there rode her horse Chief with us (bareback & with only a lead rope & halter). She expressed interest in the medieval games and asked that next time we have a practice there I let her know. Haven't had one in months, so I suppose I should! Have to check the calendar for free Saturdays. There aren't many!

Went to the races this weekend with the family and my mother-in-law. We spent Friday & Saturday nights at her house in Rutland VT, and drove over to Saratoga Saturday morning. Took about 1 1/2 hrs. I've never been to the races before, and Randy hadn't been since his father was still alive. We had a great time. It was the day of the Travers Stakes, so it was a busy day, and a looong one. We got there around 11:00 am for the first post time of noon. We had grandstand seats in the W section, which means just after the turn toward home. They had huge screens everywhere, so if you couldn't see it live, you could see it on screen. It rained on and off all day, so the track was a mud pit, and there were an average of three scratches for each race. We spent the day making $2 bets and screaming in our horses. Randy tended to bet the long shots to win (so he never won anything), I tended to bet short odds to show, so I usually won barely enough to make the next $2 bet. My MIL went home with an extra $8, I think. But we had fun. Randy or I would make bets for the kids, since they were too young to go to the window. Jackie and I started picking horses by whether or not they had cute faces. Everyone else in the stands was probably looking at the horses' legs. We were looking at their faces. :) We saw some exciting races; a real photo finish, an obvious foul by one of the top jockeys, and a longshot filly who ran away from her pony during the post parade, ditched her jockey twice before getting in the gate, and still had enough energy to come from last place and smoke the favorite just before the wire. I didn't bet on the Travers Stake itself because I wasn't sure if I wanted to root for Summer Bird (Belmont winner) or Quality Road. Ended up screaming to Summer Bird as he pulled ahead to win. What a pretty horse he is! Quality Road came in third.

We stopped at Pizza Hut on the way home, which appeased Brian a bit (Pizza Hut breadsticks being his favorite in the world). He found the races themselves interesting, but the 1/2 hour time between races he found pretty boring. And we were there for 8 hours. I understand why the stands didn't fill up until halfway through the afternoon.

Gonna have to do that again sometime.

Had a group training session for the walk I'm doing in October. We did three miles. I'm finding that the distance doesn't bother me at all, but I just can't go as fast as some of the women can. There's a couple of us who lag well behind everyone else. It was really humid. Everyone was dripping sweat when we finished up. One of the women I was walking with was telling me about her son. He's a Leukemia survivor - had CML as a teenager, which is rather unusual. Most kids get one of the other forms (usually ALL). CML isn't curable except via bone marrow transfer, which her son had. Poor kid had to be isolated for months because the process completely wrecks the immune system. A teenage boy unable to leave the house for six months. I shudder to think. Now he's in college in CA. A success story. If anyone was considering donating but hasn't yet, here's the link again so you don't have to look for it. http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/tufts10k09/ktatro

Jackie is currently trying to catch up on her summer reading. She's having to flog herself through the required book - A Lesson Before Dying. It's one of those cheery civil rights things. I don't blame her for hating it. This past week she took the classroom portion of driver's ed. It was 9-3:30 M-F in West Boylston. I wrangled my hours around so I could drop her off and pick her up. At least it's done now!

I'm going to be participating in the Tufts 10K for Women on October 12 in Boston as a member of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. I expect I'll walk it, since I wasn't much of a runner even in my younger days and my younger days are, well, past. Still, I've made a committment to raise $500, and I hope some of you will be willing to support me. Here's the link for my fundraising page.

http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/tufts10k09/ktatro

No donation is too small, but the on line system can't handle anything smaller than $5, so please give those to me in person or mail it.

Thank you!