Zoe's Summer Fun

I know posts have been few and far between lately. Seems that it's been one thing after another since returning from our trip out of town a few weeks ago. The largest issue that seems to overshadow everything is this deck project that seems to be taking forever to get done. We've also had some distractions with another growth suddenly and mysteriously showing up on Zoe's finger. It's the same finger that has the original growth, but this one is on the inside of the hand. I couldn't get the orthopedist to see her inside of three weeks, and the family practitioners don't know what it is. So we've had no choice but to wait three weeks to see if the orthopedist can help us find some answers. Her appointment with him is Monday, so I will keep you posted.

Then we've had a scare with Old Man Frederick who suddenly wasn't acting right. An emergency trip to the vet and a couple follow ups has brought us to the conclusion that his kidneys, which we've known for 3 or 4 years, are failing and his potassium is low. Also, he may have some arthritis setting in or some other cause of inflammation in his muscles or joints, and borderline high blood pressure. The vet says he is still very healthy and in great shape for his age. Eighteen cat years is equivalent to 86 human years, after all. The vet thinks Frederick still has some good years left in him yet. We'll see. For now, he's on a pretty good medication regime, if we can get him to take them. He seems to be back to "normal"...such as "normal" has been for him for the past couple years.

In addition, for those of you that I have not personally told yet, I am nearing the twelve week mark in my second pregnancy. My intentions to tell family personally have been good, but I just can't seem to get around to getting things done these days, including making any extra phone calls or writing letters. I've been in that thoroughly exhausted phase for the past several weeks, but I think I'm finally coming out of it.

As a Medicaid provider in my counseling practice, I've been bombarded with new stringent guidelines and a ridiculous amount of documentation in order to obtain approval to bill for services. For one particular family I see I had to produce no less than 50 pages of documentation in order to get approval. That has consumed a large portion of my time in the past couple weeks.

And if all that hasn't been enough, the photo blog provider I've been using has been making constant changes to their site and their programming. This means every time I log in and want to upload photos, I have to relearn their requirements to get the job done. Then I run into an endless array of "bugs." The current one seems to be that I cannot post multiple photos to this site using their system unless I want to post tiny thumbnails. That's why this post and the previous post contain separate photos.

In short, Lately I've been tired, frequently overwhelmed, tired, frustrated, tired, annoyed, and did I mention tired?

But, this site is supposed to be about Zoe, not about me...so now that I've vented mostly about my own issues, I'll at least include a line or two about Zoe. I'll try to say more about Zoe next time I can steal some moments.

The weather here has become warm and beginning to enter the muggy phases of summer. Until today I would have described things as relatively mild. Today was sticky. We got Zoe a new swimming pool since the last one spent time in the living room last winter and developed some air leaks. This one is a bit larger, and Zoe is more than excited about it. She also loves to spray things with the garden hose and fill up her little watering can and water anything she can find (that was the best $1.50 I've spent on Zoe in awhile!) Most afternoons following naptime, she dons her new Winnie the Pooh swimming suit, hat, and waterproof soccer sandels and runs around outside, in and out of the pool. It gets interesting when she dips in the pool and then, still dripping wet, dips into her Crabbie sandbox. She looks like a little breaded chicken strip when she's done. But she loves to be sprayed with the hose, so I just hose her down good before letting her back in the house.